G'Day,
Today I was given a reprieve. So here I am writing and reading in my blog.
I was supposed to go to work this morning and clean up an office after it has been renovated. Pretty easy cleaning, just cleaning up the builders mess and fixing it to be habitable again. Anyway it was canceled. We will probably get to do it next week some time, it was extra work on top of my normal cleaning schedule. Instead of doing house work like any sane Mummy and wife would do, I am in here.
My Cold/Flu bug is on the mend. It has left me with a yucky chest but that will go too. I think I have quite a good immune system. This bug has made me feel the worst I have felt for a long time though. If I do catch a virus it is usually a chesty bug not a tummy bug. Michael and Peter have caught it from me now and are miserable. I guess it can't be helped with us all living in the same space. I can be mean and say that now because they most likely caught it off me, even though I was annoyed catching it myself from someone else. He he.
It is a perfect sunny clear crisp winters day here today. It got down to minus 4 here this morning so was frosty and a bit foggy, but now it is clear and beautiful.
The snowdrops that popped up from the garden out the front have a few flowers on them now. There are still bulbs mysteriously popping up in the back yard . I think there are a few tulips amongst them. I am hoping that the others are daffodils as, if they were stinky jonquils, they would be almost flowering at this time of year. They were flowering in my Junee garden a month ago now. The daffy down dillys flower later.
My baby has been sick too, and has the week off Uni. She has been having bad panic attacks which have been increasing in severity. I can't understand it. She was always such a strong compact little personality and probably the person I least expect to have something like that happen. I have in the back of my mind that it may be related to hormones because she had a birth control implant and she never had any problems before having that. She is a lot like her aunt Maureen who had problems with similar things , so here's hoping that that may be a cause and therefore solution to her problems.
This weekend there is a great workshop at Straithnairn arts here in Canberra that I would love to get to. If my tax refund is in the bank maybe I can go to it. It is on Roman mosaics. Something I love and would like to learn about. It is a bit expensive though. I will have to look into it. Not much time left though.
There has been a hold up in the sale of our home in Junee so it is still not finalised. We have been assured that the purchaser is keen to buy it but she is being held up with her money (by Solicitors) else where. So I guess we just have to wait. With the prices of housing being so terrible here in Canberra I think our own plans to buy a house will have to be put on hold for a while anyway. I am not in any difficulty waiting for the other sale to be finalised. Well, that's if you don't count having to pay off a mortgage in Junee and rent here in Canberra which is stretching the budget. But there you go, we have to wait.
We have been having trouble with birds here. It has been lovely attracting them into our yard with seed and scrap bread for them to eat. But, cockatoos and parrots are notorious for enjoying chewing things and they are chewing the wood on the pergola that covers the back of the house. It is becoming quite damaged. We tried painting it with kerosene thinking that it might be a deterrent but that hasn't worked. I would really like to continue feeding them if I could and we put the seed and feed well away from the house but they seem to still enjoy chewing the house. Even our Galah, Cheeky has been put further down the yard away from the verandah area. If you have any other ideas on how to dissuade them, I would appreciate them. It seems to be the king parrots that I have seen causing the damage. The galahs just like chewing the feeding station. Maybe I should email the man I spoke to before from Canberra Bird club.
O.K thats enough waffling on for now, I better go and do something more important with my time.

Bye. Love Linda.

Sunday scribbling , Solace.

G'Day,
The Sunday scribblings prompt is "Solace" for this week.
Solace. Split it up. Can you see the soul.
When I am really upset I need time alone so I go bush.
If you are an Aussie you may associate this "Goin' bush" as a thing spoken of that is done by aboriginal people. Goin' bush or going walkabout. Maybe there is a little bit of that in me that still seeps through after 5 generations of breeding away from my australian aboriginal great great grandmother.

In the bush, on my own, I find solace.
The colours calm me with their beauty.
The flash of a red parrot excites me.
And bird sounds fill the sky.

The sound of water running is music to me.
The smells of the earth and plants are magical.
I take my time to minutely examine a leaf or rock or a flower.
Commune.

