in the garden

i have been emailing and texting a friend in canada recently and we were talking about things that can kill you in australia.

the very next day there was this red back spider right near the tap in my backyard (middle of photo)

 

from a distance you can barely see it but it is right near where i have to put my hand to turn on the tap. danger in my own back yard. luckily they are not aggressive so i am ok. 

also in my backyard, my trees for life are beginning to sprout. one little tree there

 

and a few more of the other variety coming up

 

its exciting and stressful watching them grow, but i think its going to be ok.

red back spider

its hard to see in this photo, but i almost put my hand on a red back spider.



this photo is a it easier. he was living under a brick that was leaning against the wall in my backyard.



this is the best photo i could get. its a bit blurry but you can see the red mark on its back, hence the name.

its a tiny one, and really no threat, and borris has killed it saving me from the poison of the red back spider.

the other day..

the other day borris and i were sitting inside the house when we were attacked by a giant lizard.



okay he wasn't really giant but he was a blue tongue lizard. he was crawling up our fly screen.



borris went out and tried to feed him some dog biscuits but the lizard was uninterested.

this is the second blue tongue lizard we have seen living in our garden. this guy was smaller, roughly 30 cm in length.

almost flattened by a kangaroo!

a few weeks ago boris and i were house and dog sitting in the hills in the bush. we went for a walk at night with the dogs and surprised and awoke a group of sleeping kangaroos. they came hopping out of the place where the red arrow is pointing.

now i don't think kangaroos have very good night vision, because in the panic to get clear of us and the dogs, the kangaroos scattered everywhere and one poor kangaroo was hopping full speed straight towards us.

i screamed alerting the kangaroo that we were there and at the last minute he saw us and did a stopping hop only a meter in front of us just like a hockey player does.

you can see the kangaroo's last hop marks in the gravel (in the red circle). the top foot mark runs across the circle just above the middle and the second foot mark runs down diagonally from the top right making a mark like the number 7.



it was the scariest moment of my life, boris said he wasn't afraid at all and his heart wasn't thumping as quickly as mine. i went back the next morning to take these images. my heart was racing and i couldn't stop my nervous giggle for many minutes after it was over.