This month has flown. Fewer bags and boxes left the house this month, but the filing cabinet has had some long overdue attention, and I've made a good start on the virtual mess of emails, photos and old documents on the computer.
In April the kids' rooms are going to get some proper attention, and my daughter is wanting to paint the ugliest room in the house - the little bedroom/computer room/ironing room/junk room.(It's currently half sky blue, half yellow with a fish wallpaper frieze dividing the two colours). It has a LOT of stuff in it so I might make that my first focus so it's less of a pain to pack up for painting. I've also retrieved some unfinished sewing objects that have to be dealt with before I start on "sheetys" for the kids.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
panic borrowing
Frantic week at work, glad this is the last day before my five day Easter break.
Library patrons have been borrowing extra, to "tide them over" our four day closure.
So as well as hysteria in the supermarket, we have it in the library too!
Monday, March 29, 2010
"brace the gate!" *
For public libraries, the days before and after Easter are the busiest in the library year. We opened the doors today and the hordes charged in - three hundred and two people in the first two hours. It was manic.
When it's your job, you forget it is an activity to do with the kids in the school holidays that's free and you get to take home books, music, DVDs and magazines. And at our library you can buy a coffee or hot chocolate out of our machine and drink it in the library.
Tuesday next week will be the worst day because we will re-open after being closed for four days in a row. People can't cope with that at all, the library closing for a holiday. I'm not rostered on desk but will go and help and cover tea breaks because the queues will go the length of the library and the staff out there will be going demented.
Some op-shop information. Details of the church op-shop I mentioned the other day are as follows:
Forest Hill Uniting Church op-shop
333a Canterbury Road
Forest Hill
Opening hours: 9.30a.m - 1.00p.m Weds, Fri and Sat only (possibly not this coming Saturday because of Easter).
It is cheap and the volunteers are like people from Barbara Pym novels. I love it.
*King Theoden (Bernard Hill) from the film version of Tolkien's "The two towers".
Sunday, March 28, 2010
gardenish
So, yesterday in the late afternoon we went to the Flower and Garden show which is on at the Carlton Gardens and the Exhibition Building. I haven't been to it for a few years and think I haven't missed much by not going. The on-going drought has really made it hard for the nursery industry to stay alive, but I just wasn't thrilled by much on show.
I thought some of the display gardens were very derivative of Paul Bangay and Jim Fogarty designs (to mention two gardeners from past years). Nothing really jumped out: same colours, same plantings, thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on the hard landscaping - water features, walls, mirrors, sculpture, furniture, decking....and then the plantings almost an afterthought.(Daughter did crack us up by saying "Mmnn, Casa de Walowitz" about one very 70s groovin' Playboy mansionish "outdoor room" with samba type music playing loudly - Big Bang Theory reference, sorry).
I actually liked the canna lilies,sedums, lambs' ears and huge beautiful trees that are permanent plantings in the gardens, more than some of the show stuff. Also, too many merchandise tents and too few display gardens.
The absolutely most awful thing about the show was the DREADFUL piped music you couldn't get away from. Now, I love corny old Doris Day stuff and show tunes and things but this was in another league altogether. I've kind of blocked it out but Pat Boone singing "April love" (or is it April showers?) was one example of the music. Since the crowd was a real mix of ages and different cultural groups I thought the style of muzak was a big mistake.
I really liked this student's design incorporating Easter daisies:
After the show we went to the Provincial Hotel in Fitzroy for an early dinner. Everything was buzzing - football/Comedy Festival/ Flower Show/ Grand Prix plus normal Saturday night crowds. Big weekend in Melbourne. We could hear the racing cars at Albert Park really clearly in the Carlton Gardens ( about six kilometres away).
I was inspired to garden for a couple of hours this morning - ripping out vegies, pruning, sweeping, watering, re-spreading straw mulch. I love the Plectranthrus Ecklonii (below), growing on the south side of the house near the wood heap. I'll do more cuttings for other parts of the garden when it finishes flowering.
And I think I've solved the geranium mystery but I'll leave that for another day.
I thought some of the display gardens were very derivative of Paul Bangay and Jim Fogarty designs (to mention two gardeners from past years). Nothing really jumped out: same colours, same plantings, thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on the hard landscaping - water features, walls, mirrors, sculpture, furniture, decking....and then the plantings almost an afterthought.(Daughter did crack us up by saying "Mmnn, Casa de Walowitz" about one very 70s groovin' Playboy mansionish "outdoor room" with samba type music playing loudly - Big Bang Theory reference, sorry).
