30 January 2007

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Jaci and Nicola
Happy Birthday to you!

With love from the Monash Mob


We all hope your birthdays' yesterday were wonderful Looking forward to catching up with both of you soon.


29 January 2007

Organising has started in 2007

We have been busy cleaning the house as part of the pledge to be more organised this year. So far the study is more under control and MLR's room has carpet, instead of a layer of clothes, followed by a layer of toys, followed by a mixed layer of clothes and toys, more like a domino's triple ripple, than a bedroom floor. The next room was the back room as it is needed at the end of the week. The photo's here show what we took out of the back room.


Mikael and his band from Newcastle, Same Old Story, are coming to stay on Friday night. They are playing at the local Tuggeranong Youth Centre. There are 4 teenage boys in the band and Mikeal is the drummer known as Micky D.

We have now washed the bathroom and swept the bedroom. Thursday night will see us putting four mattresses down, the guys are bringing their own sleeping bags.

28 January 2007

Why we should all move to Newcastle

Yes despite all the rain reported on this blog, the water levels in the area continue to fall.

Current water levels have fallen since I last reported here.

WATER STORAGE LEVELS in CANBERRA
Water levels

Goulburn

Daily consumption required 5ML.
Daily average consumption for the week ending 21 January 2007 was 5.48 ML.

Current total storage is at 20.6 %
Current total usable storage is at 17.4 %
All of which makes Canberra's water storage situation seem more manageable.

Wingecarribee Shire are on level 1 water restrictions. This is my favourite restriction.
  • Fixed hoses & sprinklers can be used at night after 8pm, but must be off by 8am.
Nowhere could I find a dam level for Wingecarribee.

Sydney and the Blue Mountains Water
Level three water restrictions, the same as Canberra, although in Canberra you are allowed to water with a hose and drip irrigation on the odds and evens system, so that in Canberra you can water on an even day if your street number is even, between 7am-10.00am and again in the same evening from 7pm-10.00pm. In Sydney you can water with a hose and drip irrigate on Wednesday's and Sundays before 10am and after 4pm. Sydney can also still water their lawns with a hose or dripper. In Canberra you cannot hose the lawns. On the whole I think the level 3 restrictions in Sydney are more sensible than the ones in Canberra. I know that people in Canberra are watering every two days for six hours a day, because they legally can, this should be stopped.
Dam water levels are:
Thursday 18 January 35.4 %

Hunter Water which manages the water in the Newcastle area had this to report.

  • Water restrictions do not apply in the Hunter at this time, and do not come into place until water storage levels reach 60%. Our water storages are 80.1% at 17 January 2007.
So this means that we should all move to Newcastle and enjoy using the water!!!!

I hear that Seattle is very wet and also has great bookshops with coffee, so maybe a move to Seattle is on the cards? Could always open a bookshop in Newcastle.

26 January 2007

More pictures of the Rain

Guess which one of us enjoyed the rain the most!!!












19 January 2007

Rain Rain Rain

MLR is trying push AJR into the water streaming from the pergola

I know I am obsessed by the rain, I miss it, so when it rained twice this week, I have been in heaven. On Wednesday night the rain fell like missiles, cold blobs of water, lancing down to earth, bouncing off everthing it hit. It was a true tropical storm and it lasted for about 45 minutes. JSR and I sat in the pergola and just drank in the noise (and a glass of wine/beer). The children of course thought it was good to run through. Millie the dog did not like the noise of the thunder, but she was very happy that we were out there with her. The peacherines are ready to collect
On Thursday I asked my colleagues at work about how much rain they had received and they had had none!!! Apparently only Tuggeranong!
Thursday night it came down again. This time the rain was gentler and it rained for a couple of hours. The garden sure is happier now.

15 January 2007

2007 the year of storms and drought




Here are more photo's of the storm from New Years Eve. This is the IGA local shop at Richardson, not far from us. Now if only it would rain like that everywhere for a while. The dam level in Canberra today is at 38%.

Cheers
Mondo

14 January 2007

More Weather

For those of you not in Canberra we had a record temperature yesterday, 40.5 degrees, highest recorded since 1968 and third highest recorded ever. If you click on the title of this page you can read the Canberra Times report of it. It is times like these that I am very pleased that we have air conditioning.

I am off to the garden to attack more weeds as it is only 29 degrees today!!

13 January 2007

Typical Saturday?

Generally on a Saturday we have a slow approach to the day. We get up late and then meander through the day, JSR nearly always plays golf. This Saturday was following the usual agenda.

Agenda
  • Gardening
  • Cleaning
  • Questacon
  • Golf
Today I took the children to Questacon, with our new pass. We recieved this as a Christmas present, from the kid's Grandma, Barb.
This pass enables us to use reciprocal facilities such as the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, as well as similar places in Newcastle and Wollongong. We get in and can use the membership lounge, with tea, coffee and milo available - we bought our lunch at the cafe and took it to the lounge, and were able to eat in peace (we were the only ones using the lounge). The kids ran all over for an hour an a half and had a great time. Thanks for the really great present.


After we came home I decided cleaning was not interesting enough and went out to attack the jungle that is our garden on the side of the house. This is our cootamundra wattle forest. Once long ago we planted this type of wattle to provide sun protection to the dining room window- and it worked. Unfortunately wattle's have a relatively short life, and it looked rangy and scruffy, so two Christmases ago we had it chopped out. The side garden looked good. Then came the babies, and more babies (seedlings?). The cootamundra wattle has been declared a noxious weed in this area for obvious reasons. I am unable to pull them out as their root system is too strong. I am cutting them at the base and then immediately spraying the cut with strong insecticide.


There is a wheel barrow under all these weeds. I have removed two wheel barrow's of rubbish and you cannot see where I have been, but the trash pack is now almost full. JSR fixed the extra long hose, so that I can water tomorrow.


A couple of weeks ago I started this whole clean up the garden thing and I started with the roses and one of our overgrown trees at the front of the property.

Here are most of the cuttings from the tree I chopped out.


Here is what the tree looks like now.






I know it will look good in the end, I have to just keep going.







JSR had a great day at golf!!

10 January 2007

New Year in Monash, ACT

While we were enjoying ourselves celebrating the
New Year in Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains. Canberra was experiencing a huge hail storm. Here are some pictures of the storm water drain very close to our house. Our home was fortunately unscathed.






6 January 2007

Welcome to Monash Mob

Hi

Isn't this template a lovely lurid green?

We have basically finished recording our trip to Europe - we will add more to it as we process the video and take photo's from it, I will be adding dates and their may be other stuff to add that I have not thought of. This blog is a general one about the Monash Mob. The Monash Mob are JSR, AJR, MLR and me, Mondo. Here we will record what we are doing and put up photo's. So if you are interested in the basically mundane existence of a family of four then this is the place for you.

Themes for this year for Mondo are

Health
Organisation
Balance
or HOB

I will come back to this page at the end of the year and see if I have managed this.

Some photo's from Christmas 2006










Mum and Dad


Margaret, AJR and MLR at Whitebridge




Rutherford Grandchildren (Megan missing)
Nicola, Kate, Damian, MLR and AJR









Rutherford adults, Al, Wal, Cath, Jim, Cheryl, JSR, AJC, Barb







TC and RMC

TDC and ARC