SOS - Save Our Sheep

Heh. I have 6 sheep of varying ages that are going to need new homes in the next month or two (most likely). I'm a wuss, so I'd prefer they were employed as lawnmowers, rather than dinner. But then again, sheep are sheep.

So if anyone knows anyone with paddock getting away from them. Have them get in touch. Sheep are (have been to me) pretty low maintenance lawnmowers, I get them sheared, drenched, feet trimmed etc, once or twice a year, and have needed to pen them for various reasons (flystrike treatment for example - just a spraycan application) perhaps half a dozen times in the last 5 years.

Seems my plan B has been sprung. Hat tip to Spareroom for this woolly tail. Ewe will be amused.

Japanese fooled in poodle scam - World - Breaking News

Our very own Bobby

Scroll down to the story of Paddy the Wanderer, who lived on the waterfront after his owner died, cared for by the wharfies for the remaining 11 years of his life.

Waterfront Tales

Hat tip to Sue from Otaki who reminded me of this story.

Sad as sad can be.

There is something about the death of a pet that really gets me. I blub when the time comes to send that faithful companion on.

I cannot watch Old Yeller at all. Nor would I be keen to see the Disney version of Grey Friar's Bobby ever again.

Just. Too. Damned. Sad.

The Bobby story is beautiful though - in 1856, Edinburgh night watchman John Gray had a Skye Terrier pup which he called Bobby. the two were inseparable for two years. In 1858 John died of tubercolosis. Bobby lived a further 14 years and if the story has credence, spent the bulk of his time lying on his dead master's grave, only leaving to be fed by locals.

At one stage the ownerless dog was to have been disposed of according to a local bylaw. The Edinburgh Provost, Sir William Chambers registered the city council as Bobby's owner instead.

I have twice stood before the statue in Edinburgh, once in 1972, and again in 1995, by which time two gravestones had appeared in the Greyfriar's Kirkyard cemetary - one marking the spot where John Gray lies, the other nearby where Bobby was buried.

In 1995 though, in one of those moments that just happens when savouring something inexorably sad...

... I spied the message on the new headstones which said "Gravestone erected by The American Friends of Bobby" and I got the giggles at the mental image that evoked.

In fact I lay on the grass before Gray's stone heaving with hilarity for several minutes.

Until Mrs Llew came by & told me that it was only mildly amusing. So sadness gone we went elsewhere.

Greyfriars Bobby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And all that prompted this post was news that Younger Sister is getting a dog. A Border Terrier, which looks to be like a short haired Bobby.

Good choice.

Nicky Watson could strip for Playboy

This explains an awful lot of google searches coming through in the last few days

Nicky Watson could strip for Playboy - Stuff.co.nz

Out without my camera.

Experience tells me that not having a camera on my person is the direct trigger for views like this.

So... with the telephone... that little bump on the horizon is Mt Taranaki, believe it or not. As mentioned, it's only visible when I don't have a decent camera on me.

Click on the image for a larger view







And random blogthis:

Something I would like to own.

WINDMILLS - Windmill Water Pumps from Ferguson Windmills

NZ's Most Dangerous - cartoon by Mike Moreu

Cartoon by Mike Moreu on Stuff.co.nz - NZ Most Dangerous Breed Show

Pictures from the manifesto - Cho Seung-Hui

Warning, contains potentially disturbing photos. Work safe. Non-gory. Heartbreaking.

Pictures from the manifesto

Hat tip to "Nobody Important" over at Public Address System.

Intruder Alert!

I wasn't the first to encounter Zeus the Pig. The open2view photographer found him 2 days before me.

Harcourts - Property Details

Variations on a theme...

Country Line-Dancing With the Stars!

There's an idea whose time has not yet come.

Dance schools - Wellington and Wairarapa regions | DANCING WITH THE STARS | TV ONE | tvnz.co.nz

At Least He Enjoyed Himself.

I guess tradition demands I make some comment. But really, the show was quite boring. Highlight WAS, of course, Michael Laws, tripping the "Gorm" fantastic.

I get told off for being mean to them - apparently I should have said "She's looking good!", instead of "She MUST have had plastic surgery!", of course, maybe it's years & years of living solely off Natural Glow crystals.

