Sunday Scribblings "Game"

G'Day,
Sunday Scribblings on a Monday, oh well. That speaks of the game I played over the weekend.
The prompt word for this week is "game".
I can think of this word taking me in many different directions .
Us Aussies use the word game to mean brave. As in "are you Game? Do you want to have a go? "type of meaning. I don't know if it is used or understood in that context in other parts of the world. Maybe you can enlighten me.
I am not usually that game. But if you challenge me......
One night when I was out with some of my work mates in Junee they challenged me to go Gnome Knapping. We pulled up outside Kerrie's house and I snuck up to her front veranda and took the Gnome that her mother in law had given her for a present. She hated Gnomes. Then we took it and placed it at the front door to the Dr surgery where she worked so that when she came to work in the morning it was standing , proud and ridiculous, stupidly waiting to greet her. She thought that was a great joke. I love playing tricks on people. While on the subject of gnomes. Another friend who lives in Wagga, had a son who joined the navy and took a stolen gnome around the world with him. Then sent photos of the gnome, anonymously, back to the person who it belonged to, which were taken in well known tourist spots around the world. Funny, I love it.
"Game"
The primary school that my children attended in Junee while growing up, had for their motto, "Play the Game". Good advice. We should all try to do that and put aside the silly idea that we need to go against advice or authority to get what we want and always be true to ourselves. I know that does not always apply, but for every day stuff, not the big stuff that matters, it really does not hurt you to play along to get results you want. Play along with the people that you don't like and you know don't like you just for the sake of peace and harmony. It doesn't hurt to follow the rules a bit, that is what they are there for ... isn't it? You need to do that to fit in. I played that game with my hubby's sister's in law on the weekend, hehe.
"Game"
My sister recently introduced me to a game called sequence. It is a cross between a board game and a card game. You have to place buttons on a board as you turn up cards and get them in a sequence of 5 cards, while the other players try to block your moves. I almost never win board games. I find it strange to be in a position of attack and defense at the same time with them.
That same night we moved on to a game of euchre. I always get annoyed when I play that because my Mum loves to haggle over each card played and that drives me nuts. I don't know why she does that and I hate playing cards with her because any game with her becomes slow moving and is dragged out to last 3 times longer than it needs to. I am a bad and impatient daughter. Other than that I play spider solitaire on the puter. Mindlessly, over and over again. It is a way to waste time and block out what is going on around me I guess, like the rubbish they try to feed us on the T.V.

******************************

I just had the most lovely weekend. My daughter had her 21st birthday party. Her birthday is actually next week but she changed the date for her party to fit in with others being able to attend it.
Pictures will follow.
I got my hair done, we went together. Now you can't see the gray hairs that were showing around my hairline, he he. We stayed in a nice motel, ate out, went shopping, met up with family and friends. Lovely. The weekend also saw me take my Mum to her home town, Griffith, to another party. It was my uncle Bill's 60Th wedding anniversary. 60 years wow! Anyway as a consequence I got to see some of my cousins. I love those girls. I fit right in with them. Plus I saw a couple of my favorite Aunts and Uncle. It was quite a bit of driving but that is O.K. I don't mind that. And when Pete is driving I get to snooze, he he. It is my Aunty Joan's 80th birthday on 12th December so I will get to see them all again, together. All being well, I should be able to get to that. When we got home home last night we were just in time to go back out again to the Tuggeranong community festival and watch a freebie Ian Moss concert. It was a biggie because it was the 21st one. Also at the festival we enjoyed watching children play and dance in front of the stage to a west African drumming troupe. Cool, lots of fun. And then there were the fire works. They seemed to go on for ages. And.... and.... and.... a group of kids doing circus stuff with hoops, stilts, balls, fire and acrobats etc. Clever kids. The best part was watching the faces and reactions of the toddlers to the entertainment.
For the last 4 days we have returned to cooler wet weather. At the moment I am wearing a cardigan again. It is just a couple of days away from the official start of summer. Wet weather; I am not complaining as an urban gardener.... but....all the way in the car on the weekend I was seeing grain crops ready to strip being spoiled by the rain. The farmers had half finished stripping some paddocks and had to abandon their work. They will be watching and cursing the skies while their much awaited crops are being ruined. I reckon that Aussie farmers are the greatest gamblers in the world. If the conditions are not just right their years work is lost. If the grain gets wet at harvest time it can drop or be shot and sprung, which means it starts to sprout from the moisture and is ruined, or if they can't get their equipment into the paddock because it is too wet they lose it anyway. Not to mention the risk of spontaneous combustion if they strip wet. The only thing they can do with it is let their stock in to eat what they can of it. There are machines they can get to help dry it but they cost money and the quality is reduced. I guess there is a romantic image of life on the land that we long to have but it is not an easy way to learn a living.
I have done part of my christmas shopping. There is more to do yet. Have not sent any cards as yet, must get on to that. Pete is to have his gall badder removed on 21st December. So it will be a quiet Chrissy season this year. As far as the operation is concerned the sooner the better I guess but it is not a good time of year to have to go through that.
O.K. that is all my news and stuff this week.
Bye
Love Linda.

