If You Open Your Ears to Beauty, You'll Hear it Singing its Song.

A little trite perhaps Blog Chics,

but never the less true enough.

I've been thinking a lot about gardens.

My garden in particular.
And gardeners.
It hasn't been a spectacular season for the Granny's potager.
And she's been busily ripping out all her tomato plants.
Not enough sun.
They've all been smited by a botch or something,
although we have been eating the little sweet yellow ones.
The Granny is tremendously disappointed.
She is one of those gardeners that loves gardening.



I, on the other hand am one of those gardeners who loves gardens more than gardening!
I see gardening as a means to an end.
I see my flowers as still lives and vignettes that I can run together as a slide show,
or fuse in the moment inside my mind.






We both love to have masses of fresh flowers inside in vases.
Sometimes it's hard to decide weather to leave a lovely bloom to be enjoyed through the window, or to bring it in and smell it, touch it and enjoy its composition intimately,
but for a shorter time.

For instance...

this year I succeeded in growing two hollyhocks.

One pink, one white.

They are magnificently deformed.

So I cut one and used the single usable bloom in my photo.

To last forever, or as long as the digital life of the photo.

If you open your heart to beauty....

You'll find it.

The Granny Square as a Metaphor for Life?

Hello.

I love this photo. It has nothing to do with anything, I just love the way it turned out.

I love all the colours together, and the way the cups stack up "just so".

I am looking for happy things to compensate for the weather.

We haven't had a summer yet here in the "Naki".

I really, really need a few days in a row of sunshine.

One swallow does not a summer make. Well all we've had here is the odd blackbird scoffing up the Granny's "pensioner bread" .

And there was the remains of last week's rhubarb crumble too, which may or may not be attractive to swallows.

I wouldn't really know, having not had enough summer to encounter even ONE...

The Granny has been randomly assorting her granny squares and sewing them together.

I have admired the work sufficiently to assume ownership of it I think.

That's mostly how it works round here.

Except for a made to order goat or two.

I really have no idea how the Granny Square is a metaphor for life.

I just made it up because I liked the sound of it.

Am far too pre-occupied with the weather to have that conversation with myself.

Probably something about going round and round, but then the Granny's Granny Squares are so free style and lovingly embellished that you just have to have hope don't you?

So there you are... the metaphor for life shall exist only in the most random of Granny Squares!

I found this gorgeous American magazine on my birthday. Luckily it was on my birthday, as it was so outrageously expensive i really shouldn't have bought it, but i just love it so!

A house is never just a house for me.

It's a blank canvas. I cannot be doing with the paint by numbers approach.

And gardens...

Another Year Over, a New One Just Begun.

Well here we are right at the beginning of a brand spanking shiny new year.

Do you do New Years resolutions Blog Chics?

I never have.

When I had little children I was just plain too busy for such frivolities, and one day just ran into the next and you turned around and it was Christmas again.

I've also learned a thing or two about motivation over the years.

And it doesn't come upon you just because it's the beginning of another year!

It has to come from somewhere very deep within you;

almost a primeval instinct rather than a rational process.

So when it comes upon you, that is the time to resolve things.

And that can happen at any time of the year, and certainly not every year.

I have only experienced that kind of motivation a few times in my life.

Probably just as well, because it requires a lot of focus.

So instead I come up with a little mental list of things I would like to achieve.

Just for my own gratification you understand.

None of them are life and death, and in fact they probably seem a little facile.

It's the stuff I want to do because it makes me happy.

I have decided to make a collection of duck/pheasant/any kind of flying poultry on plates.

It was inspired by a naive duck painting of the Granny's that I've had for years.

It's one of my precious things.

It gets moved about the house often.

I have it in the kitchen now.

And I suddenly twigged that I have a Meakin duck plate on the wall, and wouldn't it just be so serendipitous to come upon another.

And there an idea was born.

So far I've found this lovely old and battered pheasant one to go with the Meakin one on my "duck wall".

The Granny suggested I might like three flying china ducks like Hilda Ogden's "murial."

But I don't know Granny - that might be killing the golden goose don't you think?

