A few books

Reading time is the one benefit of being ill. I'm being a tad Pollynana-ish in saying that. To be honest I'm fed up with being sick. I've been struggling with one 'bug' after another this winter. The first - way back in June - zapped my immune system letting others to attack one after another. This has meant I've spent far too much time either stuck in bed or thinking I'm on the mend for a few days only to be hit by yet another incoming bug. With fingers firmly crossed I think/hope I'm now on the mend.

The only good thing about being sick is that when I haven't been sleeping I've been reading and as a result there is no longer a to be read pile.  Hmm, I may have to - shock, horror - buy some more books. 

I'm going to list some of the books I've read over the last month or so - those I particularly liked, found most interesting or thought worth another read during - here. There were others, of course, but those I wouldn't be recommending to anyone.

The books are listed in no particular order and as you can see I'm a very fast and very eclectic reader.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe - about pre-colonial Aboriginal culture and agriculture in Australia using information written by the colonists. Should be required reading for all Australians.

The whole (all nine books) of The Emperor's Edge series by Lindsay Buroker. A melding of magic and steam punk with a falsely accused woman  who likes to tidy joined by an assassin with a hidden agenda. What's not to like?  

Silo by Douglas McMaster. A chef who set out to out to change the way food is wasted. Some interesting ideas although I don't always agree with him.

Women's Work - The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber An investigation into the part women have played in humanity's development using archaeological evidence to follow the development of traditional women's work and skills like spinning and weaving.

The Serpent's Shadow by Daniel Braum. Dan and I went to Clarion South together. He writes a good horror story.

Bligh - Master Mariner by Rob Mundle. A biography of William Bligh (he of the Bounty mutiny and later the deposed Governor of New South Wales). I already knew quite a lot about Bligh - enough to be aware that most of the Bounty mutineers' complaints were largely unjustified as were those claimed to be justification for his being deposed by the Rum Corps during the Rum Rebellion in New South Wales largely due to a smear campaign conducted by the family of Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutineers, and officers of the Rum Corps. The details of the extraordinary feat of sailing Bligh achieved when he and his loyal followers were put overboard in a small boat during the mutiny was inspiring. As well the book fills in his earlier life and showed how highly regarded he was in naval and maritime circles.

Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti. A collection of short stories about people with 'powers'. I liked it a lot.

The Biggest Estate on Earth: how Aborigines made Australia by Bill Gammage and the winner of the  Victorian Premier's Prize for Non-fiction 2012. Gammage goes into great detail about pre-colonial Aboriginal land management and agriculture. A real eye opener.

2040: a Handbook for Regeneration by Damon Gameau. Based on the documentary 2040 with lots of suggestions on how we can work towards surviving in a changing planet. Not prescriptive but with ideas we can all build on.

Some of the Best from Tor 2014 A collection of novels (30 if I remember correctly - my Kindle keeps skipping pages when I try to count them up) by various well-known writers. Some I loved, some not so much.

Powers and Spice and Not So Nice A collection of ten novels by various authors. Again some I loved, others not so much.

Earth Fire Water by Maeve O'Meara and based on the three part SBS cooking series. I got this because I'm interested in traditional cooking skills and food preservation techniques and watched the all three of the series which showcased ways of preserving food.

Beginnings - five heroic fantasy adventure novels By various speculative fiction authors these are all first novels in a series. A good introduction to different authors' work.

Masque (The Two Monarchies Sequence) by W R Gingell. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty regency meets magic novel. I'll be looking for more by this author.

The Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power by Peter Clarke This is very dense and not an easy read but was certainly illuminating. It looks at the origins and effects of the First World War and the way the peace settlement played out and had an impact on the Second World War by looking at the main protagonists on the Allied side. I'll be rereading this.

Trucksong by Andrew Macrae In an alternative/post apocalyptic world strange things happen. Beautifully written and highly inventive. I liked it a lot.

Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer. This was a reread so obviously I liked it. A collection of short stories by a writer who really transports you into the worlds she creates.

1946: the Making of the Modern World by Victor Sebestyen. This is an overview of the aftermath of the Second World War. In turn horrifying and confronting.

The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy by Brian Klaas. Educational.

The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo A lot to digest here and it certainly is worth a read no matter what you believe you know about US politics.

So I've Been Thinking...

These are words that bring a chill to my husband because they usually mean I want to change something and if there's one thing Pisces does not like it's change.

This time, though, it's something entirely different. I've been thinking about how people have expectations of how others should behave when it's really nothing to do with them. And what set this off you might ask? Well one of the Australia wide Lotto games reached a jackpot this week of $110,000,000 which is a heck of a lot by any standard. Now I'm not a regular player - I probably take out a twelve game randomly generated entry six or seven times a year. I never expect to win anything - which is just as well because I've only won a few dollars ever - but because the profit from Lotto in this state goes to charity I don't feel I'm wasting my money either.

