Lawn

Not sure I'm cut out for it.

I now have a lawn or rather two lawns - one out the front and one out the back.
I must have missed the 'how to maintain a lawn' classes when I went to man school because I don't seem to be able to get it to grow soft, vigorously - green yet bindi free. I suspect I'm mowing too short - not sure about that but the bindis are enthusiastically in favor of whatever I'm doing.

Apparently the lawn is buffalo but I reseeded the bare patches with tall fescue. The buffalo safe weed killer is also bindi safe but evidence suggests that it's fescue unfriendly.

I need to mow at least fortnightly as the bark and leaves from the three enormous gun trees are sufficient to fill two large dumpsters once mulched!

Cockatoo Vs. Wooden Snake

Living on the edge of the National park we have a variety of birds come visit. It would be unusual for us to have breakfast alone without at least one sulphur-crested cockatoo, eastern rozella, rainbow lorikeet, pink and grey galah or kookaburra come up to the window to see what us two-legs-no-feathers-can't-fly are doing.
They are very playful social animals. I've come across at least one paper which found that the sulphur-crested cockatoo is the worlds most intelligent bird. They live for over 100 years, and in addition to being large (50 cm, 20 inches) inquisitive, cheeky showoffs they love to make a noise with their valley filling raucous screech. All well and good but the cockatoos are big and like to chew houses, stripping the wood, detaching guttering and removing fly-screen, just for the fun of it. They also crap on your washing and the bastards know exactly what they are doing when they do so.
To try and keep them at a distance from the washing we put a relativly lifelike $2 wooden snake on the fence.
It worked for about a week.