Things I Saw This Morning.

1. Elderberry blossom.

2. Two cats on the paving outside the door - one pure white, the other pure black. They were sitting like bookends - until they leapt at one another and and fought yowling and screaming across the backyard and over the back fence. Puss apparently didn't even notice. Too busy thinking about breakfast perhaps.

3. The beans I was just about to pull out as they had most of their leaves burnt off in the recent heat wave are shooting and flowering around their bases so they get a reprieve.

4. A stray 'volunteer' rockmelon has come up in the veggie patch. A gift from the compost heap perhaps?

5. The strawberries in the hanging baskets on the veranda which have just sat for months have suddenly produced flowers and fruit and they looked stunning and tasted delicious.

6. The rockmelons have fruit forming! These are from seeds I collected from a 'volunteer' plant several years ago and they are the best of these melons I've ever tasted.

7. The marri tree in our front garden blossom has opened - a little later than usual this year - and it's abuzz with nectar seeking honey bees.

8. We have ripe blueberries.

And that was in just the first hour after I got up. Who knows what else the day may bring.

So I'm a Feminist

That's something to be proud of because as long as women are paid less than men for the same work, occupy less than half the leadership roles in business, are overwhelmingly more frequently the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault - and in may parts of the world are treated as subordinate inferiors to men with restrictions on where they can go, what they can wear and who they may speak to without their husband's, father's or brother's permission, we all should be feminists. We need to be vigilant and fight for gender equality. That, after all, is what feminism is about, equality between men and women. I'm passionate about ensuring my granddaughters grow up in a better world than I did and that they learn from an early age that a woman can be as strong, intelligent and capable of greatness as a man.

With that in mind, while they both received other Christmas gifts from us, books also figured among their prresents. Some were simply entertaining but I included for each one book that said something more. For Miss Two and a half it was 'Not All Princesses Dress in Pink' by Jane Yolen. It's a delightful journey through all the other things a princess can do apart just wearing pretty dresses. Turns out this is not the first such book she has been given. Her other grandmother had started on this track even earlier with 'The Feminist Baby' by Loryn Brantz. Miss Soon to be Seven's book is 'Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls' by Elena Favilii and Francesca Cavallo. This contains one hundred short illustrated biographies of famous women. They range from women like Elizabeth 1 of England to scientists like Marie Curie and through to present day women like Malala Yousafzai. Both have excellent reviews so I hope they like them.
Do I have an agenda? Of course, I do. I want these girls to grow up knowing that dreams are achievable, that it may not always be easy but others have succeeded and made a difference to the world and they can, too.

Christmas Traditions

I've just been wrapping Christmas presents. A few years ago the family decided that we would only share presents for the children and it's a nice way to celebrate things without the added pressures of costs which for some family members was a real issue.So the pile of presents isn't huge but it's colourful and put together with love. We're extra lucky this year because we get to share in two gift exchanges for the littlies. We had one this morning because one small granddaughter will be elsewhere on the day itself and so we got together for a pair of small cousins to spend some time together - oh, and exchange gifts, too, of course. I have to say there were two very happy little girls.

This morning's exchange is a relatively new Christmas tradition brought about by changed circumstances but this is a family that is very big on getting together. We do it at the drop of the proverbial hat for birthdays and other festivals - we are a very multicultural family so there's quite a mix of these - and all those here always meet up for lunch on Christmas Day. Here we follow a long standing tradition of all contributing something for the meal and the dishes themselves are also  largely determined by tradition. For Pisces and me part of our contribution is a huge fresh fruit salad (this is his task and he sits and cuts up while watching and listening to Christmas carols). The Christmas pudding is traditional - and actually stands up well as a summer dessert surprisingly enough - but this is Australia after all and the forecast for Christmas Day is 34°C so a cool fruit salad makes a refreshing option for those of us who are not enraptured by such a heavy dessert. There are the vegetable dishes, also part of a long established tradition. Nowadays Virgo has taken over making Nanna's special pumpkin dish and equally special tomato and onion dish, someone does a green bean casserole, someone else a potato salad and large quantities of roast veggies appear magically on the table. There's turkey and a ham for the meat eaters and some kind of veggie creation for those who are not carnivores. It's all delicious and all part of family traditions inherited from our parents and in turn from their parents.

This year is particularly special because many far flung family members are going to be there with us, several bringing their new partners and the littlest one at two and a half is starting to really get into the spirit of giving - and receiving. There is inevitably some sadness. Over recent years the older generation has been slowly disappearing and while they're much missed they remain alive in our memories as we keep up the traditions they started.

So as you can see we are going to have a lovely day - full of love, laughter and joy. I wish you all the same.

My Special Diet is NOT Me Just Being Finicky

Yesterday I went to the Christmas break up of a social group Pisces and I belong to. We've been meeting as a group once a month every month since we were newly weds so we know each other pretty well. Christmas parties are catered for by everyone bringing a dish with the menu co-ordinated by the hosting family. This works well and the array of goodies is pretty spectacular.

So far so good because this way of catering means that those of us who have special dietary needs can make sure we can find at least one dish (the one we bring) we can eat. I'm one of those people because I cannot eat sugar but there are several others in the group who also find it problematic so there are usually a few other dishes to choose from. My sugar intolerance is severe. Even a tiny amount can lead to severe abdominal cramps, nausea and other debilitating symptoms including having to make frequent rushes to the toilet. This is not fun as you can imagine particularly when I'm not at home so I'm very careful about what I eat when out and always ask the maker of a dish exactly what is in it.

So yesterday I'm sitting talking to a couple of my friends and because one of the women in the group has recently been diagnosed with diabetes the conversation turns to special dietary needs and in passing I mention how I have to stick to a sugar free diet and why. I'm asked how I manage it and explain the intricacies of living sugar free which is not easy in our society. Ten minutes later we start the meal and I wander around the table asking what is in the food whenever I'm in doubt. There's an interesting looking brown rice salad there so I ask what's in it of the maker, one of the women I had the previous conversation with only minutes before. She says: rice, pineapple, walnuts and a vinaigrette dressing. That's fine so I take a small serve and eat it. Big mistake. By the last mouthful the cramps have started. 'Oh,' she says, 'it does have a little bit of sugar. Sorry.'

So we have to make a rush for home, which is fortunately not too far away, before things really get unpleasant - one toilet, twenty people - nah, can't take that chance - and that's the end of our evening.

I get it. People can be picky about what they eat - there's a lot of evidence that many people living gluten free don't actually have gluten intolerance for instance - but there are a lot of us who do have genuine intolerances or who even have life threatening food allergies and we can be made really ill if we eat foods to which we're intolerant or allergic. My particular intolerance is rare but it's real as are the intolerances of people with coeliac disease or Crohn's disease while my neighbour has such a severe peanut allergy it means a frantic rush to hospital by ambulance if she ingests even a minute amount. So if someone asks you what's in a food don't assume it's because they're being difficult and do make sure you tell them everything because you may otherwise be condemning them to unnecessary pain or worse.

Summer Veggies

Just a picture of part of my veggie patch - about half of it in actual fact. I tend to grow things we use a lot of, vegetables that are hard to come by in the shops and things that are better freshly picked. In the photo there are four different kinds of beans growing up the fence, a variety of different beetroots, kale, eggplant, capsicums, chard, cucumbers on the trellis, sweet corn, spring onions, shallots and various herbs - several kinds of parsley and basil and coriander. In other parts of the garden there are tomatoes, more sweet corn, pumpkins, lettuce, pak choi and zucchinis and more herbs.

Ugly as it is the shade cloth is an essential these days.for many plants. When I started gardening many years ago we'd never even thought or heard of using covers in a vegetable garden. Now any leafy greens wouldn't survive the summer without it and nor would fruit like capsicums. Even the tomatoes get severely scorched if they are not protected. Our summers tend to be drier and hotter, too, and the shade cloth and mulching help to cut back on water loss and so make the water bill less frightening.