But this very big jackpot set off those who seem to begrudge anyone who had the good fortune to win the whole lot their luck. (No one person did by the way. It ended up being shared out among a number of folk who all had the winning numbers). There were letters to the editor in the newspaper saying so much money was too much for any one person because other big winners have made bad investments or wasted it. Part of this was no doubt because a big winner a while ago made a bad decision in handing over his winnings to someone who purported to be a financial adviser but wasn't and he lost the lot. This is now before the courts because there was obviously misleading behaviour and if he's lucky he may get some of it back. Does that mean he shouldn't have been given the money in the first place? Should it have been divided among a number of people - and if it was would that be any guarantee that they wouldn't all be defrauded?

Why shouldn't any big winner be allowed to do whatever they like with their winnings? After all what one person considers waste another might consider well spent. If someone has a big win and decides to have a year long party and ends up broke at the end surely that's their choice. Equally if they do nothing except put it in the bank, or play the stock market and lose everything it's their decision. It might not be wise in my view - I'd probably try to secure myself and my family's future and give what was left to charity - but it would be their choice and unless they were incapable of managing their financial affairs for some reason I can see no reason why it shouldn't be left to them to do what they want. One thing is sure - I would not judge them whatever choice they made. Who's to say that they might not benefit from the whole experience even if it didn't leave them secure for the rest of their lives and if they ended back where they started financially well, why is that necessarily a bad thing?

Been Cooking Up a Storm

It's a pity I'm not one of those who take photos of everything I make or this whole post would be photos.

The  question probably is why do I suddenly have an urge to cook. It's not as if I don't usually make our meals from scratch - with my dietary problems that's a given - but I had accumulated a pile of different veggies when the surgeon finally allowed me to go out and do some work in the garden. As a result I had the last harvest of the eggplant and capsicums sitting in the fridge and I knew they wouldn't keep much longer. Added to that were a couple of nice parsnips I bought last time I was at the shops and some bags of onions I'd asked Pisces to get me a fortnight ago intending to cook them up but hadn't gotten around to it. (In something quite unconnected this reminded me of one of the birthday presents Pisces got many moons ago. He's pretty good at procrastination so a friend gave him A Round To It which was a nicely finished wooden plaque lettered in gold with - you've guessed it - 'A round to it'. It disappeared quite quickly so I suspect he didn't appreciate the joke as much as I did).

All of these goodies were going to go to waste if I didn't act soon so the cooking flurry began and we now have:

Slow cooked onions - they were sliced and then went into the well greased slow cooker with a slosh of olive oil and a couple of dabs of butter where they cooked away for 6-8 hours. I packaged what we didn't eat immediately into serving size amounts and popped them in the freezer to make a useful starter for all sorts of goodies. One of my current favourites is cheese and onion toasted sandwiches.

Baba ganoush - I roasted the eggplant until very soft with a bulb of garlic wrapped in cooking parchment alongside it, scooped out the flesh of both and mashed it with Moroccan style spices and lemon juice. I made some pita crisps (sprinkled with Moroccan spices) to go with it and both are seriously good.

Pear and parsnip soup - simple but very tasty. I just chop up the parsnips and microwave them in vegetable stock until tender, add a can of pears, drained, and it's back into the microwave until all are piping hot then blend the lot with a hand held blender. Top with some finely chopped parsley. Yum. (You can do the same using canned apple instead of pears - also yum).

Chickpea and pumpkin vegetable stew - this has a Middle Eastern twist, too, with added chopped dried apricots. Yesterday we had it with fresh pita bread and a dollop of Greek yoghurt.  This time I'm planning on fruity couscous - a handful each of toasted pine nuts and currants soaked boiling water for a few minutes added to the cooked couscous.

Does this all sound good? It is.

How I Spent Yesterday

- it wasn't all that interesting, I'm afraid.

I started out with the laundry that had to end up cluttering up the family room on the clothes airer 'cos it kept on raining. I'm not complaining about the rain, of course. Heaven knows we need every single drop of that but it certainly doesn't help with getting the washing dry. It was chilly enough for us to have the heater on for most of the day, something we rarely do, so the washing was dry enough to fold and put away this morning.

Then I decided to do a bit of on-line shopping. Got on amazon.com, found what I liked and they wouldn't let me buy it. There have been some taxation changes here - long overdue and quite reasonable - and Amazon can't or won't work with their third party sellers to incorporate them so you can't buy anything that is not directly from Amazon like say Kindle e-books. Dang.

Okay, I thought, I'll go directly to the manufacturer's website and buy from there. Nah uh, they just flicked me back to amazon.com. This was seriously frustrating. The item I wanted is a gadget for fastening bracelets and necklaces. My arthritis makes this pretty much impossible these days and Pisces makes such a production of it when I ask him to help that honestly it's not worth the hassle to try to wear anything I can't fit over my head. To be fair he does have bigger fingers than most and this makes gripping small jewellery catches difficult. Why do they put such tiny catches on jewellery you and millions of women ask? I'm guessing it's largely to save on costs but the reality is the cost increase would be infinitesimal and it would make life much easier for everyone who wants to wear a piece of jewellery.

