My models doing their thing!
15 Likes
I feel stupid, I have no idea what this idiom is. 
8 Likes
When you read something that makes you weep a little, but don’t want to come right out and say it.
See: cutting onions
8 Likes
Oh, OK! Got something in the eye, I get it. Now I feel less stupid. Thanks!
8 Likes
I HAVE MY TICKETS!
Visiting my fiancee in Germany for five weeks, including Channukah and New Years.
This is going to be awesome.
Also, any Happy Mutants in Hamburg or Frankfurt?
22 Likes
No, but I have a bunch of (former) residents of each in my freezer.
15 Likes
Any Berliners? 
8 Likes
But what are you doing for Christmas ?
7 Likes
Productive day:
This bit was swamped in Cissus antarctica, which is a good native vine in the right place. Unfortunately, it’s also the sort of thing that requires a regular bushfire to keep it under control, and this site is a bit too close to housing for the council to be happy with us torching it.
So, regular hand weeding instead. But it was worth it; underneath the Cissus we found a bunch of Polyscias sambucafolia, Notelaea longifolia and Dianella caerulea, all of which was on the verge of being smothered to death. Good diverse native ground covers too (Commelina cyanea, Oplismenus aemulus, etc).
The rest of the day was occupied with clearing Lantana; we managed about half a dozen patches like this. Crawl in underneath, find and cut all the bases, then haul it out in car-sized chunks and smash it up. Even dead, it still makes for decent small-bird habitat and comes in handy for constructing weed fences. Scratchy but satisfying.
15 Likes
I’m in Hamburg, and another mutant is planning to visit at the end of November. Do you like model railways?
I don’t remember ever going to Frankfurt (although I may have passed through it once or twice), but Hamburg is a nice city to visit and a good place to live.
15 Likes
Getting my car back today - and it was only $1600!!!
What a victory, that’s practically like being free, and only 50% of what we paid for the vehicle, supposing it had had the spark plugs replaced at least once in its life, and neglected to check the ball-joints. What a surprise!
11 Likes
I know the odds are extremely small but I’ll ask anyway: do you have any Drosera in your area? Lovely plants and they have the added bonus of a bit of a dark side.
7 Likes
I’ve been to Frankfurt several times, but only for a day or so each time. It is very civilized, and has a rich Jewish history if that interests you. (It was a center of the reform movement.)
7 Likes
Plantnet claims over fifty Drosera species spread across Australia, but I can’t be certain that I’ve ever knowingly run across one in the wild. It’s near-certain that I have, but when I’m working my eyes are mostly tuned for “baddies”. A nasty weed draws my attention much more than a good native.
Small, delicate things like Drosera are often restricted to undisturbed bush, and the nature of the job is such that we spend most of our time in the more battered bits [1]. If the ground is covered in nothing but good native wildflowers, we mostly stay away; no sense in trampling them and possibly bringing in weed seeds.
Sometimes we spend days on delicate handweeding amongst pretty native flora, but overall we spend more time swinging brushcutters and chainsaws around while we wade through massive weed infestations…
[1] Bush regen is kinda like being a vet. People get into it because they love puppies, but then discover that a routine part of veterinary practise is euthanising severely sick and cranky animals. I kill hundreds of plants every day…
9 Likes
Miniatur Wunderland is already on the list of places to visit 
7 Likes
I’d been deferring working on the Hedgehog Art Through History book, but finally started pushing myself to focus on it, so I’ve sorted enough of the Createspace world to have a layout going with all the images in as high resolution originals, have a good bit of the text done (I’ll be nitpicking at it for a while, though), and know how to dump the pdf so they’ll accept it. They have an 8.5x8.5 square format that seems like it’s a good fit. I have 38 images/“artworks” coming in at 50 pages. Might add a couple more or pull a few depending on copyright fears/obsessiveness. While it’s not done, that’s happy progress.
12 Likes
Hey, I was raised Orthodox 
Also, I have more interests than just Judaism. I like video games, RPGs, storytelling, astronomy, geology, chemistry, and teaching, to name a few 
But, yeah, I’ll be checking out a bunch of the historical sites, for sure. The Old Elbe Tunnel is definitely on the list, to name one.
9 Likes
Just like having a large garden. Killing is a big part of it. Not hundreds, but specific plants must die. Not at all parts, some are useful, but some must die.
7 Likes