Those who have doubts about climate change are, I suspect, not gardeners because for those of us who've worked in the garden for many years the conclusion is as obvious as it is inescapable and the science confirms that it is happening. Whether it's all man made or partly cyclical the science shows we are at a tipping point. There's no doubt that human activities are contributing to what is happening and we need to act now to deal with mankind's part in what is happening. Who cares whether we're entirely responsible. We can improve things by acting to reverse or at least slow our contribution to climate change  While we quibble about details we're losing the opportunity to make this a better world for future generations.

New Eyes and NaNoWriMo

Well almost. I have had cataracts removed from both my eyes and brand new whizz bang plastic intraocular lens inserted. It's early days yet and the initial results of the first one were less than stellar but now things are settling down a bit and I'm hoping to be able to see more than a blur soon. So far my vision is not as good as I would like but that was always a possibility and as I said it's early days. I'm assured that new glasses - which I can't get tested for for another six weeks - should deal with this so all in all I'm pretty happy as far as that's going.

What I'm not so happy about is the time lag between the operations and getting the new glasses which will in total from the first operation will add up to around sixteen weeks. That's quite a long time because blurry vision is very disabling and my independence has been very much compromised. Right now I am only able to type this because I can increase the font size to scary levels and that lets me read. It's still blurry but the magnification enables me to pick out what I've type - and since the computer obligingly underlines spelling errors in red I can take up my trusty magnifying glass (I have five of them scattered around the house and another in my handbag) and correct them. It does make for a rather lengthy process, though, and as my eyes tire the blur increases until everything is illegible so this post will be fairly short.

In spite of this I did manage to do some writing during NaNoWriMo. I've taken part in this several times now and I find it a good way to push me along in whatever I have going at the time. I've never aimed at actually writing a novel - mainly because speculative fiction novels are usually somewhere around 120,000 words in length and I'd find it impossible to achieve that in thirty days. Instead I aim at about 50,000-60,000 first draft words. This year that was obviously not going to happen so when a friend challenged me to simply try for however many words as I could manage in a day every day I accepted.

And - drum roll, please - my total was 15,691. That may not sound much but believe me it was very hard work to get that far. Even better than my word total is the way it has set my mind buzzing. The work in progress, which had stalled due to my health problems, is advancing again and that makes me one very happy writer.

Review: 100 Nasty Women of History by Hannah Jewell

I haven't been reviewing lately but someone recommended this book to me and even before I started it the title grabbed me. Inspired by Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton 'such a nasty woman' during the 2016 Presidential campaign Hannah Jewell set out to talk about important women historical figures. Many of them have been all but forgotten as history is more often than not patriarchal not to mention misogynistic. These are women from all over the world and from every time in known history who walked their own paths ignoring custom and even laws to live the lives they chose. They range from empresses and queens through to social rights activists, poets, authors, entertainers and trans women. Many of them lived in times when to go against the status quo was dangerous, even life threatening but they persisted. As products of their times some took on men at their own game and by their rules. This meant they weren't afraid to get their hands dirty and they did. Among them are absolute rulers, generals and pirates. Others, like the anti slavery activists, suffragettes and campaigners for land rights racial equality took the route of resistance. Whoever they may have been and whatever route they took all have in common that they ignored social norms of their times and got down to living life as they chose. Some suffered deeply for those choices and others are now lauded for their activities.
Although I had heard of many there were equally many others I had never heard of and it was a revelation to read about so many amazing women.

But don't think this is a stuffy history book. It definitely is not and doesn't pretend to be. Jewell's writing style is light and entertaining, sprinkled with her own views on subjects like colonialism, racism and misogyny. Her snarky commentary had me laughing out loud at times but be warned it does get sweary so if that bothers you perhaps this is not for you. For the rest of us go for it. It's educational and entertaining and I recommend it highly.

Hannah Jewell is currently the Pop Culture Host on the video team at The Washington Post and was formerly senior staff writer at Buzzfeed UK. Her website is here

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae

The bugles have just sounded and while we waited in silence I thought about those who died and among them was this man.


'In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row'

This is how the famous poem by Canadian medical officer Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae begins. There is some dispute as to the ending of the first line since McCrae wrote two versions, one with the line ending in 'blow' the other in 'grow'. As the first published version - in Punch of December 8, 1915 - used 'blow' I've used that version. You can read the full text here.

John McCrae was a doctor and poet who joined up on the outbreak of war in 1914. He was at the battle of Ypres in 1915 where he wrote his famous poem. He died from pneumonia in France in January 1918.

You can read more about the life of John McCrae here.

I do love

having frogs living in my garden. We have several frog ponds and I keep a couple of bowls filled with water in sheltered parts of the yard in the summer as well. We have several species and I don't even mind the motorbike frogs (Litoria moorei) with their chorus of  "Hello, ladies. Care to join me and make beautiful babies?" that's going on every evening.  It sounds like this and, when there are a number of males trying to entice females to lay their eggs in the ponds as there are at the moment, it can get rather noisy. When I went out last night one handsome boy was draped over the edge of one pond while another was spread out on the surface of the water while they alternately called. They must be successful in attracting mates because there have been tadpoles all year regardless of whether it was breeding season or not and much to the delight of a certain Miss Two who spends considerable time squatting at the side of the pond trying to get them to come to her.

So it's established that I like having frogs around. What isn't so much fun is where they spend their time when they're not trying to attract a mate or having a dip in a pool. I've been doing a lot of garden work lately and in the past few days I've had numerous encounters with frogs all over the yard. Bear in mind that these are quite large frogs - they commonly reach 10 cms in length - so unexpectedly coming across one can be startling to say the least. I've found them snuggled up under potted plants, in the water wells of water well pots, among plants in the garden and sunbathing around the ponds. One of the sunbathers was tiny - about the size of the first joint of my thumb  - and its time in the sun had turned it as usually happens with these frogs from dingy brown to a pretty cream, green and gold. Then there were the two who were sleeping in a large pot under a pile of smaller empty ones - I'd left them out overnight - until I started to lift the pots out to plant up some seedling tomatoes. I don't know who got the bigger fright them or me as the frogs flung themselves around trying to scale the side of a 45 cms high pot. I tipped them out but truth be told all they had to do was calm down and they'd have had no difficulty scaling the side since they can easily climb up to 2 metres - trees, shrubs, even brick walls don't daunt them. These weren't the only ones I found in unexpected places. Yesterday I picked up a cardboard carton I'd been using to carry plants around to various parts of the garden the previous day and woke another into a panicking rush for cover.

I think Pisces is getting used to my shrieks as yet another frog and I meet unintentionally. I must have been louder than usual with this morning's encounter, though, since he came running when I accidentally stepped on a frog that had settled in under a piece of old shower curtain I'd been using to protect some plants the day before. Luckily I hadn't put my full weight down so the frog escaped relatively unscathed but I wasn't as lucky as the frog since I jarred my knee trying not to hurt it.

You Want To Know How I Spent My Day?

Of course you do - or maybe not. On the off chance you do this is how it went:

After I checked my email - still not working, darn it - I went out to the garden to discover the seeds I planted a week ago are well and truly on their way. There are little curls of beans already breaking into leaf and lots of other goodies. It reminded me I need to order some mulch so I can spread it and the sheep manure that arrived a few days ago around before the seedlings are ready to put in the grounds. This addition of organic matter is essential for us to be able to grow anything much here on the coastal plain. When we first moved in there was nothing but grey sand lacking almost all essential nutrients if you wanted to grow anything but local indigenous plants. I've been piling organic matter in now for years and while it's still sandy and so not very good at retaining water - hence the need for mulch, now we have worms and other creatures that signal it is much healthier.

