Winter In The Garden

As I write this the rain is thundering down outside. It has rained relentlessly all day today, and my normal view of the city from my cubicle at work wasn't. (A view, that is.) Were it not for the fact that my office is on the 9th floor there could have been gorillas in that mist for all I could tell.

Apparently we're rounding off the coldest May in 40 years in grand style.

I took these photos of my sprightly new sweet pea shoots yesterday, and I'm hoping they're dealing with the beating they're getting out there. Is this what parenting feels like? The worry? The protectiveness?

Who will think of the children?

I planted up two pots, one has the lovely burgundy red heirloom sweet pea Sweet Velvet and the other has a heavily scented dark crimson through to purple variety called Busbee. Both should grow to around 2m tall, so by the start of Spring I should have two tall towers of blooms.

Weather permitting.

Sweet Chamomile Tea Kind Of Day

Today was one of those days that just sort of slips through your fingers without it feeling like you've done all that much. I had a bit of a big night last night, out drinking with the boys to celebrate the retreat of my chesty cold. So I had a bit of a sleep in (for me) until about eight, and then futzed all morning. Pottered. Noodled.

I did have a To Do list for my day off though, and given that it was bright and sunny I added Laundry (inc. bed linen) to the top of the list. Once that was out on the line, I headed out to the Post Office to pick up a parcel of books from The Book Depository.

Despite the fact that the Post Office only left the parcel pick up notice for me during the week, I arrived at the post office depot (which annoyingly, is about a 20 minute walk further away than my nearest actual post office) only to find out that it ceased trading on Friday. A notice kindly informed me that my parcels could now be collected at another post office, not closer to home but nearly a kilometer further away. No map on how to get there on the door, just the helpful information that it's located 850 meters away.

And the horse you rode in on, Australia Post.

As it turned out it was a nice walk anyway. Today was cool but sunny, and so long I walked in the sun it was quite pleasant. Once I'd collected my books from a tiny little post office in Annandale, with surly staff ("ID! Show me some ID!") and a queue all the way out the door, I quite enjoyed the stroll back.

And that almost covers it. I've futzed some more, gave the super cute vintage 2 tier side table I rescued from the street the other night a good clean (it might end up as a window prop in the new Newtown store some day methinks), web surfed and spent ages re-acquainting myself with Kwannum Chu's gorgeous photographs. I've just made myself a chamomile tea sweetened with honey, and I'm thinking about heating up a small tin of baked beans and making some toast.

One of those sorts of days.

Next Thing You Know It'll Be House Keys In The Refrigerator

And walking the streets with a fried egg on my head, having just eaten my hat.

My entire house smells like burnt coffee, with a hint of rubber. I put the stove top coffee maker on a short while ago, somewhat distractedly, apparently without any actual water in it. I passed it a few times thinking huh, that's taking a while to gurgle.

Well, aside from the melted rubber washer the thing is okay. No house fire. No billowing smoke.

I guess it's time for a walk to the nearest cafe for a coffee. Safer too.

Absenteeism

Before I start this blog post I just have to share this, I'm watching one of the morning music video shows and they are doing 'one hit wonders'. You know what, Vanilla Ice rhymed "lyrical poet" with "and I know it", which is a) kind of ironic in its lack of lyrical poetic-ness and b) awesome!

Anyhoo, hey everybody! Sorry for the unexpected blog hiatus. Rumours of my demise are vastly overexaggerated. In truth I had a phenomenally busy start to the week (month end processing at work), which meant I staggered home brain dead and barely able to string words together on Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday, Thursday and last night I was out until fairly late. A latter half of the week that involved lots of work (still), but balanced with beers, all-male jelly wrestling (hello, awesome), catching up with friends and sushi. Oh, and I scored a big bag of yummy Alpaca yarn last night from my friend Frances who sees an absence of crochet in her future, and is therefore de-stashing!

Video show update, this is playing now:

One hit wonder shows are almost exclusively the domain of the white boy rapper! Oh, and aside from the word "informer" this is thoroughly impenetrable to me. I guess I'll never know if having your "boom-boom down" is a good thing, or not. Factoid: Snow's one and only album was called "12 Inches Of Snow". Ick.