Beauty.

G'Day,
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "Beauty".
What is that?
It is everywhere.

Beauty is....
In watching, the curve of a soft fine cheek, as your loved one sleeps,
and you watch their steady peaceful breathing.
Your baby's fingers reaching out to discover the marvelous word he has become a part of,
To learn and explore and wonder at.
The newness of their beginning.

Beauty is....
The eye of the beholder, we all see something different,
The face or body or aroma or characteristic that appeals to one may not appeal to another.
Mother nature's assurance that we are all different and those differences are meant to be.

Beauty is....
Beauty of form and function.
The curve of that pot you just made,
The taste of that food,
The smell and sight of that....
Which appeals to you personally.

Beauty is....
All the senses that were given to us to use.
Sight, sound, taste, hearing, smell.
The things that each of our senses bring us within their sub groups.
Color. Color. More color.In all its shades.

Beauty is....
I know I am always on this subject but.....
The world around us.
The flora and fauna,
The form of the land.
Natural and man made.

Beauty is....
Everywhere and in everything.
Simplicity.
Subjective.
Sensual.
Style.
Sizzzzzzle.

Beauty is...
your journey through life.
Don't miss a minute of it.

Bye
Love Linda.

Happy Birthday to us.

G'Day,
Here are a couple of photos I took during the week that was.
The first is my mum, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. She turned 88 on the 16th of November. Happy Birthday Nan.
The picture above is of the flowers she bought me for my birthday yesterday. I am including them as my entry into the Friday Fertilizer prompt for this week. You should smell the perfume of those Asiatic lilies. Mmmm Mm.
I also got some more of one of my favorite perfumes and a little mp3 player which I am using right now. I just have to learn how to do the other stuff that ti tells me it is capable to do. I wanted one to take to work with me. Now I just have to find out how to delete all the stuff on it that I don't like from Pete's collection. Technophobe!
So Happy Birthday to me. I am now 50, over the hill. There was a thing on the news during the week saying that 50 is the new 40 for women. Must have been written by a baby boomer,the era of which I came into being, towards the end. Hehehe.
Yeah well.
It is just another number.
I get better in some ways as I age than when I was younger.
It is just another step on the journey isn't it.
The journey of being me.

That is all. Time got away from me again and it is already Sunday. So I am going to go across to Sunday Scribblings to see what is happening over there and add my 2 bobs worth for that.
Bye.
Love Linda.
Living, loving, learning
along the way.

Sunday scribblings "Oracle"

G'Day,
Sunday again. Another week rushes by too quickly. I had a visit from my sister who lives in central Queensland. She bought my Mum back but she has decided that she wants to live up there in Queensland with my sister so she will be returning there soon.
It is my Uncle and Aunt's 60th wedding anniversary in a few weeks and she will be here until after that. Unfortunately I can't go to it as it is also my daughter's 21st birthday on the same night. My little miss Braticus informs me she is going to get me drunk on her birthday. Hahaha. Not happening. Last time I did that was at a christmas party 3 years ago and I never lived that down. The time before that was about 20 years earlier. Alcohol is no oracle.

