silver beet

Well now Joonie you have alerted me to something. Silverbeet is sometimes called swiss chard. Now do you know it? You eat the stalks and leafy part not the root. My Mum grew up only eating the stalks as her mother did not like "spinach" as many people used to call the leafy part. Now she eats it all. It is a relative of the things Mum calls beetroot, and you just call beets or red beet. Yes, those come in orange and other stripey colours accordng to pictures in Mum's heritage seed catalogue.. Mum sometimes grows beetroot and then I might get the odd leaf of that, too - Mum eats those would you believe, too. As well as the roots. Back to silver beet. The stalk part is white, perhaps with a silvery tinge. And I suppose that is where the name comes from. you can get coloured sorts, known even here as rainbow chard. I have seen yellow and pinkish red stemss up to almost beetroot coloured stems. the chard things do not have edible roots - at least, Mum does not eat them and she seems to eat a lot of odd things.

Your nice ball with nuts sounds fun - for you. I do not really like to DO anything. I sit and watch TV and Mum in the garden and Dog Angela and.. sing and whistle and climb about my cage. I have a swing and it terrifies me. I will not go near it! I sit on the door of my little cage - I like to sleep there - but soetimes it rocks a bit and I get scared evenof that. If I lose my balance I am in big trouble.. can't flap feathers to sort things out though the wings still flap. They just don't seem to DO anything! I have a sort of kebab thing,and some balls appeared and I ws scared to move till they vanished again. I have cuddly things too, but I did not come out of my little house for several weeks, well, not willingly, till it went away again. I hated it touching me! Soft and cuddly and warm they said - no way! I like to sit and snooze, contemplating my life and how it has changed since I was dangling upside down in that garage carport place with cold winds whistling about.

Maybe SoS can update the blog for me - she can, but she does not communicate with me often from England so she may not know what I want to say.. Last time she rang I called out "Hello Cocky"and she called back over the phone "Hello Bibbie!" It was good to hear from her. I will have to practice screeching loudly so she can get my messages on the other side of the world. And then she can update my blog..

Well, the fire has started putting out more heat now Mum has put more wood on it. She went out to friends for dinner and I was not invited. The only consolation, the only thing that makes me not feel ignored, unwanted and so on is - Dog Angela was not invited either. At least she came straight in and stoked up the fire for me.

It is cold and windy outside so the fire is a nice thing to have going.


Back to sleep for me

goodnight

Bibbie

Silver beet - nice for me, too.

Pear blossom to make lovely pears. I love pears! some will come my way I think. There are apple trees with a bit of blossom on too but they are a bit later to flower than the pears.

I have recently been making a pig of myself on oranges and tomato and a bit of egg. And rocket - that nice Italian bitter sort of lettuce. I get a bit of everything Mum has, really. Carrots and celery and.. so it goes. to think I used to be scared of such things! Now I ask for things by calling out when I see them.

Bibbie

There's a bit of rain about - a wonderful thing!

I'm still here

Hello Everyone

I am still here and doing well after another traumatic visit to the vet.

Would you believe the indignity? I had the snip so to speak much against my wishes, and then Dr Peter let me go to find my own way back into my safety house. But I could not climb! I heard him say "Oh, now you don't have a hook, do you?" and he tried to pick me up again. NO WAY!! So he let me try again - I thought of walking off the edge of the table away from him, actually - and as I started to climb in, he put his finger under my backside and helped me in! I pretended I did not notice. It was bad enough it happened without me acknowledging it. It was a big help though.

The other news is, Mum has to go to England for seven weeks to help her aunt as she recovers from an operation. Apparently I am to stay here and will get fed twice a day by one of two men who will come and visit and water the garden and talk to Angela and me. Dog Angela will go to another house for each night apparently and will be taken for walks too; me, I will sit in my house as ever. Mum says she will ask them to turn the TV on and off for me.

I wil have to be taken to the vet by one of them too for the monthly beak trims. I do not like the idea at all. Bad enough when it is Mum with me. I do not like men!

There are things growing in the garden now - the fruit trees are in blossom and there are intersting things growing in the vegetable patch. I will put some of the photos in for you. think they may go up the top in a new post though. Sorry!

bye for a bit

Bibbie

Alex the Grey died this morning.

Oh dear I am sad too.  My bird friends departing to bird heaven and us all left here missing them.  Vale Alex.