I love this time of year when everything seems to be rushing to grow and I've even found some 'volunteer' tomatoes where I dug in some compost ten days ago. We don't have a freezing winter here so there are always veggies to pick and flowers to brighten your day. When it hits late August things really get going. The wildflowers - and we have glorious displays of these - burst into bloom, ranging from great carpets of colour to delicate orchids hiding away in the bush and they are a great tourist attraction. In a couple of weeks we'll be visiting family a bit north of here and on a visit at the same time last year the blue leschenaultia - one of our most stunning flowers - was everywhere painting the roadside verges a vivid blue. I've been trying to grow it in my garden for ages but it prefers the gravelly soils of the hills to our depleted, limey sand here near the beach.

You're probably wondering what any of this has to do with how I am spending my day.  Well, I've been investigating the Bokashi composting method. I already have compost bins and a worm farm which help a lot in enriching the soil and anything I can find is composted or fed to the worms but there are still things that don't work for those methods. For instance ideally you shouldn't compost citrus or onion or feed them to the worms which do not like them one bit and dairy, meat scraps (not that we have any of these) and bones are not compostable. The appeal of the Bokashi system - which I remember vaguely hearing about a while back - is that it will take and compost all this kitchen waste and more. So when Virgo mentioned she had invested in a Bokashi bin and how well it was working I was tempted.

The thing that put me off was that you have to use a special activator and I wasn't keen on having to regularly pay out to make compost. So that's what I was doing the research about and it turns out you can make your own activator. Yes! But, oh, most of the methods were extremely vague, made huge amounts that I wouldn't be able to store or were very complicated. I delved deeper and now I'm very happy to find a simpler method which will let me make my own activator. There are a number of bins available on the market - or you can make your own. Nope, not doing that. I'm more than happy to leave those sort of activities to people who actually know what they're doing instead of cobbling together something that in all probability won't work as well. So the next step is to get my activator ready - it takes a few weeks with a number of steps none of which are very time consuming and some periods of letting things ferment. Then I'll invest in a bin. I'll let you know what happens.

More Birds and Bits

This is the view of the garden outside my back door. It's not the greatest photo I'll admit but all these flowers self seed bountifully so they come up every Spring and give me great joy. While you can only see red poppies, calendulas and nasturtiums also nestled in among them are the tiny flowers of heartsease and alyssum.

In other news the New Holland honeyeater nesting in a fern in a hanging basket at the side of the house is not very good at not revealing itself. We’re avoiding using that path as much as possible but the worm farm is there so occasionally I have take them food. Every time I do - and bear in mind I’m walking as far away as I can on the far side of the path and carefully not looking in the direction of the nest - the honeyeater bursts off the nest in a flapping panic, then lands on a nearby twig where it stays staring at me and looking very uneasy.

The honeyeaters are not the only ones nesting among the ferns. There’s also a laughing dove in another hanging basket. She is much more sensible and although clearly nervous she stays firmly put, hunkering down and trying to pretend she’s not there. Move along, human. There’s nothing to see here, she seems to be thinking.

The Australian ravens are also extremely busy. They have one very loud and demanding youngster and keeping its gaping beak occupied is persuading them to be quite bold. We have a large population of lizards and frogs living in our yard and so we don’t encourage ravens or kookaburras for that matter. I’ve been finding bones - some quite large - all over the garden. Not satisfied with turning the bird bath into a messy sludge by dipping stolen bread in it, the ravens raid rubbish bins and dump the bones here when they're finished with them. Since the baby is now as big as its parents I suspect it won’t be long before it is expected to find its own food and things will quieten down. I hope so because it's very raucous and its cries keep sending the neighbourhood dogs into a barking frenzy.

Birds in My Garden

One of the joys of living where I do is the number of different species of birds that appear in our garden - and in Spring that number increases as the migratory birds come back. We're suburban but surrounded by bush and wetlands.This includes two golf courses - both of which have remnant bush (one has a resident mob of kangaroos), three nature reserves, one surrounding a large lake, another a wetland awhile the last includes wetlands as well as public space and that's without mentioning the numerous small parks nearby.

All these areas are home to many birds and they overflow into our gardens to feed. In the past week we've been visited by some of the magpie clan as well as Australian ravens both of which live in the park adjoining our back fence. As well we've had visiting pink and grey galahs that have dropped in to feast on the seeding weeds that I have yet to get to. I confess that part of my slowness is to encourage the birds. If I weeded every part of the garden as soon as the weeds appeared we'd miss out on these entertaining visitors.

Then there's the willy wagtail (well-named djitti-djitti in the local Nonngar language as he jitters noisily as he feasts on the flying ants that are starting to emerge). He's a feisty little fellow - and very little fazes him. He'll take on anything that he perceives as a potential threat, puffing out his little chest and chittering furiously until they take the hint or if he deems it necessary he swoops. Doesn't matter how much bigger the birds, dogs, people he'll take them on.

The New Holland honeyeaters are around in increasing numbers, too. We have at least one pair nesting in the ferns around the side of the house. It means the ferns and pineapples will have to go unwatered for a few weeks but they should survive. We did see some odd honeyeater behaviour that we've never seen before the other day. We heard lots of bird tweeting and yelling outside the back door and went out to find about a dozen honeyeaters had another one down on the paving and they were attacking furiously. They were so focussed that we were right up to them before they even noticed us.  No idea what that was about but all of them flew off so I guess not much damage had been done.

As well as these locals there are the others that move in to breed during the end of winter and beginning of spring. I saw my first grey butcher bird a couple of days ago. They have a pretty song that you can hear here.

There are a number of LBBs, too. Those are the little brown birds I haven't been able to get close enough to identify. I suspect they're mostly other honeyeaters or gerygones because I've seen them here before but I'll wait until I can actually identify them before I name them.

Then there are the feral birds. These include the ubiquitous doves that are everywhere - those are thanks to founder of the Perth Zoo who was appointed by the Western Australian Acclimatization committee to set up the zoo and to release European species into the wild. Why they thought that was a good idea I do not know but as a result we have populations of the laughing dove and the spotted dove. They're pretty things that don't cause much of a problem unlike the aggressive rainbow lorikeets which may be lovely to look at but take over native birds' nesting hollows and toss out the eggs and chicks, not to mention the damage they do to fruit crops. They're birds I'd be happy to see disappear.

So that was last week in my garden. I wonder what birds next week will bring.

The Joys of Gardening in Spring

- and yes, I am being sarcastic since my spring time mantra is lovely to look at but horrible to breathe which does make gardening somewhat problematic. Off on a slight tangent: because European seasons don't actually work out all that well here I prefer to use the local Noongar seasons. This makes August and September Djilba, instead of the end of winter and beginning of spring. The Noongar seasons were worked out by the local weather patterns which makes a lot more sense for here than those entirely different ones of the Northern Hemisphere. So my heading should read The Joys of Gardening in Djilba but I figured that would only confuse everyone.

Whatever it's called this time of year has its challenges. It's still cool and often rainy but starting to warm enough that the weeds are springing up everywhere. This explosion of grasses into flower means the air is full of pollen which makes breathing less than enjoyable for those of us who suffer from asthma and/or hay fever. Western Australia is famous for the spectacular displays of wildflowers at this time of the year and they are truly glorious. Supposedly they don't add much to the cocktail of allergens so I suppose I should be grateful for that.

