Pottering at home

It's been lovely this week to potter gently about at home. A bit of gardening, although the wind chill has knocked the fun out of it a bit. I don't mind cold weather but having a gale rip through you is not very pleasant. I went out for about an hour yesterday before retreating indoors. 

I did manage to take some baja sage cuttings - we have a very pretty and healthy plant and I wanted to get some more, but it's not common and I couldn't buy either seeds or seedlings. So I have ventured into (another) unknown world and I'm propagating by cuttings! No idea if it will work but I followed all the instructions and found nodes and dipped in hormones and the rest ... I've done six that I will coddle through winter and see if they live to be planted in the spring.

In even more exciting gardening events ... our veggie cage is being built!!!! It is too hard to protect edible plants from rabbits, parrots, kangaroos and wombats individually, so we are building a big netted enclosure and putting everything in there. Vege beds, fruit trees, maybe some herbs? 

It is 9 metres by 12 metres which seemed perfectly reasonable when we made a little map out of paper but looks absolutely enormous now it's a steel structure in the western paddock. But given that we keep saying things like 'how about a permanent bed for asparagus? how about espaliered fruit trees? how about thornless blackberries? how about cold frames?' it might not be big enough...

Back to the autumn

Even just a week away has changed the landscape into autumn. It's very very beautiful around here at the moment. 

I'm appreciating the time I took to do the last trim and feed of the roses because we're getting a late flush, including some that I don't think have flowered yet during the summer. I suspect there has been some thoughtful planting. 

The dahlias and tomatoes have all died - before we left for Norfolk Island I pulled up the tomato plants and made all the green ones into green tomato chutney. It was quite fun but far too time-consuming to do the day before you go off on holiday and everything in my suitcase smelled vaguely like chutney. I had fun though, and it's very satisfying. Here is an oddly blurry shot of me stripping a cherry tomato bush, in the late afternoon sunshine.

The day after we got back we went into Canberra to farewell drinks for friends who are off to Washington on posting. They most cordially invited visitors but I don't think we'll be going any time soon .... We've put off the planned UK holiday until next year, and we'll have to save our pennies again after that to go to somewhere with proper hard currency ... but it seems a shame not to go. These are the same friends we stayed with in Jakarta in 2012 and we did have a lovely time.

Then on Monday we went back in to catch up with both children  - number two had flown up for number one's birthday party on Saturday. We popped in briefly after farewell drinks, before the party had started, there is no overlap in time between old person drinks and young person party ... but went back on Monday to have brunch, a proper chat, and take number two back to the airport. Then we had to do a very large grocery shop which is more than enough effort for one day. But we LOVE our new car. It is so easy to drive.

Norfolk Island

We have just spent another lovely week on Norfolk Island with my husband's parents - which is why I haven't posted for a while - the internet over there is fantastic but I didn't bother bringing my laptop! It would take away from the time sitting, chatting, having a drink, going for a walk and poking about the shops. 

It was a very relaxing and fun week, although the weather wasn't as good as previous years. I took my togs but was not tempted into the water. I also didn't spend as much time sitting on the verandah chatting and painting ... I changed it up for sitting on the sofa chatting and knitting :) 

This year we overlapped with Brad's sister and her husband for a day, which was an excellent catch up. They'd been there for two weeks, which would have put me into an almost fatal level of relaxed I think. We tried to go for walks but wind, rain and laziness kind of put us off...

How pretty is this. What a lovely part of the world. 

Bouncing around

I bounced down to the coast for a couple of days (new car, so much fun, love driving everywhere) and then into Canberra for the day (old car with trailer, got ebike serviced, not much fun driving at all). In Canberra we took number one and girlfriend out for a lovely birthday lunch (Afghani restaurant, absolutely delicious) and I saw the new flat, which is light and lovely and in a super location close to town. So grown up!!!!!

At art class I finished my watercolour of Abbotsford Convent (in Melbourne, where we went in March). It's an awful picture and it kept getting worse the more I did to it. I broke out the pastel pencils as well and I don't think that was a good idea. I wanted to have it a bit wonky and artistic but it ended up in some uncanny valley between correctly proportioned and properly freeform. 

This is the original photo I took.

I finished a quilt finally, which made me feel better, because it's pretty. I pieced this last year some time but just got around to the binding and finishing now. Part of my push to use my solids! Not doing so well, I keep getting distracted.

Bonus bulbs

We got a bit excited with one of the primary school fundraisers and ordered a large number of bulbs that arrived last week. Such a box of fun - carefully picked from the catalogue and chosen for a particular place in the garden.

This post is not about those bulbs, it is about the line of random pots full of grass and weeds that were here when we moved in ... and we don't think the tenants had them so they would have been there for at least three years. I thought they might be salvageable to plant things in so emptied them out - and they were FULL of bulbs. This is about half of them, there were more.

No idea what sort - my husband thinks daffodils but all bulbs look the same to me - so I took the little tub full to plant underneath the pines at the road end of the front lawn, where no grass will grow. I am not terrifically optimistic but daffodils are tough, and these were free.

It turns out my little pot contained 157 bulbs, which took me three hours to plant, and now my legs hurt. But the odds are good for some of them to come up? I will report back in spring.

The cat watched me from the kitchen window. That is my reflection in my awesome orange overalls, which I still love.

In other gardening events, one of my broad beans is up.

I pruned the banksia roses and we took a ute-load of the clippings down to the community garden and added them to the dead hedge. It is quite a cool concept, but a bit untidy for us at the moment, we are not quite as feral in practice as we think we are.

Block printing

On Saturday I did a one-day block printing on fabric workshop at the local arts centre. This is the kind of thing that I thought I would do in retirement, and after a year I've finally done it! Seen something interesting, booked it, did it without worrying that it would be a 'waste' of a weekend day ... and of course I had a lovely time.

In the morning we printed the fabric, and in the afternoon we sewed it into something. They had a heap of fabric there, various sewing patterns, lots of printing blocks or you could carve your own ... the tutor took an action shot of me putting little dots on my pink drill. It's a very forgiving style that looks OK even when your skills aren't up to much, and your ink is a bit uneven, and your spacing is a bit wobbly.

I made a bag and matching hat :) there were all sorts of clothing as options but I didn't think I'd wear any of it, but a bag I can always use. I do fully intend at some point to wander down the main street with my matching bag and hat ... or perhaps to garden club! There's a thought, the ladies at garden club appreciate a good colourful floral. Or floral-adjacent.

I printed a different sort of colour way for a contrast pocket (and alternate panels on my hat) and even block printed the lining. With dots. 

I can see this becoming a very addictive hobby but I can also see me ending up with metres and metres of hand-printed fabric that I have absolutely no use for. 

Last of the dahlias

We have the first frost predicted for next week - no guarantees it will happen but the tomatoes and dahlias are looking nervous. The dahlias in particular are glorious at the moment, but there are many vases in town looking like this as people bring them inside to enjoy them. And the last roses too.

Garden club yesterday was delightful as ever - three gardens in town including the big retirement community just on the outskirts. It is quite nicely set up and we can see the attraction of new build, low maintenance, insulation ... not just yet though.

And there go the maples too. Autumn is definitely here! I went into Canberra on Wednesday to have lunch with friends and do some grocery shopping and it was a perfect, warm, autumn's day. It didn't make me want to move back but Canberra can be lovely sometimes, despite what they say.