New kiln, Gardening. horse flu.

G'Day,
Here are some flower pictures from my beloved garden. The first one is a bloom from the big old climbing rose on the back of my house. I don't know its name.This orangie rose is beside the red one. I think it is called rouge de marmande or something like that.
A bit of my yard. Perennial wall flowers, snap dragons and little daisies.
This one was taken looking back towards the house. Early spring. I take a pic from here for each season, but as they are from different folders I don't know how to put them side by side to compare them.
A snowball bush, it is also called a guelder rose or a viburnum sterile'. It is out the front. Behind it is a may bush, named from the month it flowers in the northern hemisphere.
A beautiful Iris. I bought this in Canberra last year, this is the first flower. The plant behind it is a big fuchsia, not flowering yet but a good value plant.
And a columbine, also called grannies bonnets. These didn't flower last year and I was going to get rid of them if they didn't this year. A friend gave me the seeds.
A silvery white iris, at the back fence.
The baby doves are almost fully feathered now and can fly and feed themselves, though they still don't have their adult colours and markings.
The new kiln is having it's first firing today. It has a cone 9/10 glaze in it. The pressure gauge I got yesterday from Wagga is not registering. I don't know why. I will get Ray our plumber, to come back and have another look. So I am turning it up a little at a time, so far so good. It is at the 7 1/2 hr mark at the moment with about a hundred degrees to go until it reaches temperature. I can't wait to open the kiln up in the morning to see how it all went. For some reason the primary air intake at the burner has silastic glue in the holes. I don't know why the previous owner would have done that.
My second son had a shocker of a weekend last week. He lost his drivers licence for drink driving. He was very upset and didn't need me to rub it in, he already knew what I would think of it so I didn't. He will get a hefty fine and 6 to 12 months suspension and have to go to court. Serves him right.
I also brought from Wagga yesterday 3 more bales of sugar cane mulch and spread it around my garden beds out the back. With the 2 I put out before that makes 5, but I reckon I could use 3 or 4 more to finish it off properly. I also got a punnet of sweet basil, a golden nugget pumpkin and a white verbena to put in. As mulch,I have used pine bark fines, lucerne hay, meadow straw, pea straw, horse manure, stones and home made compost in the past. They all work, you get more weeds pop up with some more than others. I didn't like the stones much though, as the kids were little and enjoyed scattering them and so did the dogs and I had to pick them up all the time. They also sunk into the ground after a while and became hard and compacted. The idea of mulching is to conserve moisture, add humus, and protect the soil and plant roots from extremes in temperatures. We have had no rain over the past week an a half, not even a sprinkle. One of the nursies at work said the other day, that her farm usually gets 20 inches per year, this year they have had 7 inches of rain. Surely this can't last forever.
In Australia up until recently we didn't have horse flu. Now we do. There has been a campaign going for the past few months to try and stop it spreading but it is spreading, the Riverina area where I live is now on alert. Anyway, the campaign to stop the spread of the disease has stopped horse racing in certain areas in its tracks. Some enterprising people have been finding fun alternatives. Recently in Lockhart instead of their annual picnic races they held sheep races. I heard on the radio this morning of another funny alternate race. They are getting farm dogs to have a race by eating food. The first dog to the bowl of food to empty it wins. Of course there are alternate race meetings held in other places annually. In Hillston I think, there are camel races, In Queensland there are cane toad races, at picnics we have gum boot races and Alice Springs has their regatta where they build boats with no bottoms and race them down the dry bed of the Todd river. Darwin has the beer can regatta, boats or rafts are built out of beer cans. An old saying is that Aussies would have a bet on 2 flys crawling up a wall if there was nothing else to bet on.
Time to check my kiln, get up , get out, get on with it.
Bye, Love Linda.