Appropriate clothing

As we know, all human endeavour is improved by wearing appropriate clothing. I have been struggling with gardening clothes - originally I thought I would wear athletic gear like leggings, but I need way more protection against the branches, thorns, prickles and spikes that live in my garden. Then I moved to jeans - which are a bit restrictive for digging and bending - then elastic-waisted pants which are fine except I've lost about five kilos since stopping work and I can't put anything in the pockets without sending my pants to my ankles. So ... I have put sense before fashion and bought myself some dungarees.

They are awesome. Tough, lots of pockets, no plumber's crack, super comfortable and great for stomping about in. All the bits and bobs are adjustable including several sets of waist buttons for pregnant gardeners (not going to happen to me, but I might get fatter) and just general fabulousness. 

I think I am giving hipster, permaculture, millennial vibes ... but I am not. I am giving fat toddler vibes. And I know this because of the seven photos that exist of me as a child (third child out of four, parents rarely remembered I existed) one of them is this delight. Fifty years on, haven't changed a bit.

Finished a solids top

I have no memory of sewing this top, so I think it must be from 2020, when I was doing a lot of solids and everything else was a bit of a blur. For everyone. 

It is super simple, just rectangles. Was I trying to use up leftovers? Not impossible, or maybe I just felt like something very straightforward. Solids look good in simple blocks. I called this quilt "Sensible decision making" - not because I feel that the quilt represents sensible decisions. I think I am trying to manifest sensible decision making in my life, so calling a quilt that seems like a first step.

It was blowing a gale while I tried to take these photos - the quilt was horizontal half the time. We have had massive rain, followed by a sharp cold snap. Our fire doesn't take much encouragement to stay banked overnight, and is easy to wake up in the morning. It's lovely ... but a bit of a trap if you want to go out into the weather and do some gardening, and not spend the morning sitting by the fire reading. I have come very late to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and my word they deserve all the hype. I have been transfixed.

Simple quilting too - like a meander? I did the binding at quilters, very easy to sit and stitch while chatting / listening. Or not! The group can spend fifteen minutes in silence, just sewing away with their own thoughts. It is very peaceful.

A new toy

My husband is getting a lot of 'how to manage a small acreage' advice from his brother, who has had a similar sized place for quite a few years, and number one advice was Buy a Big Chipper. And after a few dozen trailer trips to the dump of green waste we moved it up the priority list, and bought this beauty. Also a connecting thing so it can be towed about by the ride on mower.

Like all fabulous things it is made in NZ, and can allegedly do a branch up to 7 cm in diameter, but it stalls a bit at that size so we're taking it easy until we are used to it. (Luckily number two advice was Buy a Selection of Chainsaws so anything bigger we'll use as firewood). 

So after a bit of try-and-fail with set up and starting we have had a couple of excellent chipping sessions. It is so satisfying to see an enormous pile of branches and prunings reduced to a lovely manageable pile of mulch. Because our garden is so overgrown we are absolutely in a trim and chop phase, and we have lots of uses for mulch. 

I am slowly moving my way around the house, and next on the list were these rosemary bushes. I felt a bit sad about them, because they were not a bad planting, and looked very cute when we bought the house ... but rosemary won't grow on old wood and these were far too high for the verandah. So I chopped them back to stumps (thank you small electric reciprocating saw, new favourite tool) then mattocked them out. 

This is the pile of rosemary bushes.

And this is the much smaller pile of woodchips! It was a delight to chip, it flew through the chipper and smelt AMAZING. Next on the chipping list is the pile of weed trees that garden guy has cleared from the creek .... not so much fun. 

Dad, I think you avoided the black chairs because they are murder on anyone's lower back - that curve was evil. God knows why anyone would buy them to be honest ... and no we didn't put down newspaper on the weeds ... mostly because we don't get a newspaper any more! We are having to light the fire with bank statements.

The black chairs

You may have seen these two chairs - and matching footstools - in the background of photos over the years. I tried to search my google photos to see if it would find any shots but the google photo search is WILD. When I searched 'black chair' I got four hundred photos of our black cat, which was very lovely, but not what I was looking for. Although co-incidentally she is sitting under the chair in this photo.

When I searched 'black sofa' I got this shot of the dog, the fire, a footstool and my glass of sparkling red ... I think I sent this to my husband when he was travelling somewhere to show that I was missing him dreadfully and having a terrible evening. 

And when I searched 'leather chair' it turned up this shot of the time we borrowed the prime minister's jet ... this is why I sometimes miss my job. I'm not usually this happy on a ten hour flight.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is to tell the story of these black leather chairs, that we bought when we bought our second house in Weetangera in 2001. We went from our first house - 1950s cottage, un-renovated, three bedrooms, one bathroom, one cupboard - to our 'forever' house - 1970s orange brick mansion, four bedrooms, four bathrooms, family room, study, basement, the works ... but of course had absolutely nothing to put in it. So we bought a lot of furniture from the sellers, who were downsizing, including these two black leather chairs and matching footstools. The owners did a big reno of their house in the 1980s (lots of grey and peach curtains, a chrome bar and a 16 seater marble table, we didn't buy that) and these chairs were probably the most stylish part, and we bought both sets for

 $400. Here is an action shot of when number one was about four months old - my petting zoo - there is a tortoiseshell cat in the black chair although it's quite hard to see. (We also did buy that incredibly uncomfortable moulded plastic desk chair for $40, bargain).