So I've moved the duck painting and put the small couch into the kitchen

and the chairs into the lounge instead.

And swapped the quilts and cushions around to achieve the desirable level of "squishy".

Soon we will start on the "Granny studio apartment".

Just waiting for the builder.

We are so planned up!

We know every detail of every detail in our heads.

Just need a few men out from town to make them into real

(like the velveteen rabbit - or the Christmas Goat for that matter!)

And I've re-arranged the bears on the window sill.
And enjoyed the Mister being home and watching "the world cup of pool" for a few minutes in between cricket matches.

And watched the garden grow and grow with the constant rain we've had.

And loved the pink hydrangeas that we have here.

And yearned for a sky blue one like in my old garden.
They say you should never go back.

The new people have ripped out the lovely cottage plants and planted yukkas inside the buxus.

What's that about?

I try not to think about it,

I have the lovely photos of how it was.

And I'm going to start making things again.

When the Granny has moved into the new headquarters I'm going to put a sewing table back into the spare room and have my sewing things all ready to go again.

I want to make pretty little dresses from vintage fabrics again.

Just because it makes me happy.

Which hopefully makes it a happy New year all round!

The Jesus Table.

A lovely weekend of sunshine.

Out came the Jesus Table to sit under the climbing hydrangea.

Perfect.

Grannies are naturally attracted to such pieces of sculpture appearing in the garden.

The same as cats and cardboard boxes!

Flowers From My Grandmother's Garden.

There is an enduring memory from my childhood in which a letter would arrive in a fat airmail envelope; with an Australian stamp and my Grandmother's beautifully old fashioned handwriting on the front.

My mother would read it through a couple of times, and then I would be allowed to have a go at deciphering the beautiful handwriting.

It was like unlocking a secret code.

I remember they would go something like this...

"...I am watering the garden every day now... " and she would go on to describe what was flowering and what was looking its best, and there would be all the minutiae of a gardener's life there in the detail.

Evey now and then there would be something like ...

"...Stephen killed a brown snake today and hung it on the fence..." which would keep me interested when descriptions of the colour of the dahlias had become a bit tedious.

Forty years later I am composing letters in my head to my Australian Aunties.

As every new rose appears and every new hydrangea flowers, and the Granny asks me to dig the potato patch and she plants the tomatoes, and we plant some more sweet peas to climb the frames that the beans climbed last year.



And they go something like this...

...Dear Doreen and Kathy,
it rains at least a couple of times a week at the moment, and the equinoctial winds blow outside our shelter hedges.
The clothes dry quickly in the meadow and some days the grass lies almost horizontal.
But inside our shelter belt of hedges, it is relatively calm.







All the roses have begun to bloom.
I pruned them, fed them and mulched them a bit and it's worked wonders.
I really thought they were on their last legs when we came here at the end of last summer.

The climbing hydrangeas have burst into flower and will be perfect as shady umbrellas in the summer.
We plan to put the Jesus table out there under the biggest one under the walk way.
The Jesus table was a lucky find in the local antique shop in Eltham (The Bank).
Barb had all her religious icons displayed on it when we came in out of the rain one Sunday and bought it for the Granny annexe.
It is a rustic French looking affair, round, and the perfect size for breakfasting on or taking outside on summer evenings.
It shall be forever known as the Jesus table.









The Granny cuts the blooms as they become completely open, and fills our collection of little china jugs with beautiful velvety roses.
The kitchen is filled with the scent of them when you come in from outside.

I have never had such a collection of reds, russets and black-burgundy roses.

In my other garden I favoured old fashioned roses in pastel shades.

Here I have bushes and bushes of healthy iceburgs lining the walkways and the sweeping down the driveway alternated with lavender.

They have just burst into flower and have the prettiest hint of pink when the buds have just opened. They fade to white by the time they are ready to be picked.

And yellow. I have yellow roses!

I don't have any stories of snakes to tell. Only cats who plonk themselves in the middle of a patch of catmint and roll around in ecstasy.

What is it about catmint that makes them love it so much?

