about time

Here we go.  Going sort of chronological.

Maria disappeared for some time after the referendum result

As I was walking home one day, it occurred to me that I hadn't shown you this part of the garden.

It is the largest bit of garden that passersby see

but the part I find least attractive to work on.  South facing, it spends the day mostly in shade.

Currently the oven at The Village is out of commission, so Malcolm comes around on Tuesday mornings to bake the bread for the lunch.  After a period of sourdough, he's now experimenting with baguettes.  DELICIOUS.

Here's Kate, our resident poet, delivering her Remembrance Day poem.  She is a gentle and conniving wordsmith.

And to prove that age does weary us, note the difference in the stance of these chaps as they lay their wreath at the cenotaph.  The surrounding iceberg roses have been interplanted with rosemary this year.  Kate, before delivering her poem, suggested that perhaps next year there could be red poppies too.

Saturday just gone delivered a Thai cooking class at The Village.  I went along to learn how to make a good fish curry, and I think I have the basics now.  Apparently you can make the green curry paste and freeze it in small portions.  One day I'll get around to it.

We also made Crystal Rolls, which I have made before.  I can easily gather the ingredients, but then I have to make the dipping sauces too...

As you can see, it was a convivial event.

Sunday was the Village Market, then off to St David's Cathedral in Hobart to listen to His and Her Majesty singing Joseph Haydn's Seven Last Words.  Beautiful singing, though the topic was rather off season.

Back to the garden:

the view from my bed on a lazy Thursday morning

will there be enough to make a gooseberry pie?

a poppy finally blooms in the studio garden

And, of course, books.

This is a unique book in my experience, tackling breast cancer, tattooing and environmental issues in one read.  And set on the Tasman Peninsula.  How do these writers get to be so clever?

This one strikes home for me too - Griffith / Murrumbidgee home in this instance.  When we left Tasmania to live in Griffith, I was excited at the prospect of learning a Waradjuri language.  This was in 1997 and no such opportunity was available.  This book melds historical and current issues for Aboriginal people with the production of a Waradjuri dictionary.  I think the story is a bit uneven but it enabled me to relive some of our Riverina experience, and its wonderful to know that the language is being regained.

This is a local one.  Maggie Mackellar lives on a farm up the road and, until recently, wrote for Country Style magazine.  I have never met her.  Her book is beautifully presented.  Her writing is simultaneously blunt and liquid.  Like The Octopus and I, the book presents a wildlife / environmental picture, but it is also a manual on sheep farming and its perils.  The title Graft is cleverer than it first appears.

Finally, a page from my school French text, kindly sent to me by my niece.  Tamasin chided me for my irreverence (look carefully) but I detect the hand of that great Francophile classmate, C.K. Butler.