The chairs have done well over the years - indestructible for the family room, make excellent forts when tipped on their side, beloved by pets - but they take up a lot of space and don't really fit the vibe of our new place. We were tossing up whether to donate or use as porch chairs (because nothing says classy like a lounge chair on the front porch) but then decided to google if they were worth anything ... turns out they are highly sought after Tessa chairs, so we took the easy route and emailed a collective of furniture dealers asking $1000 for the lot - got a call back within half an hour from a guy who drove out in his ute that afternoon and took them off our hands! One email followed by a wodgeful of cash to end the day, and a nice clear space in the lounge room. 

We are quite startled that anything we own could be worth something ... I like watching the antiques roadshow very much but neither of us are from 'old stuff might be valuable' families. And this blog post has taken me about an hour to write because I got distracted by google photos AND old photo albums. Retirement!

Deliveries

My tiresome weeding of the bigger garden bed is nearing the end, so we ordered another few cubic metres of mulch to cover it with. There's no way I can get the grass out, so it is dig / smother / poison ... repeated for the next twenty years. Which is fine. 

Delivery guy brought his tipper truck to drop off the mulch, and also some road base that we are using to fill up the worst holes in the 'driveway'. There are rocks and tree roots and other things that wear away - and which wouldn't be a problem if we had a proper vehicle, but we have weak little city cars that are bottoming out in the chasms. So ugly road base it is, and at some point we will get a professional in to grade the driveway properly and put something down. Delivery guy dropped it in a couple of spots, which was very kind of him. My husband was very taken with the tipper truck, but I don't think we need one.

All expenditure is theoretical, because we still can't sell the Canberra house. We are going to have to drop the price I think, which is depressing, even though it's imaginary money, until someone buys it. Then we can get a larger car, a decent driveway and NOT a tipper truck.

It's that time of year when the mushrooms sprout - we are fairly sure these are edible but we are still not eating them ... we let cupboard guy know about them because his partner is an experienced forager but we are watching beef wellington lady on the news every night and aren't brave enough to eat them. Beef wellington lady is something of an Australian obsession at the moment, it's got a lot of twists and turns. 

We also have the classic toadstools arranged in little fairy circles ... definitely not eating those.

Canberra days

 Sunday was a Canberra day and Wednesday was another one - they seem to roll round regularly, which is actually nice. Gives us a change and we enjoy the quiet days at home more. Sunday I went to urban sketchers, which had over thirty attendees! There had been a news item on the local radio about it, because we are tying in with a museum exhibition about a local architect. And on Sunday we sketched the Dickson Public Library, which is one of the architect's triumphs. In a very 1960s way ... flat roofs, concrete, and little courtyards that were probably a good idea but are now very neglected.

Someone who used to work there said it leaked like a sieve and they had terrible mould problems. Surprised? No. Different levels of flat roof and ornamental downpipes into a water feature? Recipe for disaster.

Although at least the architect did put the downpipes flowing into the water feature (which has a drain) in contrast to my drawing of it, which has them just gushing anywhere they want. I tried to get the vibe without worrying about being too accurate because it was fiendish to draw. A lot of the others did the autumn trees and people having coffee, which was probably a better idea. 

Wednesday I went in on my own to a work morning tea for a colleague who's off to NZ to get married next week! It's in a particularly dull piece of the countryside less than an hour from where I grew up but I didn't say that out loud ... I'm sure it will be very lovely.  It was wonderful to catch up with everyone and get all the goss - they are gearing up for the start of the new parliament which is an exciting time and I miss it a little bit but not a lot. Lots of the same old bullshit really, and I am not pining for any of it.

The Canberra days involved two trips to Ikea, so I could frankenstein this excellent ironing station. It's a $45 metal trolley with a $12 tabletop ironing board zip-tied to the top and it is AMAZING. I was getting annoyed at having to get up from the sewing machine to iron things - instead of just turning around - and this has solved that problem. It is very solid and has smooth wheels - the things you see on tiktok! I love tiktok, and I have found myself on quilt-tok finally, with lots of ideas and inspiration. The ladies at quilters on Tuesday were bemoaning the lack of young people taking up craft hobbies ... which is simply not true at all, lots of crafts are thriving ... but 30 somethings aren't going to show to the scout hall at 10 am on a Tuesday morning in rural NSW. I did not say that out loud.

