• Daily Life

    Banking On Banksia

    Having caught the propagating bug last year, I’ve decided to try my hand at growing my own plants again in 2024, this time turning to the difficult proposition of raising banksias, the flower that most symbolizes Australian flora in my eyes. So far, my luck with banksias hasn’t been great, mainly thanks to ignorance and ill preparation to be fair. And impatience, perhaps? Kangaeroo Corner has a banksia that has grown well since it’s initial planting almost two years ago, but it has yet to flower for us. I expect it will do so one day. But I still want…

  • Daily Life

    Happy Bird-thday, You Pterror!

    Today is Dino (the dinosaur)’s third birthday. Our little rosy-faced lovebird has been with us for three years, and has been pretty much a constant companion since the early days of the pandemic. She is my best mate, but at the same time, the bane of my life. She demands ceaseless attention, unless she’s laid a few eggs or found herself some paper. If she has laid, as she did to mark her third birthday, she tends to sit on the eggs in a corner of her cage. If she’s about to lay, the preceding couple of weeks are nearly…

  • Daily Life

    Lady of the Lake and More Lucky Rides

    Not much has happened, certainly nothing to really write about, but I have been very fortunate to get some amazing skies that make tremendous backdrops for bicycle photos, including these shots of La Cangura beside a little pond near the Tama River, which evoked an image of the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian legend (at least for me). Futile attempts to revive the fertilizer-burned lawn have caused greater frustration. And so has taking care of the bird, which is going through a hormonal stage. Of course, my boss at work is somewhat similar, so I never know which…

  • Daily Life

    Be Careful What You Wish For…

    One of the highlights of Kangaeroo Corner is the Fountain of Strewth, which I placed with the hope of attracting birds to the garden, but the role has been served so well, I’m now drawn to the idiom used in the headline (which stems from a passage of Aesop’s fables that says “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified,” according to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Sixteenth Edition and as I learned today). Sweltering heat and fierce sunshine has made the Fountain of Strewth a popular part of the neighborhood’s avian residents. And I’ve been delighted by this, sitting in…

  • Daily Life

    Another One Bites the Dust…

    It’s no longer possible for me to trust my own mind because I know how utterly unreliable it is, but I got greater affirmation of why I’m so uneasy in my workplace when I learned last night that we have lost yet another very decent person from our working team. My boss is toxic. So am I, though. I’m not a positive, constructive workplace presence; at least in terms of what my employer would like. Nobody can work with my boss. She has chewed up and spat out everyone she works with, mainly through being excessively demanding and relentlessly uncompromising.…

  • Daily Life

    It’s All Happening Here!

    Pushed for time and all other sorts of resources, Kangaeroo was surprised to note this morning that it had been almost 10 days since the last post on the site. So much has been going on, some of it pretty crucial, that time slipped away. To borrow a turn of phrase made popular by one-time Australian cricket captain and commentator (and fellow Victorian) Bill Lawry, it’s all happening here. I guess it’s best to go forward by category. Among Kangaeroo’s interests over the past year has been the Aussie garden. A crucial part of that garden is the lawn, traditionally…

  • Strine Sports

    Cold, Wet and Dark

    Doesn’t get any more archetypically Monday than today….cold, wet, dark and bleak. Kangaeroo wasn’t too keen on getting out on the bike with a huge day ahead. But it was precisely because the day promises to be demanding that dragged him out in the end. Rain had been forecast, but the prediction was that it would be intermittent and not heavy. That was exactly what happened. Rather than hit the dark bike path where many people dress in black and are hard to see at the clearest of times, Kangaeroo decided to stay on the main roads, which were hard…