Along with the wild flowers, of course, there's winter grass - untidy and prone to appearing in places I'd rather it didn't but otherwise not a real problem to control - and wild oats turn up everywhere. If they would only confine themselves to out of the way places I wouldn't mind so much. The wild oat in particular is quite graceful and delicate as they move in the wind. Pity they have pointy seeds that stick into just about everything including flesh. Then there are the clovers which are already covered in prickles and such a pest to have to pull out - and I can't forget the thistles which range from the familiar milk thistle to a nasty one that grows up to a metre high and is a nightmare to pull out because it is literally covered in sharp prickles.  On top of all this there's another vicious grass that keeps finding its way under the fence from next door and comes with prickles that hook onto anything - clothing, shoes and skin. Its little barbs dig in making them hard to remove as they break off leaving the tips behind unless you're very lucky. Then there's the double gee (also called the three cornered jack or spiny emex) which has three very tough pointed spikes that dig into pretty much everything as well. It was apparently imported back in the day by the earliest European settlers as a green vegetable, though why anyone would even think of bothering to eat its less than appealing looking leaves I do not know. Of course it escaped and is now rampant across the agricultural areas causing significant problems.

I haven't even started on the insect pests which appear regularly at this time of the year. First to invade were the cabbage white butterflies and they lay their eggs on all and any of the cabbage family - cabbages, kale, broccoli, nasturtiums. They don't care. I might be the kind of gardener who doesn't like to kill things - I don't use chemical insecticides - but picking them off doesn't work so I do spray with Dipel, which is a spray containing a naturally occurring bacterium (Bacillus thuringiensis) which kills caterpillars that ingest it.

The other serious insect pests at this time of the year are the aphids which seem to be under the impression that the onion tribe is being planted purely for their sustenance. Uh, no. These reproduce at an incredible rate and the theory espoused by the gardening experts on all the gardening shows I've seen recently - just hose them off and wait until the natural predators build up - is in my opinion simply rubbish. I've tried that and by the time the natural predators arrive there are precious few of the plants I want to save left. In the past week I've tried the squash 'em method, the sharp spray with a hose method and then I tried spraying with a soap based spray. While each method has helped a little by the next day they are already back in numbers. I don't think I can wait for nature to take its course any longer - I've already lost half my onions, the garlic chives are disappearing almost before my eyes and today I noticed the wee beasties had started on the onion chives.  I'm reluctantly giving in and heading to the garden centre for a pyrethrum based spray because it has a very short residual period so is less of a worry than chemical based sprays. Wish me luck.

Bush Foods

This spectacular flower is the red and green kangaroo paw Anigozanthos manglesii. It's the floral emblem of Western Australia and this one is growing in a pot in my garden.









When the first European settlers arrived here in Western Australia they brought with them a lot of ideas on how to 'improve' the country. With the pretence that Australia was terra nullius or a land that belonged to no-one, they tried to wrestle the land and indigenous people into a European mould. Very belatedly there has been recognition that the indigenous population possessed a rich culture. They had been using firestick farming for thousands of generations and they still have much knowledge to share. We can't go back and alter what happened but we can acknowledge and learn from them and one way would be to acknowledge that this is not Europe. I know - who'd have guessed that a continent on the opposite of the globe might not work in the same way as that the colonists came from. It was a belief fuelled by extraordinary arrogance and ignorance I suspect.

Well the world turns and we learn. Which is why these days like many others I'm very interested in growing indigenous food plants along with those that have been imported from the Mediterranean climes which are so similar to our own. There was a time when this was difficult. With the exception of macadamia nuts very little notice was taken of local food crops. In fact in many places they were deliberately pulled out to provide growing space for exotics and while this still happens to a degree people are becoming more aware of bush tucker and how to use it.

And it's not only gardeners who are interested. Flavourings like lemon myrtle, finger limes and pepperberry as well as foods like quandongs, riberries, warrigal greens and wattleseed are only a few of the native plants making their way to restaurants and specialist suppliers. I've discovered a couple of nurseries that specialise in edible bush plants nearby and I've plans to go on a wander and stock up on some of the more unusual ones but in truth I don't have to go all that far. When I was at my local Bunnings store recently I discovered a section devoted to some of the more commonly used species. I didn't buy anything that day - I needed to go home and prepare some beds for planting - but I've convinced Pisces that we need to go back. Who knows what treasures I may find there. I'll let you know when I've had a look around.

If you're wondering why the kangaroo paw image, it's because I read recently that it was a food staple  for the local Noongar people before colonisation. I haven't been able to find out how they used it  yet but I will be continuing my journey of discovering how to use bush tucker and when I find out you'll be the first to know.

Reading

A while ago I set myself a challenge of reading long listed and prize winning novels and recently I moved on to last year's Man Booker list. Honestly, after a pleasurable start I was finding it hard going and often not a little disappointing.

The pleasurable start came with the winner Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Bloomsbury Publishing). This is an original and clever novel in the style of older historical novels. Its main characters are the spirits of those buried in the Bardo cemetery who for assorted reasons have not moved on. Most are in denial of their deaths and they spend their nights wandering the graveyard going back to what they call their 'sick boxes' by day. We follow and get to know them and how they ended up in this limbo until the burial of Abraham Lincoln's son, Willie, changes everything.

I followed this with some others on the long list and really struggled with them. By the time I'd had to force myself to finish a novel by one well known writer I usually enjoy - I'm a fast reader but this one took me nearly ten days because I kept putting it aside because I couldn't bring myself to care about these self absorbed people - and then moved onto another novel, which I doubt I'll even finish, I was losing interest in my plan.

That's when a comment on my Facebook newsfeed reminded me about Ann Cleeve's Vera Stanhope novels - and sent me off on a binge read. Oh and as Ann Cleeves is a prize winning writer, too - she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award (now known as the Golden Dagger) in 2006 (not for a Vera Stanhope novel, though) - she fits into my prize winners reading plan. I had read some of the Vera Stanhope novels quite a while back but then had lost track of them for some reason. Now I began from the beginning and I was hooked all over again.

I have long been a fan of the ITV series Vera (based on the character of Vera Stanhope from the novels) since it started. In the series Vera is played by Brenda Blethyn and I was intrigued to compare the TV Vera with the one in the novels. I wasn't disappointed. Although they are dissimilar in some ways - physically the Vera of the novels is tall, fat, unattractive and tends to dress in Oxfam clothes while no-one would ever describe Brenda Blethyn's Vera in those terms - to a large extent the TV version stays close to that of the Vera of the novels. For instance TV Vera's clothing choices are still not flattering and her behaviour is as eccentric as that of the novel character. They differ in that the novels explore the dynamics of Vera's team more than the TV series and we see things from more varied perspectives because we get into the heads of the team members. Not all of the novels have made it onto the screen and Vera and her team have grown and changed as it has progressed in ways not part of the novels (she's now a Chief Inspector while in the novels she remains an Inspector for instance and her loyal sergeant, Joe Ashworth, has eventually moved on). It doesn't matter because both TV series and novels entertain. I have thoroughly enjoyed both and was sorry to hear that this is the last season of the TV Vera.

Ginger Harvest

They said you couldn't grow root ginger here. Of course, that meant I had to try - and I've been growing it successfully in pots on the back patio for years. This is my current harvest. I use a lot of it - it goes into most of our meals - but even so this lot should last quite a while, don't you think.

Weird 'Stuff'

So I was sitting at my desk when I heard scrabbling noises on the roof above me. This is not unusual. We live next to a park in an area surrounded by two golf courses and three wetland reserves all within a ten to fifteen minute - not too brisk - walk so there is a huge array of birdlife. Among these is a clan of Australian ravens which often land on the roof or settle in the large marri tree in my front yard where they finish off whatever they're found to eat - then drop the leftovers all over the yard. These are mostly bones filched from rubbish bins and which we have to search for on a regular basis so the Virgo's dogs - frequent visitors to our place - don't get them. Along with chop and steak bones, chicken bones and leg bones from lamb roasts we also find the sad remnants of baby birds they've killed - they killed and ate all but two of the seven wild ducklings that hatched in my neighbours' front garden last year, and little hollowed out egg shells they're snaffled from nests.