I actually liked the canna lilies,sedums, lambs' ears and huge beautiful trees that are permanent plantings in the gardens, more than some of the show stuff. Also, too many merchandise tents and too few display gardens.
The absolutely most awful thing about the show was the DREADFUL piped music you couldn't get away from. Now, I love corny old Doris Day stuff and show tunes and things but this was in another league altogether. I've kind of blocked it out but Pat Boone singing "April love" (or is it April showers?) was one example of the music. Since the crowd was a real mix of ages and different cultural groups I thought the style of muzak was a big mistake.
I really liked this student's design incorporating Easter daisies:
After the show we went to the Provincial Hotel in Fitzroy for an early dinner. Everything was buzzing - football/Comedy Festival/ Flower Show/ Grand Prix plus normal Saturday night crowds. Big weekend in Melbourne. We could hear the racing cars at Albert Park really clearly in the Carlton Gardens ( about six kilometres away).
I was inspired to garden for a couple of hours this morning - ripping out vegies, pruning, sweeping, watering, re-spreading straw mulch. I love the Plectranthrus Ecklonii (below), growing on the south side of the house near the wood heap. I'll do more cuttings for other parts of the garden when it finishes flowering.
And I think I've solved the geranium mystery but I'll leave that for another day.
Friday, March 26, 2010
op-shop round up:march
I still go to op-shops as much as ever, but I am buying a lot less.
The haul below is sourced from about seven op-shops, spread over the month of March.
I also visited many, many, shops and came out with nothing.
Books - 1.Charlaine Harris series I don't know.2. An old Moomin I have no recollection of reading.3. Davis -first in a series.We have all the others at work but not this one, so I'll check it out.
This tea-cosy was fifty cents.
Tablecloth - I know. Couldn't help myself. Four dollars.
Pillowcases - two @ 50 cents each.
Iron chef! This book is from 1971. The recipes are do-able and photographed so well.
50 cents.
Swami was on television doing yoga when I was at primary school. This 1972 book has all sorts of vego recipes, curries and some marigold biscuits using marigold petals.
50 cents.
Book for my daughter who is madly into re-fashioning op-shop clothes on her sewing machine. Two dollars.
Two more pillowcases - one dollar each.
More books. Love Alison Lurie and have read lots and lots about the Mitfords, and most of their books. The Narnia book is all the novels in one volume. It's for my son. One dollar.
Six of these things came from one op-shop. It is an old church hall that is only open three mornings a week. It is absolutely jam packed with stuff, some that I have to will myself not to buy. The churchy people who staff it are absolutely lovely and totally bewildered by the amount of stuff that is there. They try to tidy up all the time but are fighting a losing battle. If anyone is interested in checking it out leave a comment and I'll work out the actual address and note the hours etc. (12 hours a week only I think).
The haul below is sourced from about seven op-shops, spread over the month of March.
I also visited many, many, shops and came out with nothing.
Books - 1.Charlaine Harris series I don't know.2. An old Moomin I have no recollection of reading.3. Davis -first in a series.We have all the others at work but not this one, so I'll check it out.
This tea-cosy was fifty cents.
Tablecloth - I know. Couldn't help myself. Four dollars.
Pillowcases - two @ 50 cents each.
Iron chef! This book is from 1971. The recipes are do-able and photographed so well.
50 cents.
Swami was on television doing yoga when I was at primary school. This 1972 book has all sorts of vego recipes, curries and some marigold biscuits using marigold petals.
50 cents.
Book for my daughter who is madly into re-fashioning op-shop clothes on her sewing machine. Two dollars.
Two more pillowcases - one dollar each.
More books. Love Alison Lurie and have read lots and lots about the Mitfords, and most of their books. The Narnia book is all the novels in one volume. It's for my son. One dollar.
Six of these things came from one op-shop. It is an old church hall that is only open three mornings a week. It is absolutely jam packed with stuff, some that I have to will myself not to buy. The churchy people who staff it are absolutely lovely and totally bewildered by the amount of stuff that is there. They try to tidy up all the time but are fighting a losing battle. If anyone is interested in checking it out leave a comment and I'll work out the actual address and note the hours etc. (12 hours a week only I think).