They follow me around with the wheelbarrow up and down to the compost heap.

This is where we'll put the Jesus table in the summer.

The Granny fancies sitting under the climbing hydrangea with a glass of wine.

And I have to confess I got a "man out from town" to cut the hedges.

Well, actually it was a man and a girl.

The Granny and I went round afterwards with the secateurs and the hedge cutters and evened everything off and neatened it all up.

And sweapt the paths of buxus cuttings and put them into the compost pile in the paddock.

It is early morning here now as I write this and the birds are all starting to wake up.

The sun has risen over the mountain and has left a red tinge on the snow line through the cloud.

The wind has already started. The branches in the tall trees shift outside my window.

Today I will be mowing and weeding and digging in compost for the Granny's potato patch.

And hoping for some sunshine.

In your gardens you can take that as a given; but not here.

Not even in late November.

But I think I would trade that for the possibility of finding a brown snake amongst the

snapdragons!!!

Finding Julia - Post Card from Canberra.

You can walk from just about anywhere to anywhere in Canberra.

There is a vast network of walking and cycling tracks along all the major thoroughfares.

And there is virtually no traffic!

I've seen more traffic on Friday afternoon in Hawera.

And everywhere you go there are magpies.

It's a city of magpies and monuments.

I enjoyed walking from the Old Bus Depot market all the way along Lake Burley Griffin

(I think that's what it's called) to the Art Gallery,

and down to the local shopping centre near Parliament Buildings.

Of course I was sure I was going to run into Julia doing her weekly shop at Coles on Friday

night; after a hard day defending the carbon tax.

But she was nowhere to be found.

Even in the New Parliament buildings, where I did a thorough search of both the Upper and

Lower Houses, and the roof top.

In case she's slipped out for a ciggy.

I did catch up with her later on the TV news.

In a way this trip was a lot to do with memorials, if not monuments.

It was a sort of living memorial to my Uncle Don,

who's time has almost passed,

and who is the holder of so much of the oral history of my family and of the times he lived in.

He's the Granny's elder brother.

They share a preference for quiet contemplation and books and art and the natural world.

So this was a chance to enjoy a bit of that together, in an unhurried manor.

And for me to meet for the first time as an adult, those members of my family

who exist in that parallel universe across the Tasman.

And to hear the stories from the past that are so important,

and allow you some insight into why you are who you are.

The Granny and I laughed most inappropriately in the reading room of the Canberra State Library while reading excerpts of a novel written by my Grandma Beatrice in the early 1930s.

It's called The Lure of Pleasure.

I know! It sounds like a very bad Mills and Boon Title.

But it's actually very moralistic, and not much pleasure was had by anyone from what I could see.

She gave some of her characters a very hard time. Particularly one called Madge.

The story goes that all the friends and relations round Croyden in those days were terrified of offending her, lest they turn up as a character in one of her stories.

She also wrote under the pseudonym of Grandma Pixie in the Weekly Times for many years.

My Uncle Gordon has kept all her letters to him as a child.

He allowed me to choose one from his collection to have as my own.

I brought home a lot of the memories and recollections, as told to me for the first time, by the people they happened to.

Each with a slightly different perspective on the same events.

One of Uncle Gordy's stories I'll have to make up my own ending to.

It involves some childhood exploits with an echidna in a hessian sack, being dragged around the town for good sport.

Gordy is a real animal lover, so he wouldn't have meant it any harm. It was just something to do with your brother and your mates.

I wanted to know what had become of the echidna. He can't remember!!!

In my version it just crawled out of the bag and waddled away .

We also had the pleasure of experiencing a mobile family afternoon tea, prepared by my Auntie's Kathy and Doreen





(she who is famous for the white above knee boots).





Not just the stories were passed down that day.





I came home with this lovely Crinoline Lady cake plate,





various pieces of curtains, tablecloths, remnants of material and other treasures from her cupboard.





Travelled all the way in the back of the car with the afternoon tea from country Victoria to Canberra.





Much to the consternation of my Uncle Joe, who clearly does not understand the order and priority for packing luggage for us "magpie chics'.