Weeding the house garden beds

We are doing urgent jobs, and random jobs, and jobs that take our fancy, while we figure out what on earth we have signed up for and how on earth we are going to do it. Because it all has to be done we don't have much of an idea what to do where - and we are still getting garden guy in to do the big stuff (i.e. drag logs out of the creek with his tractor, it was awesome) - but that's OK. We do not have a project plan (or at least not yet ... perhaps we are in the 'gathering information' stage. Very important.) Here is an old shed, with a fifteen foot high rose bush. 

I think I am going to work my way around the 'house' garden beds (i.e. the ones close to the house). They seem to have been planted in more cottagey, small scale plants like lavender and roses and lilacs, with a couple of little rhododendrons and violets and catnip for ground cover, lots of bulbs (mostly iris and jonquil we think, but that's via post mortems when I slice one with a spade) with some penstemons and hebes and other stuff that we can't identify despite HOURS of google image search. There's a couple of sacred bamboo bushes and a conifer that we are assuming is not meant to be there (but we're keeping it anyway, it's alive).

It is not a small job. I was feeling very good about this bed - several days work, cleared and mulched - then turned exactly ninety degrees and saw the next one. 

It is grass, with god knows what else, and a big dead gum tree in the middle. It will take at least a week to get through and there are a dozen more to go. I am gardening in the morning then doing something else in the afternoon - last week I did morning AND afternoon then the next day I squatted down to pull out the first weed ... and couldn't get back up again. My thighs would not work. I had to roll over onto my side on the grass and pull myself upright on the wheelbarrow. It was very feeble, and now I take it a bit easier.

Another quilt finish

I do not know when I pieced this top - or why - but there it was in the sewing room ... so I added a border quilted it up and bound it at Tuesday morning quilt meeting, and now it's a quilt. 

I tried to do artistic shots on the porch, with limited success. But it shows you the idea - brightly coloured squares. I'm not sure the border goes with the theme, but honestly I can't remember exactly what the theme was, and it looks fine to me now.

More arty shots. This was me spreading it over the rosemary bushes ... which are destined to be pulled out, they have gotten far too woody.

And home to winter

Even though we were only away for a week it felt like a definite shift in the weather - from a plausibly summer-like autumn to a slightly autumn-like winter. I am seeing bits of the garden that I haven't seen before when the leaves were on. It was a cold dark house all on its own when we arrived home after the drive back from Sydney airport. It's about the same distance as from our old house - three hours or so - but the last hour you leave the highway and cut down through back roads. Perfectly fine (all paved and mostly marked) but there was a deer in the middle of the road going up, and an enormous recently-dead wombat coming back. Wombats are units and you do not want to hit one with your car. 

This view back towards the house is a favourite. However the house gets ZERO sun after about midday, in any room, which is interesting. We knew that beforehand, but the reality is different - luckily there is plenty of sun about, you just have to walk outside. I know windbreaks were planted first thing for farms but whoever it was 150 years ago did an outstanding job. No wind, no sun. 

We went down the coast on Saturday night to watch the election with friends ... a safe space is sometimes needed with politics. It can get a bit awkward if you find out halfway through the evening that people have wildly different views. Luckily the centre-left government was returned with an increased majority, in what commentators are calling an emphatic rejection of trumpian politics. I'm not sure it's quite that simple but the current prime minister talks about strength being kindness, which I like as a message. 

My political views are tempered by working with our elected representatives so closely for the past ten years - there are absolutely arseholes on both sides, some of whom lost their seats - and very nice people who also did. It was beautiful weather but a bit too cold to swim, so long walks and back home to the cat.

Norfolk Island again

We took a break from gardening (and worrying about the house sale) to have another lovely week on Norfolk Island with my parents-in-law. 

They had rented the same house with the wonderful verandah, so we did a lot of sitting, admiring the view (and the chickens), having sunset wine-and-cheese and some gentle touristing.

Some days were glorious so I had a swim - not warm, but do-able - but some days we got a lot of rain. We went on a bushwalk to try and offset the wine-and-cheese and got soaked to the skin. Or I did, my husband remembered his raincoat. It was absolutely filthy and we got caught right in it.

Other than that there were some delicious meals, a bit of light shopping, some more successful walks and general chill holidaying. Very much needed after the past couple of months. Here are some Moreton Bay figs ... stunning trees but they are frost sensitive and get absolutely enormous. Maybe worth some experimenting? I will ask the chief gardener. 

We feel like we are comfortable with the Norfolk Island experience now - some downsides like $20 for two litres of fresh milk; but plenty of upsides like checking in for your flight then going back to the house for an hour and a half to have lunch ... you make a move when you see the plane land. Awesome. We went to a museum we hadn't seen before, and walked around the heritage areas but didn't feel the need for the full tours given we did it last year. 

There is not much island and an enormous amount of Pacific Ocean. I think the most exciting thing was when a cow gave birth on one of the walks ... second was when one of the backyard roosters died. It hadn't looked super healthy for a while.