Thursday, March 25, 2010
footytown
So here’s my confession, my dirty little secret.
I love the football season.
I was sort of lured into football through being surrounded by it for the last few years. Son played for the local club and even ran through a banner (which husband and I constructed) after reaching 50 games (he is having a break this year – 50 games by 12 years of age is a good commitment I think). Husband plays for the next door suburb’s veteran’s team. I ran the canteen for 2 years for my son’s matches (OMG), husband was team manager. I could write a book, or at least a thesis, on the subject of parents' ambitions (unfulfilled for themselves) being transferred to their own children when they start to play competitive sport.It would be a scary tale.
The local club is big, and very successful, from the kids’ teams right up to the seniors.
The “boys club” aspect leaves me cold, but if you were a lonely person living in my suburb and became a member, you would be welcomed and included and have lots of people to hang out with at games and chat and cheer and spend time with.There are some very, very old men who are club fixtures, also intellectually disabled people who never miss a game.
When we moved here five years ago I was up at the primary school buying uniforms and the two women running the shop gave terrific advice for newcomers - get your son into the football team and your daughter into netball ( their kids were in both) and you will meet everyone. We did, and it was true. My husband who knew almost no-one in our last suburb ( I did because of school and kinder) cannot go to the fish and chip shop, the hardware store, the supermarket without running into someone he knows. He works in the city all week so it’s harder for men like him to make community connections.
Another reason I like the local footy is that you can walk to the ground from home, watch football for only a few dollars, have a drink and a sausage or something and walk home again. Easy.
So AFL football:I barely understand the rules of the game. I haven’t been to a match in years ( the rest of the family go a few times a year). I sort of vaguely have a team (Essendon) only because Dad grew up in Ascot Vale and that was the family team.
There is just something about football/winter/ Melbourne that seems so right to me.
I love listening to the ABC broadcasts, any game really, accompanying my weekend cooking marathons in winter. We watch Friday and Saturday night games. We love watching“Before the game,” and eat dinner on the couch:plates of shepherd’s pie made by me or pizzas (dough and all) made by my husband.Then whatever match is on. I sew, I half watch, we get excited.
The fire is roaring away, it’s cosy.
I listen to the Inquisition on the ABC on Sunday at 12, while making soup, enjoying Sam Lane and Gerard and the others being so passionate about the game.
Yes, I think I have a girl crush on Samantha Lane.
I have never watched an episode of “The footy show” and no amount of bribery or money would make me.
I have a few players I like to watch and I think are gorgeous. This changes year to year. Matthew Richardson – but he has retired now. Lance Franklin – but he has ruined his body with a hideous sleeve tattoo. Adam Goodes is graceful to watch, handsome and seems like a nice man.
So tonight it all begins again after about 180 days. This must mean the weather will change soon. Surely.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
end of term weirdness
The young ones who live here are tired and touchy and headachey and ready for a break. Just got to get them through til Friday. Weird weather, no rain.
My job share partner was sick last week and is away this week so I am drowning a bit in libraryworld doing two people's jobs, and the phone at work doesn't stop ringing with more and more demands being made of my department. I have been taken off the front desk this week which has saved my sanity, a bit. There is light at the end of the tunnel: my Saturday for working falls in the middle of Easter and the library is closed for four days. As the Saturday roster is set in stone my team and I get a lucky Saturday off. An Easter miracle I think.
Monday, March 22, 2010
all those poor wives
One of the pilgrimages on our recent trip to the UK was to the Tower of London.
I had been there before over twenty years ago, but now I feel more familiar with the history of the place since reading so many novels about the wives of Henry VIII.
We visited on New Years Eve 2009 and it was absolutely freezing. It is a fascinating place if you know about any of the events that unfolded there. To me it also has an aura of fear, intimidation and hopelessness. My husband felt it was an evil place. One of the saddest and most distressing places is where the boy brothers - the infamous Princes in the Tower,nephews of Richard III - were lodged and then disappeared.
The sculpture of a glass cushion below commemorates all those who were executed at the Tower. It is placed on the approximate site where the scaffold and chopping blocks were situated.
The Queen's House, above, is believed to have been built in 1530 by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn.
Over the last three or four years I have read novels about five of Henry's six wives.
