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Thursday 14 July 2011

Pink Zepheranthes, Demonic Chickens and wanna be Wolves

There  are several major differences between living at Fagalii Uta and Alafua. The primary one is the noise factor. Aside from extremely noisy neigbhours there are the chickens and the dogs. The Neighbours range from the type who turns their radio on all day a top volume so practically ALL the neigbhours can hear it to neighbours who have built their house right next to the boundry which means you can hear everything they say. The worst part is that this is right next to the bedrooms. Hence the thick plant screens that I have been planting along that boarder.

The other problem is that some of the neighbours have chickens. I always thought chickens crowed in the morning. I remember when we had the poultry farm here ages ago (when there were far far fewer neighbours) the few roosters that had managed to elude identification (and execution) when the pullets were transfered to the laying sheds, would serenade the dawn (until they grew up and their big combs betrayed them and they ended in the cooking pot). These roosters though are demonic creatures who do not seem to understand the concept of crowing at dawn. No they crow good night, they crow at midnight and throught out the wee hours of the night and morning. But it does not stop at that there are several and its always one that starts and then you hear another in a distant location responding and then another then its bedlam.

To add injury to insult the neighbour's chickens root around on our land and seem to take great joy in industriously digging up anything I have planted. I assume they appreciate my having loosened the soil but after finding that they had dug up and scattered a whole bed of pink rain lillies I was not amused. The fact that I do not really want them eatting the resident earthworms is just another point against them.

On top of that our street or rather I should say our neighbourhood is repleat with dogs as in every variety and size of mutt under the sun and at night they will start up a chorus of howling. Like the roosters one starts then that family's dogs will join in then another pack and another until all the dogs in the street and along the main road are howling along. I have not yet discovered just how far this phenomenon extends but I can imagine that it rolls in waves all around the whole Alafua - Sinamonga and Lotopa areas. Someone who lives along the main road quite a distance from the turn off onto our street verified my suspicions when he said that the dogs along the main road are part of the chorus.

I have resorted to putting cottonwool in my ears at night to try and block out the noise a bit. And to think that when I was at Fagalii Uta Undertaker and his two friends used to drive me nuts with their occassional swearing matches with the other dogs!

Well I have had to cover the zepheranthes with cocoa wire too. I think that once they are established I should be able to remove it. Having a yard full of coco wired covered plants is definately not what I envisioned. I will need to sort out some alternative to the cocowire covered Flame violets because I think that as soon as I remove the wire the dogs will be digging them up. Maybe some sort of wooden picket barrier might work?
I still need to remove all the stones as well as some plants and rubbish from the front area of the house where more Flame violets will be planted. I intend to plant Blue Irises in front of those.

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