Oracle

I searched for an oracle
For a moment of clarity
What I found was a man
Who told me the oracle
Is inside me
It always was there
You just need to find it
To use it.

*************************************

This morning is a bright sunny morning and I have been outside dead heading roses and pottering around the garden. I have missed doing that so much, but now in this house I can do it all again. I emptied the worm juice from my worm farm, watered it down and spread it amongst the roses in the front yard and watered some of the potted plants with it as well. Later today it will be hot again. There has been some unseasonably hot weather in Australia for the last week or so. Ah yes global warming , don't you love it? Not!
I try to do my bit in my own small way.
Think local, act global.
That phrase is one from an advertising campaign that was around a few years ago. I always liked it.
My own little bit of gardening oracle advice.
Feed the earth with that which comes from it. Organically.
Use less water, keep it clean and preserve what you have.
Choose plants with their particular water needs in mind.
Do not try to plant things just so you can prove that you can succeed with them even though you know they are not suitable to your area. Yes I know ...in my last post on the Botanic gardens here in Canberra I contradicted that. He he. But for home gardens I reckon it applies, leave the other stuff to the experts, and enjoy public gardens for what they provide us.
Love the earth and look after it in your own special way.
She is your mother.
Bye.
Love Linda.

Friday Fertilizer

G'Day,
Here is my entry this week for the Friday Fertilizer prompt.
On remembrance day I took my sister and Mum to show off one of my favorite places in Canberra. The National Botanical Gardens. I go there every few months to see what is happening and in what is in flower and I am never disappointed.
The gardens are quite new as far as gardens go but they have made a wonderful job of developing them for such a short time. They are set out in areas representing different botanical regions of Australia and all of the plants there are native to Australia.
I might not get all the plant names right but will list them as I know them. There are many species belonging to each genus that are similar except for differences of colour or region they come from.
The first picture above is one of the callistemons, or bottle brushes.

This to my mind, is one of the most spectacular plants there ever were. I love this. It is a Gymea Lily or properly known as Doryanthes Excelsior. It looks like something that would have been around in the age of the dinosaurs. It is huge but is very specialized in the area it grows. Namely along the eastern coast of N.S.W. and in a few small areas north into southern Queensland.
This is a close up of the Gymea lily flower head. I was lucky to be able to get this pic by climbing up on some rocks for a close up. It is about the size of 2 basketballs. Years ago I used to know this plant as black fellas spears but of course now that is very politically incorrect. Lots of these plants can be found, in their natural habitat, through the Royal National Park just south of Sydney.
The plant in the picture above is a Kangaroo paw. Now they are bred in different colors and with a fungus resistant rootstock for the home garden and have become a popular garden plant. Years ago they were not easy to grow in the eastern states and there were many disappointments, but now they are better. They are a western Australian native and floral emblem.

This is one of the Waratah family. Telopea, but not the famous one from around Sydney. I think this is the Dorrigo plateau version.
Close up of flower from above shrub.Waratah.
The tiny white flower above is (I think) one of the tea tree family. I don't know its proper name but it is in full flower at the moment.
Large everlasting daisy. Don't know its proper name but I know it as that. Might be called sunray.
Tiny delicate rock orchid.
Another of the many types of everlasting daisy. So called because the petals are dry and papery and if you dry out the flowers they last for ages, years even.
The picture above is of my elder sister Ellen. She is walking through a gully that is representative of the rain forests in the Macpherson Ranges area of southern Queensland. Magic eh. Amazing that the botanists who built the gardens in Canberra, where we have cold frosty winters and dry hot summers, have managed to create this giant, green, damp, semi tropical garden here. Who would guess from this picture that you were in Canberra Australia's capital city.
Twas funny, Ellen's sandals broke a short time into our walk and as my feet are tougher than hers, I gave her my shoes to wear and I wandered about with no shoes. Must have looked good. It was a bit hot on the feet too. But better than missing out.
Pink everlastings. Again I do not know their proper name. I tried to grow these a couple of times, unsuccessfully. They are so pretty.
One of the many grevilleas.
Yellow thingy? Flower heads 5 or 6 cm across.
I think this is a Geralton wax plant but they are normally pink to white so..? Another of the western Australian natives.
Tea Tree.
Native hibiscus, I think....... maybe. See the tiny beetle. Please correct me if you know better.

