Five

Happy anniversary PJ and Z!

Here's to many more years of making silliness together.

38 18 7 33 37 20 40

These were the winning numbers for the lotto ticket I bought. Of the seven numbers, I had four, which entitled me to the princely sum of $20.80, which I spent on groceries for tonight's dinner.

PJ went out, so it was just Z and I sitting out on the deck eating the winnings, talking about all the wonderful comments people left to say why they are happy to be alive.

"Today I am happy to be alive because I saw a tree reflected in a heart-shaped puddle," I announced.

"I'll be the tree and you can be the puddle that holds it," Z said.

And so I was.

Salad Days

Red Pesto

After getting up early, PJ and I decided to go for a walk in the autumn morning.

We walked through the forest,

around the lake,

and up to the farmer's market where we bought, among other things, a bunch of Red Rubin Basil.

This is Ian, the farmer who grew it.
When we got home I ground up the basil and added toasted pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan and river salt.

We ate it on rye bread for lunch with some other garden goodies.

Then I stuck the basil stems in water because, gosh, they're just so pretty.

Boing Boing

Oh delicious tomatoes! For breakfast and lunch today I ate them thinly sliced on rye bread. We still have some ripening on our vines but because of the early autumn frosts, these are amongst the last of the season.

Oh dastardly frosts! I'm sure there is a good reason you exist, I just don't know what it is. Rain on the other hand, rain I understand completely.

It has been raining here these last few days, which, although signalling the beginning of the colder weather, also declares the end of the bushfire months. The rain has put a spring in my step so bouncy, I can hardly stand still without boinging up and down with rejoicing.

The Get Go

Two of my nieces stayed over last night and are again tonight too. Just before bed this evening, Indigo asked me what my favourite part of the day was.

My answer felt like such a grown-up's answer. I didn't say the bushwalk or the two hours on a neighbour's trampoline, or the colourful drawings we delivered to all the mail boxes in a nearby street. I didn't say picking wild apples and grapes or watching Mary Poppins or going on the flying fox, or meeting some friends up at the skate park. I didn't say playing mums and dads (why do I always have to be the naughty cousin?), or eating corn and cucumber fresh from the garden, but I did say the quiet breath I inhaled before any of this.

When I got up this morning, it was to the two girls and Z sitting quietly in the living room. They were writing all the activities they wanted to do on little pieces of paper, which they then picked out of a hat and completed one by one throughout the day.

My answer felt so goddam diplomatic. And although it was true, it was also because I just couldn't decide.

Floating

We spent the afternoon down at the lake again today; swimming, reading, listening to the Hottest 100 playing on a nearby stereo.

Doesn't this look like heaven? I love that this is practically our backyard.

These three girls floated by on their cloud and I had to snap a photo.

Good Morning!

Chook Book

Because I'm an enthusiastic reader, I'm always eager to see what books strangers are engrossed in when I see people reading on public transport.

On the way down to Melbourne today I read this book on the train and then on all the trams I took. I held it out in front of me like a proud shield.

Keeping chooks is one of the greatest joys in my life and I want people to know that I am not some random redhead on public transport, but that I have chooks!

I learnt a lot whilst reading the Chook Book. Of course you can never read too much about something you love, but I have learnt more than a book can ever teach just from hanging out in our yard and quietly watching our birds in all their feathered glory.

So many people have commented to me how dumb chooks are – what pea brains. And maybe they are compared to dogs or cats, but what nobler job is there than sitting on eggs of new life. I was in awe of Cuba when she was broody and I am in awe of those little pea brains who can create something as complete and contained as an egg. 

After all these millions of years of evolution and with all my years of education, if only I could create something so wonderful each day.

I Thee Red

This is the table we sat around last night to help our friends J and L celebrate their commitment to each other. They were married several months ago in New York and last night we hosted a party for some of their Australian friends and family.

Dinner for 10 then others joined us for cake and hours of dancing. A fabulous night! - If this hangover is anything to go by.

Private Domestications

PJ serves breakfast on the deck.

A chicken at the door.

Toenails too long.

Droplets like stars on a clear night.

H-a-p-p-i-n-e-s-s

That's me on the left when I had short hair. I'm holding a dish of cookies, as drawn by Loobylu.

Today on her blog she has a competition for her readers. She is asking for people's favourite Internet recipes. Hers, she says, is for Princess Meg’s Birthday Celebration Cookies, which she blogged about just after she and I worked together.

My entry: 

Oh how things change in seven and a half years!

I used to love anything with dried apricots in them, but now I love anything with ginger.

This is currently my favourite recipe:

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/13627/gingerbread+love+hearts

My stepson is 6 and is learning to read. We like to make this recipe together and use our alphabet cookie cutters to spell out our happiness we then eat.

Bring the Cow Out

When I first moved out of home I rented a room upstairs in a big house that had an adjoining room I used as an office. I bought a black and white cowhide to sit on the office floor in front of the fire place.

I got it cheap from a tannery because it hadn't been tanned properly. I couldn't see the problem, though when the afternoon sun came through my windows, boy oh boy could I smell it.

This is before 1998, so there was no Google to help me find out ways to get rid of the stench. So I researched it the old fashioned way – I asked my mum. Every morning before work I would take the cow over to my folks' place where Mum would embrace it, like a grandchild. And every afternoon, I would swing by to collect it. 

She tried powders and salts and fragrances and scrubs, but what she found was most effective was leaving it out in the sun. 