But last night wasn't a late one as I seem to have scored myself a streaming head cold in the process. Ugh. There was a period of about 4 days where the last vestiges of the consumptive hacking was gone, gone!, but now it's a world of Butter Menthols, tissues with aloe vera* and a fresh round of... consumptive hacking. Yay me. Just a cold though, no swine flu, so put away your face masks scaredy cats.



So a quiet weekend is on the cards. I have a dinner invitation tonight (which I might not make at this stage), and I might go to knitting at the pub tomorrow afternoon if this cold is a bit better, but aside from copious amounts of internet porn that's about it. Now be a sweetie and fetch mummy a Butter Menthol, there's a pet.

* At first I had a bit of an Squick Factor about greasy feeling tissues, but the no nose redness results overcame my misgivings. That's a big plus for aloe vera right there.

Weekend Recap!

It used to be part of my Monday ritual to do a weekend recap. When did that fall by the wayside?! I've kept most of my other Monday rituals; hangovers, an industrial strength coffee pick-up, crying bitter tears all the way into the office... So I say, revisit the recap!

What's more relaxing after a frenetic stressfull week at work than a weekend that cracks along at a breakneck pace? When all you can do is hang on and hope for the best. T&H was here all weekend, and we kicked off Saturday morning with breakfast together at my favourite cafe Barmuda. Then God help him T&H got to see the anxiety-fest that is me shopping for a gift at the last minute. Given the time, inspiration and money I love gift buying, but deciding to buy a wedding present on the morning of the wedding is a recipe for exasperated sighs and string lips.

After all the shopping and apologising for being a strung out asshat it was time to get changed for the wedding and sample almost every form of Sydney public transport (ok, 2 trains and a taxi... so we did skip buses and ferries) getting to the venue. And what a lovely venue! Adding to the strung out asshatness of the day were nerves you see, because I was shooting the pics for my friends Shawn & Megz' wedding! So I ran around with the camera all afternoon, whilst socialising, and here's a tiny teasel:


Could they be more adorable? And don't they look fab in their Victorian outfits? (Once they're back from their honeymoon, and with their permission, I'll post some more pics because they looked thoroughly smashing.) Then we retired to the nightclub style cellar of Curzon Hall for the most fun wedding reception I have ever been to! I ate, I drank, I smooched T&H and hung out with my lovely friends. Shawn and Megz, if there are no useful pics from the end of the reception... blame the Champagne not the photographer. (I kid! I'm still working my way through the hundreds of pics I took. Fingers crossed!)

T&H and I stayed back to help tidy up like model citizens, and see if any of the gifts were worth stealing, before realising we had a) left ourselves a bit too late to get numerous forms of public transport home and b) failed to score a space in a car going back to the city. There could have been a more fun way of ending the evening than walking weary and a bit drunk (in the rain) to find a cab, but it was a small price to pay for a wonderful evening. (And hopefully the cost of the cab ride will help the driver put his kids through private school. All of them.)

Sunday! My friend Judy recently upgraded her sofa, and as her second son has just returned to the roost with furniture of his own, kindly donated her still-in-great-condition old sofa. So, long story short. I had some rearranging of the living room to do in order to make space in my tiny house for a second (soon to be only) sofa. Cue opportunity for more anxious asshat behaviour! Sigh. The sofa arrived with two big strong boys in tow (one of whom was startlingly handsome), was quickly and deftly deposited, whilst I parted with a reasonable amount of cold hard cash.

Once that was dealt with, T&H and I headed off to my regular Sunday afternoon knitting at the Courthouse Hotel. We had a lovely afternoon of knitting before heading home to meet up with our friend Christopher who, as soon as we knew Peter would be in Sydney last weekend, we had arranged to go to the leather bar Manacle with. (PS. sorry Speedy, we organised it even before we got your party invite.) One extremely enjoyable evening later... and suddenly I find myself back at a Monday morning hangover.

So now T&H is back home on the other side of the country, I'm sitting here looking at my new(ish) sofa and seriously contemplating an early night. Next weekend I'm thinking... not so many plans.