A potted display just outside the office and shop at the gardens. If you enlarge this, that big fluffy flower at the back is called a nulla nulla. The front one with the purple/pink tips is very similar but I don't know what it is. Pretty huh. Hope you like my selection from the gardens best in flower at the moment.
I am still having computer troubles. The phone line keeps dropping out and I keep loosing the connection, so in my frustration I have not been visiting other people via my blog lately. Please forgive me. I have not forgotten my blog mates, just finding it difficult at the moment to follow up on puter stuff. Please don't go away and desert me. Since moving house we have had a lot of trouble with this and when the contract with our current Internet provider expires in a few weeks we will be changing it over to a more reliable company. Welllll....hopefully more reliable.
When things hopefully improve I will get back to reading and commenting again.
Love Linda.

Sunday scribblings "Interview" Watching you watching me.

G'Day,
Interviews. I hate them. I hate being interviewed for employment. Hate it. There is nothing worse than being put in front of a panel of people whose job it is to judge you. I am not that strong that I can take that as a challenge, I find it completely intimidating. I know others love it though.
Last time I went for a job interview I was interviewed by two women who actually made me feel quasi comfortable. That is until I said that I had the occasional back ache. The faces went blank to me and they glanced at each other and I knew that was the end. Ah well, I knew I could have done the job, enjoyed it and done well at it. Their loss. That was about 14 months ago and I have not tried again since. I had a job, I still have a job and I am doing o.k. I know the quality of my work is very good and am told so . Ah this is making me sound so lame isn't it. Let me try another tack.
Interview. Um.
I do an interview each time I meet a new person. I have been doing a bit of this of late, meeting my new neighbors. (They seem like nice friendly normal people.) It is not just a verbal interview but a visual assessment as well. We all do it. We all check each other over to form some idea what sort of person we are dealing with. We look at physical features and facial expression then we search our memory for similarities with other characters we have known to help us make that assessment. We do this, consciously or not. Watching you watching me scenario. Some of us thrive on doing this others cringe from it.
I have learned however that my first ideas of a person is not always correct. The people who come across on first meeting as vibrant and exciting and whom I like instantly are often not the people I like later and visa verse. I like to try to reserve my judgment for later. Maybe that is my natural reticence when meeting new people and the self protective instinct kicking in.
Facial expressions are so important. I like to think I can read faces, especially when I get to know some one a little better.
Maybe that is a case of just being more tuned in to their wave length.
Maybe I am wrong and just a bloody idiot and my assessment of other people is warped beyond repair.
Maybe?
Maybe,
maybe......WHAT.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
I shouldn't be writing tonight.
But I am gonna post it anyway.
Another piece of blog drivel on the WWW.
Written by some silly old woman who hates interviews.
Bye
Love Linda.

Friday fertilizer.

G'Day ,
I am back to put in my two bobs worth at the Friday Fertilizer prompt that is run by 'Tootsie time". You can find her on my side bar. I am even posting on Friday. Howzat.
Oh looky looky what I got. I didn't plant these or prune them but I have watered them and fed them, does that count? They are wonderful aren't they? And as my friend Merle said the garden is mine while I am living here. Thanks Merle. I had been missing having my garden in Junee for so long. Merle, you helped me by saying that.
I can do this and cut them to admire and scent the inside of my house again. LOVE it. And I love this old antique ceramic vase, I think by the style of it, it is from the 1940's.
See, not all my vases are pottery. I did make some more this week at the pottery society Thursday drop in session though. Hehe, just in case I should ever run out.
Hey, side story, I am so dumb. Yesterday when I was there I weighed the candle thingy I made and went to pay for it. The price for firing and glazing the piece came to $37+ dollars. Cleaned out my wallet. I nearly died and was thinking I really will have to cut back on making bigger things. Anyway on the way home I realised that I had weighed the candle thingy on a pounds scale not a kilograms scale and had paid for the Kg weight. That made it over 2.2 times the price I should have paid. Bright eh!