The cow became part of our family and the phrase, bring the cow in, bring the cow out, became part of our lexicon; to refer to the mundanity or repetitive nature of tasks.

Today the cow is still part of our family and lines the floor of our living room, when it isn't going camping or picnicking with us, or lunching with us out on the deck.

Bee-youtiful

We spent the morning at Z's school with all the other parents for a working bee. The kids were excited it was the last day of term and that their parents were in their grounds.

We worked that ground. We dug, we found rocks at one end and lined them up in a row at the other. We mulched and composted and planted and swept and raked and pruned. Then we sat around with the kids and had a BBQ lunch. It was a day of considerate reclamation.

And so too in Melbourne, as in many other other cities around the globe that celebrated International Park(ing) Day, where people took to the streets to reclaim public space as public space.

Springing

I had planned to blog about our Riesentraube heirloom tomatoes that seem to be growing before our eyes. But that topic merely needs a couple of sentences, a photo and I'm done.


A much more blogworthy topic is the 6 year-old human seedling with whom I live. I picked him up from school today and we made a deal: I would buy him an ice-cream if he would climb a local wild tree overflowing with lemons. It was as they say, a win-win situation.

On our happy way home, his face white with the sweet treat and my bag overflowing with fruit, he asked me to tell him about Meg's Choice, a story he loves to hear. 

You see, most parents don't get to choose their kids - they make a baby and that baby grows up and that's that. You get what you get. But I had a choice. I could have loved any old dad with any old son, or any old daughter, but I didn't. I had a choice and I chose to love his dad and I chose to love him. Of all the kids in the whole wide world.

Blazing Blazey

This is the book I bought PJ for his birthday. It's written and signed by our hero, Clive Blazey, founder of The Digger's Club, where we buy the majority of our seeds. 

Here is his introduction from the Digger's Winter Garden 2008 catalogue:

Dear Minister

We would like to see a government supported campaign to encourage the growing of fruit and vegetables in Australian back yards. When we grow our own food at home we cut our greenhouse emissions by 25-30% because we don't rely on commercial crops which:

• Consume non-renewable oil to till the soil, plant the seed, weed the crop, harvest the crop and transport it to the silo or market.
  
• Consume electricity to process the crop, package the crop, refrigerate the crop and finally to provide lighting at the supermarket.
  
• Consume oil which is the main ingredient of nitrogen fertilisers, weedkillers and pesticides that grow the crop.
  
• Consume electricity used to pump the water for irrigation.
  
• Finally the consumer drives by car to the market to pick up the food and bring it back - using non-renewable oil.
  

When gardeners grow their own food at home they eliminate all these steps and from day one, meet half our 2050 Kyoto target of 60% reduction 42 years early!

Gardeners are the largest group of people bringing CO2 back to earth. A campaign encouraging food gardeners will reach 3-4 million households.

• Growing lawns, trees and flowers brings CO2 back to earth. By composting and recycling green waste at home we are sequestering carbon in the soil. 
  
• Gardening being a home based activity means gardeners drive less, buy less, and consume less than other groups. It is pedantic to say gardening is "green," but it is "greener" than any other activity.

30% of Diggers staff have cut their CO2 emissions by 60% today – 42 years ahead of target. They have done this by: 

• Growing their own food – a 25-30% saving
  
• Buying carbon offsets for their cars
  
• Switching to renewable energy
• Installing solar hot water, riding bikes etc.
• Growing plants instead of laying concrete and paving
• Composting and recycling

When we grow our own we use less land and less water to produce our food than commercial growers. Diggers research shows gardeners who grow their own food cut water use by 66%.

Not all gardening activity brings CO2 down to earth, particularly the modern fad for paving and flaxes which minimises bio mass and photosynthesis. For this reason we believe the campaign should be focused on growing food rather than just supporting gardening in general. 

Yours,

Clive Blazey, The Diggers Club

Happy Birthday, PJ!

Of Everyday

I had a night in Melbourne then PJ came to meet me yesterday. I spent some great time with my family, but still it was so nice to come home last night, especially to this heart, that PJ had arranged on our bed out of socks:

Today we spent the day embracing the domestic, both inside the house and in the garden. It rained on and off. When it was on we went in, and when it was off, we went out. Our chooks pecked around us. At one point a currawong flew into the chook house to eat the remnants of our breakfast scraps and became disoriented, repeatedly flying into the chicken wire, until PJ shooed it out.

Not that other days feel unreal, but today felt especially real - a beautiful quiet day, living in the country. I was born and bred in Melbourne, but still I feel very unsettled each time I go and then come home. Today was a gentle day of resolutions.

Gustave Flaubert said,“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” My work is not necessarily violent or original, but I agree that there is much to be said for fashioning one's life from uncomplications.

Kidding Around

I am in between contracts and thinking about what projects I am going to work on next.

I wrote a story when I was in grade 5 that our class then made into a movie. (It was called Key to the Unknown Planet.) I knew then that I wanted to be a writer.

In 2000, Bruce Willis made a film called The Kid, in which he as an 8 year-old visits himself as an adult. In one scene, when the boy sees what his older self has, he exclaims, overjoyed, "We've got a dog!"

Sometimes I feel that I live my grown-up life as a salute to the dreams I had as a kid.

I look in the mirror and think, "We've got red hair!"

My sister K, (who wanted to be a ballerina when she was young) sent me a link to the folio of Yeondoo Jung, who, for one of his projects, honours childhood imaginings by bringing them to life.

Happy Thursday Part 3