Short report

There's been a TSO Winds Concert at The Mill.

It has been rumoured that's the Triabunna Symphony Orchestra...

It's lovely to be upclose and personal to the musicians.

 I've made 70 bandanas, so far, for the Dogs Breakfast next month's Mental Health Week.

Rosa's Luca looking suave

sort of self-sown tulips in the garden

native Golden Moth Orchids growing on Melbourne Street!

the road to Buckland yesterday

Zumba, tai chi, yoga, Tuesday Lunch all continue, but that's the news for now.

Happy Birthday Hildy May!

Mum and I both have a penchant for Cointreau

so what must a good daughter do on her Mum's birthday?

Mum liked to drink hers as an after dinner liqueur - neat in a small glass.  I like Cointreau and lemon with ice, cocktail style.  And that's what I've just had.

You may recall that last year Helly, Tamasin, Willowa and I went to the Magnolia Gully at Mt Lofty Botanical Gardens to celebrate Mum's birthday and her life.

Back home, I set about buying 2 magnolia plants,

one deciduous (Waterlily Magnolia)

one evergreen (White Pearl).

I am pleased to say that they have both survived and blossomed right on time for her birthday.  This spot seems to perfectly meet their needs but I'm still waiting on the inspiration to pretty it up a bit.  It will come.

Owed to Mum

This is the weekend between the first anniversary of Mum's death on 30th August and her birthday on 2nd September.

I have a friend who believes that I am still grieving.  I don't think that is so.  I have grieved that Mum did not use her full potential, content to be a wife and mother, and I am sad that she did not make better use of her time in the nursing home.  These were her choices and I respect them.

Mum was a very good wife and mother.  I left home at about 18 to live in a uni college and then left in 1974 to live in Tasmania.  I spent little time with her from then on.  This is demonstrated by the few photos that I have of her.  I have never missed my Mum. It is as if she is always with me - especially when I look in the mirror...  She and Dad did a good  job and raised me to be capable and independent.  I love her, and am very grateful.

Favourite photos:

Mum with her Mum and Dad, Weymouth, around 1930

Mum, Helen and I circa 1957

Mum, Helen and I on the verandah of the nursing home during covid

Last weekend a couple with a young daughter camped next door at the caravan park.  It mostly rained and I watched them struggle to put up their tent and, a couple of days later, pack it all away.  It occurred to me that Mum and Dad had done this many times and, as a child, I had taken it for granted.

They had their naughty eagle boy with them.  Another reminder.

Horsham, on the way to Tasmanian holiday 1970

Mum was no shirker:

concreting the driveway at 16 Ramsey

(photo courtesy of Helly)

slaving away at my place 1981

nearing the end of a big day of trains and walks in Barcelona 2014

and a big day walking the clifftops from Pwyllgwaelod to Cym yr Eglys 2014

We shared a passion for eating:

we love a good picnic, River Derwent around 1981

Mum's first paella 2014

and we both so love seafood

that Mum gave me money for The Easterers to have a fish frenzy on the Eyre Peninsula in 2013, wishing she could be there.  She loved us all.

 

I love blackbirds and consider them to be a sign of home.  We have always had them in our garden but this week they have taken to hanging around the house.  It feels like a blessing.

Take 2

 I  know the common wisdom is to never go back, but I was born on the Day of Return and that's what I do.  So, having a small errand to run, I decided to also return to Orford beach today.

better weather but not so beautiful

wattles less stunning than when against a platinum sheet

the water still clear but not glass-like

5 little black cormorants, 3 currently under water

A  house that looked like a fairytale cottage in the woods with  smoke rising vertically from the chimney yesterday, looked ordinary today.

But there was still magic to be found.

tiny fairy homes on the way back to the car

Look twice!!

Nothing to do with Orford or even Australia.  Rosa Norte's holiday photos from Alaska!!

Saturday summation

This morning Jill PD and I went for a lovely walk.  That wasn't the plan.  We did the short drive to Orford to checkout the Park Run starting at 9am.  It was all part of a mission to plan the Dogs Breakfast event for Mental Health Week in October.  But no-one turned up, apparently the Park Run had been cancelled for today.  The weather was beautiful misty rain, so Jilly and I took a stroll along the beach.  The sea was  mirror-like and lapped at the shore.  Sea birds bobbed on the water and regarded us calmly.  Landwards was a blaze of yellow, a solid wall of wattles against a pewter sky.  It was magical and, of course, I didn't have my phone / camera with me.

So, in other news, life has been pretty much pleasantly same old.  The FoTR gang and I have pulled up mountains of Spanish Heath from a local reserve;  Malcolm continues to provide spectacular lunch every Tuesday at The Village;  the Weily Fox and I plan to restore full mental health to Triabunna before Mental Health Week;  Sarah visited last weekend.  I have no photos of any of this, although

I did take a photo overlooking Devils Corner on the way back from Bicheno last Sunday while Jill PD took a restroom break.

Steve sent me this mystical photo of Maria Island a cuppla weeks ago.

