Big gardening and little gardening

It's been hot and dry here for the past few weeks - this afternoon yet another set of storms managed to sweep to the north and the south with just a few showers for us. A few showers are good, but a day of rain would be better. The little gardening is a new garden bed over in the west paddock where it's rocky and dry, with lots of wind and western sun. At the moment it's mostly grass - struggling - so we're going to create more beds around the rocks and put tough things in them. 

This is the one that we're doing first as proof of concept. It looks tiny but by the time I mattocked and spaded the edges, then killed the grass (with round-up) and spent an hour this morning mattocking/spading/forking over about one quarter of it ... I think it's good we just started with one bed. I'll keep turning it over and put some compost in it, then put in some perennials in March and fingers crossed they survive the winter and take off in the spring. I do not know what I am doing but that is what the internet is for.

And this is the big gardening - for an eyewatering sum we are slowly getting the big dead pine down. A massive branch (about eighteen inches in diameter) had broken off and was just dangling there, which gave us the push we needed to finally get someone in.

They have taken down the broken one, and some of the others, but to get the remainder they need to go away and get other equipment. Or something, I don't get close enough to understand. They are trying to avoid squashing the garden shed which is good - I would be VERY CROSS after spending all that time painting the inside. 

At least there's plenty of firewood! But the strawberry bed was a bit of a casualty.

Central coast

We had a weekend away somewhere I'd never been - the Central Coast of NSW, which is an hour or two north of Sydney (about four and a half hours drive from here) and seems to be an aggregation of small towns, beachside villages, bad roads and wonderful views. A friend has moved up there so a few of us went to stay for a weekend and have a nose-about.

This is the most stunning view from her house. Cursed steps and a terrifying driveway ... but worth it when you get there. Much wine was drunk on the balcony.

We went for lovely walks along various beaches (too cold for swimming), a couple of pub lunches, fish and chips on the waterfront... it was lovely. A very relaxed vibe, although our friend commutes into Sydney twice a week - two hours each way! I can't imagine, I used to get cross when my twelve-minute commute turned into 15 at rush hour. 

This is the light pole at the local boat ramp - like a trophy wall? But with fish skulls? Some of them were high enough to need a ladder, which is an awful thought. How (and why) would you do it?

We stopped for a night in Sydney on the way back to test drive another car - we are buying an electric one - but didn't do anything exciting there (it was raining).

Bicycling ensemble

I have been biking about in any old thing, which is fine, but skirts tend to whoosh up at the front and flash your underwear at people, wide-legged pants get caught in the chain, shorts ride up your bum and I am far too fat to do my errands in leggings. Actually I am think I am just far too old to do my errands in leggings; nobody under the age of about 35 seems to worry about body shape, which is good for them, but I cannot revisit my ideas on showing the shape of my fat arse at this late stage.

So I made some knee-length culottes! Bloomers! Bicycling pantaloons! They are very practical and comfortable and they have flowers on them.

I bought the cheap rayon at Rathdowne fabrics in Melbourne last July and it was easy to sew and is lovely to wear. My pantaloons even have pockets. 

"Who sent you?"

This is a scrap quilt called "Who sent you?" from some song lyric, as usual. It is a floribunda block which I have done a few times before, but this time in old-school browns and creams with a bit of red.

I love the block and I love the colour scheme, so this was fun to make. The only problem is my machine went on the fritz half way through the free motion quilting - nothing serious, it just needs a service and kept skipping stitches - so it is partly quilted in flowers and partly just straight lines. 

It doesn't seem to matter too much. Cat included for scale.

Heatwave

We've had a nasty heatwave in Australia where temperature records were broken (again) and even our shady corner got uncomfortably warm. I took off to the coast for a few days where it was still hot but you could always jump in the ocean to recover. I took absolutely no photos but it was very very nice - especially because school went back for a new year!!! Hahaha I do not miss that, not one bit. Other than swimming I had a sewing frenzy - including some fabric that I'd lifted from the quilt shed, they are happy to be rid of it - and read some of the two dozen books I got at the book fair.