Chicken Soup For The Soul

On a whim last night I decided to stop by the supermarket after work and [vegetarians look away, look away!] grab the fixings to make chicken soup. From scratch. No bouillon cubes. No packet this, no sachet that. Just an organic free range chicken, water, carrots, onions, celery, a bay leaf (thanks Speedy!) and some peppercorns.

A couple of hours and a house full of nummy aroma later and I had a big pot o' chicken and delicately flavoured stock. Most was placed in a container in the 'fridge to allow the fat to solidify and then be disposed of, and some was placed in a small pan to be simmered with risoni, salt & pepper, some of the veggies from the stock, lashings of shredded chicken and some parsley. A small squeeze of lemon would have been good too, but I forget to get any lemons at the supermarket. When life doesn't give you lemons, make... do without them.

It was rewarding and relaxing. It felt nice to be making something from scratch, and putting aside something for future meals. In this case containers of stock in the freezer for cold winter soup nights, or risotto maybe. Most nights I only have the enthusiasm to spend 10 minutes throwing together some pasta or something easy, but given the lightning strike of time and energy there was real enjoyment in checking the pot, skimming, smelling and waiting.

And then today found me looking up small sized slow cookers online. I mean, a casserole all ready for me when I get home on a winter work night? With portions boxed up in the freezer for later?... Nom nom.

Back From The Bush

The weary traveller returns! I had the best time. I spent some of the time wandering the bush with students and lecturers, learning, observing, listening, photographing, and the rest of the time socialising, having quiet time alone, knitting, napping and just enjoying the surrounds. Tall & Handsome was often off with students, but some of the time I tagged along and the rest of the time we got a rare opportunity to hang out together.

The scribbles on the bark are the tracks of burrowing insects, which burrow around under the bark before it's shed by the tree.


Leaf galls on a eucalypt leaf.

The permanent university field station we were based at had very comfortable accommodation, without being so plush that you felt like you were at a resort rather than a teaching field station. I was initially a little worried about feeling like a tag-along, but all the teaching staff and students made me feel very much a participant rather than an observer. The students were such a lovely bunch of kids, all 30 of them 3rd year university students in their very early 20s. Faith in The Young People Of Today restored!

I shot this leech shortly after it was taken off my leg. On one hand fascinating (those orange markings, the way they fling themselves with uncanny accuracy up your trouser leg), on the other hand... ewww.


The shoreline of Smiths Lake, on the edge of the field station grounds.

I took lots of pics. In such amazing surroundings it was all I could do to put down my camera at times! I've added around 50 of the highlights to Flickr in this set, but I'm still tagging the pics and adding descriptions. It's a long slow progress!

Banksia spinulosa growing in the bush.

There were lots of highlights; watching Tall & Handsome with his students, going for an impromptu late afternoon swim in the sea at Seal Rocks while dark rain clouds rolled in, a (surprisingly) exhilarating late night hunt for frogs in a pitch dark forest in the rain, relaxing with good food and a glass of wine in the company of an interesting and enthusiastic group of people...

Early morning checking of the trap lines. Each night 25 small traps were set along several trap lines, and then in the morning the animals were recorded, weighed, sexed, marked (with a tiny dab of pink nail polish!) and released unharmed. In fact they got a free feed, and a snug predator free night's sleep in the bargain.


An antechinus stuartii, a small roughly mouse sized marsupial and so very, very cute. We caught a lot of these little guys who have a unique life cycle, they mate for extended periods of time (like 13 hours at a stretch!), with various partners, and then sadly the 1 year old males all die from the stress of the process. The females can live a little longer, sometimes for a couple of years, but those are the exception more than the rule.


A litoria revelata (or Whirring Tree Frog), a tiny tree frog with a distinctive whirring sort of call. These guys are teeny tiny, that's a medium sized grass blade he's clinging to. We managed to capture and release three different types of frogs (and one intermediate stage froglet), but the night was alive with the calls of many more.

It's nice to be home (where thankfully one doesn't have to be diligent about ticks and leeches) but I miss waking up to the dawn chorus of bird calls, or the late night chittering of the bats and eccentric frog calls. Tall & Handsome is wrapping up the course tomorrow, while I came home early to go back to work today (blech), and then he's hanging out with me until after next weekend. I only got home late last night, so tonight I've pottered around a bit, done a small load of washing, made some chicken soup, puts some pics up on Flickr... and now it's already past the time I was going to go to bed. Without any bat calls tonight...