The sounds and rustlings through the undergrowth and breeze rustling in the trees,
give me peace and take my interest away.
The bush's timeless beauty soothes my jumbled mind.
As I calm myself I rationalise the events that sent me to the bush.

I can feel its timeless and ageless comfort.

Can you see it, smell it, hear it, feel it?

========================

My Dad used to take us, his girls, walking in the bush when we were little. He would always get a stick for us to walk along with and we would draw lines along behind us along the dirt track. Looking like a wobbly snake track following us. He would point out plants and birds. He always broke a small switch off a gum tree as he walked along to flick away the tiny bush flies that settled on our backs. We called them free loaders. We would throw and kick rocks along the track.We thought it was wonderful, especially when he picked a gum leaf and placed it carefully between his thumbs and blew through it, giving a loud whistle. I never did master that.
Last time I was upset and went bush I was told by my workmate that I was selfish as she was worried about me and didn't know where I was. I felt really bad about that, but I needed to get away. Was I selfish or did she misunderstand me?

G'Day,
I feel yuck! I have a cold, yucky throat and sinuses. Mum has it too but because she is older and frail she has it worse and can't stop coughing. I will be better in a few days, I hope so anyway.
Michael and I started cleaning a second small school this week. It has about 300 students. It is a pretty nice place. Also because we start there later in the afternoon it is easier to clean as there are no kids running in and out of the toilets that we have to keep stopping for. The extra hours I get from there will be most welcome in my pay packet.
The driving lessons are going along well, I have to tell Michael less each time we go out for a drive. He has been driving to and from work and between jobs for the last week. He also drives at every opportunity and is keen to do so which is better than before. Pretty good as most of his earlier driving was done on country roads and not around the city. Still needs some work on that clutch though. It has to be practiced until it becomes second nature and you don't think about it any more.
Oh I don't know what to write here tonight. Must be my fuddled brain with this cold bug.
I have been watching a silly show on telly for the last few weeks called "Celebrity Singing Bee" It is quite funny. The contestants have to fill in missing lyrics to songs to win money for their nominated charity. It is quite funny. It just finished and I enjoyed it. I don't always get the lyrics right. It seems that I do better with the older songs than the newer ones. Am I showing my age.
Or might I have just had more time to spare when the older songs were around so I took more notice of them. Surely it can't be my memory could have deteriorated over the years? Ha ha.
I think tonight I will dope myself and have a really good sleep for a change so I feel brighter tomorrow. I have not been sleeping well. Waking up about 3 in the morning, laying awake for hours and not getting back to sleep until it is time to get up. Seems to be the thing since moving to this house. Maybe I just need a new me. Whinge, moan, groan. I have it bad today. C'mon it can't be that bad I just pressed the spell check icon and didn't have any spelling mistakes. Only colloquialisms that I meant to be there.
This is going no where. Good night.
Love Linda.

G'Day again,
Yes I have written in here twice today. I am having a lazy day. Sitting here on my bum with the heater blowing on me and sticky beaking around blogland. I have done absolutely nothing all day!
There was something else I wanted to comment on but forgot earlier today. So here tis'
For the last week there have been thousands of visitors to our country. They have been here to celebrate World Youth Day in Sydney. I think it is an annual event, not sure. Held in a different country each time and designed to bring together catholic youth from around the globe to celebrate their religion. The next one is in Madrid.
No I am not a catholic, nor am I a church goer. I prefer to practice my faith every day in the way I choose to live. So before anyone shoots me down for that , that is what I believe, I do try to be christian.
There has been lots of stories and pictures of the participants on the news each night. Last night they were all gathered at Randwick race course in the middle of a chilly winter night for a sleep over, services and concerts. It was to get down to 7 degrees. The candle light vigil looked great with so many people there, and the whole race course was covered with people.
It has made me so happy to see their excitement and enthusiasm for life in a time when we hear more about bad things that happen in the world everyday that are so depressing, than we hear of good things happening. We hear so much about the degradation in our society and amongst our youth. Brings a tear to the eye.
Pope Benedict has been greeted with a crowd that is so excited to be part of such a big gathering of people and he is being afforded status above what any rock super star would or could ever have. Wonderful. A great symbol of the christian faith. Brings tears to the eyes and hope for a better future.
Yes, and I know that there are faults with the catholic church which have caused harm to people and their respective cultures in the past but they are, over all, a positive influence in our world today and I hope will continue to stay that way. However I do not agree with everything they say. Which I suppose is a more modern version of a religion. I choose not to follow blindly and I think for myself.
Prior to the event beginning, 500 of the Pilgrims, as they are being called, were here in Canberra. They attended services and had meals in one of the schools Michael and I have been cleaning. So that was the small contribution I was involved in. Sort of anyway. I cleaned up after some of them. It wasn't real bad either.
So all good things and kudos to the pilgrims and the event they have been a part of.
Bye again. Love Linda.

