Death to cineraria

Here's a before and after for you - a bed entirely full of six-foot high cineraria (probably 'silver dust' looking at the leaves) that was very much living its best life out by the clothesline. They are not meant to be six foot high ... in the interests of accuracy I googled what the plant is and it's been reclassified as Jacobaea maritima, commonly known as silver ragwort, which is all news to me. I am not entirely sure if it's the same plant but it does look a lot like it, and the foliage is very distinctive. And very pretty! But the inside of these plants was not happy; lots of dead twigs and generally lanky and miserable.

Actually on further googling it could even be Centaurea cineraria, the velvet centaurea, which is a completely unrelated plant that looks almost exactly the same. You can tell the difference by the flowers, so now we will NEVER KNOW because I chopped it right back, saw it still looked sad, so pulled it all out by the roots and plan to put it through the chipper. Lost to science.

As you can now see, this is some sort of building foundation turned into a couple of garden beds. There is concrete and rocks and a big wooden post and there has been careful planting and mulching in the past. Brad is thinking hibiscus there, which would be lovely (cold weather hibiscus of course, not the pretty tropical ones), but in the meantime we have discovered another actual part of the garden. Can you tell I read The Secret Garden about fifty times when I was a kid? I now follow the little blue-headed wrens about in case they're going to lead me to a hidden gate. In a big brick wall. Sigh.

Distance to the ground

I called this quilt " Distance to the ground" because it made me think of sky? Air possibly? I made it because another woman at quilters was doing a blue and white quilt, and it is such a lovely classic colour scheme, that I thought I needed one. Another one, I have made blue and white quilts before.

But not this pattern which is a traditional block that's called about fifteen different things. All of my points are chopped off and I had to trim the blocks about half an inch so they would be even remotely square, so it does not look at all the way it should look. Am I bothered? I am not. 

It is quilted in an allover meander. This possibly the laziest quilting pattern you can do other than straight lines (which I am also very fond of) but it looks fine and you wouldn't notice much on this busy piecing. The outer border was meant to have those four-patches floating in the same fabric but I got the maths wrong and didn't have quite enough ... so a recalculation and some unpicking meant two colours. As ever, it looks like that's what I planned all along! Hah!

Hints of spring

There are definitely rumours in the garden that spring is on the way. One camellia bush is in full flower and the other one is covered in buds about to burst out. 

This tree is an early starter with these blossoms thinking about showing - most of the rest of them are still completely bare. It's not any warmer but the days are starting to get longer. 

The daffs are starting to come up, and the jonquils are everywhere. The roses that I pruned so severely have some buds ... although some shoots that are never going to sprout again. Oooops, sorry roses.

We're a bit nervous about spring and things growing ... having barely gained control of some small fraction of the garden, it's an intimidating thought that everything is going to start fighting back. And because it will be our first spring we have no idea what exists underground or what half these plants are. Is it dead or is it deciduous? We're about to find out.

Melbourne again

We went down to Melbourne for a few days to see some more alternative theatre ... off to the Melbourne Theatre Company again where number two was in a reading of a new play. It was described as a "reckless, erotic and audacious ode to reconnection" so we weren't 100% sure what to expect but we really enjoyed it. The main character was read by a single actor but number two did the three secondary characters including sensible best friend and British love interest ... god listen to me "love interest" it was definitely a fuckboy situation ... so yeah, our child reading sex scenes. We coped with that and just about burst with pride all the other times - so talented and smart!!!! And can do an accent!!!! Completely unbiased opinion of course.

Number two also had a ticket to some re-telling of Pride and Prejudice and persuaded us to get tickets to come too... then BAILED (admittedly, did have a bad cold) leaving us to go and enjoy a play where Mr Bennet was played by a literal pot plant (I think a monstera?) and Mary murdered Mr Collins with a shotgun. Sounds dreadful, was actually very funny and we laughed a lot. Very high energy and entertaining. 

The weather was a lot better than the last trip - clear and cold - we saw these hot air balloons very early on the last morning just as the sun was coming up. It would have been freezing up there, but very still. Our airbnb was a nice townhouse that had bedroom/bathroom downstairs and a big kitchen/living space upstairs. Kind of strange but you did get a bit of a view from upstairs.