Art classes continue on, and I continue to attempt faces. This is Susan Sonntag. It is not terrible but also not very good. The teacher makes me change things if they're not right (not something I do for myself, I tend to throw it in the bin) so I spend the full two hours smudging away at my latest victim. And the next week I did this bloke, who was a life model from many years ago. 

It doesn't look like him at all, it's hard to describe how it manages to be both the shape of his face and a completely different person. Sometimes you capture the essence and sometimes you really don't. 

We also had a friend to stay for a few days which was a real treat  ... he parked out front and made the cottage look MUCH classier than it usually does! He took my husband for a few spins with the top down but I have informed him we are much too poor for a mid-life crisis convertible.

Garden shed inside transformation

Here is our little garden shed, that used to be the laundry, and still has a part-brick floor for the copper. It also has hot and cold running water and is weather tight ... but there's not a lot else to say about it. Small and shed-like.

It was also very filthy, had a lot of gaps where critters could come in, an uneven floor, dodgy sheeting on the walls (probably asbestos tbh) and was generally held together with paint and optimism.

Some of the uprights are timber, some appear to be actual tree trunks, and some were just split in half where a big branch must have landed on it at some point. We decided to have a little project because it is just too hot to garden, and did an incredibly bodgy job trying to fix it up. We used quick dry cement in inappropriate places.

Where the cement dried too quickly we used cornice cement to fill in the most obvious of cracks, in ways cornice cement was never intended to be used.

After a thorough scrubbing I discovered the absolute joys of expanding foam. That stuff is amazing, you just shoot the little nozzle in and whoosh! No more rat-sized gap between the roof and the wall. Looks like shit but an astonishing amount of fun for $13. 

Then we painted the ceiling a mix of all of the ceiling white / primer / antique white  that we had in the shed (quite a lot as it turned out). The walls were a mix of more leftover white and two of the blue sample pots that we bought for the hallway. It turned quite a violently bright blue. It's hard to tell in the photos but it is much much brighter than the previous colour.

The floor was a full tin of "terracotta" something that we found in the shed -  that you use on driveways, or concrete planters, to make it look like terracotta? We thought it sounded promising, so did two coats, and it went a violently bright orange that does not work with the walls AT ALL. Each coat took about two days to dry and even then it looked a bit damp but we were over it by then so did a coat of concrete sealant (which we actually had to go to the hardware store and buy, shame).

Then we washed the furniture, moved it back in, and my husband spent a day putting up hooks and a pegboard and arranging it all so beautifully! It looks amazing. The whole thing took two weeks and was a bit of a pain but we are very pleased with ourselves and our project ... as long as you don't look at any part of it too closely. 

Two of my favourite things

This weekend I have been rampaging through other people's unwanted stuff ... fabric and books! Does it get any better than that.

The fabric is donations to the quilter's group that are starting to take over the shed. We are going to try and sell it at a destash sale in a few weeks but first it has to be ironed, sorted, measured and priced. This is part fun treasure hunt and part wake-up call for those of use that hoard fabric. If you can't use it all ... it ends up not treasured, no-one wants it. It's a bit sobering, especially when you see things that were clearly precious projects in progress.

And the books were the town's book fair which has been on the Australia Day long weekend for a very long time. The amount of books is staggering - I volunteered to help with the stocking and tidying. The books can't all go out at once so as they sell we go to the stash and re-stock. It is just mind blowing ... but again, all the gardening books and cook books were on super sale because no-one wants them. 

I had a lovely time and volunteers are positively encouraged to snaffle books for themselves. Everyone has an increasingly tottering pile in the kitchen (volunteers also get cake, it's very social) and pay up at the end. Awesome ... I will read my way through my tottering pile and donate it again for next year.