And I should have said "At least he's having fun!" rather than "He's really crap."

Will the good people of Wanganui rally behind & keep him in the show? Ultimately, who cares? Especially if he's going to appear in those slash front sequinned suits.

But first impressions:

Suzanne Paul - surprisingly good. And to be honest, looking better than she did in the telemarketing days. She really MUST have had some work done.

Frank Bunce - pretty crap. It'd be rude of me to suggest he's more interested in putting the spadework into scoring his partner, but hey, I'm rude like that.

The Pongia guy - pretty good! also looks like he's working the spade, and who'd blame him?

April - not bad, but her partner, Chubba-chup or something, looks like a stoner. Not to mention a prize knob.

Holmesy - about what we'd expect. Nothing flash. The poor guy was more concerned that the judges might be irreverent. They weren't. They must have been briefed by someone.

Who am I missing, oh yeah Greer Robson - could be a contender, can dance, is apparently fiercely competitive. The judges seem to dislike her.

Megan Alatini - has she had dance training? Looks suss. If legit, should meet Pongia in the final.

Who AM I missing. Oh yeah - Michael Laws! Crap! but seems to be enjoying himself. Could be around at the expense of more deserving dancers. Or, if Wanganui despise & abandon him, could be resting his broken toe in no time at all.

Judge mauls Laws on Dancing with the Stars - Stuff.co.nz

A Fruit & Nut Picking, Pig Wrestling, & Lamb Burying Weekend.

Say what? Pig wrestling?!!

First things first though - one of the wether lambs died in the weekend. He'd been looking a bit unhappy for a few days & on Good Friday I caught & had a good old look at him. No marks, just generally unwell. I did my research & decided that even though he was drenched not so long ago, he looked like he had worms, and so I planned to get down to Farmlands first thing on Saturday & get some drench & if we were lucky, he'd pull through.

He didn't though. He was dead on Saturday morning.

Asided from that, the weekend was spent learning how to drive & wield a ride-on mower. I need some ear protectors. The teens were charged with harvesting all the macadamias on a tree at the back of the orchard, which for one reason and another has never been harvested. We decided that this would be our experimental tree.

It's not actually harvest time for this tree, that would be around June. But since it hasn't been harvested in years, we decided to give it a good clear out.

We left the kids to it, with huge plastic drop cloths under the tree, and we went somewhere else - possibly to check on a sick lamb & to wrestle a pig. I can't remember.

When we got back, we inspected the newly harvested tree. And then we spent another hour ourselves, picking about 4 times as much as the kids had all day.

Out of all that, we ended with one large wheelbarrow full of unhusked nuts.

And so onto the dehusker, which looks like somes spare parts & things that an engineer threw up into the air, and they landed that way.

But aside from an initial snarl-up, the contraption works rather well. It needs two people on it, one feeding in the nuts, the other separating the nuts from the husks. And you need gloves. And ear protectors.

I didn't put these into the drying room, I decided that they should be kept separate from any commercial crop & I have them in 3 large buckets in the "Tack" room, which currently has a portable spa in it. This is how they used to dry nuts before all the new fangled technology came on the scene.

And the pig? Well it's not something you encounter every day for sure. On Good Friday, Wilma & I headed out into the forest to check the fences & the sheep. All the sheep present & correct (aside from the sick lamb). Then at around the gate to the forest, something unnoticed & sunning itself on the ground in front of us... suddenly stood up! Wilma got a fright. I just couldn't believe it!

Tripitaka!! I yelled. And Mrs Llew came running.

"A fecking pig!" I bellowed. "Somone has left us a PIG!"

I'll post a picture I took the next day, but this was a pretty largish, black & tan, fully grown pig.

There were no fences down, and so we determined that someone had abandoned a pig on our property.

I called the SPCA & left them a message, I called the Kapiti Coast District Council & was unable to leave a message. I called More FM Kapiti & told their lost pets person that I had found someone's pig. They were amused.

The next day we arose to find that a neighbour has built a pen in his garden & has a pet pig called Zeus. It's not a very secure pen.