I know the pics are not the brightest but it is cooler and threatening rain this morning. This rose is by the front steps. It is great, and has been open and holding its shape and colour for about 4 days now. Don't know the proper name.
This is a hybrid tea rose I think and if you could see it you might comment , like I did, wow, could this be any redder! Love red.
Bush rose out the front side fence.
One word. Delicate.
My Mum used to have this rose out the front of her house years ago. The color always reminded me of old fashioned lipstick so I used to call it the lipstick rose.
when I cleaned one of the house I do on Wednesday I couldn't resist cutting one of her roses and putting it inside her house. I wrote a little verse beside it for her.

A touch of
spring's perfection
A long stemmed
Red red rose.

Corny aren't I. I hope she didn't mind me cutting her rose.
Then I thought I might pick one of the beautiful red edged, white, double delight roses and leave another one, they have one of the best perfumes of any rose as well.

Red rose for love
Purity is white
A mix of the two is
A double delight.

I better go do some house work instead of playing in here. My sister and Mum are coming here today as a surprise for my birthday. Early because it is not for a few weeks yet but they were coming in this direction so....my god 50. I found out about the surprise last night by over hearing a phone call I wasn't supposed to. Oops.

Friday Fertilizer

G'Day again,
Two posts in one day. While I was sticky beaking around the blogosphere a while ago I came across this lady in Canada who has a prompt called "Friday Fertilizer". Hmmm I like that. So here are some pictures I took to celebrate spring here in Canberra around my garden.
I hope you enjoy them. The first one is out the front beside the drive way. It is Snow in Summer.
You know what these are. Even non gardeners can recognize a rose. There are quite a few around the yard all starting to break out in bloom at the moment. Lovely.



Above is a gorgeous Iris, behind that is Granny's Bonnets and in the pot behind that is a rhododendron. A friend gave me the Granny's Bonnet seeds years ago, she had been experimenting with cross pollinating them. They are also known as aquilegia and columbines. These purple ones are the plain ones, the crossed ones didn't come up this year as well as the purples. I want to divide the iris and spread them around the garden beds and get them out of these pots. I have russet red iris, a white and a blue ruffled one as well. An old man (Keith) who volunteered at Junee hospital when I worked there gave them to me and I bought them to Canberra with me.
I love these pretty perfumed dianthus. They are in good sized clumps around the front garden beds. Also known as clove pinks, from the same family as carnations. I have some double ones in pots but they are not flowering yet.
White Azalea in the driveway.
Million Bells and English daisies in a hanging pot out the back yard. Tough little fellas.
O.k, I hope I can follow the rules and stay with this one. Thanks for the opportunity. i will have a look at what others have put in this prompt. Should be good!
Bye Again.
Love Linda.

Sunday Scribblings "Adventure"

G'Day,
The prompt this week from Sunday Scribblings is "Adventure".
Well, your whole life is an adventure.
From start to finish.
The different stages we pass through on our journeys
all provide different adventures.
Learning along the way is its own adventure.