They are:
The constant princess - Philippa Gregory (Catherine of Aragon - divorced)
The other Boleyn girl - Philippa Gregory (Anne Boleyn - beheaded)
The Boleyn inheritance - Philipa Gregory (Anne of Cleves - divorced)
(Catherine Howard - beheaded)
The sixth wife - Suzannah Dunn (Katherine Parr - survived)
It kind of irked me that no author that I'd heard of had written about wife number three, Jane Seymour, who died of post partum fever after giving birth to Henry's male heir, the lack of whom up to this point had caused no end of legally sanctioned murder, divorces and general mayhem.
So I was pretty excited to find utterly by chance a novel at work today called "Plain Jane" by Laurien Gardner. I don't know anything about this book but I feel glad that someone has tackled the third wife, and I'll read it once I've finished William Trevors' "The story of Lucy Gault" my current reading. Another gem from William Trevor.
I had been there before over twenty years ago, but now I feel more familiar with the history of the place since reading so many novels about the wives of Henry VIII.
We visited on New Years Eve 2009 and it was absolutely freezing. It is a fascinating place if you know about any of the events that unfolded there. To me it also has an aura of fear, intimidation and hopelessness. My husband felt it was an evil place. One of the saddest and most distressing places is where the boy brothers - the infamous Princes in the Tower,nephews of Richard III - were lodged and then disappeared.
The sculpture of a glass cushion below commemorates all those who were executed at the Tower. It is placed on the approximate site where the scaffold and chopping blocks were situated.
The Queen's House, above, is believed to have been built in 1530 by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn.
Over the last three or four years I have read novels about five of Henry's six wives.
They are:
The constant princess - Philippa Gregory (Catherine of Aragon - divorced)
The other Boleyn girl - Philippa Gregory (Anne Boleyn - beheaded)
The Boleyn inheritance - Philipa Gregory (Anne of Cleves - divorced)
(Catherine Howard - beheaded)
The sixth wife - Suzannah Dunn (Katherine Parr - survived)
It kind of irked me that no author that I'd heard of had written about wife number three, Jane Seymour, who died of post partum fever after giving birth to Henry's male heir, the lack of whom up to this point had caused no end of legally sanctioned murder, divorces and general mayhem.
So I was pretty excited to find utterly by chance a novel at work today called "Plain Jane" by Laurien Gardner. I don't know anything about this book but I feel glad that someone has tackled the third wife, and I'll read it once I've finished William Trevors' "The story of Lucy Gault" my current reading. Another gem from William Trevor.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
cooking up a storm
Last weekend the thought of cooking had me howling at the moon. This weekend I've been loving it.
Oaty slice (blurry photo)
fancy fruit salad
pesto (to put on pizza bases - another blurry photo)
chicken pie (no crimped edges here)
shortbread - cats and rabbits
Cookbooks by the bed. Looking for inspiration/ new things to cook. The fruit salad and the slice were new recipes and a hit. Everything else - old reliables. Still on the agenda today , sausage rolls and pumpkin soup. Maybe a cake.
Oaty slice (blurry photo)
fancy fruit salad
pesto (to put on pizza bases - another blurry photo)
chicken pie (no crimped edges here)
shortbread - cats and rabbits
Cookbooks by the bed. Looking for inspiration/ new things to cook. The fruit salad and the slice were new recipes and a hit. Everything else - old reliables. Still on the agenda today , sausage rolls and pumpkin soup. Maybe a cake.
Friday, March 19, 2010
for all the Kathie Winkle fans ...
I'm completely indulging myself and other Winkle fans with this post so anyone else reading can log out now, you'll be bored witless.
It's just that a post I wrote in November is still getting lovely people commenting, literally from many corners of the world, so I thought I'd put up a few photos for the obsessed.
Below, Mexico bowl, 1970. From Lakes Entrance op-shop so by rights it should belong to Sue M. Sue, if you ever come and visit..... you can eat from it. Aren't I generous?
Romany plate,1975. I didn't like this one for a long time until a very groovy friend asked specifically for this plate at lunch one day. Yes, I'm a sucker for the opinions of cool people.
Below:Romany - 1975, Eclipse - 1971, Indian tree - 1971 and October - 1974
Eclipse is the only piece I've ever bought on Ebay. My friend Neeny bought it for me. It was nine dollars. I've never seen it anywhere else in Australia.