At one stage, later in the day, I came across the pig happily lolling in the sun in the middle of my sheep paddock & incensed, I leapt over the fence & tackled the bloody thing.

It took me 30 minutes, and there was a lot of squealing & oinking, and cursing, but I finally pushed the tub of lard back under the fence that he was able to push through from his side. Then I attacked my side of his pen with hammer nails & a couple of pieces of corrugated iron. Then, when the neighbout turned up I impressed upon him the need to keep his pig contained.

Monday was spent less energetically. Except for Mrs Llew, who picked 4 trees worth of apples. At least half of them were bird eaten & ended up in the compost, but we still have enough to last us a wee while & at least one more tree to pick.

Brothels cleared to open during Easter trade ban - Stuff.co.nz

What a relief! Now, all they need to do is start selling gardening supplies & plants, and they might be onto something.

Strange Google Search redux!

Bwahaha! - The guy (it must be) from Lorain, Ohio, tried again, guess who he found this time.

black cheerleader search (naenae) - Google Search

Calling All Celts - Time to Mobilise!

Hands off Pal, all your rivers are belong to us!

Tainui wants to own Waikato's water - Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand, A Celtic country

And even more! Hat tip to Noizy for bringing this to my attention.

New Zealand, A Celtic country

Once I find out what it is Mr Brougham clearly has easy access to, I shall get ripped & read it.

Things you probably didn't know # 1

This thought provoking* letter was published in the DomPost this week:

Artefacts Are Celtic In Origin

An archaeological dig has taken place recently at Westport where greenstone arrowheads were found. Local iwi have already claimed them.

It's strongly suspected that this is one of the sites of Mhor Ruairidh, who lived there in 1120. These arrowheads are definitely not Maori. They belong to the original tangata whenua, who created this & other settlements, and were of Scottish/Celtic origin. This is another case of the Government and Maori trying to cover up New Zealand's true history.

Ian Brougham
Wanganui

*The thought provoked being: Where can I get what this guy must be on?

Everything for Sale

I saw this movie at varsity - it was one of the movies we had to see & critique for a course called History & Criticism of Film.

Great course, for all the entertaining ones like The General, I'd bring a load of mates along.

I didn't bother if it was a Polish Arthouse film from 1969 though.

Everything for Sale is a semi-autobiographical movie from Andrzej Wajda and concerns a famous Polish film-maker looking at his life following the suicide (or drunken mishap - he fell off a moving train) of his most famous leading man Zbigniew Cybulski (there is no photo on this page, so you'll have to trust me when I say that Cybulski looked like Trampas/Doug McClure). The two had worked on Wajda's masterpiece, Ashes & Diamonds.

Wait - I found a photo

It wasn't immediately apparent to me, but then I can be like that, maybe I was hungover at the time, but the title explains the film - Everything for Sale = selling out.

And so we watch the film director selling out completely, and his surviving stable of actors, and pretty much everybody except the leading man who was too busy getting laid, getting drunk, and falling out of trains to bother selling out. Although wikipedia says he fell under a train trying to catch it... if my memory isn't playing with me, Everything for Sale has it slightly different. But it could be my memory - hey, if you come to watch it, let me know.

So anyway, find & see all these movies as they're well worth it. Especially The General.

Wszystko na sprzedaz - Everything for Sale (1969)

And SunnyO, the old one is for sale now, the sign went up yesterday. Chances are it'll be bought by a developer, it's 2.5 acres of residential, coastal land. We haven't even told our neighbours what's happening, but they'll have seen the sign by now.

It is available to rent though, until it gets sold.

And the sheep are for sale although wuss that I am, I'd like them to go to retirement paddocks, rather than freezers (I'll give them away to a good home), . I think the ewes will be easy to rehome, people want lambs. The wethers may be a bit more difficult to shift, although they are characters & very efficient lawn mowers & fertilisers.

I've been making a case to take 2 of them to the orchard, as I really am no fan of mowing lawns, with or without a ride-on mower. Mrs llew reckons M & her boyfriend H will happily do the mowing, but from my own experience, I know that will last two, maybe three occasions & then it'll be down to me again.

Sigh.