P.S. On the news tonight it said there were almost a quarter of a million pilgrims here.

Sunday scriblings. Ghost Stories.

G'Day,
Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is ghost stories.
Over the years I have had many things happen that I guess could have been ghost stories and also some funny ones that were most probably my imagination running away with me.
Do I believe in ghosts? Well, I don't know in which sense "Believe" is meant but I think there is such a thing as ghosts.
I think these sort of things are something you have to be tuned in to to experience, so lots of people have never had anything like that happen to them. But, here are some of mine.
When Pete and I were first married we lived in an old house in Wagga that had a strange light in the centre of the hallway in the darkness that could not be explained by another light source. It was around the door to the bathroom and 2nd bedroom. I used to often wake up during the night after dreaming about something there and tell, whatever, that we lived here now. The presence was never threatening but was more like it was questioning. When my first son was born I am sure that the presence was an old lady or man because I felt it watching out for him. I don't know if it was some weird connection with my son or with this presence but I would often know when my son was about to get up to something that might hurt him , just before he actually got up to it. Like when he learnt how to push a chair across to the back door to open it and was in danger of falling down the back steps, or when he was about to eat the dirt out of my potted plants, (again!) I would get an idea, and there he was with a handful of dirt about to go in his mouth. Or I would get a message like "You left that knife on the table" and would go to check just as my son was reaching up for it. Also if I was away from him and someone was looking after him I could tell them exactly what time he woke up and cried because my let down reflex would go and milk would start running. Weird. I never had that with my other kids. When he was big enough to sit up and be fed in his high chair he used to stare at the place in the hallway each morning at breakfast time, that was lit up at night, and babble away in his baby talk to something or someone there. Unseen by me, but for all the world like someone was there talking and playing with him.
My niece also must have been tuned in to stuff like that too when she was a baby, because my sister lived in a house that was reputed to be haunted and every time she was taken into a certain room she would panic and scream until she was taken back out again. Also when she was a toddler I used to take her with me to visit an old lady I was working with at the time and she didn't like that house either. The old lady suffered dementia. When I was there cleaning, I used to have a sense of someone following me around saying "Don't touch that, it is mine" maybe it was the old lady's husband, so it was a very strange there also.
When my boys were little we lived in a town called Urana and there was something strange in the corner of my front yard. I would often hear a baby crying out there and when I went out to check there was nobody or nothing around.
Also around the same time we used to go out for short day trips to the surrounding district, one day we visited a town called Rutherglen. There were old shops along the main street that had long since closed down but were re-opened with museum and local history type displays set up in them. I went into one of them and there was an old photo at the end of the room that showed an early pioneer from that area and I couldn't walk past it. It was such an unfriendly threatening feeling that I felt in there, I had to get outside, but nobody else with us felt anything like that . I later asked my pottery teacher at the time , who lived there, about it and she said there were lots of ghostly type things happened in Rutherglen.
At our Junee house there was a light spot outside our front verandah that was only there just before dawn and a strange feeling at the end of the hand rail . It was especially noticeable on foggy mornings when we left early for work. One morning when Peter was leaving for work there was a young teenage boy standing there. Peter got a shock and said out loud "What the F are you doing there" and it disappeared. We had known about a car accident that happened across the gully where a young boy was killed and maybe that was him coming looking for help. I sensed that he was about 14 or 15 and he had mid length blond hair that curled at the bottom and had on a blue and white striped tee shirt, but of course I didn't have anything to go by to prove that. Peter doesn't believe in such things but he saw that one.
Junee is also famous for having a haunted house called Monte Cristo. It was an early mansion in the town. It has been on T.V. often and is reputedly the most haunted house in Australia. We went there often, mostly because it was full of antiques to sticky beak at. One day we went on the tour and my eldest son sat on one of the chairs upstairs. Olive the tour leader and owners wife said to him don't sit there that is the ghost chair. When he stood up he had three red scratches down his thigh. They looked like finger nail marks. There was no nails or anything on the chair to explain it.
And, where we are living now, in this house since moving here we have had some strange unexplained noise. When Michael and I have been alone in the house there has been a really loud sound of smashing glass, like something big has fallen and broken on the tiled floor. We have gone to check what it was and there is nothing there. Over in the park there is a sign saying that in this area there used to be a motorcycle track before the houses were here. It might have somehow been related to an accident that happened then.
When I was working at Junee hospital there were lots of stories going around of things that happened late at night when people were working night shift. Things like muffled voices outside the emergency department and wheel chairs running away down the ramp outside there, without any help. Also someone talking in the day care area. At Christmas time they used to try to close the acute care ward for a couple of days and we used to go in there and do special cleaning jobs that were unable to be done when it was open. I was over there one day cleaning, when it was empty and I got this really strong smell of after shave in the kitchen. Well ! I had myself spooked. It was there all day whenever I went into the kitchen. I swept the floor and when I bent down to pick up the sweepings it was really strong. On checking I worked out that some one must have either spilled or broken a bottle of after shave lotion and used the hand broom to sweep it up. We all had a good laugh about it. So that one was truly my imagination running away with me.
Also while working there in the kitchen, we used to see a shadow of someone walking down the hallway outside when no one was there. They used to reckon that it was the old doctor.
That's all folks. More of my silly memory stories.
Bye Love Linda.

