Bend in the Weather (Entries tagged as holiday)

One who plants a garden, plants happiness

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:26:00 +1100

In December we moved into our new house.

Like any new house there are a million tasks that need to be undertaken to make that house into a home.
Slowly but surely Pauline and I are undertaking these tasks.

Whilst the majority of the house is now set up as we desire inside (albeit a few pieces of furniture and moving boxes that seem to continually appear!), the outside has been relatively untouched. Looking out on dirt, rubble and left over building materials wasn't too inspiring.

We laid down approximately 24 metres (yup 24 metres!) of top soil over the Australia Day weekend after removing most of the rubble from the yard. Six hours of bob-cat work and we had it laid out and levelled. Whilst the top soil provides a great foundation for lawns and gardens, it also is a wonderful way to introduce a massive amount of dust and dirt into the house. We also laid about 2 metres of gravel with the bob-cat laying it out for the commencement of a side driveway for us.

I took last week off on work to put in a front garden. This would provide a few solutions:

Limit the amount of dust being brought in the front door.
Provide us with some inspiration.
'Complete' the front of the house and making it much more appealing to the passing eye.

We started by drawing up a rough plan of what we were after. We wanted a low maintenance garden, but something that was pleasant to look at, but also something that attracted native birds. As the front yard can be seen from the bedroom and Pauline's study, we were also after something inspirational.

One item I did want was a 2nd driveway, to provide access to the rear of the property. We have a 2.5m side gate, and a gravel driveway would be ideal to separate the garden from vehicles and machinery needing to get around the back. I wasn't overly keen on having the garden being stomped on by earth moving equipment. In addition, we could put an area behind the gate to store our trailer.

So after many, many hours in the last week, we've produced a garden we are extremely proud of. It's our first attempt at any serious gardening (do growing herbs and potted plants count?), so we actually surprised ourselves.

Here is a run down on the various stages we undertook. It should also help provide some steps to those wishing to undertake something similar.

Stage 1 - Starting point We had previously had the bob-cat operator in a few weeks earlier. He had laid down and levelled the top soil and some crushed rock for us. This was our starting point.	Stage 2 - Preparing the area We started by laying some treated pine (H4) as a boundary between the side driveway and the proposed garden. 3 additional metres of gravel was then placed on the driveway, and we shoveled and raked this out by hand. (in hindsight -- using a bob-cat would be recommended) Moving this much by hand isn't advised! Weed mat was then applied and pegged down to cover the proposed garden area.
Stage 3 - Laying the chip bark We ordered in 3 metres of chip bark and raked it out. It's about 4-6 inches deep, which helps reduce water evaporation and also provides another barrier against weeds. Now the chip bark is down, the defined areas of the garden can be made out.	Stage 4 - Creating a feature point A feature point in a garden is important, as it draws the viewer in. We decided on a centre feature point to utilise the shape and area we had defined in the garden. ¼ a metre of 20mm tuscan pebbles and another ¼ of a metre of 40mm tuscan pebbles where mixed together to create variety and randomness. The ½ metre of pebbles was then laid out in a 'pond' style shape and curved to break many of the straight lines in the garden.
Stage 5 - Adding garden pieces Garden pieces add curiosity to a garden and often provide the charm. Whilst the plants are the main aspect of a garden, it is often a good idea to add non-plant items to a garden to break up the garden and generate some interest. As we were going for a native/bush garden we added some 'rustic' elements such as the tree stump and the log (a disused/broken old fence post). In addition we wanted to attract native birds to the area, so we added a bird bath to the garden. The tree stump is strategically located so curious birds can fly/land on the tree stump and survey the surrounding area before venturing in for a drink/splash.	Stage 6 - Planting Now that the base of the garden has been established, we planted the succulents, trees, shrubs and flowers. We were after a native bush style garden, so natives and drought tolerant plants were used. We were also mindful of colour, shape, texture and foliage of all the plants selected. Doing so meant that we didn't create a static looking garden but one with visual depth and appeal. Many of these plants when established will grow out to 1-2 metres in width and height. This will provide a rather populated garden and one rich in colour, foliage and shade. Due to so many native plantings, it's likely to also be a hit with local bird and animal life.