One little dog we had hated them with a passion and they were one of very few things that set her off barking, They would sit just out of her reach and stare at her and send her into a frenzy. For all these reasons we don't encourage them around here but they are very intelligent birds so they often settle on the roof where they take a positive delight in letting us know we can't do anything to move them on.

Anyhow this morning after a few minutes of thumps and scrabbles something fell past the window and landed with a noisy splat on the path so I went out to see what it was. It turned out to be a hen's egg shell, plenty much cleaned of any residue. I have to assume it came from someone's bin since as far as I know there are no hens being kept around here at the moment. Bin raids are much more likely on the weekend when some bins are full to the brim and I've watched as the ravens flip bin lids open but whether that's the case I guess we'll never know.

So that's one of today's mysteries. Another revolves around a dream I had yesterday when I was sick and had to go back to bed. What was special about this dream? Well I dreamed I was talking to my friend Annie and the discussion was entirely logical and rational - well, if you ignore that we were in my teenage bedroom along with two toddlers and a baby playing with a Jack Russell in the corner. The weird was that the actual conversation made complete sense even after I woke up instead of dissipating into nonsense as soon as I came to as dreams are prone to do.

And finally when I went out to hang out the washing this morning I saw that the Spanish bluebells are in flower - nothing odd there apart from them being about two weeks early, but then I found the grape hyacinths are also in flower and that is odd because they have already flowered once eight weeks ago. Then there's the cyclamens that I bought in flower back in May and which died back and are also into a second flush of flowers, something has never happened before in my garden. So everything is going mad.

I Love Me a Flash Mob

and here are a few that I came across today.

This one is a cover of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, a song I love. I haven't been able to find out who the performers are but the video was released by SWR1 Hitparade.

This is another release by SWR1. This one is a cover of Queen's  Bohemian Rhapsody. Here's the original.

This one came up twice in my Facebook newsfeed today. It's a selection from Les Miserables performed by the State Opera of South Australia.  

And this haka was a performance by the team of 50 men chosen to perform at the Opening Ceremony of the Rugby World Cup. They performed flash mobs of this haka a number of times. 

Made a Plan

I really shouldn't have. In my defence it was made yesterday so I could have no idea what was going to thwart me at every point. Still...

Famous last words, my friends. I'd had a very disrupted night but I was determined to make some progress on a list that has been growing by the day. I did make a good start. I cut up onions  - a lot of onions - and put them in the slow cooker to do their thing. That's when the wheels fell off my day. Yeah, I know, not the best metaphor but, hey, that's how my day is going.

Then I intended to tackle the housework - even had all the stuff needed lined up - and decided to start by changing the batteries in the indoor and outdoor wireless thermometer which I noticed had gone flat. If you're wondering why we need a thermometer that gives the indoor and outdoor temperatures it's because some folk around here are fond of opening doors 'to let some air in' at the height of the summer and wouldn't believe me when I said if it was hotter outside that was also letting the heat in the house. Now he can't argue about it and our very well insulated house can stay cool, something that really matters when the external temperature is hovering just below 40°C.

I put the new batteries in and the thermometer screen only shows the clock and the indoor temperature. Dammit! Now where is the instruction manual so I can troubleshoot? Should be in the file where such things are kept, shouldn't it. Pisces, trying to help, gets out the file - somehow managing to spill most of the contents in a tangled mess. So that means re-sorting the lot - and there is a lot, much of which was out of date and is now dumped in the recycling bin. No sign yet of the manual and I've spent the best part of an hour restoring order to this pile of paper.

So I decide to take to the internet. They have manuals on there, don't they. Hmm they do but not this one and in the process I have now gained a bad case of weather station envy. There are so many of these wonderful devices that measure not only temperature but humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure. Some probably tap dance they're so exotic. Okay while this is all well and good I still haven't found the manual. It's now after midday and so my morning's down the gurgler.

I give up and pick everything up intending to come back to it some other time - and the stupid thing is working.

So that's my day so far and now it's bucketing down. Everything crossed that the leaks we had repaired few days ago have finally been beaten because enough is enough, universe.

More Flowers

'cos I'm still busy. This time it's part of my daffodil bed which is on top of a garden wall outside my back door. The daffodils are a bright splash of colour and the perfume of the sweet alyssum edging the bed is glorious. The whole space is abuzz with bees and, as you can see by the greenery amongst the flowers, once the daffodils are done red poppies will take over the bed and with luck there'll be heartsease or johnny jump ups (Viola tricolor) scattered among them, too.

Ooh I was just looking to see the proper name of sweet alyssum - it turns out it was Alyssum lobularia and is now Lobularia maritima - and found to my surprise, that because it's a member of the brassica family, its flowers and leaves are edible. I love edible flowers and grow as many as I can. At the moment as well as sweet alyssum there are roses, society garlic, johnny jump ups, nasturtiums - we eat the leaves as well, onion chives and calendulas in flower and others that will come on soon.

I have an ambition of being able to walk around my whole garden, not just the veggie patch, picking fruits and flowers to eat. It's amazing to me how many people are nervous, even afraid of eating flowers. I once took a salad with all the ingredients picked from my garden to a potluck dinner and included some heartsease, calendula petals and nasturtium flowers with the salad greens and no-one was game to try it. It was actually quite delicious but the flowers freaked them out. Weird.

Stuff

Things got rather out of hand while I was sick. Pisces is well intentioned but not well organised so a lot of the stuff I do on a regular basis simply didn't get done. This includes maintaining the garden - he did water the pots when we had a brief dry spell - and general housework.

So today, as a distraction, I bring you one of the glorious bearded irises which are out at present in my garden - this one is beside the frog pond where the tadpoles are looking fat and healthy - while I set about restoring order. Enjoy.

                            

Hello Again World

I have been sick and not just any old sickness, the kind you're over in a few days. No, this was the really, truly flu, much worse than the bad colds that often are claimed to be the flu. It started with a sore throat, progressed to what I thought was just a bad cold the next day - and then it really attacked. High fever, sweats, aching muscles and I was so weak I couldn't stand up without support. That was my life for a full week. I am actually up and walking around again but it's left me so weak that I'm still not able to go back to our regular exercise classes. Next week, I tell myself, next week.

That this all happened during the school holidays was even more frustrating because it's when I usually get to catch up with our granddaughter. The last thing I wanted was to pass it on to her or her parents - or anyone else for that matter so I had to put them off.

But towards the end of last week I thought I was past the infectious stage and so we could have visitors - and very enjoyable that was, too, although I wasn't able to do any of the usual fun stuff. Still I think I've been forgiven to judge by the cuddles I got.

On another topic altogether there's a great idea going around on Facebook whereby people are agreeing to write personal letters and send them through the post. Emails or Facebook messages don't count. The plan is to put an invitation on your Facebook page saying you will write a letter to the first five people who ask for them in the comments and they in turn are to write and send out letters to five more people when they receive yours. I was too unwell to take part when this turned up on my Facebook feed but I think it's such a great idea I intend to try it. Want to join me?

Daffodils

                                        


Here's one of my unseasonably early daffodils taken when it stopped raining for a bit and the sun came out for a brief spell. It's a trifle blurry because sunshine doesn't mean no wind and that is whistling around the house, setting things rattling and blowing over my neighbour's bins.

While the daffodils are very pretty - there are five out now - they are around a month earlier than I'd have expected. It seems our once predictable seasons are completely confused and what will happen next is anyone's guess.

Daffy-down-dilly

My first daffodils are out. The jonquils have been in flower for a few weeks starting with the white ones that I posted about at the end of May which came out unseasonably earlier about six weeks ago. Those blossoms have long since died back and we now have the common jonquils along the front driveway in bloom and two pots - one paperwhites and the other yellow - bringing brightness and perfume to the back patio.