G'Day,
Thank you to everyone for leaving comments for me when I was feeling down about blogging. You restore my faith.
One of the comments was from a fellow potter "Sorrow" who asked to see some of my pots. I found a few photos without my son's help and managed to put them up here.
The first one is of the mural I made for the new Multi Purpose Centre (hospital) in Junee where I lived until recently. I made it with as many of the staff As I could and who were interested, we had great fun. It is made of Buff Raku clay and fired to 12oo degrees celcius. No glaze except fro some brown slip to do the lettering on it. I love the warm biscuit colour that this clay goes at that temperature. I as a bit worried about the colour variation through out the piece but everyone was happy with it.














The mural in my little kiln ready to be unloaded.














The little fire house below was an idea I liked at the time but didn't prove to be good design. I carved it from a half block of hard raku clay that someone gave me. It has three floors at the back where I sit tea light candles that show up through the windows when it is alight. However the candles on the top floor get over heated by the candles below them and after burning for a couple of hours they catch alight. Which really looked great but wasn't real good O.H.& S. But I still like the idea of a fire house. He He.















The row of pots in the next picture are ones I made inspired by fire wood. I was thinking what a waste it was to burn such lovely wood that took decades to grow and how could I make a pot that would show its beauty and therefore preserve it. I made slabs onto which I pressed the rough cut wood surface to decorate it. Then made cylinders out of the slab and threw a neck to attach to the top of them. I took them with me to a raku lustre workshop I attended and they are glazed in turquoise lustre which reduced to a nice copper lustre in places.














Next picture same workshop. I like chooks and shiny glazes. This glaze was called "Queen Mum's Plum" There are some lovely plummy red lustres on these. The glaze at the bottom is a clear crackle. I like shiny too.