Renew | Re-use | Recycle

Repair!

After a really fun session of knitting at the pub yesterday afternoon, and between making a light supper (toast, because a) I had a huge late lunch at the pub and b) couldn't be arsed, frankly) and watching So You Think You Can Dance (Final 6!) last night, I decided to repair a bunch of clothes that have been in need of it for ages. In the word's of Kim from Kath & Kim (the funny Aussie one, not that other one ) I am loving myself sick right now!

I have vanquished. Things have been put right, and order restored. Importantly, no money was spent. We love that! (Unless we're in the mood for Retail Therapy that is, then OMG we can't spend it fast enough.)

Jeans were made hobbit leg length, and hemmed. Buttons were replaced on a couple of shirts. A pocket fixed. Shorts that had lost a waistband button (thread can only take so much strain) and had torn through under the crotch (fabric can only take so much strain, ha!) were repaired.

It feels good to have extended the life of some otherwise perfectly good clothes. Made them useful and wearable again, and in the 'grander' philosophical scheme of things to have done some recycling, reduced my expenditure and use of resources a teensy bit.

Oh, and I learned how to use the free motion darning function on my sewing machine! That's a bonus for sure, I mean, who knows how many fabric strained crotches are in my future?

Nocturnal Emissions

Last night I went to a friend's house for dinner, and after a lovely meal, good conversation, and scoring a heap of fabric from her as she heavily culled her stash, I climbed into bed wearily and already on the verge of sleep. I was just settling in, rolling over to turn out the light, when something caught my eye. Something on the sheet up near my pillow, in the corner of the mattress. A dried pool of blood about the size of my palm.

On my good 'hotel quality' white sheets mind you.

I sat there slack jawed for a number of seconds, heart racing. WTF? Clearly it was my blood, there were no drips from the maw of a horror movie ghoul lying flat against the ceiling, no signs of me having slayed anything in my sleep the night before. At a guess I'd say a nosebleed, but I've never had one in my life. (Oh, except for an unfortunate childhood incident with an exploratory piece of wire, that is.) And I'm far from consumptive (and bohemian) enough to have delicately coughed Mimi-style in my sleep.

Weird. Sometimes my own life is like a foreign country, even to me. I didn't notice anything the previous morning, although having staggered straight from slumber to the shower I probably didn't have an opportunity to spot anything anyway. What am I capable of next? What will I wake up to on the morrow?

Mabon

The Autumn Equinox.

Sigh. Although you wouldn't know it from the hot, humid weather today, Summer has ended. Today is the equinox, the "equal night", where day and night are at equal length, crossing over from the long days and shorter nights or Summer to the longer evenings and shorter days of Winter.

For pagans Mabon is a thanksgiving celebration at the end of the traditional harvest season, a time for meditation, thanksgiving, of finishing old business and enjoying the fruits of your own personal harvest.

Sounds pretty good huh? In truth Sydney doesn't have 4 strong seasons, the pictures above were taken by me years ago in Canberra, which certainly does have them. Winters, and even Autumns, in Canberra can be bitter. But even so, seeing the shorter days advancing makes you think about giving thanks for the joys of Summer. Making the best of the warm days that crop up in amongst the cooler days of a Sydney Autumn. Then about settling in for longer, cooler nights. Planning knitting and craft projects to do rugged up on the couch. Autumn and winter foods; soups, stews, risottos.

I think in my ideal world Autumn and Winter would last about 3 months, combined. Long enough for a taste of it, a bit of contrast, some time to appreciate the crispness, the rugging up and the snuggling in, and yet not so long that the frustrations of cold bathrooms, wet feet and coming home in the dark bring.

When I get to be God Emperor/Benevolent Dictatrix of the Universe I shall make it so, but in the meantime, and in the spirit of Mabon, I shall give thanks for the bounties of Summer. Cheers, Summer!