The garden is quite attractive from all angles:

Here is some close ups of some the plants we planted:

We're extremely happy with the results, particularly seeing this is our first real attempt at gardening. Whilst it's daunting starting out, there is so much information available on the Internet, in books and at hardware stores/nurseries that it really isn't hard to locate the information you require.

Pauline now has a beautiful view out of her office window, and we wake to a lovely garden each morning.
It's definitely not a weekend job, and it did take us the entire week to do. (Though a very warm summer and not being the fittest people going around probably dragged that out). In addition we had to go get supplies on a regular basis which ate into 'gardening time'.

So if you are wanting to put in a garden and remove that dead brown grass I highly recommend it. It's much more pleasant and lively to look out on, and will help attract native birds into your part of the world. Whilst we could have also paid a landscaper to come and do all the hard work for us, we ended up saving thousands and have a great sense of accomplishment. It's well worth the investment in labour and time. On the finance side, we hit just over $500 which is quite cost effective.

Finishing Touches
We are going to put in a pathway from the side gate to the front door. I'm picking up a bunch of red gum sleepers and will be cutting them in half and burying them into the chipbark to provide a nice rustic path via red gum steppers. Even better, I'll pick them up for free after a barter was undertaken (configure up a Samba server for him, and access to the sleepers I would like). Now that's using Linux in ya garden!

We have some garden lights that we may eventually run down the driveway/path to the front entrance. We do have a sensor light there, so I'm undecided at this stage if we need them out the front (we also have a street light opposite us, which provides a lot of night light). If I don't use them around the front, we will redeploy them around the backyard.

Back online after moving into the new house

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:44:00 +1100

In my last post, I mentioned I was moving out of the city (Melbourne, Australia) and heading to the country.

Well the transition has occurred and I'm more than happy with the move. Our neighbours two deep on each side have all come out and introduced themselves, and the general atmosphere around the place is warm and uplifting.

The sense of community runs strong outside of the capital cities by the look of it.

Bannockburn is by no means a small town, though it's no thriving metropolis. It's about 15 mins drive from Geelong, but you would think you're thousands of miles away or in a parallel universe. Hand-waves whilst driving, a chat with a stranger (soon to be become an acquaintance/friend) are all common place. At the time of the 2006 Census, the population was a mere 2,486, but has more than doubled in the following two years. By 2015, they are expecting a population of around 15,000. If you're down this way, be sure to drop in. It's a quaint part of town and quite charming.

All the majority of our daily needs are here (local Woolworths, petrol, green grocer, butcher, baker, vet, auto repair, post office, pub, restaurants, fast-food, legal and accounting services,etc can all be found in the town). Those not here (ie: the not-every-day purchases) is only a 15 minute car-drive into Geelong.

I'm loving the lack of police sirens/choppers and cars doing wheelies until 4am most nights. The only noise we hear at present is the 6-7am chatter of the native birds found in abundance. (Not a real problem -- we're up at 6-7am anyway -- working through to late at night getting the house set-up).

Bannockburn for me was a natural choice. It's closer to loved ones, as well as the type of environment, community I would like to raise a family one day. The hustle and bustle and dog-eat-dog attitude that the big cities portray is not the values I would like to instil into my own children.

So how did the move go on Friday? As many know there was a deluge across a lot of Australia. In our neck of the woods we had the pitter-patter of a few rain drops from about 10:30am whilst filling the removalist's truck. By 3:15pm they had finished unloading the truck and literally seconds after the truck doors had been shut down it bucketed!

I'm glad we got our water tank hooked up prior to the move. Those 24 hours resulted in approx 70mm of rain. The tank is now full!
That much rain ensured we had a natural inground swimming pool over most of the backyard. The dogs found this too irresistable (they had never seen so much rain in their young years), and decided it was time for swimming. Shortly after we had dual-coloured dogs.... The original colour on their top half and a nice brown/muddy underbelly.

Saturday/Sunday saw us return to clean up our vacated premises. On Wednesday we return the keys to the landlord. It's a great feeling moving out of the rent cycle and into our own home.