G'day,
Here's another post. But really I don't know why I bother sometimes. It seems like I am wasting my time here when I read lots of other peoples blogs and leave comments and very few people bother to even look at my blog. But then again I should go back to why I bother to write in here. Is it because I want to write or because I want something else. Ah well! A bit of both I suppose. How do I grow my blog. Any suggestions?
I had a lovely visit from my nephew Terry, his wife Linda and their daughter Olivia last weekend. Terry is the youngest son of my sister Thelma. He is 40 now I can't believe he is that age. Wow. He is also my son David's god father. We shared a meal. Mum, Linda and I shared a bottle of wine. Out of all the people in my family I think Terry gets my sense of humor and he can always make me laugh. Olivia is a quiet little girl but by the end of the day she was talking and laughing more and enjoying playing with our doggie, Rufus. I did the, "I will tell you some stories about your Dad when he was little" thing, and she really enjoyed that. It was nice to see that they seem to be working as a family so well together. They are from near Newcastle and were visiting on their way to the snow up at Jindabyne. It should have been good up there last weekend. News reports said that there was 2 ft of snow fell on Wednesday and Thursday.
In the news; Lots about the state of the Murray River. For anyone who does not know, the Murray is the biggest river in inland Australia. It runs from the mountains in the east of Victoria. It forms the border between the states of Victoria and N.S.W. and meets the sea in South Australia near Gawler. All of the inland rivers from the top of inland Queensland and through N.S.W. Victoria and South Australia, eventually drain into it. This makes it the biggest river system in our country. All the way along the east of the country. Along their paths they are dammed, sucked dry, diverted, dumped in and it all goes downstream into the Murray. All done for us!
So the Murray river system is in big trouble. It has been for decades, but it is now thought by some to be irreparable. The new labor govt. voted in last year is trying to do something about it, I hope it is not too late, but none the less they are going to try. It was an election promise they are following up with. A billion dollars has been allocated to do urgent repairs to try to salvage the river system. A huge job. I guess the biggest portion of the money will go to consultants to make them richer, but now I am being cynical.
Anyway, my beloved old Murrumbidgee River is one of the rivers that flows into the Murray. It runs through Canberra where I live now and also down stream through Wagga which is my home town.
There has been plans made to suck a bit more much needed water out of the bidgee to upgrade and enlarge Googong Dam, Canberra's water storage and supply for the future growth and development of the city.
Canberra's cut of the 1 billion dollar govt money, is to be put towards the building of a water treatment plant which will remove 80 tons of salts daily from Canberra's waste water that would otherwise be sent , as it is now, straight back into the Murrumbidge river. I was shocked when I read this. Then there are all the other towns along its path adding more and taking more. My dear old river!
I am no great brain so I don't have some wonderfully clever solution to our water problems, but isn't that, although a local solution of sorts, giving with one hand and taking back with the other? I guess it will be quite a while before all plans are actioned. Hmmm.
O.K. thats my rant for the day.
The oil light came on in my car the other day so I checked the oil when I came home and it was not even registering on the dip stick. Pete had a look and topped it up, and reckons the oil is leaking out from around the oil filter and when he looked it was loose. He reckons it is cross threaded. Nice since I had my car supposedly fixed of oil leaks just a month ago and it cost heaps. It is also staining the driveway of our rented house which will put us in the bad books with the real estate agent. Today I have to go back to the mechanic who fixed it and confront them. I hate confrontation. I am such a chicken when it comes to that sort of thing and I know I can easily be conned because of it. I will probably end up paying out more money. Which is very scarce at present.
Michael's driving is going along well. He is driving in the traffic quite well and even asking to drive. All is well except when he gets the gears mixed up and changes from 4th gear into 1st gear, like he did yesterday. Not too good for my poor old car nor for the surrounding traffic or my nerves, fun.
Bye. Love Linda.

