phew

well that was christmas 09. I took a little while to get over it. I won't bore you with all the details - it was busy. it was fun. it was productive.

it was too short.

here is a snippet which includes presents, renovations, a broken arm, the first visit of the tooth fairy, knitting, walking in the mountains, lounging in the mist, a new bike for the pirate, a letter from santa, a letter to santa, heatwaves, vegies, job applications, visitors, friends, parties, naps, sewing, cleaning, freecycle, plans, crushes, wine, champagne, grandparents, air conditioning, travel, new friends, new resolutions, new plans, and a whole lot of love and friendship

Honestly I think I am the luckiest person alive with the friends I have and the support I get. I hope you are as lucky.

And what did I learn these holidays?
that my aircon does work, that freecycling can get rid of mountains of stuff and it feels very very good, that the tooth fairy can remember to come, that a waterproof cast does exist, that it does not come in green, that it costs quite a bit, that you can knit a scarf and not go insane, that stones and a mountain stream can keep 4 boys under 8 occupied for hours, that march flies like blue, that it does get hot in Guthega, that you can get good coffee in Cooma, that knitting socks from the toe up is fun, that you can find a pattern for pants that isn't too bad, that having an oven again is magic, that the pirate can cope with a broken arm without too much problem, that a child can have a broken arm for days and a mother not be sure it really is hurt, that new birkenstocks feel fabulous, that shopping for clothes and fabric after a fabric and clothes diet feels fantastic, that leaving salmon in the car in 5 days of over 35deg isn't at all good, that eggplants produce very very well and peas only grow with mulch and much much more.

I hope your 2010 is a lovely one.

Creative Space Thursday

This week I cannot blog about the handicraft type things I am creating. I wish I could. But they must stay a big big secret.....for now.

I can talk about another very creative project I have been working on this week. I did post on it way back in the planning phase. Now that it is coming to fruition it is very, very exciting.

The pirate's school is the first Canberra school to get a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden grant. As the resident landscape architect parent I am getting involved in a few school projects and designing this garden has been a wonderful experience. I have met some fantastic new friends with similar philosophies about gardens, sustainability and community. See how good we are?- almost all of us arrived by bike, even with tools!

This week I got to lay out the great curving planter beds along an old driveway, making sure they were just so - but was beaten to it by over-enthusiastic blokes when it came to applying the power tools!

I am quite chuffed with them, I must say.

For more creative spaces head this way.

it's a Canberra thing

One of my favourite events of the Canberra calendar is the twice yearly Australian Native Plant Society (ANPSA) plant sale. It is one of those events which I don't think could happen anywhere else - it is so quintessentially Canberra. And it is great fun and a little eccentric.

Canberra is full of retired public servants, professionals, academics and people who love a system. The ANPSA is these people. They take their efficiency very, very seriously.

Conscientious Canberrans arrive early. Lots of them. They queue up from the entrance gate back along the road for a couple of hundred metres. I have a better trick - but I won't be giving that away here.

The people that come have usually planned ahead, studied the list of plants, worked out a strategy and brought crates, bags, trolleys, boxes and other assorted systems for collecting plants.

The crowd surges forward and race each other, in a rather polite way, up the hill to where the plants are all laid out alphabetically. There is a frenzy to find the plants you most desire. Families separate, each with a list of target species, people rush this way and that. Trays and crates are filled. The experienced amongst us know which plants usually go first and head that way before going to find the ones we aren't so desperate to get.

Then we head off to pay for them. Now this is also part of the fun.

Paying for the plants is a 4 stage system. 4.

First someone takes them out your bag and puts them into trays according to size. DO NOT try to help. They get snappy. That person slide the tray along to someone who counts them and fills in a specially printed tally form. They then slide it along further to someone who checks the tally and takes the payment. Then that person slides it along to someone who takes them out of the tray and helps you put them back in your box/bag/crate etc. 4 steps.

I heard one woman this morning congratulating her girls ( 7 & 9 ish) for their marvelous skill in the quest. She joked, or maybe she wasn't joking, that they had spent the night before drilling the plant names.

I did quite well out of it.

And it inspired another wonderful spring afternoon in the garden.

what a weekend

My lordy I had a busy and productive weekend.

We had the first mate and family here and lots of pirate action. The pirate was in character almost all weekend practicing his Jack Sparrow mannerisms except when we went to the markets when the pirate and first mate were star wars characters in their capes. I wish this dressing up would never end. It is magnificent.

We had the kind of weather that just makes you want to be outside in the garden. I finally built a vegie garden.

I mowed the knee deep back lawn, extended the chicken run, weeded weeded and weeded.

I got to play with my new toy - and yes I was all a quiver!

The clothkit dress for my niece. Cute isn't it?

A couple of little sacks - one for the lovely woman who sold me the machine. The other for ???

