Home on Nick's Blog

Scientific Name: Adiantum aethiopicum Description Hiding under a sheet of iron to protect it from the Sydney heat in Summer.

Scientific Name: Cymbopogon schoenanthus Description Grows like crazy, needs a haircut.

Description Looking forward to some potato and leek soup!

Scientific Name: Viola tricolour Description Very cute and edible.

Description Very vigourous and difficult to control.

Description Grows best in a semi-sheltered position despite the tag saying it’s loves the sun.

Description An oldie but a goodie.

Description A lovely companion to go in a sheltered spot next to our Hydrangea.

Scientific Name: Physalis alkekengi Description Always seems to be a bit strugglesville.

Description Even the leaves smell amazing on this incredibly fragrant spice.

Description Grows like mad all around the yard, difficult to get rid of!

Description Need to remember what it is called!

Scientific Name: Ocimum basilicum Description Self-sown in the footpath, moved to the garden bed.

Description Found this was “thriving on neglect” in a 100% shady corner of the garden and so repotted it.

Scientific Name: Aloe vera var. chinensis Description Great for sunburn and drinks - although we’ve never tried making aloe juice ourselves at home.

Scientific name: Crassula ovata Description An old plant that has started to get a very nice red border on leaves now that I’ve moved it into the sun.

Scientific name: Pelargonium peltatum Description A compact growing variety that has an abundance of year-round flowers - currently pruned back hard, but should hopefully develop into a lovely example.

Scientific Name: Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Rosea’ Description So good for cooking and tough as guts.

Scientific Name: Cyperus prolifera Description I’ve been wanting another water plant for a little while now and when I saw this healthy specimen, I couldn’t help myself.

Scientific Name: Euonymus japonicus Description We had no idea what this was, it grows out near the letter box and looks unusual.

Scientific Name: Dianthus x allwoodii Description Has really nice soft and scented blooms.

Scientific Name: Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus Description I love a good marinated artichoke, so when I saw a pot of 3 for sale, I couldn’t resist!

Scientific name: Goodenia humilis Description Pretty little yellow flowers on this native ground covering plant.

Scientific Name: Colocasia esculenta var. antiquorum Description Unfortunately, it is not the fragrant version.

Description Grew these from cutting a few sweet potatoes from the shop, placing in a glass until sprouted, then twisted out each sprout and planted.

Scientific Name: Epidendrum ibaguense Description Was a shared plant from friends, grows in pretty much any soil (or no soil at all�) and has striking pink flowers that are crucifix-shaped.

Description Source Already established Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peach#Nectarines

Scientific name: Nymphhaea x Hybrid Description A very elegant collection of 3 water lilies.

Scientific name: Lysimachia congestiflora Notes Loves a good bit of manure and mulch to keep it well-fed.

This one grows a bit wild but apparently is good for deterring aphids - so we have it growing underneath our rose bushes.

Update on 2020-07-07: Looking pretty dead now, I don’t think it likes the cold (lost all of it’s leaves early Winter) and the ants have started to eat the last remaining okra.

I share the work and rewards of looking after a small block in suburban Sydney with my partner.

I picked up yacón a few years ago from my usual online nursery.

I was recently asked this very question and going with the “I might as well respond in blog form” strategy, here we are. 10 years ago now, I had a couple of “on the side” clients where I looked after their websites and some of their IT needs.

Recently I’ve been attending training sessions on what makes a great leader and what I (and the rest of my team) can do better to reach leadership nirvana.

I recently added lazy loading to images on my blog, just to see if I could get the overall page load time down.

We’ve been running a bit of music at home (especially with all of this “work from home” activity lately) and as a consequence, often ask Spotify to play some music on the smart speaker.

Boy, these sure are interesting times.

A colleague at work asked me the other day: How did you become a solution architect?

So in light of all this crazy COVID-19 shenanigans, we’ve all suddenly got a huge amount of time at home.

Everyone has their own list.

I’ve been meaning to get around to writing an annual edition which summarises all of the events of the past 12 months on an annual basis.

(and why an electric car without a huge range could make sense for 99% of trips) I’m collecting information about electric cars because I’m fascinated to see just how far we often drive - it surely can’t be that far.

Although I’ve had a bit of a rocky start to my own NBN experience at home (for example it took 2 NBN tech visits to get it working and FTTC is practically impossible to diagnose), I’m sure my experience is far from the worst out there.

Yikes. $100k sounds like an awful lot of money, but you don’t get much of an electric car for much less.

For more than 10 years, I’ve been working on website projects outside of my main career.

Firstly, I need to thank Tobias Van Schneider for what is really the main Inspiration for this post: https://www.vanschneider.com/a-love-letter-to-personal-websites In writing this, I had almost forgot that ‘blog’ is a truncation of ‘weblog’!

This blog is super-condensed but showcases some pretty spectacularly terrible 90’s website design.