(It was invisible today)

signs of Spring

the japonica

more of a host

the hardenbergia

I've just remembered that I went to see the https://www.hadleyshotel.com.au/hadleys-art-prize in Hobart.

I wasn't game to take photos in the galleries but took this one just to show the Hadley Orient Hotel magnificence.

Sort of at the other end of the spectrum, a new venture in Triabunna:

I am not involved in this at all and hopefully will never need it, but it's a great community initiative by person / persons unknown - possibly the Christmas Crew people.

There has been reading:

I took this book to Wales with me, expecting to leave it there but had to finish it back here.  This is a slow and gentle read about the perils and joys of learning to play harp in 16th Century Ireland.

I am always intrigued by this series which reminds me of Alan Bennet's The Uncommon Reader.  I don't think the authors are related.

I took up with this one because I have read both The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding.  I enjoyed both books but didn't relate to them as many readers have.  I was interested to see how Holly Ringland approaches her writing.  And somehow that led me to this:

I read Eat, Pray, Love when I was deeply depressed in Wentworth many years ago.  Sandrine loaned it to me and it was just what I needed to see beyond the black hole I was in.  I read / lived it twice.  I have also read Gilbert's The Signature of All Things.  The two books are so different that I had give Big Magic a go.  If you've read Eat, Pray, Love you'll know that Gilbert fell on her feet and met a wealthy man and can now afford to live creatively.  She admits this, but the message of the book is not how to make a living from your creativity but the necessity of making time for it regardless of your situation or the views of other people.  She has an interesting theory about ideas and also suggests that we return to saying a person has a genius rather than is a genius, ie the 14th Century notion that a person has an attendant spirit like the Ancient Greek daemon / guiding spirit.  It's an interesting book but it is also beautifully easy to read.

This is also a beautiful and perfectly sized book by my friend Nicky.  We used to work together in the heady days when I was The Gatehouse Officer.

Now I'm going to sit back with a Sidecar and wait for Van Der Valk on ABC tonight.  A new series starts next week.  I've been whiling away time with the Marvelous Mrs Maisel (fabulous clothes) and The Red King (whacky Welsh people AND Marc Warren!).  Thank goodness for On Demand.

a day of rainbows

Last Sunday was one of those lovely days when it rains gently most of the time and all you can do is curl up and read.  This suits me fine and I've been doing quite a bit of it lately.
 

I wickedly ordered The Chocolate Factory from the library, feeling very disloyal.  The Floosie wrote MacRobertson: The Chocolate King many years ago.  There is, of course, no comparison.  The Chocolate King is thoroughly researched and engagingly written Australian history.  The Chocolate Factory is a mystery story seemingly authentically set on the Tasmanian Cadbury Estate as it develops in the 1920s.  And I'm biased.

This book fell into my hands and I thought it only fair to give boy books another go.  I realised as I was reading it that I'd read an earlier book in the same series.  There were some interesting thoughts, feelings and realisations in the main character (who after all is a psychologist) but I'm constantly amazed at how our hero gets assaulted, kicked, beaten up and carries on effortlessly with everyday life.

This is a monumental book covering three generations of one family.  It reminded me of life in Sri Lanka, which is not surprising given much of the story is set in Kerala in southern India.  This is particularly poignant given the terrible flooding there at the moment.  Leprosy is also a central topic, and I learned a lot.

I finally got around to ordering this one from the library.  I first read it as a child in England and I loved it so much I resolved to call my sons Marcus and Esca...  I learned a lot about myself on the re-reading.  My memory of the gist of the story was true but what a difference experience and adulthood brings to understanding.

I had to return this to the library before completing it.  Each chapter is a season so I started in August which happens to be the last chapter because Simon Grove thinks the Tasmanian year starts in Spring.  I was making my way through September when I had to return it, ie not very far into the book at all.  It is both autobiographical and biological and I found the detail hard going, although there are certainly snippets of fascinating places and wildlife totally new to me.

This is a children's book featured on Gardening Australia when Hannah was investigating the forty spotted pardalote and birdboxes on Bruny Island.  It's a charming little book which takes about 3 minutes to read.

I read about bird boxes for a reason.  You may recall that Georgia and I had a bird box painting stall at The Village market some months ago.  These are the leftovers stored in her garage.  Malcolm, the maker, and I had a stall at the last market to sell them and promote an awareness of the need for them.

Here's Malcolm striding through bushland on his property followed by a pack of wolves.

Miya and Winter on the trail

We had a Dog Romp on Malcolm's property as a trial run for the Dogs Breakfast I have been charged with organising for Mental Health Week in October.

Jill and Miya enjoying a Friday night at our place.

glimpse of daffodils from the kitchen window

daffodil alley

It's been a lazy week - no gym or yoga.   Bit of tai chi, gardening and some slaughtering of Spanish Heath in one of the Triabunna Reserves.  Jilly got cabin fever so I took her to get a breath of fresh air.

Breathe.