And on top of that I knitted, cooked a dinner party for 8 adults and 7 children, did all my washing, collected straw and chook food from the produce store, cleaned eggs, socialised, and, and..... I am way to tired to go to work today!

mountains and mist

You know how your body just lets go and relaxes when you go somewhere you feel at home and connected to? I had one of those experiences this weekend visiting the misty Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains are where my father grew up. It is where we went for weekends as children, where I got to know my grandmother as a young child and where I have returned for bushwalking weekends throughout my adult life. When I am there I feel connected to my grandmother, Ethel. She was an amazing woman who, like many others, supported her family when her husband decided a good drink was more important than food on the table. Interestingly his drinking was what sent them to the mountains in the first place. They were set up in a house by his family, hoping it would be far enough away from drinking influences in Sydney, and while the drinking did not improve, in fact it thrived on the train commute to the city each day, it did give us the mountains.

My favourite story of the many about my grandmother was how she came into some money around the time she retired from nursing. Without my grandfather's knowledge she had a house built in Katoomba. One night, while he was at the pub, she moved into her lovely little house. Alone.

I loved her very dearly and think of her most days even almost 30 years after her death. I know she would have loved the pirate.

So back to the mountains. I love so many things about the place. I love the wild wild bush. I love that it till has some of the feel of a 1930's hill station retreat. I love that it has junk shops and bookshops galore. I love the stonework everywhere.

I love most the eclectic mix of houses. I especially adore the old ones, a bit shambly, with a wild garden, a bit of stone work and an old fence. It is so different to Canberra where finding the quirky and eclectic takes a much more trained eye.

The mountains experience is different for the pirate. The reason we were there though was to visit our friends and to drop the pirate off for a few days sleepover with the first mate. He found it confusing and difficult to be in a strange house in a strange place even if the furniture and people are very familiar. I was a little worried leaving him this time. He is usually so relaxed about being with different people and sleepovers but his time he was less settled. We talked about it a bit and then he seemed fine when I left. 4 hours driving later I was just coming into Canberra when I had a call from my very upset boy who is missing me and feeling too far away. He felt much too far away for me too hearing his voice and his sadness. He couldn't even finish the conversation, breaking down and running off somewhere to cry it out. It was all I could do not to turn straight around and do that 4 hours all over again. Thankfully I didn't - cause it all seems fine afterall.

for the gardeners

I really do have to share. This came to me from one of my fellow community gardeners. A clever idea, though I am sure not a first, a great set of short films and great music.



I love it. It makes me smile. For more go to Truck Farm

another type of creativity

Something has been eating into my knitting time these past few days. It is fun though, if a little performance anxiety inducing.

The local primary school, which the pirate does not go to till next year, has asked me to help out with a design for a community garden and a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden grant application. This wonderful school is the only one in the ACT to put in for one of these grants and has a fantastic plan to involve the community in their gardening endeavours. They already have chooks, compost bins and the start of of a vegetable garden and have put in so much effort with planning and lobbying that they deserve many awards.

So a few meetings and a lot of measuring later I have the first rough draft of the vegetable garden. All 500m2 of it.

Won't it be great? I can't wait till the pirate gets there.

my garden tales

I keep seeing blogs here, here and here showing all the magnificent things happening in gardens all over canberra. So I thought I would share a little of what is happening in this garden of mine - it isn't quite the same...







ah weeds, why do you grow so happily?

It is raining

lovely rain. everything looks fresh in the garden, except the chooks, washing and dogs. It hasn't rained in a while so I am very glad to see a wet deck this morning.







Of course the pirate is feeling better today and we have another party to go to. I wonder how the parents will cope with lots of 4-5 yr old boys inside the house being star wars characters? I can only say I am glad it is not here!

check out the costume - the ski gloves top it off I think.







And for the first time in my life I blocked something. I don't actually know anyone who has done this before so spent a bit of time doing my net research. I have opted for the pin and spray with water method as it is mostly mohair with a little acrylic (wish I had read the label properly before I started knitting the thing - I hate using acrylic). The cardigan is too short afterall and so I am hoping this will solve that issue. Am I being too hopeful?

Eggs

My lovely 2nd -hand chooks have become productive. I take back all the talk of stews and marvel at their cleverness.

isn't it wonderful?

I, myself, am not nearly so clever. I am knitting a beanie for a friend and last night frogged it for the second time. I was trying to knit in the round and change colours often and it was just becoming a mess. I haven't knitted in the round in a long time and was planning to make some socks soon - so I hope it comes together.

Now the beanie is going to be on straight needles and seamed so I can get onto the next project.

the magic hint of spring

before it is rudely pulled out from under us for another two months, led me to do foolish things in the garden today. I had visitors for the weekend and party for my birthday yesterday so it has been a very busy, social couple of days. My visitors left and then the pirate was invited on a walk up Mt Taylor. I was alone. sweet sweet alone.

Before the pirate was out of sight I was in the backyard and working on making the vegie garden fence. The dogs don't appreciate the need to keep out of a vegie patch so a fence had to be built. I was halfway through before a power tool crisis stopped work. Devestation. It was all looking so productive, and so promising and I want a vegie garden. NOW. I bought this house a year ago and a year is too long to be without a good vegie patch.

so I planted seeds. beautiful nastursiums and snap peas. I know, I know - way too soon and it will surely end in tears, but the sun was warm and the birds charmed me. Who knows, they might actually grow and then survive a frost or 10.