The Week That Was

Initial thoughts about this week? Hot. Busy. Fun. Sydney has been treated to a blast of heat and high humidity this week, and it's evening and the news just informed me that the humidity is still 69%. Sheen. Of. Sweat. I haz it. All week I've been holed up in our airconditioned offices, not loving stepping outdoors into what is essentially the giant bitumen carpark of my workplace. (I make an exception for the morning coffee van.)

Busy, because as someone who is employed to ensure that people keep paying their bills, in an industry seeing many closures, my employers are justifiably a little... tense. I'm settling into the groove of it all, but getting results and being so closely monitored has had its stressfull moments.

Fun, because I went out twice with my good friend Stephen from Brisbane. Once with a group of his friends who I really enjoy spending time with, and once just the pair of us when he crashed on my sofa bed here one night. Dinner, drinks and a late night trawl through the bookshops of Newtown - just like old times!

So, now it's Friday night. I just put the AC on, and I'm still sweating. I'm having a quiet night in, except the fact that 3 out of 6 free tv channels are showing sport is a downer. Hello internet!

Small Treats

I had a hot, tough, tiring day today. Struggling through a busy month-end with a couple of staff down, and struggling through the heatwave and un-airconditioned buses of a Sydney summer! Yay.

So anyhoo. Once I was home in Newtown with my pay burning a hole in my bank account I felt like, well salving the hurts with a little retail therapy. A little something nice for dinner. Nothing extravagant, just little treats to remind myself I'm worth it after a somewhat craptastic day.

So I bought a couple of magazines, surface and the Christmas Martha. Frankly that sums me up, all hard edged and high shine on the one hand, and a person who thinks about making things from doilies on the other. Then a small dinner bento box of miso, sushi, sashimi and chicken teriyaki for dinner. Followed by a lychee gelato for pudding on the stroll home.

Less than $30 bucks well spent.

Disconnected

Ugh. I found out last night that my phone and internet connection at home are down. I rang my phone service provider and it seems that somehow my phone line has been 'earthed'. In layman's terms, something has reached out and touched my phone line in a close up and personal way. So consequently I'm at the grubby but cheap internet cafe again. Not looking too closely at the keyboard. Ooops I just did. Gross.

The 2 storey house next door to me is currently being renovated and largely rebuilt, and recently the phone company (or whomever) has sheathed the wires in a protective cover as workmen are working very close to the lines. So I suspect that has somehow been the cause, or maybe one of the workmen accidentally touched something against the unprotected bit. Sadly, them next door look nothing like this.

Anyhoo, the upshot is no phone and internet until probably Monday. Grrr. Fortunately I have a very busy and fun weekend ahead, and Tall & Handsome gets here again on Sunday, so I won't be mourning all the good time on the internet I might be missing too badly. I just won't be able to tell you about it. See you Monday (I hope)!

[Updated: I take back the nasty thoughts I had about Telstra, and the workmen next door. (But I don't take back the hot linesman fantasy.) It's Saturday morning and I'm back on the grid! It turns out that the problem was with an underground connection just in front of my house. During the last rainstorm we had water got into the manhole cover thingy, and into a connection that wasn't as watertight as it should have been. George The Technician has just been and greased the join, for good measure. If he was hotter he could have greased my join, but sadly he was employed for his skills, not looks.]

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggedy Jig

Hola chicas. Yowsers, what a day.

I started work at 8.30 this morning and finally stepped away from the spreadsheets and wibbling wobbling mountainous piles of papers at 8pm. Knowing that the last bus home was scheduled for 8.17pm was an added incentive. (Although by 8pm, no incentive really needed to be added.)

Curious fact, for one who has traditionally departed the office promptly at 4.30pm (overtime has until now been verboten), the office is almost as fully occupied after 6pm as before. These people are cray-zay. However, after 6pm you can comfortably phone for Pad Thai to be delivered to your desk. Right to your desk! Even Pad Thai without peanuts, for those of us with allergic dispositions, which amusingly arrives at your desk with a hand written note NO P-NOT written on the container. Awwww, bless.

So I was home by about 9pm, and even grabbed a couple of beers from the local bottle-o (off licence, liquor store) on the way home. A couple of quick little blog posts (see below) and one of the two beers, and already it's about bedtime. The Bo-Bo Express has tooted it's horn. Time to climb the stairs to Bedfordshire (even though I don't have any stairs). Bedfordshire is a state of mind.

