Mind Fields

I am ejoying reading Mind Fields ( ISBN 978 1 883398 66 8). A book suitable for a rainy day in a caravan.

It has intriguing art of Jacek Yerka with a short story from Harlan Ellison for each painting.

I tried to read them long ago but I was too easily distracted. Now I can go slow and savor each one.

Ancestral Land

I was driving along a country road recently when I came across a road named with my surname. It is an area that was inhabited by my ancestors - now farming country with little native vegetation and most traces of the aboriginal inhabitants are erased.

Can I do more than say "Sorry"?

Sealed in

My home is air conditioned. It never used to be and I love a a high speed fan for feeling cool. But the air conditioning is installed now and I makes sleeping through the night very easy.

To assuage my conscience I have sealed all the external and internal doors so that the heat does not leak in. It was a tough job.-
1) All the internal doors had large gaps at the bottom because the house was once carpeted. Now the floors are polished hardwood.
2) Not all the doors shut
3) The floors are not even.

For the external doors I installed weather strips at the bottom so this stopped rain blowing in (a job that has been on my list a while) as well as stopping warm air blowing in. I added rubber seals around the frame.

The internal doors had to be taken down and have coverstrips added onto the bottom to restore their length then nylon brush seals were added. The brushes were able to cope with the changing floor floor levels as the door swung open and closed. I also shaved the doors to fit the door frames and repositioned the locks so the the doors actually shut.

A surprise was the amount of warm air blowing into the house under the toilet door - the toilet is permanently naturally ventilated with fixed louvres.

Since sealing the doors I have adjusted the air conditioner - it does not have to work so hard.

And I still use a high speed fan to cool down fast.

Glossy White Windows

Light bounces off the window frames and window sills on its way into the house. So the size and colour of the frames and sills really affects the the amount and the mood of the lighting.

To maximise the light the frames and sills on my house are gloss white.

Colour under the sun.

I chose the exterior colours of my house from the Colorbond range - this means that they can be matched by different manufacturers and that they are fade resistant. For example the facia could match the gutters.

My Colorbond  palette is:
Pale Eucalypt
Headland
Ironstone
Surfmist

and the windows are gloss white.

I was helping a friend paint his house recently. One  of his colours was Colorbond Pale Eucalypt. There was plenty left over - so if I need some paint in the future I might be able to buy his left over stock.

Bunya

Six hundred and eight hundred year old Bunya trees are dying in the Bunya Mountains. The blame is put on a water mould soil-borne disease.
Previously myrtle rust became widespread along the east coast of Australia. Many different plants are susceptible including eucalyptus and melaleuca. It was very sad some years ago to see so many dead xanthorrhoea walking around Wineglass Bay in Tasmania.

This is why bushwalkers scrub their boots after walking through native forests.

Blue tongue

I try to keep a part of the yard around the house in a nature friendly state with  trees, shrubs, sticks, leaves, native grasses. I augmented nature with artificial logs made from old steps and watering points.

There was a winter a couple of years ago when a fat blue tongue lizard Tiliqua scincoides would emerge from the fake log each morning to sun itself. I would be watching out from the bedroom window. After that I noticed a couple of skinny juvenile lizards sneaking around.

A this point in the story I should mention that Jack the neighbours tom cat likes to visit my place. He sneaks around the undergrowth or naps under the hedge. And likes watching the birds.

To encourage the lizards and help them hide from Jack I have made hidey holes from old pallets. But with leaves and sticks and hidey holes I had not seen any blue tongues for a year or more. But I saw a big one rustling leaves under the steps where its shady and cool. Knowing a blue tongue lizard is living here makes me smile.