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!

Oh Christmas Tree.

1st of December is time to put up the Christmas trees and start planning the Christmas Menus.

"She who is proficient at separating eggs"has been around with her Australian Women's Weekly recipe supplement, and I got out my NZ House and Garden equivalent and off we went.

We intend to make about 25 puddings and 2 salads!!!

Obviously a little more fine tuning to get through yet.

But we did find a triangular ginger bread house which may well turn out to be the solution to our gingerbread house structural engineering problems!

The Granny has put up her Christmas tree too, so we have three inside.

And one outside for the cats to play with!!

About 23 sleeps to go Blog Chics. Hope the weather improves!

Catching the Cupcake Fairy.

You know how I love to start projects Blog Chics.

I started this one almost 18 months ago, then packed it up in a box when we moved house.

Never to be seen again till now.

I blogged about it here when I had the initial flash of inspiration that you can't ignore when you want to start something new.

And here it is, the finished article.

I will add more and more pages, but I have three complete ones now.

You have no idea how long it took to get that far!

The Cupcake Fairy is my Grandmother as a little girl - with wings of course.

Reminds me a bit of when I was little and we would have wallpaper or flour and water paste and collage and papier mache and scissors and magazines and make a huge mess for days at a time.

I remember asking for a stapler for my sixth birthday!

You know what Blog Chics.... we have way better glue now days.

I love having no lumps!

And the Granny has finished Morton's little brother!

Have a great weekend Blog Chics.

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!!!