Monday I had our networking guys in to terminate off our wired house. We now have 48 GigaE running throughout the house. The 19" racks I have in the garage look all very impressive now. I'll take some photos in the next few days and post them up for all to see. (Once I find the box with my camera data-cable! )

The new 48-port GigE Managed Switch also has PoE on all ports, and makes powering the Snom VoIP phones a breeze with no need for a power pack anymore (frees up on power point, and also one less cable to tangle unde rmy desk!). Cabling the house was a great idea -- being able to just plug an Ethernet cable into the wall in nearly every room of the house is just a god-send and something I would recommend to anyone who's building (do it during the framing stage, prior to the plastering).

The mountain of boxes strewn around the house are slowly disappearing. It will take us some time but we're hoping by Christmas to have everything fully unpacked/setup. That will leave me with the daunting task of establishing our gardens/plants/lawns outside during this crazy drought/summer. Something I am looking forward to getting up and running.

One of the benefits is since moving that my ADSL1 connection is indeed faster and cleaner here than our previous location (though we are about the same distance from the exchange (1-1.5kms). I'm pulling down pretty much the physical limits of ADSL1 and squeezing 100-150Kb/sec more then I previously have. Once ADSL2+ becomes available through my provider (Internode - due in the next few days), I may consider the move up if the price is 'reasonable'.

The garden shed and vegie garden will probably be first off the ranks, with the rest to follow after that.
I'm seriously considering putting in a large sandpit for the dogs so they can dig til their hearts content (and not in my lawn/vegies/plants! )

Though, all in good time. In the interim, I'm just enjoying country life, and not missing the glare of the city at all. A few more weeks of setting up house and I'll be as happy as my dogs running around in mud!

Visit Disney World - in the luxury of your own home

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:28:00 +1000

We all enjoy a good holiday. Getting the time to take one always seems to be the problem for me however. I think I may have just found the answer...

If you're like me you grew up watching The Wonderful World of Disney at 6:30pm every Sunday. Here we marveled at cartoons of Mickey, Goofy and other great Disney characters. (So much so, many the hostnames on my home network are now named after Disney characters! ).

It also introduced us to classic 'childrens' movies like Herbie, 101 Dalmatians, Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland.

It's probably the dream of every child to visit the magical place of Disneyland or DisneyWorld.

With the help of Google you can now explore DisneyLand without leaving your chair!
Google has produced a 3D interactive representation of Disneyland inside Google Earth.

If you've got Google Earth installed try the following:

Once Google Earth loads, search for "Disney World".
Click on the golden Disney Mickey Ears - This will load an information window.
In the info window click on Show Disney World in 3D.

The 3D world contains over 1,500 3D models and will let you explore right through the park. The models are highly detailed and a sight to behold!

It's nearly as good as being there!
Just think - no more queues for rides, no long-haul flight getting there, and the park is now open 24 hours for you.

Have fun exploring!

10 year anniversary

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:38:00 +1000

How time flies.

Tomorrow (2^nd May) Pauline and I will have been married for 10 years!
It only seems like yesterday that we were two scared kids wondering what the hell we were getting ourselves into.

We can honestly say that it's been a great 10 years. Whilst like every couple we have our ups and downs, we generally have more ups then downs. We've both grown together and stronger as individuals.

This year, is a big year for us. We are building our first house, and potentially may start a family after that. So life moves on, always throwing more challenges and adventures.

To celebrate the milestone, we're heading away for the weekend.
I'm taking a few days off work to extend the stay. We're not heading too far, but enough so that we're out of mobile phone range and the hum of computer power supply fans for a few days.

We've decided to head up to Healesville. For those unaware, it's located North-West of Melbourne in the Yarra Ranges.

View Larger Map

There is tonnes to do there, and we indeed to make good use of our time! We're hoping to get to Healesville Sanctuary (Pauline is an animal loving nut - this is a must stop for us!), The Hedgend Maze, The Yarra Valley Railway (time permitting), as well as visiting a bunch of wineries in the region (Map here) (I wish to stock up the ever diminishing supply of good Australian Red/White wine I have.)

It will be good to get away for a quiet retreat and leave computers, mobiles, television and most of the usual suspects that distract us.

Matt's new watch that Pauline gave him to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary.

