Bear, bare, Be with me

Let me take you back to the friday before last.

Always interesting living next to a caravan park.

Total no sequitur.

Here's Steve on the first day of the Art Studio at The Village.

This space will be open 7 days a week over December and January.  Artists and crafters are welcome to display and sell their creations in return for a few hours of minding the store.  It was Steve's idea and has been very well received by local creators.  The Visitor Information Centre is also on board.  A few visitors trickle in.  Come January the Spring Bay Studio will be open so we can actually have an Art Trail.  I went to their Exhibition Opening that evening.  Great fun swanking around with the Triabunna arty crowd.  The next day the Development Application for The Spring Bay Mill was advertised in the paper so we are all a-tremble with anticipation.
Saturday I headed south for another weekend of indulgence with The Green Bean at Abel's Bay.  In the afternoon GB took me to a nursery at Egg and Bacon Bay in search of a Haemanthus coccineu which sadly was not available.  However the nursery lady, Ann, offered to show us her garden.  GB has seen it before but it was new to me.  The tour started from the balcony at the back of the house which overlooks the garden then out to the Huon River with the Hartz Mountains glimmering in the distance.  It had the same effect on me as when I first visited Sandra's Garden Wall Nursery in Yelta where, entering a gate from parched scrub, I was greeted by a formal Italianate garden with a billabong beyond.  Belissimo.  From the balcony we took lawn paths in and around small gardens with artworks and many plants new to me, or in colourways I had never seen before.  Truly inspirational.  I had my camera with me but felt it would be rude to suddenly start snapping away - though with the advent of mobile phones such behaviour may now be considered normal.  And I hope to be invited to visit again.
So with no photos of that garden, I'll show you where GB's garden is up to:

I was particularly smitten with the interplay of reds and am, yet again, rethinking aspects of my garden.

I think I have a self-sown Pride of Madeira in my garden.

hmmm thinking of a bog garden not just for irises such as these but to assist my quest for becoming Primula Queen.

Sunday dawned with a big agenda.  First we visited a potter at Deep Bay for her first viewing since moving from NSW.  Then we went to the Cygnet Market which I have to say puts the Triabunna Market to shame.  We bought Cornish Pasties for lunch and doughnuts with cherries inside.

The elusive Bean at lunch.

to the left

to the right

We drove a little further down the road to visit another pottery, Ian Clare Studio, this one long established.  I was enchanted to discover that Ian was the maker of the flathead and starfish that I used to buy at Salamanca Market as Christmas presents for my Mum and Dad many moons ago.  It is Ian's seconds that feature as artworks in Ann's Egg and Bacon Bay garden.
From there we went to the Marine discovery Centre at Woodbridge, only to discover that it was just closing for the season.

Here we have the ferry from Hobart to Peppermint Bay at Woodbridge.

I believe the new ferry from Triabunna to Maria Island will be opertaed by the same company.

Then we were off home the long way round via a secret beach to find rounded stones, and so to dinner.

I returned chez Tribes on the Monday and the rest of the week followed the usual timetable until Friday night came around again.  This time Steve and I were off to Hobart for the launch of a book by Minh Hien, sister of the Tran boys who have played such a pivotal place in our lives.

A walk through town revealed that the Myer building is now just a facade.  We continued on to Hadley's and had a wonderful reunion with Hien, Tue, Be and Be's wife Thay and daughter Emily.

Last night it was St Mary's church for the annual Traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  I was feeling very Tess of the d'Urbervilles strolling through the village to the church.  I had never been inside the church before.  Sandstone outside, it is very whitewashed and simple inside.  The choir was excellent.   The organist got increasingly gothic as the service went on.  I had finished reading Jamaica Inn the night before so couldn't help but keep an eye on Rev. Trev.
I strolled homeward and seaward in the late evening and was so inspired I cooked up a batch of mince pies.
ps the other 'bare' in the post title comes from a finance article in Saturday's Mercury:  'There's only so much households can bare'.