 

Sammy might become quite a friend now once you get properly used to each other. 

 

It is sunny again and no rain – looks like we are fronting up to another season of no rain following years and years of little or no rain – it is getting worrying.  Mum is using buckets to move tank water from outside to bathe in, and then using it again into the (front loading so she uses a small jug to ladle with) washing machine and catching it outside (it now goes onto the garden instead of into the drain) and bringing it in to flush the loo.  She says three uses for water is not bad.  The rinse water from the washing machine goes onto the garden.  But sometime not too far away the tanks will be empty and she will have to start using mains water when allowed.  Not that she will be allowed to use it for too much longer.  We hope for some showers Sunday night or Monday which MAY top up the tanks and then – it will be really work to save it for the garden I think.  I do my bit – I don’t drink a lot!

 

I think – don’t tell anyone yet – I am getting fluffy ankles.  If my legs get feathers all over and the rest of me doesn’t it will look like I am wearing leg warmers or pantaloons!  What fun! 

 

Bibbie

 

 

Spring and Joonie and Sammy

Oh Joonie you make me laugh with the story of how Sammy talks!   Have you told him the story of the rude bird that so disgusted his human, that in the end the human put him in the freezer for a few minutes?  It taught the rude bird such a lesson – he came out, very polite, apologising for his rude behaviour.  THEN he asked what the poor chicken had done to deserve its fate.  I don’t think you need worry Joonie – your Mum sounds as if she knows how things are.  As for getting Sammy here – why not turn him loose and let him FLY here?   It’s the only way he could get here to be honest, I think – there are strict laws about quarantine and things and I suspect Sammy might not pass.  Shall we agree to keep that bit secret – he might get an inferiority complex if he knew?   On the other hand…     

I would like to meet you face to face too Joonie but would not like to give you my virus and have you loose all your feathers too.  Perhaps we had better leave our locations as they are!

Yes it is spring here now in Melbourne Australia.  Just – it officially started 1 September.  But already we have had days where the fire has not been needed, and Mum is working outside in jeans and t-shirt.  Of course, it is sometimes still cold too – some days the max is only about 15 or 16 deg C = 59 – 61 deg F.  Better than the 10 or 12 we had occasionally in the depths of winter.  Still it is a bit early for tomatoes and things to be planted out so Mum is protecting them with plastic and paper if it is going to be cold (below about 3 deg C about 37,38 deg F) at night.  Mum might have to go to England soon to help her Aunt who has to have an operation and lives alone..  so she wants to get things planted before she gets the phone call to say the operation is booked.  Seems strange to me, but that is apparently the way the National Health system works in England.  Here too, apparently, but at least you get a bit more notice locally I think.  As for Angela and me, things are being lined up to get people to come in and do our daily care twice a day, and others to come and sit for company every day or so.  Mum is also trying to get someone to come and live in the house with us but is not having a lot of luck. Even so, it will not be as nice as her being here all the time like now.

I have sat on Mum’s had again a couple of times, and investigated up her sleeve and so on.  I do enjoy a nice cuddle!  And right now, I will enjoy watching Mum pegging the sheets on the line to dry.  Such fun watching them flap in the sun and breeze, too!

Bibbie

 

 

 

No excitement PLEASE

Re  <<<<I am envious, Bibbie. Your life is an adventure filled with surprises and, as Darwin said, giant leaps for birdkind.>>>>

 

Oh Joonie here are you envying me and I envy you!  A bird to talk to and nothing terrifying happening.  I think I could do with some boredom!  And - the closest I get to a bird to talk to is either through the window at the back of the yard, OR a frozen chicken on the way between freezer and oven, poor thing.   They have no feathers either!

 

Yesterday I watched Mum putting tomato seedlings into the ground.  She has put bottles in so she can pour water into them and it gets down into the soil instead of evaporating from the surface.  She said she will give it a good watering today on the garden bed (it was supposed to rain over night but it was just a light shower) and then put mulch all over it, thickly.  She said I can watch her plant little seeds in the umbrella sort of plastic greenhouse, too,  That’s the sort of excitement I like, Joonie, not falling off my perch!

 

Say hello to Sammy for me – he will settle in soon I hope?  He is not sort of decrepit, is he?  Bet he has feathers..

 

Bibbie