As I've already blogged, I got Pauline an eternity ring to mark the occasion. Pauline returned the favour by surprising me today with my own present!

She came home with a lovely watch. My existing watch had been banged up quite a bit and was in need of a new battery (though it did tell the time correctly twice every day!).

She couldn't wait to give it to me (she was planning on surprising me on the day and had to show me straight away!

It is indeed lovely, it's quite easy to read, balanced beautifully and quite an attractive piece of jewelry. I'm extremely happy with it. (I would of personally picked something like this - she has got my taste down pat!).

It's fantastic, we now both have something lasting to remember the milestone.

So we've packed our bags, getting the dog looked after and heading out early tomorrow. (Friday).
The camera has been thrown in so we will hopefully take some photos of the picturesque country that is the Yarra Valley.
Pauline's selected a lovely apartment for us to stay in, and it's been furnished in a lovely traditional Japanese style. I'm looking forward to staying there, as it looks divine.

I won't be near a computer or Internet access for half the week, so I suspect the Email will still keep rolling in.
For those of you wanting a response, please SMS me (I'm not sure when we'll have coverage), or wait for our return.

Whilst the weather forecast isn't ideal, it is strangely very similar to the weather we had on our wedding day! In any event we have a number of indoor and outdoor activities planned so I'm sure we'll have a blast.

The sounds of Christmas - Sennheiser Style!

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:37:35 +1100

Each year my family do a Kris-Kringle for Christmas. This saves us all ending up with a bunch of presents we don't want and one present we all desire. All the names are drawn and everyone knows who is getting for each other.

Individuals can then 'request' the present they want.
We set a limit of $50 on each present, so whilst it won't break any banks, you do end up with a reasonable present.

This works well on my side of the family, as we're all adults with the exception of my cousin Joshua who's still under 10. For Josh...we all still buy for him.

This year I wanted a reasonable set of headphones to listen to music/videos and anything else making sound from my computer. The main reason is that I share the office with Pauline, and as you can imagine, it annoys the hell outta her when I've got something cheesey or crazy off YouTube playing.

I elected to get some Sennheiser headphones. I originally requested the HD201's.. as they were under the allocated $50.
What I didn't realise at the time.... is that they are no longer on the market, and have been replaced by the more expensive HD202s.

They were almost double the price of the ones I originally asked for... But after listening to 'em...you'll be lucky to prize them from my hands/ears.

These little beasties pack a real punch, and are very comfortable to wear for long ours at a time (not like those annoying iPod ear buds that hurt your ear canal after an hour!)

Even better, it comes with a 3m cable, so it easily plugs into my PC, without having my head flattened against the desk to listen (due to short-chord syndrome found on the iPod ear buds).

The sound range they produce has to be heard to be believed! Those flakey 160kbps MP3 files now sound like you're sitting in front of the royal orchestra. The sound is crisp, rich and full. I dare not stick a CD in for fear the sound depth will blow off my head!
For those that love classic/jazz, the ambience and clariry of the strings is crisp and sharp, whilst those bass-heads will love the chest thumping that the deep bass volumes produce.

These beauties have ensured none of my bad tasting music effects Pauline now.. and saved hours of frustration.. (though they don't solve my tapping my feet however -- which now seems to be the problem!)

If you're in the need for some decent headphones, you can't look past Sennheiser's range. They produce headphones for any price range and situation.

So if you need to speak to me, make sure you wave your hands... I probably can't hear you over my headphones!

A week isn't weak

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:27:28 +1100

It's been a week since my last blog entry!

Since that time I've been enjoying the rest. I haven't started looking at present for another role but will commence with that as of tomorrow.
I'm not too concerned, as it's traditionally a quiet month and December was very hectic so it's likely that February will also do well.

The role at Coles-Myer didn't eventuate... though that's not such a bad thing.

What have I been doing in the interim? Well enjoying life... have watched some of the cricket, and much of the tennis (for those that don't know the Australian Tennis Open is on in Melbourne ... so it means we get to watch it in prime-time.

I've also been doing some work on my brother-in-law's notebook to ready it for Internet use (It didn't have any patches and have never stepped near the Internet). Why?! His desktop has died so we ordered him a new one, so his notebook (normally used for tuning his cars) was rushed into commission.