But while the jonquils have been up for in some cases for months, the daffodils have been really slow to even shoot - and given I had planted over a hundred I was getting a little concerned. Then, a couple of weeks ago I noticed the first leaves and yesterday buds. Now today I have flowers. I would like to show you a photo - I may later - but today the rain has set in and since we need every single drop after an exceptionally dry summer I'm not complaining even if it's preventing me from getting outside.

Seeing the flowers has reminded me of the old children's rhyme Daffy-down-dilly of which there are several variations. The one I grew up with was

'Daffy down dilly went to town
 In a bright yellow petticoat
And a green gown.'

This is not very far from the first recorded version which appeared in Mother Hubberd in 1593 but differs from some other later versions. Although the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne is often credited with creating the term daffy-down-dilly in his novel Little Daffy-down-dilly published in 1843 the term had been in use for much longer and was generally used as an insult. This leads to the question of how this verse became a children's rhyme, something I doubt we will ever know. Mind you many nursery rhymes began as verses intended for adults and have since lost their original meanings so maybe it's not so surprising.

If you want to know more about Daffy-down-dilly you can find it here.

Wheelchairs For Kids

is a charity which makes wheelchairs for children and sends them all over the world.

I was shown around their workshop yesterday with a group of friends and we are all in awe of what they do. Wheelchairs For Kids was started twenty years ago by the Rotary Club of Scarborough and is supported by The Christian Brothers. This charity makes wheelchairs specifically for children to World Health Organisation standards and sends them world wide to impoverished countries. These wheelchairs are adjustable and can be used for children aged up to fifteen. There are two other charities - one in Canada and another in the USA - which make wheelchairs for adults but this is the only one making wheelchairs for children.

The workshops in suburban Wangara are staffed entirely by volunteers, both men and women, many of whom are retired trades people. A few components are brought in - such as the frame and wheels  - but the bulk of them are made on site while others need to be modified or altered to fit the specific requirements of children. The volunteers include two occupational therapists and a physiotherapist and a large number of people who make knitted toys and crochet the rugs which are included with each boxed wheelchair. Each chair is put together, inspected and checked before it is dismantled and packed up for shipment.

In the twenty years since it started Wheelchairs For Kids has put together and sent out 40,000 wheelchairs and they have orders on their books to keep the workshop working at full capacity until April 2019. What an incredible achievement. There is a desperate need for wheelchairs for children worldwide and what these volunteers are doing is nothing short of inspiring.

If you are interested in finding out more or donating to Wheelchairs For Kids you can find out more about it here. They also have a Facebook page.

Things You Don't Expect

to find in the veggie patch in winter.




                                                


As you can see a couple of the zucchinis which should have died back quite a while ago have continued to fruit as have the beans. I'm not sure why this is happening given it's been a bit nippy but there you go. I'm not going to a look a gift zucchini or two in the mouth, am I.

Guess what we're having for lunch.

I Really Had No Choice. Honest.

I've been shopping. If you know anything about me you'll know that I really, really hate shopping for clothes or pretty much anything else now I come to think of it. I hear someone say 'retail therapy' and my immediate response is 'Are you mad?' For me shopping is something that has to be done, not a pleasure. I don't even window shop as a rule although I make exceptions for looking at - but not buying - jewellery and a fabric shop will get me in any time since it's impossible to have too big a patchwork stash.

The time comes, though, when however much I try to avoid it I'm forced to buy clothing and that's the point I was at on Saturday. I needed some tops to replace old ones being retired to around the house use, some shoes since the soles of my favourites were coming adrift and were quite beyond repair plus some warm pants and some gumboots for the garden.

So I hied me to several websites of stores near us and found the best range of what are now apparently called rain boots at Target. This worked well because the shopping centre where the nearest Target is has a large number of clothing and shoe stores so I could - with luck - get all my needs in one shopping trip. According to the website Target stocked no less than three different styles of rain boots in several colours including sensible matt black. Just what I wanted because this time I was going to be sensible. No more bright red or other multi coloured gardening boots for me. I was going to buy matt black. Not even going to  look at the others. No, sir, not me.

Once we hit the shops while Pisces was doing the grocery shop I was off to Target.  A couple of tops and some warm pants went into the basket and then I was on my way to the shoe section where I was disappointed to find a total of five pairs of boots - one black pair and four shiny red. Determined not to be seduced by red again - if you haven't seen my wardrobe I have to tell you that around three quarters of what's in there is red - I looked further along the aisles. Nope, not another rain boot in sight.

I didn't even have to pick up the black pair to know they were much too big and so was one of the red pairs. So I was down to three shiny red pairs - and ooh they were so pretty and they were all my size. Now someone else would probably have thought well, let's go to another shop, but I'm not that someone. I had the perfect excuse of shiny red boots that fitted and I wouldn't have to go shopping anywhere else. Woohoo! See I really did have no choice.

What a Difference a Storm Makes

Over the weekend we had a couple of glorious winter's days. Lots of sun and not too much wind tempted me out into the garden. Not that it takes all that much to tempt me into the garden you understand. Normally just a break in showers is enough but this time the weather was truly glorious so every time I took a break from writing I wandered outside and spent a bit of time doing some garden chores. On Saturday this included spraying the cabbage family for caterpillars - I go the non toxic route of BT, a naturally occurring bacteria that kills the little beasties but doesn't harm anything else. Now all I need is something similar to deal with the snails. I can see where they've been busily chomping but where they hide during the day still eludes me.

When Sunday proved equally lovely I splashed around a bit of liquid fertilser and scattered some NPK around among other things. Since I was by no means lavish with either of the fertilisers I wasn't expecting much to happen quickly or otherwise, just for the plants to keep on growing steadily so when I'd finished and tidied up I came inside thinking more about my story than plants. Then around midnight there was an almighty crash of thunder and the heavens opened.The heavy rain and thunder only lasted about twenty minutes then everything quietened down so I went back to sleep.

On Monday, apart from a quick morning check for storm damage and to see if the roof was intact - it was, phew - I wasn't even thinking about the garden until around midday when I was standing looking at the flower bed outside the family room and talking to Pisces while idly wondering if the daffodils were ever going to come up when I noticed something. Where on Saturday there hadn't been a sign of daffodil shoots now they were everywhere and most were around 3-5 centimetres tall. I hadn't put any fertiliser on that bed because I ran out - note to self get some more fertiliser ASAP - and there they were growing almost before my eyes. As well every leaf had turned brilliant green. Hmm, I thought,  as I headed out to the veggies. There wasn't a plant there that hadn't grown. The tiny carrot plants that were barely showing the day before were now now 3-4 centimetres high, the peas that had been sitting barely moving for days were well on their way up the trellis and the chard, kale and pak choi had nearly doubled in size.

Of course, some of this is down to the fertilser but most I suspect is due to the nitrogen brought by the storm. You don't have to be a gardener to notice how the plants green up after a storm - storms generate a lot of nitrogen in the form of nitrates that plants feast on. While I don't want regular storms with severe winds and damage like those we've had several times over the past month - hence the roof check - smaller ones like the latest with a brief flurry of light and sound and a short, heavy rain shower watering the garden as well as supplying it with nitrogen are very welcome as far as I'm concerned - even if they do send Puss under the bed in a panic.

What I've Been Reading: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

For some reason I haven't been reading as much as I usually do. It's not at all unusual for me to get through five or six novels in a week normally but for a few months I haven't got to the library - or anywhere else much, truth be told. I've been struggling with health issues - just being sociable has seemed too hard for much of the time - and for some reason this affected my desire to read as well.