A picture of dirty breakfast dishes chez nous. Ascot - 1962, Roulette - 1971, Rushstone - 1965, Geneva 1970 and Mexico - 1970.
It's just that a post I wrote in November is still getting lovely people commenting, literally from many corners of the world, so I thought I'd put up a few photos for the obsessed.
Below, Mexico bowl, 1970. From Lakes Entrance op-shop so by rights it should belong to Sue M. Sue, if you ever come and visit..... you can eat from it. Aren't I generous?
Romany plate,1975. I didn't like this one for a long time until a very groovy friend asked specifically for this plate at lunch one day. Yes, I'm a sucker for the opinions of cool people.
Below:Romany - 1975, Eclipse - 1971, Indian tree - 1971 and October - 1974
Eclipse is the only piece I've ever bought on Ebay. My friend Neeny bought it for me. It was nine dollars. I've never seen it anywhere else in Australia.
A picture of dirty breakfast dishes chez nous. Ascot - 1962, Roulette - 1971, Rushstone - 1965, Geneva 1970 and Mexico - 1970.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
patchwork and me
I started making sheety when I was 13 after reading about how to do English style patchwork in this book:
It was my sister's book and I just adored it. All those cool girls doing surfing and rounders and bushcraft and collecting butterflies. I found a copy in an op shop a couple of years ago and had to snap it up.
Anyway, it took me about four years to finish queen sized bed sheety, all sewn by hand and then I sewed cotton lawn on the back. It is a really nice thing to sleep under in summer and now thirty years later is faded and tattered and I look at all the hexagons and see bits from dressmaking projects I made at school, a bit of my old high school dress, material from my grandmother who made so many of our clothes when we were growing up. Much of the fabric is from the seventies and very, very groovy. It is completely the opposite of the beautiful, technically perfect quilts people make with new fabric all matched and sewn on machines. My kids want me to make them one each for their beds and I think I'll start this winter. I may have finished by the time they leave home.
This funny old piece of my history really is the thing I would grab in a fire.
I've also made cushions with this method and in 2008 a crazy enormous tablecloth with a square for every day of that year. It looks like a bed quilt but is nice covering the dining table on occasion.This is not used every day for eating, (maybe once a week though when we have an extra one or two) but largely for storing things I should have put elsewhere, and sometimes for homework. I have been meaning to clear this table since Monday morning, yes now it is Thursday. This is what it looks like:
Not very tidy, that's me.
It was my sister's book and I just adored it. All those cool girls doing surfing and rounders and bushcraft and collecting butterflies. I found a copy in an op shop a couple of years ago and had to snap it up.
Anyway, it took me about four years to finish queen sized bed sheety, all sewn by hand and then I sewed cotton lawn on the back. It is a really nice thing to sleep under in summer and now thirty years later is faded and tattered and I look at all the hexagons and see bits from dressmaking projects I made at school, a bit of my old high school dress, material from my grandmother who made so many of our clothes when we were growing up. Much of the fabric is from the seventies and very, very groovy. It is completely the opposite of the beautiful, technically perfect quilts people make with new fabric all matched and sewn on machines. My kids want me to make them one each for their beds and I think I'll start this winter. I may have finished by the time they leave home.
This funny old piece of my history really is the thing I would grab in a fire.
I've also made cushions with this method and in 2008 a crazy enormous tablecloth with a square for every day of that year. It looks like a bed quilt but is nice covering the dining table on occasion.This is not used every day for eating, (maybe once a week though when we have an extra one or two) but largely for storing things I should have put elsewhere, and sometimes for homework. I have been meaning to clear this table since Monday morning, yes now it is Thursday. This is what it looks like:
Not very tidy, that's me.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
hot at night
We are having what seems to be unseasonally hot weather for the middle of March and I'm hoping the Autumn equinox on March 21 brings an end to this sorry state of affairs.
Going to bed becomes a huge production for me. First, put the air conditioner on upstairs while I'm reading, to get the room cooled down - it faces west and despite the lined curtains becomes a furnace. Fall asleep while I'm reading ( under patchwork sheet, pictured) and wake with a start after about 15 minutes (the light is still on). Turn off air conditioner, open door to roof, put fan on low to keep air circulating. Turn off light.
About two hours later wake up when the temperature has dropped and turn the fan off.
Possibly pull doona over me and pull sheety off and throw on the floor. Otherwise wake again in another couple of hours and pull doona on when I feel chilled. By now it is about 5.00 a.m. and hopefully I go back to sleep.