Having reached peak levels of frustration I wandered out into the garden between showers - and this was much more satisfactory. The seedings I planted earlier in the week - kale, broccoli, pak choy, bok choy, lettuce, coriander and dill plus some Sweet Alice and kangaroo paws - are all looking great and obviously enjoying the rain. As well the seeds I put in a week or so ago are almost all up so soon there'll be sugar snap peas, snow peas, carrots and beetroot plus more lettuce and pak choy - these will replace those already in the garden as they're harvested. The only ones not yet showing are the red onions and spring onions. I'm particularly pleased the seeds are coming up because most of them were on trays out in the open when the drenching storm we had at the beginning of the week hit and when I finally managed to get out to check on them they'd been standing in pools of water for at least a day. I figured that if the over watering hadn't finished them off the pelting rain would have washed them out of their seedling containers but most - for now at least - seem to be doing well.

Add in a couple of hours of French and German study and a bit of writing where I fixed up some very obvious plot holes - well not so obvious now - and my day was pretty much done with equal parts of frustration and pleasure.

I was tired by then and ended up watching It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World - a very silly but thoroughly entertaining movie. Pisces, who almost never watches a movie, enjoyed it, too.

So that was yesterday. I wonder what today will bring.

Updating

As I sent off yet another message yesterday apologising because I couldn't attend a social event due to health problems I thought I should fill you in on my life for the past eight months - and it hasn't been a bowl of cherries. I've posted about some of this before but in case you haven't seen much of me - my husband said the other day that the number of social events I've left the house to go to in that time wouldn't even fill up a count on one hand and he's right - here's a brief run down.

I've had three separate surgeries and one of these left me with severely compromised vision for close to five months. That has now resolved but was very scary. My vision is still deteriorating but with the help of a wonderful optometrist I can now see well enough to read and watch television and with luck this will stay at a level where I can function fairly independently for quite a while.

Then there was some major surgery from which I'm still recovering slowly. My surgeon has had me on very restricted activity for the past two and a half months and since I don't want to have to go through this again I'm being a very compliant patient.

Added to all this I've had a major flare up of an auto-immune disease I've had most of my life which has made physically doing even simple things very difficult. Walking any distance has been impossible and I've struggled to do something as simple as hold a sewing needle - my husband bought some new work pants three weeks ago and yesterday was the first time I could cope with pinning and sewing up the hems.

So, if anyone has been wondering where I've been and why I keep having to pull out of social activities now you know. With luck things will continue to improve. I certainly hope so because I'm more than a little fed up.

Strawberries!

My neighbour borrowed three eggs yesterday. She's just returned them and this came with them along with a head of broccoli.

Yum - and the perfume is simply glorious. If I could I'd leave them out on the kitchen bench but I'll succumb to commonsense which dictates putting them in the fridge.

Gardening - At Last

Not that I got much done before the rain came. Still something is better than nothing, I suppose, and although my surgeon has said I can start to do some gardening he did stress that it should be 'gentle'. I am trying very hard to be a compliant patient because the last thing I want is to have to go through all this again.

Bearing his instructions in mind I pulled on my red wellies, grabbed my spade, trowel and loppers and headed out to the veggie patch. I have been pulling a few weeds every day and went over some of the ground with a dutch hoe but this is superficial stuff and I knew I had to take on the biggie if I want to get any winter veg at all.

The problem is that because my veggie patch is heavily composted, fertilised and mulched it has become a magnet for invasive roots from my neighbour's garden. They have a curry leaf tree, which is very lovely with its delicate, fern-like leaves. It's a great flavouring in curries, too, but in the garden it's highly invasive which is why the one I have in is a pot and will be staying there. My neighbour's one is not so confined. Its roots come under the fence (which is sunk over a metre deep), then come up beside it and spread across my garden. The roots consist of quite substantial ones up to 3 cms in circumference as well as masses of fibrous roots - some bunches of these that I pulled out today were 45 cms long and 10 cms around. Both of these suck the nutrients and moisture out of the ground and block the roots of anything I want to grow. They sucker like crazy, too - the furtherest sucker I've found was 30 metres into my yard - so at the change of every season I have to go along the fence line with a spade, uncover the roots and cut them off, knowing they'll be back in a few months.

So that's what I've been doing - very carefully - this morning. I was hoping to do more but the rain has arrived  - and truth be told, it's probably just as well because once I start working in the garden I tend to find it hard to stop, doctor's orders not withstanding. I did do one other thing though. See. Here are the seeds I sorted ready to plant. All I have to do now is to put them in their punnets or into the ground. I might wait until the storms we're expecting later today and tomorrow pass before I do that, though.