But a few weeks ago I was looking at various lists of prize winning books and wham I was on amazon.com and buying up ebooks. My To Be Read list is now bulging with potential goodies and here is a brief review of the first of those I have read recently.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey was the winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2014. I picked it up without knowing anything about it. I hadn't read any reviews and I'm glad I hadn't because while there is much, well earned praise there's also a lot negativity which I don't think it deserves.

Personally I loved it. It's not a comfortable or easy book to read. Maud, the protagonist, has dementia and is convinced her friend, Elizabeth, is missing and that Elizabeth's son has something to do with her disappearance. The trouble is no-one will take her seriously as she tries to find out what has happened. Her dementia has affected her memory so in her search for Elizabeth she does the same thing over and over irritating people. She is patronised by those who should know better and eventually even forgets who her daughter and granddaughter are. There are a lot of questions raised about the treatment of the elderly as we hear Maud's story.

Intertwined with her present day confusion and memory loss but with the perfect clarity of a dementia sufferer Maud remembers all the details of her sister's mysterious disappearance in 1946 when she, Maud, was a schoolgirl. The disappearance of her sister has had long lasting effects and Maud's search for answers to both quests makes for a satisfying read. The author has tackled a difficult subject - the effects of dementia on the sufferer, the family and the way it's dealt with in the community as well as the lack of sympathy with which it is often perceived - skilfully and with compassion. Dementia is a terrible disease with its insidious, incremental theft of the personality of the sufferer and in this novel it is shown in all its cruelty.

When I did read the reviews later I found the mixed responses interesting. For some the end was unsatisfying and they found Maud's confusion, well, confusing but for me it follows the logic of a dementia sufferer. There are never going to be clear cut answers for Maud who is likely to  have forgotten what she finds out in a matter of minutes and to go back to her search for answers. I suspect this book is difficult for some of those who have no experience with dementia to grasp but for those of us who have watched a loved one decline with this disease it rings painfully true. I recommend it highly.

Garden Food

I love nothing so much as going out to the veggie garden and bringing in a basket of yumminess - and I didn't really expect yumminess to be a word. Turns out it is. Well, fancy that, as my grandmother used to say. Okay back to the subject which is veggie garden harvesting - and cooking, both of which are equally important after all.

So I currently have a glut of lettuces. This is because I let some go to seed  - I do this regularly with my veggies, either to collect the seeds to store or, as I did with these lettuces, to let them self seed - and they've come up all over the place in my veggie patch.

As you can see in the photo pretty much all the left hand corner is lettuce - plus a border of calendulas, which also self sow like crazy.

They're not the only volunteers. Most of the spring onions you can see have also planted themselves - and I'm very happy for them to do that. The only trouble is they're in something of a glut, too. What to do? Well I settled on pea and lettuce soup - had to buy the peas because mine aren't ready to pick yet but you can't have everything, can you.

I was sure I had a recipe for this many years ago but couldn't find it so I decided to put together my own based on the traditional French way cooking peas and lettuce together as a vegetable and it turned out to be very tasty.

This is what I did - and bear in mind I'm the kind of cook who for the most part doesn't measure much unless I'm baking so most of the measurements are by no means precise.

Lettuce leaves (the outer leaves are fine for this) sliced - about 8 cups in total

6 or so spring onions (you could use any kind of onion really) sliced

3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped

about 30 grs butter

1 kg frozen peas

7-8 cups vegetable stock (I made it with a couple of cubes)

⅔ cup milk powder (I used this because I was short of fresh but you could use 2 cups of fresh milk instead and adjust the amount of other liquid accordingly.)

3-4 sprigs of mint

Black pepper

In a large pot melt the butter and sauté the onions and garlic until soft but not brown. Add the lettuce and cook until soft and wilted. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Add the peas and mint and simmer until the peas are soft. Remove from the heat and add a generous grind of black pepper and the milk powder. Blend to a purée and adjust seasoning to taste. I served it with a sizeable dollop of Greek yoghurt but you could use crème fraîche or cream I guess.

Note: This is pretty thick - because that's the way we like our soup - and made around eight large  servings but you could add more stock or milk to thin it down a bit.

Note: I didn't use salt because the stock cubes tend to be salty and I rarely cook with salt anyway.

A Few Feel Good Moments

Well, they are for me.

Tortoises are seriously amazing - and cute. Don't forget cute. Thanks to my friend, Sarah, for pointing me in this direction.

A boy shows his Dad how to build a Leonardo da Vinci bridge.

A baby elephant enjoying a mud slide.

I Do Not Like Housework

I REALLY do not like housework. There, I've said it, so now you all know. On the other hand I really hate dirt. This means that housework - at least that I deem necessary for my physical and mental health - does get done. It also means I'm like a bear with a sore head - not mention sore hands due to arthritis - while I'm doing it. And when something proves hard to clean then I get even crankier.

This means that when something happens as it did over the last few days that I cannot find a solution to, I'm a far from happy little camper.

What was this problem you are no doubt wondering - or not if you find everything about housework, even someone else's, as boring as I do. Well, I will tell you.

A few days ago I noticed an odour in the fridge and, being somewhat compulsive about such things, I took everything out, clearing out everything from the shelves including the freezer compartment, and washed the whole thing out - shelves, vegetable crispers, everything. There was not a spot I missed.  I  found a few smelly items that Pisces had not sealed up properly and moved them to sealed containers and disposed of the surprisingly few past their use by date items I found where someone - whose name is almost certainly Pisces - had pushed them to the back. This is an on-going battle between the two of us since if you push things to the back of the fridge they tend to freeze but apparently it's a step too far to remember not to do it. I then checked and wiped over every container before I put it back and for good measure I put a container of bi-carbonate of soda in on the top shelf to absorb any future odours.

This odour free state has not lasted and by today opening the fridge had reached the 'oh no' stage. So I've just gone through the whole palaver again. I'm hoping this time I've won. If not, well, I do not know what I'll do.

The Royal Wedding

It was quite spectacular, wasn't it. The bride looked beautiful and the groom's smile as his bride came down the aisle was full of emotion - all just as it should be. I confess that by the time of the great day I was just about royalled out. Not that I didn't wish them all happiness. Of course, I did and do wish them that - and I enjoyed watching a happy couple making their vows. What was driving me nuts was the media driven hype. The inane commentary and the pursuit of every sniff of scandal appalled me. Why we - and as consumers of this stuff we, the public, are complicit and just as guilty as the media - feel entitled to pry into private matters I do not understand. Personally I am not interested in anything that is private unless it affects the public good and is therefore in the public interest and I avoid gossip about the famous - which includes the royal family - at all costs.

Because of that I tried very hard to avoid the hype. I was not very successful. If it wasn’t programs about the various royals it was advertisements for those programs and the forthcoming wedding or hordes of reporters - and I use the term reporter loosely - descending on the UK in search of a story, any story (like those wandering around London with a couple of unconvincing royal impersonators - really) and not so much reporting as making desperate attempts to fill their programs or other media with something, anything, however irrelevant. When I mentioned this on Facebook some folk assumed I was anti-royal and that’s not the case. I really have no problem with the royal family. The British model of a constitutional monarchy seems to work very successfully and I admire the Queen greatly for the way she has carried out her obligations. Personally, though, I think it seems a pretty thankless task and all the designer clothes, jewellery and palaces would not compensate for the lack of a private life. It’s certainly not a job I’d like.

No Smoke Today

so I've been out in the garden - of course. On our way home from the doctor's yesterday - I've just had my annual flu shot - Pisces was persuaded to make a detour to the garden centre so I could invest in a few seedlings. Actually I was in search of some marjoram - one of my absolutely favourite herbs - after mine suddenly turned up its toes and expired. I grow a lot of herbs to use in my cooking and I still have plenty of others to choose from but nothing quite does it for me like marjoram and I've been looking for some for some months. We did a circuit of the herb section and there was no sign of any - lots of different thymes, oregano and mints to name a few but only golden marjoram which tastes quite different from the old fashioned kind.