My husband is oblivious to all this, goes along with anything that's happening, can be in the bed, out of it, watching television, asleep, awake. He doesn't care and isn't bothered.
The patchwork sheet, known as sheety, I made when I was a teenager. Over the winter I need to do some serious repair work because some of the hexagons are wearing out completely:
I want to write a little more about sheety and my bits of patchwork tomorrow.
Now I need to make dinner.
Going to bed becomes a huge production for me. First, put the air conditioner on upstairs while I'm reading, to get the room cooled down - it faces west and despite the lined curtains becomes a furnace. Fall asleep while I'm reading ( under patchwork sheet, pictured) and wake with a start after about 15 minutes (the light is still on). Turn off air conditioner, open door to roof, put fan on low to keep air circulating. Turn off light.
About two hours later wake up when the temperature has dropped and turn the fan off.
Possibly pull doona over me and pull sheety off and throw on the floor. Otherwise wake again in another couple of hours and pull doona on when I feel chilled. By now it is about 5.00 a.m. and hopefully I go back to sleep.
My husband is oblivious to all this, goes along with anything that's happening, can be in the bed, out of it, watching television, asleep, awake. He doesn't care and isn't bothered.
The patchwork sheet, known as sheety, I made when I was a teenager. Over the winter I need to do some serious repair work because some of the hexagons are wearing out completely:
I want to write a little more about sheety and my bits of patchwork tomorrow.
Now I need to make dinner.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
latest books
"When you reach me" by Rebecca Stead was a great read, much more so than "A wrinkle in time" which it makes loving reference to on more than one occasion. I am glad I read the L'Engle though, it's not essential but the plots of the two books do have connections. The Stead novel is very clever, with sly similarities to "Back to the future" and "The Time traveller's wife" in some ways. (Incidentally, I saw the film version of TTW on the plane to Paris and thought it really soppy). I would recommend this book as a gift for a clever grade 5 or 6 girl, very different to something like "Twilight."
I always enjoy the latest Cliff Hardy tale by Peter Corris. This one (Torn apart) was short, fairly light on plot,but it must be hard now Cliff has lost his private eye licence.
I think I've read every one he's written.Had a few years when I was lost in Babyland and I missed a few but I've caught up now.
The other book I'm finishing off currently is Mia Freedman's memoir called "Mama Mia". This is not my usual sort of read at all, and I think I'm probably ten to twenty years older than her blog fanbase/ readership.
I read a piece about her in The Sunday Age magazine last year which got me interested in reading her book . I had vaguely heard of her over the years and read some columns here and there but she was apparently the editor of Cleo and Cosmopolitan magazines ( which I did not read much even at my most magazine obsessed - maybe in the late teenage years), nor do I watch Channel Nine or daytime television (which she featured on, apparently) so had I no knowledge of her as a tv personality.
Well, I am quite liking her book despite not knowing much about her. It would be a good one for a long haul flight because it's a breezy read, very entertaining, despite some sad family stuff and some very personal disclosure that I do find is in the "too much information" category . The parts about the magazine industry were eye opening and should be required reading for teenage girls (everything you see in the magazines is faked to the nth degree, and the advertisers really control everything). As I said, I feel too old to be reading it - too much fashiony/magaziney/baby focus for me, but hey, this was her life and she relates it all most entertainingly.
I do feel the need to read something a bit substantial after all the fluffiness so when I'm finished with Mia I'll be looking through my unread pile for something with some substance I think.
Monday, March 15, 2010
endless summer
This is the "orchard" planted at the bottom of the garden.
No - not "Each peach pear plum"* but "peach,apple,nectarine,apricot."
There are also 3 old plum trees, a newish lemon with bright green fruit like golf balls on it, and a feijoa, all growing in other parts of the garden. The rosellas are eating all the feijoas this year.
The white cockatoos are making their usual mess eating the berries on the Hawthorn tree and breaking off little bits of foliage. This was swept clean 24 hours ago:
I work about five minutes (in the car) from The Biggest Hardware Store in The Southern Hemisphere, so during my lunch hour on Mondays I sometimes become a middle-aged man and go and mooch around in there looking at things. Today I bought some seeds to get going in some seed raising mix in trays on the back verandah.