A day and a half later it was right to go! That's what happens when you have numerous updates, service packs and the like to go on a PII-300 running WinXP!

Not much else to report... will be doing some website coding for some new stuff released later this month. More news as it comes along.

Holiday - Part 6

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 08:20:00 +1100

This is the last post on our holiday.

I thought we would at least post some pics on what the place looked like that we stayed at!

We stayed at the Quality Resort Rockford in Mildura. Recently refurbished, it's quite modern and very relaxing!

For those considering going to Mildura I would highly recommend the place. We stayed in one of the corporate rooms and were lucky to pick it up for half price by booking through WotIf

I would say I got sunburnt the day we played tennis. As we were out there for a while! Ahh well... the exercise did us well.

Those that know me know that I enjoy my wine. I had let our stocks run down a little so was looking forward to visiting some of the local wineries around Mildura to replenish the stocks.

We took in 3 wineries whilst we were away. Stanley Winery (part of the Hardy Wine Company), Trentham Estate Winery and Lindermans Karadoc Winery. We purchased a mixed dozen at each so we'll have plenty of wine for quite a while now. Each winery has some excellent wines.
If you're interested in what we went with (both white and red) let me know.. I'm happy to give you details.. We even picked up some excellent 'summer reds' that you serve chilled. Very refreshing on a hot summer's day!

To get to the Trentham Winery we passed through the town of GolGol, a small town on the Murray just outside of Mildura. We stopped and took a photo as it was so picturesque.

As we visited Lindermans on the way home we passed through Red Cliffs (just south of Mildura). Red Cliff's claim to fame is that 'Big Lizzie' resides here.

Built in 1914-1915 in Richmond, it was intended to go upto Broken Hill to cart wool from the outback stations. It however could not cross the Murray at the time which was in flood.

In 1920 the Victorian Government hired it to uproot trees and clear some 1500ha of land around what is now Red Cliffs.

After Red Cliffs and Lindemans... it was back to Melbourne via the Calder Freeway. The return of Melbourne highlighted the end of the holiday. We had such a good time we didn't want it to end!

I'll take some shots of all the different wines we brought back and post it up later in the week.

Holiday - Part 5

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:23:49 +1100

As promised, here are the remainder of the photos from our Paddle-Steamer outing.

The Murray river has a series of Locks along it's path. Originally slated for 30 it contains 15 (The railway system that came through many moons ago killed off river transport!).

The locks allow the water depth levels to remain in place to ensure the Paddle-Steamers can get up and down (without running out of water!). The Lock 11 is the only Australian designed Lock, the rest are US designed.

The Lock works by using gravity to move water from the higher ground to the lower ground. Once both sides have levelled the doors of the lock are opened and the vessel is able to pass through.
It's a simple design but quite ingenious! It fills at around 1 million litres/min so it only takes about 4 minutes to raise some 4 feet. The gates each weigh in at a staggering 18 tonne!

Below is a small animation of the gates opening up.

Holiday - Part 4

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:45:07 +1100

Hmm.... a day of catching up on sleep.
I also officially blame Anne for the peeling skin now on my cheeks!

Okay... on with more photos!

The same day we did Orange World in the morning, we headed out on the Murray River on a PaddleSteamer for the afternoon.
It was fabulous! We went on the "PS Melbourne" -- Very relaxing, with a nice breeze and a very casual 2 hour cruise taking in the Mildura Weir and Lock 11 (photos on both tomorrow!)

So on with the photos!

So as you can see it was very enjoyable!

Holiday - Part 3

mbottrell@gmail.com (Matt) — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 22:59:09 +1100

We finally arrived home.
We've had a great time away, but there is no place like home... actually there is no place like your own bed to sleep in.
It will be great to get a full nights sleep.. both Pauline and I have struggled to get a decent night of sleep since being away.

Continuing on our picture tour... we visited Orange World on Wednesday. It was quite fascinating and very educational (I'll post in the comments later on some of the stuff we learnt! ... It's late, and I've only arrived home recently - after spending about 9 hours on and off travelling today), so I'll keep this brief!)

That's all for now... more photos/comments tomorrow!