August

My winter hibernation is at an end.  My garden is the scene of total neglect with weeds and things that desperately need pruning and yet all the things I love about it soldier on to reward me, even if I deserve much less.

Actually I should rename the blog Kurrajong Sewing Room because that's what's been happening these last few months.  My sister and I have been working on a quilt for our older sister's 60th birthday, which was yesterday.

As well as that, I have had a cupboard clean-out which resulted in my making 35 pincushions from charm squares of fabric which were anything but charming - I haven't got a photo of them all, will post one soon.

 I finished piecing a quilt top made entirely of 2 inch half square triangles done with jelly rolls and Thangles - once begun, it quickly became known as the 'Thangle your way out of this, woman' quilt -

 I have had a super weekend away on our annual Stitch n Bitch with my sister, my daughter-in-law-to-be and a bunch of super ladies who have become dear quilting friends -

I came back from that weekend all inspired to sewing the sort of interesting things that these girls make, and from the jelly roll scraps left over from the Thangle quilt and some handles bought years ago at the Craft Fair, I created myself a bag -

And I'm about to start a new quilt in conjunction with my sister-in-law to celebrate the wedding of her son, my nephew, who is getting married in Tasmania in November.  It will be very similar to the birthday quilt above, but in completely different colours.

In the meantime, August is upon us and with it comes the winds - I'm sure it is nature's way of blowing winter away.  Trouble is it's blowing everything else away as well - I'm constantly recovering the dogs' bed from anywhere in the back yard and returning it to the verandah.  Today I will give my sore stitching fingers a rest and go pull out some weeds and prune some roses.  The new leaves are coming out quickly, even early blooms are appearing - here's DA Graham Thomas and its clear yellow flowers - can you spot the stick insect?

 So off out into the wind I go, hmm, wait, maybe a cup of coffee would be good first . . . .

Neglect . . .

is a very bad thing.

There's scarcely anything in my life that I haven't neglected badly in the last month or so.  I have neglected the housework, the vacuuming hasn't been done, dust lies thick on every surface, the ironing basket is as high as it can be without toppling over onto the floor, the laundry baskets are overflowing, the kitchen floor desperately needs sweeping.

I have neglected the garden, weeds haven't been pulled out, nothing has been watered, the roses haven't been pruned.  The fishpond has been neglected, and the fish are swimming around in pea soup.  The dogs have been neglected, even though they all went to the vets last weekend for their annual shots, their winter coats are knotty and matted and need a good brush.

One place I have been busy is in the sewing room.  A quilt has been loaded onto the quilting frame, a process which takes some time and causes a lot of aching back muscles, and an attempt has been made to creatively quilt.  To a point where I had achieved 20 'elements' strategically  placed on the quilt top.  That took a frustrated day and a half to do.  It's now taken me three days to 'unsew' it all, stitch by stitch. How completely unsatisfying.

I neglected to pick the mandarins from the tree.  Our neighbour swears you have to leave them there until we have had a frost, which somehow sweetens them.  I looked at them a fortnight ago, loaded onto the little tree.  I looked again a week and a half ago - about 99% of them were on the ground with a little bit chewed out of each one.  The white cockatoos had been busy!  This is what I ended up with -

and a whole bucket of chewed ones went in the bin!  Bad, bad birds!

And of course, straight after that, we got the frost we'd been waiting for.  Not one but three on consecutive mornings.  Here is the heliotrope in the driveway bed.

I had admired it's vanilla-secented flowers only the day before it looked like this.

Here are the hanging pots of 'Nodding Violet' on the front verandah -

There are some cheerier things to be seen in the garden.  The new Snowdrops, 'Galanthus elwesii', have come up in the bed near the front steps.

Funny how they almost come through the surface with a flower already there.

The mulberry tree is already getting new leaves.

That's a fuzzy looking Merlin in the background.  I hope we don't get any more frosts now that the leaves are coming.

And to add to all this doom and gloom, tomorrow is my birthday and I will be a whole year older than I am today.  Woe is me!

It's Winter Solstice!

Which is a funny old-fashioned way of saying yay! today is the shortest day of the year.