I was feeling a bit frustrated by then and so I headed to the vegetable seedlings. I'm trying to remember to plant in succession this year, something I tend not to be very good at, so I wanted some more lettuce seedlings - and I might have accidentally on purpose invested in some more onions, dwarf French beans, beetroot and pak choi which are now nicely tucked up in the veggie garden beds. And then it happened. I was wandering along the seedling display picking up this and that and there they were in the middle of the veggies - a couple of containers of marjoram seedlings.Whoopee! One of them is now waiting to be potted up and sent to join the other herb pots in the garden and I can hardly wait until they're big enough to use.

Convoy by C. W. McCall

A reference to this novelty song came up on my Facebook newsfeed. Brought back some memories of when nonsense songs were all the rage I can tell you. There were so many. Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour by Lonny Donnegan, The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley, Star Trekkin by The Firm and so many more. Closer to home who in Australia will ever forget John Williamson's Old Man Emu or Slim Dusty's Pub With No Beer?

For those who who want relive Convoy - or those who have never heard it - here it is in all its glory complete with lyrics.

Smoke!

We're in the middle of the controlled burning season here - and that means today the air is thick with smoke. While I understand the rationale behind these burns - it gets rid of the build up of flammable material in the forests so decreasing the risks of severe bushfires, many of our native plants have evolved to need fire to grow and, of course, in many ways controlled burns are not unlike the 60,000 or so years of fire stick farming by our indigenous people which was brought to a halt following European settlement - there are consequences.

Those of us affected by smoke (it's pretty grim to be asthmatic for instance) struggle when dense smoke fills the air as it is this morning. The advice is to stay inside and keep doors and windows closed - and at least these days we do receive warnings in the news bulletins. When I was younger this didn't happen and you'd wake coughing and wheezing in a smoke filled house. Shutting up the house is all well and good but smoke seeps in no matter how careful you are and it's not always feasible to stay shut inside, is it. For one thing people have to go to work, don't they, and for some that means being outside all day. Then there is the inevitable death and injury to wildlife which is heart breaking.

Some folk are perturbed by fact that CO2 is released by burning. After all we're used to seeing reports of the clearing by burning taking place in various parts of the world (the Amazon rain forests are of particular concern) with the effect this is having on climate change. This is not quite the same thing, though. The clearing of the rain forest is just that. The forest is destroyed. These burns certainly release CO2 but it's far less than a wild fire would produce and, if done properly, there's no loss of human life or damage to property and the forest is not destroyed. Yes, sometimes they do get out of hand - fortunately infrequently - and now we farm instead of relying on hunting so creating fresh vegetation for prey species and safe ways to travel no longer applies but that said, on balance it seems regular burning like this does more good than harm.

Do I enjoy the thought of animals being caught up in these fires? Of course not. Do I enjoy having to spend days shut in the house wheezing and coughing? No, I do not. Do we need to find other ways to manage our forest? Probably in the long term we do. All these things disturb me but as things are at the moment I don't see an alternative. If climate change continues at the rate it is the prospect of severe bushfires will only increase and I live in a dry country already very prone to such disasters. We have to do what we can to prevent them - and this is one method. Yes, we definitely need more research into alternatives but in the mean time we can only do what we can and controlled burns are one way we cope.

Confusing?

I'll say. It's the beginning of May and that means we still have nearly a month of Autumn to go and the garden is in a state of total confusion.  For a start the paper white jonquils are in flower. See?

And that was before the more ordinary cream jonquils in the front yard were even showing above the ground. There are a few shoots of those visible now but they're usually the first to arrive, not the last. The grape hyacinths, which usually don't even shoot until the end of May, have been up for nearly a month as have the yellow jonquils. On top of that I went out this morning and discovered that the red poppies which also don't usually emerge until into June are already appearing in the garden where I still have pumpkins growing and fruiting. Yes, I know most people don't grow pumpkins in flower beds but they came up as volunteers and who am I to argue with a gift from Nature.

It's not surprising the plants don't have a clue, though, because temperatures have been going crazy. On Thursday our maximum was 20.1° C followed on Friday by 21.7° C, then yesterday, after dropping to 7.6° C overnight, it reached a top of 28.7° C and the rest of the week is more of the same. It's a rollercoaster ride I can tell you with the winter bedclothes going on and off so often I now just fold them and leave them at the foot of the bed.

I'm not really complaining, though. It's been a long, hot, dry summer and cooler days are more than welcome. I just wish it would be a little more consistent - and I'm guessing the plants feel the same.

It's May

and here it's time to plant the winter garden. Actually what spurred me into action is in part due to my friend, Carol, who has been posting about her newly set up vegetable garden. I'm still picking some summer crops - Lebanese cucumbers and a few zucchinis are coming on as well as some butternut squash plus lettuces, rainbow chard, basil (and other herbs) and spring onions - and this means that I've had limited space to plant anything new but it's time - and not only in the veggie patch. The flower beds have been looking somewhat stressed, too, to the point that last week I pulled out most of the annuals and dug the beds over ready to plant.

I haven't been able to garden as much as I would like this summer, thanks to a foot fracture followed almost as soon as I was out of the 'boot' that required for several months by a painful soft tissue injury to the same foot which has taken nearly two months to heal - but last weekend I decided it was time to deal with the garden. I persuaded Pisces that I needed to visit a garden centre - not that he was all that hard  to convince since it adjoins our local Bunnings hardware store which was quite a sweetener. I started with 100 daffodil bulbs and some scarlet tulips and some annual seedlings - and that was before I got to the vegetable seedlings.

We arrived home with two cartons of seedlings which then, of course, I needed to plant. Yesterday I set out the daffodil bulbs, planted up some hanging baskets with strawberries and started getting the vegetable garden ready to plant. We have sandy soil here that easily becomes water resistant during the summer so the first step was to break up the soil and then to spread around some soil wetting agent and water it in. Luckily it rained overnight and this morning so today was the day. It was a somewhat dampening experience as I dodged showers but at least all the plants - and some of the seeds are in.

So now we have a veritable feast to look forward to, don't we, with new beds of red onions, pak choi, kale, broccoli, coriander, beetroot, dwarf French beans, snow peas and sugar snap peas. I still have a few other plants I want to get and put in. Better get out the seed packets, hadn't I. Hmm, maybe tomorrow.

Lest We Forget

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian soldier, doctor and poet who wrote the beautiful poem 'In Flanders Fields' in war torn France sometime in 1915. It speaks to us about the waste of life that took place on all sides in what then was believed to be war to end all wars. Those optimists were horribly mistaken as it turns out because only twenty one years later the world was once again embroiled in war. You can hear a touching reading of McCrae's poem here. It brought me to tears.

When World War One (then known as the Great War) began men from all over the then British Empire volunteered to fight (and with them came women as nurses). Australia sent a total of 416,809 men from a total population of less than five million people. More than 60,000 of them died according to the Australian War Memorial and inevitably others were left with injuries that affected them for the rest of their lives. The effect that this loss of life and injury of such a high proportion of the young men of a small nation is hard to comprehend.

In the war's aftermath there were few Australian families that had not been touched by the loss or injury of loved ones including my own family. My great uncle, Captain Horace Chamberlain King MC, was one of the many killed in this war. That he was only twenty two when he died makes it even more poignant as does the fact that only twenty one years later the world was engaged in yet another horrific worldwide conflict. Peace had not lasted long and before the end of that war my family had lost yet more members, two of my uncles who died within a few months of each other in 1944. Anzac Day commemorates them all and so it should.

We will remember them.