G'Day,
It has been cold here the last few days. The temp. today was 0 to 9 degrees. Good for the snow season, if you like that sort of thing. God knows what our electricity and gas bill will be when we get it.
Yesterday the truck arrived here with the last of our belongings from Junee. Consisting mainly of my pottery kilns and paraphernalia and Pete's tools. So my little car no longer has a place in the garage and is out in the cold. That is O.K. though there are more important things. I will not be getting my kilns hooked up in this house, they will have to wait until we have our own home again. Pete and I went to Junee last Saturday and saw the removalist and they loaded the stuff into the truck while we were there. On the way home Pete and I went on a date of sorts. We had tea out at a restaurant in Civic in the city and then went to the pictures. The movie we saw was "Mongol" which is a story about Genghis Khan. Great scenery and photography. It was pretty good, though a bit graphic in places. We haven't been to the pictures together in years, I think the last picture we saw together was "Dances with Wolves" which should tell you just how long ago it was. We should do that more often, if for no other reason than to do something with each other. The seats were comfortable and spacious too. In the theatre there was a cinema called the premier theatre that has twin recliner seats with little tables and cup holders in them. Very modern and a far cry from the old seats that never had enough elbow room or arm rests and you left the theatre with aching shoulders because you were trying not to get in the road of the person sitting next to you. I will have to check out the premier theatre for myself next time round. Trouble is they might have to wake me up at the end of the movie if the seats are too comfortable.
I had a phone call from my nephew Terry tonight. He said he is coming through here on his way to the snow on the weekend and will drop in to visit us. It will be good to see him and his family. That is if he shows up, he has said he would visit before and didn't turn up.
I am going to the Dr's tomorrow to get my skin cancers seen to again. They should be sort of healed up by the time school starts back again so I don't scare the kids too much, he he. It has been probably 4 years since I last had them burnt off so it is about time again. I hope they don't find any that have to be cut off this time. I have had to get 3 cut off before and 25 plus burnt with the liquid nitrogen. One of the cut out ones was on my eyebrow, the other 2 on my arms. My face will look like a patchwork quilt if this keeps going. One thing I was told was that once you start getting them bad enough to be cut out, you keep getting more of the same sort. The ones I had before were 2 x basal cell carcinomas and 1 of the other ones, I can't remember what the name was, um! Not melanoma though, thank goodness's. The result of good old Aussie sunshine.
O.K. it is late and I am going to bed . Good night.
Love Linda.

G'Day,
The Sunday scribblings post for this week is "Chance Encounters".
What came to mind first up was an encounter with a Red Belly Black snake I had when I was in my teens.
Let me tell you about it. We had gone on a family picnic up to Adelong Falls. There was me and Mum, My Auntie Joan and Uncle Jim, and their youngest daughter whom we called little Joanie and my niece Janelle, I can't remember who else but there were two car loads of us.
Adelong Falls is about an hours drive from Wagga where we were living at the time, and is a steep hilly gorge which was once a goldmine where early miners used the terrain and water there to process the ore that they mined. So it has old ruins and races cut into the rock and lots of little pathways to explore and best of all for kids on a hot day, little rock pools and waterfalls to play in. Us kids went wandering around the tracks and climbing up and down the big granite rocks that have been worn smooth by years of water rushing down hill over them and are everywhere there. Janelle, little Joanie and I were having a great time exploring when I decided to pull myself up on to a big granite boulder. I am the king of the castle type scenario. As I pulled myself up I came eye to eye with a big red belly black snake who was sunning itself there. Well, it went in one direction and I went the other. I was pretty shaken and scared at the thought that I could have been bitten, right between the eyes , if the snake had so wished so I thought "We are not going back past that way". We all climbed down the rocks to swim across the rock pool and get back on the other side of the creek. As my jeans were pretty tight I decided that I would take them off to swim across and put them back on to walk up the hill and back to the car. So I tied them around my waist and took to the water. Yes..... of course they fell off, and sunk, then we saw them go over the waterfall down stream. Not retrievable!
So I being the eldest of the three kids decided that I couldn't walk up the hill in my underwear and little Joanie was youngest, and by nature the least likely to be bothered by such matters, so she gave me her bright red shorts. God knows how I squeezed into them, but I did.
We arrived back at the picnic area , me with a very red face and little Joanie quite unconcerned about her state of dress. Mum was annoyed at me for having lost my jeans and everyone else was teasing me. Little Joan ,who is no longer little and about 6 inches taller than me , still brings it up when I see her. One of our "Do you remember when ..." stories.
About the snake. Red belly black snakes are quite timid and are venomous but would rather run away than bite. They like rocky areas near water and are not as deadly as some other Australian snakes but never the less would cause a lot of damage if they decided to bite you. They are a pretty snake with a dusty black back and as the name would suggest a bright red belly. We had quite an adventure that day and still laugh about it.
That's it Folks.
Bye
Love Linda.