So

Pardon us while we pull ourselves together. I had a fab weekend, got farrrr too little sleep and had far too much fun. Tall & Handsome is jetting across the country as we speak, homeward bound. I am feigning interest in work, but feeling a little stretched thin by tiredness... and trying to decide if I have the strength for complex sentence structures.

I have to do overtime at work today and then I have to clean my house in readiness for the flying visit of my friend/landlord tomorrow night. Blech. Maybe I can meet him at the front door with my coat in hand, and bustle him out before he can set one foot in the door? Suspicion making do you think? And more importantly, do we have the energy to care?

Gut Reaction

Well, after briefly mentioning KFC yesterday a certain wise sage said "...KFC? Have some respect for yourself." Yes, ho ho, well. So, with the sheepishness of someone who knows they deserve an I told you so I have to admit, I've been sick ever since. Yup. You don't need the details, but it began with an emergency exit from a mode of public transport and ended with me lying within a short dash of the bathroom for most of today. (With laptop and knitting of course.)

Michael, sweetpea, from this point forward every piece of advice you give I will follow to the letter.

I haven't eaten much all day, but I did just wander around to the local corner shop to buy a loaf of bread. My local deli is run by a young Vietnamese family, who have a couple of kids, and for the first time ever neither of the parents were behind the counter. Instead this gorgeous little face was peering over the counter. Yup their son who must be all of about 7 greeted me and with all the seriousness of a kid being very grown up, scanned my order, repeated back to me what I was buying, told me how much it was and then carefully checked the money I handed over. If I hadn't been plotzing so badly from all the cuteness I would have realised that I probably just got the best customer service I've had in ages.

TGIF

It's a long weekend! I'm not even certain why (something about The Queen I think), but will lack of understanding stop me from feeling a sense of being entitled? No. Were it not for the fact that I'm temping at present and don't get paid for holidays, I think she should give us one every week. We've supported her all these years. If she doesn't want us to go all Republic on her ass she should, I mean there's a vote winner, right?

Today is going to be crazy hot. 35C (95F), in Spring! (Someone get me Al Gore on the line.) I hope it says warm, but maybe not that warm, over this long weekend. I feel like doing a bunch of social things this weekend, but one of the things I'm going to tackle is a bit of spring cleaning. Weeks of internet addiction based inaction mean my home could use a bit of attention. I'm kind of thinking a 'take everything out of the kitchen cupboards, scrub, edit the pantry, scour eveything' sort of major kitchen detox just for starters.

Hopefully next week (finances permitting) I'm starting to buy the paint to repaint my house. Yay. I'm starting with the front bedroom, which I'm going to make into an office/studio. It currently has a sort of yellow cream colour on the walls, and the ornate cornices are picked out in dark colours of brown and blue. Yup, ugly and dated.

I'm going to paint the cornices and ceiling rose white, to match the ceiling, and the walls a very pale green (so pale it almost reads as cream), and the fireplace surround wall a fresh green (sort of like the colour of an unripe pear, but a bit darker). Fresh is what I'm going for. I'd like to paint the skirting boards white too (they're cream at present), but the same colour has been used throughout the whole house for all doors and trims, and I'm not sure I'm up for that much of a challenge, yet. If they look dingy I might do them room by room.

Hey Sydneysiders: applications for volunteer painters are now open!

I might do some work in my garden too. I've been ignoring it while the house next door has been a building site, but since the weather has turned so global-warmingly unseasonably warm, I feel like doing some entertaining out there. Drinky dinks on a warm night.

The other thing I might do on Sunday morning is go to the organic markets again, I haven't been for a while. I'm on a bit of a 'clean food' mission at present, repenting for the bad take-away habits of the winter passed, and a trip to the markets sounds ideal. Then Sunday afternoon will be knitting at the pub. Nice.

Those are my vague plans. What are yours?