Yesterday afternoon I saw something horrible, very upsetting. I have been waiting to hear the news to confirm what I saw but nothing has been on as yet.
Over our house, almost every day, we see sky divers jumping out of planes. A bit before 5 yesterday afternoon I was out in the back yard when I heard a plane flying over and stopped to watch. Three parachutes came out of the plane. Two of them opened the third did not. I watched in horror as it fell picking up speed along the way. I think it would have landed near the oval on the other side of this suburb. I listened for ages but there were no sirens afterward so maybe it was not I person I saw falling. I could not actually see an outline of a person ( but then you don't from here) just the parachute falling with something underneath it. I so hope it was not a person I saw fall.
A few days earlier I was watching three others sky dive overhead and I actually heard a woman's voice screaming Whooo Hooo and I thought that was great. Not something I would ever attempt, but great fun I guess, if you are an adventurer of that kind. Peter's sister has done this many times. She reckons it is great.
Adventure comes to me in different , more gentle forms. I would never be brave enough to pursue such physical types of adventure.
When I was a child my cousin Joe and I were good mates and were always up to something together. We were called the terrible twins as he is just three weeks older than me. It is actually his birthday tomorrow. We will be 50. OMG. When we got together we had adventures. We did things that were probably thought of by our adult carers as dangerous, but we were just kids pushing and playing with the boundaries. We had heaps of fun together. Swimming in the canals around Griffith N.S.W. Joe trying to prove that you can't ride a horse past a camel at the show grounds without getting thrown off, eating fruit off the trees in the orchards until someone chased us, getting stuck in the middle of bindi patches without our shoes. When we were in our teens we used to go swimming in lake Albert every afternoon when Joe was staying at our place. He had his license then and we would burn around in Mum's old car. It didn't go very fast but we used to see how fast we could get out to Oura beach and try to knock a few minutes off the time each trip. They we would spin around on the river flats and have a great time. We always washed the car each afternoon so Mum would not know we had been playing in the mud/dirt. Mum thought that it was lovely that Joe was looking after her car so well. Hehehehe. God it is a wonder we are still here!
Yabbies are little crayfish that live in dams. Australian natives, fun for kids to catch and very tasty too, I reckon they taste better than prawns, but ouch if they nip you. One day (We were 9yrs old) we decided we would go Yabbying. Joe took some raw meat out of the freezer and put it on the roof of the shed in the sun the day before so it would go nice and smelly because the yabbies like it that way. We made our nets from old wire coat hangers and some chicken wire and took a roll of cotton from the sewing machine.
To catch yabbies you get a few feet of cotton, tie the smelly meat on one end and a stick on the other end. You throw the meat on the string into the dam where it is shallow an poke the stick into the mud at the edge of the dam. Then you watch for the string to get tugged. You slowly, slowly pull the string in until you can see the yabbie holding on to the meat, then you scoop the net underneath and get the yabbie in the net. Or if you are good you can slowly pull in the yabbie until it is at the edge of the water and then flick hard on the string and the yabbie flies through the air and up on the bank where you grab it quick before it gets back into the water and away. Sometimes you have 3 or 4 on the line. Lots of fun. I used to like doing it the second way because it was more exciting. Even more fun if someone was behind you and the flying yabby hit them and made them squeal. Anyway.
Next morning we took off early before the other kids were out of bed because we didn't want them tagging along, and besides Joe was annoyed at his older brother Denny for something, I can't remember what, and didn't want to include him. We left at dawn with our fishing gear in two buckets and walked for miles to a dam Joe knew had some Yabbies in it up near Scenic hill. We got a great haul and our two buckets were full and very heavy to carry back to Joe's house on the other side of town, but we did it, with lots of rest stops along the way. On the way home there was a black and white kitten that had been dumped outside a shop. We stopped at to buy a bottle of drink and asked the lady in the shop and she said the kitten had been there for a few days. Being kids we couldn't just leave it there could we? Joe carried it home with us inside his shirt, getting lots of flea bites on him along the way. He sent me inside first to butter up my Aunty Joan about the kitten. Hehehe. He had that cat for years. Then we boiled up a big pot of water and cooked our Yabbies and didn't give Denny, my older cousin, one of them.
Then there was the time we caught frogs in our gum boots to scare the girls with, I didn't consider myself a silly squealing girl but had fun teasing the ones who were. We also used to pinch petrol because it used to lay inside the hose from the pump in the back yard of my grandparents house. Then we would get some money and go down the shops and buy a box of matches and write things in the dirt and set them alight. We had a fascination for fire. I still do, pottery has earth, water and fire, my favorite things. I didn't think we were being dangerous because to our 9 year old minds we knew what we were doing. I don't think as an adult I would approve of kids wandering around at will like we were able to do in that country town years ago. Now days parents are paranoid about letting their kids loose. Which of course I understand as a parent when you read and hear on the news of the horrors that can happen. My own kids were a little in between these two extremes in their upbringing. They did have the pleasure of some freedom because they lived in a small town but were not left to wander as much as I was able to do just a few years earlier.
I think that kids adventures are important because they are a great learning experience. You can't learn the same from a T.V. screen or a computer game played safely inside your own lounge room, they are get no physical exercise from that.
But as a parent you think of all the what if's in letting your kids out to play without adult supervision.
Bye
Love Linda.