Here's how to know it's winter at Kurrajong -

There's smoke coming out of the chimney above the lounge room fire.  In fact, there's smoke coming out of everyone's chimney above the lounge room fire.  There's so much smoke in the air that if it was summer and this smoky, we'd all be cursing the bushfires or the pyromaniac neighbours for destroying our air quality.  But somehow, because we are making the smoke and are inside warming our toes in front of said fire, we don't seem to worry.  Note the wire netting to keep the mynahs from falling down the chimney.  Which they have done.

Meanwhile, inside, we're actually lucky if we can get close enough to the fire to warm our toes.  You have to be quick to get a spot.  Here's Merlin, our new rescue dog, who seems to have worked it all out.

Outside, the wattle is flowering,

and the leaves on the Japanese Maple are beautifully red.

After all the rain last month, the roses came down with a universal dose of black spot and they are all, without exception, basically nude of leaves!  Here's Brother Cadfael, with no leaves but one sweet, enormous bloom.

These are some of the violets that arrived here around the roots of the irises I brought from the previous garden.  Such pretty flowers but so invasive.  Behind this clump is a little rabbit dig which appeared a few nights ago.  This probably explains how Ewan McGregor can be sound asleep on the end of the bed one moment and, a fraction of a millisecond later, is wake, has leapt off the bed, torn up the hallway, shot out through the doggie door, down the back stairs and is barking madly at the side fence.  How does he do that?

The jonquils are the first of the bulbs to flower.

Meanwhile, inside, other signs of winter are very evident -

One day soon, I hope to stop coughing my lungs out and blowing my nose.

More rain!

This weather is starting to make me laugh.  I read on the SMH website this morning "City has it's wettest May in seven years, with more to come".  I wish that meant more May to come - this is the last day of the month and next month, i.e. tomorrow, means that the year is as good as half gone.  :o< (that's meant to look like the face of someone who's just heard some news they found quite appalling!)

This is what happens at our house when the nasty weather rolls in from the south.  And has it ever been rolling in - I wake up in the morning to the sound of rain on the roof, okay, no walking this morning; by the time my cereal is in the bowl, it's sunny; finish my breakfast and open the door, it's raining - I can watch the next shower of rain sweeping in from the south over the village, along past the Heights, disappearing to the north over Wollemi National Park and turn around again to see the next shower sweeping in from the south.

The bulbs are all coming up!

The jonquils in the front garden even have a bud.

I'm sure these are snowdrops, but they must be multiplying because I sure didn't plant nearly as many as this!

The persimmon tree is starting to lose it's leaves.

And because it is raining, that means I am washing.  Who else in the wide world washes their clothes when it's raining?  My craziness comes from only having tank water.  When it's raining and water is going into the tank, then I can happily be taking water out again.  And to add to the completeness of my lunacy, when I am washing, I am also watering the garden!  Do you get this picture?  It starts to rain, so I start to wash, I collect my washing water and I water the garden.  But it's already raining on the garden.  The neighbours shake their heads.

Have I ever explained that my garden is only watered with rainwater and greywater?  I have never had the luxury of hoses and sprinklers in this garden.  My wash water is bucketed onto my plants, suds and all.  Consequently some plants in my garden are never watered.  My only exception is my herb garden and my bay tree in a pot.  They don't get watered with greywater for fairly obvious reasons.

The next shower of rain has just rolled through, pitter-pattering onto the glass of the back door.  There's not much else to do but sit by the fire and knit, or maybe google some waterproof blinds to hang outside the back door to keep the rain off.  That is, until the next load of washing is finished and it's time to water the garden again!

And now the HAPPY news . . .

I was curled up on the lounge in front of the TV late-ish on Tuesday night when the phone rang.  And it gave me one of those phone-ring starts, you know the sort you get when the phone rings late at night or really early in the morning.  When you can only imagine that it's going to be some sort of bad news.

