In the last month since I blogged a lot of progress seems to have happened.

The vegetable garden has gone through a frenzy of green manure growth, which was repeatedly slashed, leaving the soil in a remarkably improved condition. The first vegetables have been sown (cool season roots, legumes and greens) but I have been careful to curb my enthusiasm and only planted about a third of the available space for the season so we arent swamped with a brief surplus of harvest. Just this weekend I was putting in a row of snow peas where a pile of grass had just been moved from when I saw the soil move a little. I thought it may be a cane toad until the head of a young taipan (australia's most dangerous snake) poked itself out meekly. After a little hide and seek I decided to find something else to do for the day.

Instead I ended up putting the first twelve trees into the orchard (six macadamias, two malabar chestnuts, a longan, a persimmon, a quince and a pomegranate). In all the half that has been fenced off to protect it from our malingering old horse should take about 45 trees. I have picked nine tree catagories to focus upon so I can collect enough genetic diversity to start making some local seedling selections:
1. Macadamias (sure fire indigenous nuts)
2 and 3- The two best performers out of Malabar chestnut (flood proof/tasty?), Pecan (high yield/cockatoo prone?) and Sterculia (dry tolerant/low performer?).
4. Avocado (oil rich fruit)
5. Persimmon (or Black Sapote or Quince)- long winter storage
6. Jujube (or maybe Shahtoot Mulberry)- early crop/easy drying
7. Plum (or Peach/Nectarine)- Early summer crop/dry
8. Longan (or Lychee)- Late summer crop
9. Pomegranate- Autumn/winter storage.

Small numbers of fruit with poor storage or keeping (eg annonas, loquats, guavas, mango, pitaya) or that are effectively sterile (bananas, figs) will also be included in smaller numbers.

Work-wise the highschool tutoring at Noosa has proven to be a winner. I almost feel guilty charging for it. I really find it that enjoyable. Irregularity of the job is the downside (summer without income) and in the long term the discretionary nature of its funding may prove detrimental, but I will make the most of it while it lasts. The personal assistant position with my PhD supervisor was a bit of a drag at four days a week, but I have scaled back to three and it seems much more bearable. Brisbane still seems uglier every time I visit. It is weird noticing the smell of the pollution after a long weekend in the fields. I also start tutoring university level chemistry at a residential college tonight, which makes the trip to brisbane for the other job more reasonable.

Everything seems to be happening and even my finances have turned around (despite my fairly profligate spending on plants and seeds, which will only get more indulgent as the weather cools). Our local supermarket is expanding soon and I am weighing up applying to work there to give up the weekly trek to Brisbane, but something tells me this isnt quite the right time yet. The stock market jitters have paradoxically made me more reluctant to try and establish myself in a completely new field. Perhaps next year will be the time to move outside my comfort zone?