An Enduring Love Affair

I have a long and enduring love affair with my neighbourhood of Newtown. I appreciate it in Autumn, and I mostly have a fondness for it in Winter, but when Spring and Summer roll around I think I fall in love with it a little bit more every year. Once the days get longer, the parks full of people later into the early evening, and the percentage of beautiful cloudless days increases, I just enjoying being in my neighbourhood. I hope I capture a little bit of how I feel about where I live when I post pictures here.

I spotted these gold pumps mounted high up on the side wall of a house on the way home this afternoon. Tucked away in a little side street, they're a bit of silliness and surprise that made me laugh out loud.

Most of my neighbourhood is quite high density living, full of old workers' cottages and narrow terrace houses, and while we could probably be a little bit more actively friendly with each other, everyone in my end of my long narrow street gets along and generally leaves each other alone. (Bin thief or two excepted.) Some of my favourite residents are the street full of friendly pusses. It can take me double the time to walk up my street if they are all out and ready to be paid their due. From the demanding ginger tom that starts yelling for a pat when I'm still two houses away, to the inscrutable Burmese that accepts but never seeks scritches.

Beautiful morning light and a luminous bloom growing through a fence near my house.

It's not all about the felines. A few blocks from home there is a big park where dogs are allowed to romp off the lead. In the morning and in the dusk of late afternoon you'll find groups of people from old Greek grans, to inner-urban Goths and hipsters, and of course lots of The Gays, standing around chatting while a large well natured pack of pups of all shapes and sizes chase each other and any ball that's being thrown.

A fantastic vintage Dodge truck I passed in the street last weekend. I didn't spot the driver, but I'm picturing a white tee with some Malboros tucked in the arm. Wishful thinking maybe

I've talked about the diversity of my neighbourhood before, but I think that's one of the strengths. The uni students, old residents that have lived here forever, and the vegan right-on sisterhood (and brotherhood) stop it from getting too precious, while The Gays (of which we are many) and the young families bring special flavours and colours of our own. The cafes are good, the shopping likewise, there are chi chi and grungy pubs... in a word, variety.

Some rear laneway street art I chanced upon last weekend.

It's a good fit for me. I like the peaceful part of the street I live in, while less than 10 minutes away there are cafes, restaurants, funky shops and bookstores open late into the night. Pretty much what I had hoped for when I moved from sleepy old Adelaide all those years ago. It just took me a while to find but, but now I'm here I'm in no rush to ever move... ever!

A Winter's Night

After crowing about Spring's arrival earlier in the week, Winter has come back and slapped me on the legs with a wet umbrella. Today was cold and wet. Really wet. What my aunt/stepmum (long story) would jovially describe as persisting down.

A cold and wet Friday night after a busy, busy day at work = slug out time. So I've settled in for the night. The heater is on. Ancient but comfy sweater - check. Track pants - check. Slippers - check. Handknit socks - check!

I've just had a lovely long phone chat with my sister who lives interstate (big news is she's finished writing her book - a travel guide for people with disabilities, and she's added a couple of generations more to our family history) and a very lovely chat with Mr Tall & Handsome who visited for a sleepover a few weeks back. Pizza has been delivered and devoured. And now I'm tucking into a mug of nom nom-worthy homemade hot chocolate.

Hot Chocklit - The TOA Way

• 1 mug's worth of good quality soy milk*
  
• 1/2 a 35g bar of Lindt 70% dark chocolate
  
• 1 tsp sugar

Break up half the chocolate bar into small pieces and place in mug. Add teaspoon of sugar. Heat the soy milk until almost boiling. Consider eating the other half a bar while soy milk warms. Pour warm soy milk into mug, stir, lose internal battle re: remainder of chocolate bar.

(*or regular milk if you aren't lactose intolerant, lucky bitch)

One Perfect Lily

When I went outside into my courtyard yesterday I noticed that the first lily of the season had opened its little face to the sun. Hey there happy face! Some people think these lilies are a bit, I don't know, funereal? Maybe? I don't think so though, I think they are happy flowers and I love their sculptural form.

Just to show that Winter hasn't entirely quit the scene yet, today was rainy and a bit stormy so this lily is not showing quite the sunny disposition that it was yesterday. I love the way water beads on the big waxy petals though, so it was nice to shoot these slightly more dramatic shots this afternoon.

I guess every happy face has a tear now and then!