Other than the theatrical experiences we hung out with number two a little bit, wandered round the alternative streets of Brunswick ... I accidentally walked into the Victorian headquarters of the Spinners and Weavers which was AWESOME. A shop, but also full of volunteer ladies who wanted to tell you all about everything you were looking at and ask you questions about what you did and point you to the library and suggest you join the guild? I enjoyed it very much and one of the ladies had a small crusty white dog for my husband to bond with.

We also went to a historic house and gardens - Como House, which was kind of cool but also impossible to see how you could live there, even though it wasn't that grand. Sometimes we go to these places for decor inspiration but I think I prefer the ikea touches of my cosy cottage. The gardens were nice.

One afternoon we drove into the burbs to what is allegedly the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere ... I don't know if that's true but we had a lovely couple of hours shopping - it was all very clean and shiny and peaceful which sometimes is just what you need. We enjoyed it but were glad to get back home again to the countryside.

Log cabin

I finished the log cabin that I started at the quilter's Saturday Sew Along - I do like a log cabin and this is nice and small and pretty. I was the only very scrappy one - most people had a more curated selection :) - but it turned out OK. It was going to be far too small for anything so I put on the border and brought it up to a reasonable size. And less long and skinny.

It's just quilted in straight lines because of all the seams. I wasn't going to get swirly and creative with that much going on.

We finally have a new sofa and it is surprisingly comforting. It feels like the living room has finally got its proper shape, and we are very much enjoying having somewhere to loll. Once again, despite swearing I wouldn't fill my house with shit from Ikea, we bought it from Ikea - exactly the same as the one at the last house except smaller. It was super comfy then, and it's super comfy now, and the colour is good, and the price was right, and it only took three hours to put together, most of which was putting the cushions in the covers ... like putting a duvet cover on but ten times as hard. Here is an action shot...

So I think that was the last house thing we had to do? We have lots and lots of more elaborate plans (if we ever sell the Canberra house and have two cents to rub together) but that was it for immediate things. No outdoor furniture yet but we have camping chairs... And finally we have my husband at a eight-hour lunch last weekend (Christmas in July [August], which is why the Santa headband) bonding with the house dachshund. It was a flighty little thing but followed him round like a sausage missile the whole time.

Chaos at the sheep pen

One of the 'features' of our new place is a small sheep run, with broken down fences and a concrete ramp up to where they would have loaded sheep onto some form of transport. It is old and cute and planted with roses and some other garden beds. Cupboard guy reckoned that the concrete was made with stones from the local river, and it certainly looks rocky and rustic.

Like everything else it is wildly overgrown and we've had to dig and clear to even see what's there. We know that it's been lovely because these are photos from when it was sold in 2017.

And this is what it looked like last week! Some of it is just because of winter but mostly it is an absolute morass of weeds, grass, roses that have been left to their own devices and dead sad lavender. So I've dealt to the roses, sprayed them down, chopped them back and we are in the process of clearing and mulching the beds.

It could be a long time before it gets back to the picture postcard glory days. The fence is falling down too, and we don't really want to 'fix' it, but we don't want it crushing passersby either. 

And of course Chonky needed a second burrow so dug one out in the least convenient spot. It's the dark bit to the right of the little rock, which we rolled into the hollow to see what he would do .... dig around it? roll it away? ignore it? We have noticed he's started dropping turds on the wooden chopping stump, so is that a sign of protest? or just lizard-brain cairn-building? Wombats are mysterious.

Photoshoot

A few weeks ago I bought tickets in the preschool raffle, because the first prize was a very large load of firewood, and we really needed some. Excitingly, they rang that afternoon to say that I'd won ... second prize, which was a family photoshoot by one of the preschool mums who also had a photography business. The chances of organising the children to get us all together was zero, but we figured what the hell, let's go with just the two of us, and so the photographer came round the house with a mate and we got some photos taken of us, in our garden.

We said we were unphotogenic and awkward, and would like almost entirely garden and house with just a little bit of us, and we were embracing the wintry ugly! Surprisingly, it was great fun, she totally got it - we nattered about all sorts of things for an hour or two while she snapped - and we now have a peculiar but pretty record of our first winter. 

Some of them are a bit engagement shoot - no excuse for this window number - but generally it was us in all our middle-aged glory. So peculiar - absolutely nothing I would ever voluntarily do - but I'll get some printed out and maybe even one for the wall.