G'Day,
Ever had one of those days? Nothing is going right on the puter tonight. I keep stuffing everything up. Pressing wrong buttons and not being able to do what I want to get done. Well big blah to you Mr puter, I am not giving up!
Here is a picture of my dear hubby Pete. I was making fun of him because it looked like he was pretending to read because the magazine was upside down.





The next picture is of Wagga beach last Saturday. See Rufus in his security dog T shirt. He always gets grins and comments from people when he is wearing it.














The next one is of Wagga beach again, looking upstream. Not much water in the old MurrumbidgeeRiver is there.














I also went to the Junee house to have a look and pinch some more stuff out of the garden while I was there. The next pic is of the little federation daisy I planted last year which is flowering beautifully at the moment.














And there is always always a flower or two on the old geraniums, no matter what time of the year it is.














This is in the back yard. Twisted willow in the fore ground.














The back yard again. It is nice and green at the moment.














The front of our Junee house.The sold sign hasn't gone up yet.














This camellia is out the front in the driveway. It didn't flower at all last year because of the drought but this year with a bit of rain it has fought back and has its lovely big flowers on show again.














More of the same bush. I never did find out its proper name.














This is a verbena out the back yard.














I am missing having my own yard and plants so much. Renting is just not the same as living with a garden you have planted and nurtured yourself over many years. Even though I have a lot of my old plants here in pots with me it is not as good as digging down into the rich cool moist soil and running it through your fingers when you have built the soil up yourself to rich and composted beauty.
This week has been quite busy. On Monday we had Pete's graduation ceremony. It was at old parliament house. A lovely old building. I was kicking myself for forgetting to take my camera. The ceremony was late starting so I had a dawdle through the building for an hour which is set up as a sort of museum of Australian politics and I enjoyed looking at all the displays. I am not into politics but there are some really good displays there that warrant spending lots of time looking at. Work and grocery shopping in the afternoon.
On Tuesday I had a job interview at a nursing home. I didn't do very well because I was honest and confessed to having a bad back. But what can you do, you have to be honest. If they ring me up now I have decided that I won't take a job with them and have decided to stay where I am. On Tuesday morning there was a car parked out the front of our house with all the windows down in the rain. When I went out to have a look the back window was smashed and it had no number plates or registration sticker so Pete called the police and told them about it. It turned out that it was a brand new black song yang 4x4 which had been stolen from a car yard the night before. Pete went out and spoke to the police when they came and the owner when they came to get it and they were grateful that we reported it and said they had not expected to get it back. There was around $3000 damage done to it.
On Wednesday I had to take Mum to have more blood tests. Give driving lessons and work in the afternoon.
Thursday morning was back to have more blood tests and the continuation of tests done the previous day. Then I rushed home because Michael was having driving lessons. Gave more driving lessons and worked in the afternoon. Cute side story. I had special instructions on Thursday afternoon from a little girl about 5 yrs old, who came up to me in the playground with big scared eyes. She asked me could I please get the spiders out of the girls toilets. I said don't you like spiders darling? and she replied querulously, with big scared eyes, no. So I told her I would look after it. I found three small daddy long leg spiders in the room, which were soon no longer recognizable as spiders. I can remember myself being scared of spiders when I was a little girl and could see the same in her face. She was so cute.
Today I got to stay in bed for a while and keep warm. Then it was pretty much just the house work routine, then to work again. Today was the last day of term 2 here in the A.C.T. The kids get 2 weeks holiday now. Cleaning the school this week has been a bit of a pain because they have had parent/ teacher interviews all week and we couldn't get into the rooms to get our work done as we usually would.
Tonight I made butter chicken with drumsticks. Well, the sauce came out of a packet so I guess I cheated but I still had to cook it. It was good winter weather food. Spicy but not hot and very nice.
Bye for tonight.
Love Linda.