Mike answered and gave the phone to me and it was my son.  He and his girlfriend had gone up to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains for a few days, staying at the gorgeous Lilianfels.  Such a lovely, romantic place to stay - and it had obviously worked it's magic, because he was ringing to tell me that he had asked her to marry him and that she had said 'YES'!!  He didn't know whether to laugh or cry!  And I wasn't much better - I'm so very happy for them.  They called here yesterday morning on their way back home for a big family hug and to show me the delicious diamond on the finger -

and to invite us to dinner at her parent's house last night for a celebration.  Mike didn't make it, he was home and working away on the laptop when I got home at around 10.30 pm, but I braved driving through some of the heaviest rain we have had for ages and had a lovely time.

Congratulations kids - promise us that you will be good to each other for the rest of your lives.  We love you both!

Sad news and BAD news

No, I haven't left the country for a long holiday or been admitted to hospital with all my typing fingers completely broken or even had a computer crash.  I've just been really, really slack!

We'll start with the sad news.  Sad to me anyway.  Our dear sweet Merlin, who recently joined our household and has become such a joy in our lives and especially in the life of our Ewan McGregor, has nearly broken my heart.  Yesterday morning, the two boys came running inside in their usual chasing, tumbling fashion and thundered past me up the hallway towards the bedroom.  Our dear old Daisy, very deaf and going blind at an alarming rate, was standing beside me in the laundry and for once saw the boys go chasing by.  In a return to her past behaviour, she took off after them, barking.  The barking very quickly changed and I raced up to the bedroom to find Merlin attacking my poor old darling.  My yelling at him had no effect at all.  I was able to grab his collar and it took all my strength to lift him off her.  As soon as he released her from his jaws, she scurried off and hid and he was unceremoniously carted outside where he stayed for a good part of the day.  I was so shocked, it was the most awful thing to witness.  I truly believe that he has decided that 'top dog' is now his job and he is letting Daisy know in no uncertain terms.  And it makes sense - how long would the pack survive if the top dog was deaf and blind?  My immediate problem, of course, is that I have lost my trust in Merlin not to hurt her while I'm not around.  She doesn't seem to be scared of him today, but she is certainly not getting in his way.  I am at a loss to know how I am going to cope with this sad issue.

And now the BAD news!

I have committed a great gardening sin and I know that I am going to pay and pay and pay for it.  Today, I decided that I would remove the old woody rosemary outside the kitchen door.  I am sure I have previously stated my intentions in this regard and also alluded to the fact that the surrounding soil contains that horror of all horrors - oxalis!!

Indeed, a veritable sea of oxalis!  Some months ago, I spread a large piece of black plastic over a lot of it and weighted it down with bricks in the hope that the oxalis would miraculously die in the darkness.  Have you heard the story in recent years of the building in London, constructed after the Great Fire, that was demolished and the soil underneath saw sunlight for the first time in nearly 400 years and an immediate crop of oxalis sprouted?  And I thought I could kill it under a sheet of black plastic!!  You are allowed to laugh now!

When I lifted up the plastic today, what I saw were long shoots of albino oxalis.  And the only thing I should have done was get the toxic spray and sprayed it all!  And waited for it to die.  But I was impatient and I was stupid.  And even as I dug it out (ha ha ha!) (are you laughing?), I knew it was the wrong thing to be doing.

I have ended up with a huge bucket of chunks of soil in which lurk the dreaded bulbs.  But as we all know, the bucket would contain only a percentage of the total bulbs, the rest of which are now widely distributed through the remaining soil and every one, every single one will grow into a lush new oxalis plant.

Sometimes, I'm amazed at myself.

Anyway, the trunk of the old rosemary was sawn through and removed and smaller rosemarys planted to hopefully form a little hedge along the side of the verandah.  There will be a hedge of rosemary and an even bigger sea of oxalis!

Let's not get any older!

It's 11 May and that means Happy Birthday to my dear son!

And how old are you today?  22!  21!  Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart - happy 29th birthday!!  We love you!

I went to visit my dear old mum at the nursing home this morning - they put on a morning tea and a concert for Mothers' Day.  She is looking frail and is so confused.  I stroked her hair and gave her a quick manicure and went away thinking 'where's my mum gone?'

How come we're all getting so much older so fast?