Steve, I was talking to my wife’s nephew today who is horticulturally qualified, and picked his brains on some weed problems. He said the chemical I was talking about is Sempra, which is good but expensive and also very toxic. You need gloves, masks etc and so better left to the perfessionals.

He said he’d had a lot of success in using neat glyphosate on nutgrass by daubing it into the centre of each plant with a cotton bud. The idea is to leave the leaves free as a pump to take the poison down into the nuts. If you attack the leaves with strong stuff you can burn them off but the thing then shoots again from the nuts.

Unfortunately he couldn’t help me rescue this guy’s bougainvilleas from the fond embrace of dodder. It seems that we might have to remove the host plant and grow nothing there for the next 60 years just to be sure. But I’ll need to investigate the pre-emergent spray to see how effective it is in killing the seeds in the ground.

I also picked up a copy of StarTrek Voyager, the complete series episodes but am restraining myself until the magazines are read.

http://phenomenologist.deviantart.com/art/Citycat-and-cliffs-edit-73332066

It seems to me in cases like this one there is a conflict between the bright backlight coming from the sky and the faces in the foreground that no software could resolve.

In this case, however, the cloud is part of the feature and you could probably have had a bit more of it and a bit less of the dark hedge in the foreground, because the house in the focus, by aiming the camera a bit higher.

But I’m a total amateur, really.

Steve, thanks for the tip about the nutgrass. I’m sure that’s the same stuff Mitre 10 were selling. A woman I know used it and reckoned it acted like fertiliser, but she did say they had a storm that afternoon.

It’s definitely not the stuff the professionals use, which you can get at Brookfield Produce Store. It used to be available in minimum quantities worth about $600, but now I believe is available in smaller lots.

Both are likely to knock over small (and not so small) shrubs, which really means head down and tail up and some careful painting.

Herbert M visited the tiny band of rebels in the Sierra Maestra, when Cuban gov’t was claiming they had all been killed after their disastrous shore landing. Meanwhile urban rebels were sceptical of Castro and the official Communist Party had no plans for armed insurrection, it seems.

I found the book a little repetitive, but interesting as Fidel (initially claiming to be non-communist) starts his rule with many executions, claims not to want power, and comes under the sway of the Soviet Union; then becomes briefly a key player in the Cold War when USSR stations missiles on the island.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis, other newspapers [and his own paper the “NY Times”], and FBI, take a very dim view of Matthews.

hasta la vista

And rather like Steve’s battle with nutgrass, I’ve been engaged in border skirmishes with rampant bamboo from the neighbours 2 doors away. I tried mechanical means but the damage from digging it out was greater than damage from the bamboo. In fact, the bamboo might have shaded the worms nicely, but … I’ve resorted to chemicals and it seems to work, but requires constant vigilance.

Last night my niece came over for a belated Christmas dinner. My partner’s (ancient) mother had been reading Hemingway in which someone or other had been drinking Calvados (an apple brandy I am informed) and it had been high on the request list. She scored a bottle for Christmas, much to her delight. Throughout the evening when lost for something to say, or sometimes just for effect, she threw her hands in the air and exclaimed “Calvados!” This was both amusing and disconcerting.

http://www.brisbanepowerhouse.org/events/view/a-very-bohemian-nye-08/

We are copping the swimmin weather bigtime today as we did yesterday. I bought a 75 dollar, partly blow up pool, complete with electric filter from k-mart a little while back and consider it the best investment made all year. Nocked my water tank sideways ,when filling, but some good storms last week mean the garden still has some hope.

So it’s all reading ,dipping and watching in our household. And maybe a bit of the music you mentioned if the teenager allows us to stay up late tonight.

Great piccies Mark.

I finally got some time off work after doing seven days during the Christmas week. Went up to Woodford on Saturday and had a great time, not seeing any particular bands but just wandering and watching whatever caught my attention. Sean Choolburra was pretty funny and I enjoyed the Toothfaeries in the amphitheatre too.

Then yesterday I slept in very late and went to Portside with my mum to see Atonement in the afternoon. I enjoyed it, Mum said the book was better. Went back to my parent’s place and grabbed a stack of CDs that I used to listen to about 10 years ago, lots of “very best ofs” (Eric Clapton, Cat Stevens, Santana, David Bowie, etc.). Came back home and played them loudly and mocked my boyfriend relentlessly for, for example, not knowing ‘Layla’. (He claims to have listened to classical music while growing up, so maybe I’m the real philistine…)

Today I am looking at the sky and thinking that doing the laundry probably won’t be worth it. When is Brisbane going to get some decent summer weather? I am sick of overcast skies and mild temperatures; I want the kind of weather that makes me want to go swimming!