Many of the treasures once belonged to my Grandma Hazel.








And I did find something vintage and interesting in Canberra.
In fact a whole market full of it.

The Old Bus Depot market happens every Sunday in Canberra.

The quality of the merchandise was very high.


Beautifully handmade items.

With price tags to adequately reflect the work and time that goes into producing them,

which I was pleased to see.

If you want to get a bargain, then this is not the place to come.

If you understand and appreciate the investment involved in handcrafting, collecting and re-purposing, then it is.

There was such a lot of beautiful hand knitting to choose from, and hand dyed wools and yarns.

Available in every colour you would care to imagine.

I found a lady who made beautiful and ethereal looking gowns and wrap skirts from hand dyed thrifted doilies.

This wedding dress was my fav.

This is Cocky, who I remember from my first visit to Australia when I was three.

My Uncle Steve has been his curator for the past forty five years or so.

They have very long lives. He'll probably outlive my Uncle Steve.

In fact Cocky is most fond of my Auntie Kathy, who does all the daily curating!

She is country Victoria's answer to Bindi, but she presides over a collection of shelties, poodles, ugly cats, miniature ponies, chooks and birds, approximately equivalent to the number of Little Black Sambo's pancakes!

She does all that from this beautiful spot in country Victoria near Tatura.

I had to have a fairly extensive photo shoot with Harry the rooster, as he would be a fairly useful model for one of The Granny's chook paintings.

He was most co-operative and photogenic.

I caught a ride from Canberra to Tatura with the Uncles, who were able to fit me in because we'd eaten all the afternoon tea!

We stopped along the way at the Dog on the Tucker Box Memorial near Gundagai (hope I have the spelling correct).

You know the song, from Dad and Dave from Snake Gully, used to be on the radio?

The Road to Gundagai.

It's somewhere just over the boarder from the ACT into New South Wales.

Near Snowy River Country.

Anyhow, I loved that series, and particularly that song, so this was quite a significant event!

Clearly the Uncles thought so too.

This is my Uncle Gordy without his trademark "Ned Kelly" beard.

I hardly recognised him without it!

Here he is.

So I arrived unannounced at my Auntie Kathy's, which was done in collaboration with my Uncle Steve, for fear that she would be up all night cleaning the toilet and vacuuming if she had known I was coming!

So I had a few lovely restful days in country Victoria, reading my book in the sun, chatting to Auntie Kathy and visiting all my dead people in the little cemetery at Murchison.

They are all there. Grandma and Pop, and Auntie Marita, and cousin Shannon.

And Kathy and Steve will be there one day too. They've chosen their plots.

The only one not there is my brother Matt.


He wanted his ashes scattered in the Tasman Sea.

Metaphorically half way between both countries that he felt identical loyalties to.

I understand why.

I too sometimes feel that parts of Australia are my spiritual home, although I have never lived there and only spent small blocks of time there.

But I feel like that about parts of New Zealand too.

I think it is simply a visceral feeling of connection to a landscape and its history, at the emotional point where they intersect for me personally.

As I was whizzed down the Freeway from suburban Melbourne to the airport by my lovely cousin Simon, I was pleased that I would only have to point the car in the direction of Motorway South - Hamilton and keep going, when I got back to Auckland.

How very uncomplicated!

And when I reflect on why it is that I choose to live here and not there, and why it is that The Granny has chosen to live here and not there for most of her life, I think it is something to do with the uncomplicatedness. That the eccentrics and make doers and non fitter inners are all universally welcome here, just as much as the two cars, the batch and the boaters, and that innovation is admired and respected, and that we are somehow a less homogeneous society.

No firm conclusions. It may all really come down to landscape of one kind or other, in the end.

And this is the landscape i came home to.

Probably a once in a life time event. About 4 inches of snow in my garden.

Snow to sea level in many parts of the country.

Richard took these photos with his phone.

And as I contemplate my mountain of holiday washing, I am lookin out the window at the real mountain. All picture perfect and cone shaped, fully covered in snow.

And i am happy to be home Blog Chics.