Summer seems to be going on and on and on so it's too dry and hot to plant soft little seedlings or divide and move anything so I'll get some seeds going instead.
* much loved children's picture book by Janet and Allen Ahlberg
No - not "Each peach pear plum"* but "peach,apple,nectarine,apricot."
There are also 3 old plum trees, a newish lemon with bright green fruit like golf balls on it, and a feijoa, all growing in other parts of the garden. The rosellas are eating all the feijoas this year.
The white cockatoos are making their usual mess eating the berries on the Hawthorn tree and breaking off little bits of foliage. This was swept clean 24 hours ago:
I work about five minutes (in the car) from The Biggest Hardware Store in The Southern Hemisphere, so during my lunch hour on Mondays I sometimes become a middle-aged man and go and mooch around in there looking at things. Today I bought some seeds to get going in some seed raising mix in trays on the back verandah.
Summer seems to be going on and on and on so it's too dry and hot to plant soft little seedlings or divide and move anything so I'll get some seeds going instead.
* much loved children's picture book by Janet and Allen Ahlberg
Sunday, March 14, 2010
r and r
I've not been feeling like a happy camper since Friday, so this weekend was about rest and recreation and trying to get my groove back, as they say in the classics.
The lads kicked the footy yesterday morning, I walked some circuits of the soccer field, even breaking into a Cliff Young shuffling jog/run at one point. ( I haven't run anywhere in years. Actually, decades, I think).
I saw this little bird house on my walk. I was expecting a Pixar animated creature to stick its head out and start talking to me.
I drank a couple of pots of this to try and lift my mood a bit.
Listened to a variety of music. Lots of it daggy and fun.
Made some honey joys - fun cooking, not obligation cooking. Didn't cook dinner (oh bliss).
This morning we went to the City Square to check out a Digger's display of edible plants, as part of the Melbourne Wine and Food Festival. I was underwhelmed by the size - should have been five times as big. I was expecting something like the old Spoleto - Paul Bangay gardens which were around years ago during the Melbourne International festival held in the spring.
Nor were Digger's selling seeds, only memberships, which I already have. There was some $100 a head lunch all roped off, hosted by Stephanie Alexander, who was there, looking a bit grouchy. Maybe just nervous, I shouldn't be mean.
Below, climbing Malabar spinach, I have a packet of these seeds to plant.
The heirloom vegetables looked gorgeous.
I'm not sure why Joan of Arc is in front of the State Library?
Haven't eaten in Lygon Street in years, but stopped and had chinotto and a delicious flatbread - ish pizza. Just garlic, mozzarella and parsley.
Followed by gelati. I had blackberry, the lads had caramel and lemon.
So back to work tomorrow, feeling not brilliant but at least not ground down by housework and cooking. Fish and chips for dinner tonight, and a cold white wine. Yay.
The lads kicked the footy yesterday morning, I walked some circuits of the soccer field, even breaking into a Cliff Young shuffling jog/run at one point. ( I haven't run anywhere in years. Actually, decades, I think).
I saw this little bird house on my walk. I was expecting a Pixar animated creature to stick its head out and start talking to me.
I drank a couple of pots of this to try and lift my mood a bit.
Listened to a variety of music. Lots of it daggy and fun.
Made some honey joys - fun cooking, not obligation cooking. Didn't cook dinner (oh bliss).
This morning we went to the City Square to check out a Digger's display of edible plants, as part of the Melbourne Wine and Food Festival. I was underwhelmed by the size - should have been five times as big. I was expecting something like the old Spoleto - Paul Bangay gardens which were around years ago during the Melbourne International festival held in the spring.
Nor were Digger's selling seeds, only memberships, which I already have. There was some $100 a head lunch all roped off, hosted by Stephanie Alexander, who was there, looking a bit grouchy. Maybe just nervous, I shouldn't be mean.
Below, climbing Malabar spinach, I have a packet of these seeds to plant.
The heirloom vegetables looked gorgeous.
I'm not sure why Joan of Arc is in front of the State Library?
Haven't eaten in Lygon Street in years, but stopped and had chinotto and a delicious flatbread - ish pizza. Just garlic, mozzarella and parsley.
Followed by gelati. I had blackberry, the lads had caramel and lemon.
So back to work tomorrow, feeling not brilliant but at least not ground down by housework and cooking. Fish and chips for dinner tonight, and a cold white wine. Yay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
