'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.
Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.
She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.
Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.
We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash
Lara Giddings, government official
"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.
"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."
Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.
"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," he added.
Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields.
"They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away," he told ABC News.
"They'd come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock."
Some people believe the mysterious circles that appear in fields in a number of countries are created by aliens. Others put them down to a human hoax.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pac
and artificial flowers," wrote poet Federico Garcia Lorca. "In his mouth,
just one small word was left." There were times during the first half of
June when I was tempted to borrow those words to describe you,
Cancerian. Now, thankfully, you're moving into a much brighter phase. The
buds that are about to bloom in your heart are very much alive, not
artificial, and your wings, while not fully restored to strength, are healing.
Meanwhile, your mouth is even now being replenished with a fresh supply
of many vivid words.
http://FreeWillAstrology.com
suggestions?
mummies on father's day
Originally uploaded by zzinnia
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oh, how I'd forgotten the loveliness of letting water out, topping it with hot! adding Epsom salts, to soothe my aching body (that just finished pitchforking my 18' x 24' plot--which was never a vegetable garden before).(this was day 3.) but i got stuff in the ground, finally. my work schedule's been brutal. and it has been raining constantly. but tonight, 3 kinds of tomatoes, green beans, silver queen corn, and marigolds are in!
beets, arugula, lettuce, jalapeños, habaneros, sweet yellow peppers, basil, carrots, romaine, okra!, cukes, and zucchini--guh! where will i fit it all tomorrow???
but for now i must log into work and execute a full export of the cod.
woot(zor).
worked in the yard from 7:30-11:30. went to a meeting. took a nap. worked in the yard from 5:30 to 8:30. (it was a long nap.)
watched S2E01 True Blood tonight! woo hoo!
spoiler: Lafayette's not dead! man, they really have veered off from the books! (in good way.)
sigh. still, my tomatoes are not planted.
looking to the pond, from the back yard
you can see the bright green privet leaves, where i've wired them to a cross-piece to grow into an arch. i'm not going to trim the hedges until after they flower. i love that scent! it reminds me of getting out of school for the summer!
by next year, the garden will be "walled" by privet hedge!
my trusty wheelbarrow:
first clematis of the year:
centaurea montana
lovely ligularia leaves:
new path to the apple tree
melissa helped plant the reds and lay the path
the yew side of the pond
looking to the yew
unfinished path
rocks for pathing
lynne's mother-in-law's siberian iris
new velvety citron water plant (name unknown)
despite seeing 2 doctors, the fire and ice in my right arm continues to wake me multiple times a night. i am typing left handed because i can't get my fingers to hit the correct keys with my right hsnd. i can't pick things up. it's useless.
i have poison ivy.
sigh.
(that brick edging is new. unfortunately, i couldn't find enough bricks to do both sides.)
from another angle:
isn't that dulce de leche heuchera (orange palnt near the glass orb) da BOMB??!?
beauty shot of the ligularia (dark leaves) and the most sumptuous columbine i've ever seen:
me pond, with cattail and water hyacinth:
the lone allium gladiator that survived the over-the-fence-raiding neighborhood kids:
and, the wall o'iris is in bloom!!!
3 kinds of iris (japanese bookend the bed, german/bearded are the bulk of it), rose campion (that i stole 15 yrs ago from a hillside near a golf course where hey were growing wild, this side of a stone wall), lambs' ear (a salvage from my days working for the gardener on weekends) and california poppy, that i planted from seed 4 or 5 years ago and has reseeded since), sweet williams that wintered over from last year but have not yet budded, and petunias (annuals bought in 6-pack).
behind the iris bed is an untamed tangle of concord grape vine, blueberry bushes (planted by my grandpa before iw as born), boysenberry tree (planted by the birds in recent age), leftover granite blocks (from the house construction in 1951), milkweed, and poison ivy. and some other new-on-the-scene weed that i don't know the name of yet.
here's some close-ups:
the rest of these are the garden pre-cleanup. but the colors are pretty:
bluebells and grape hyacinth
crocus gone by, tulips, and euphorbia
my little cement woodchuck under the ligularia
the left front of the pond
the "aunt sue's garden" stone melissa gave me is at the center of the entrance
in the bucket are the rose of sharon stalks i dug up 2 weeks ago. i planted them this morning before we went to the mets game
