Sunday scribblings "Shipwreck"

G'day,
I Hope my post finds anyone who reads it, well.

Shipwreck?
Quite the ship wreck.
A world lived on the back of a tsunami.
Riding a merry go round.
A roller coaster.
Likely to slide off the wooden horse at speed.
Happy then sad then frustrated then angry.
Back and forth from one to the other.
And each in between.
Can't hurt anyone else, so hurt myself.
Quiet the shipwreck.


My old camera died or otherwise I could share the awakening world moving ever so slowly towards spring and it's new life.There are discoveries daily in my garden. A garden not planted by me, but encouraged with food I have given the earth since living here. Today I cut back the lemon tree at my kitchen window, it leaves were yellowed and dropping. From cold and lack of the right nutrients. I fed it a mixture of trace elements, seaweed extract and iron chelates. I hope it works. It bore lots of lovely fruit to share, but was looking very ill.
How analogous is that.
Popping up through the still cold soil in the front yard are bulbs. Tiny Tete-a Tete daffodils. fresh, golden and perfect in their display and some lovely hellebores, white, pink and dark, dark, purple. There are also tulips coming up around the place, not flowering as yet, grape hyacinth, daffodils and jonquils which are yet to burst into bloom. Bring on the warm sun.....please. I have planted poppies, yarrow, stocks, onions, veges, herbs and bits and bods around the yard too.
The roses have been pruned and their buds are forming up nicely. I have sprayed them for black spot along with the peach, nectarine and plum trees in the back yard which suffered from brown rot and leaf curl so cruelly last summer. You are supposed to spray the fruit trees at bud swell, their flowers are ready to pop open at any day so I hope they are better this season. At least I know that the yard and it's plants in this rented house are being cared for better now than when we first moved here.
The cherry trees and pears which are espaliered against the back fence are yet to be sprayed because the development of their buds is not at bud swell stage as yet. It might be a few more weeks before they begin to fatten and want to bloom.
I spent last night browsing through the gardening Australia web site, being inspired and learning how to do things with the plants I have, appropriate to this time of year. It is such a good place to spend some time and always gives me a smile. I take comfort in a way, that I do actually know some things and enjoy a refreshing of old knowledge in a subject that I love as well as learning more.
Yesterday, Sunday, Pete and I went for a drive to Goulburn to try to find his father's and grand parent's graves. We walked around and up and down the isles of head stones before asking a couple of other people there where that catholic sections were, to be told we were at the wrong cemetery all together. After a short drive we did find Nanna Lander and Pete's dad's graves. We spent some time scrubbing off old dirt and mold from their marble head stones with water stolen from rain filled vases on nearby graves. Then we left some of the little daffodils from the front garden and came back home. Something different to do on a cold afternoon I guess.
I was feeling that they deserved much more than a bare looking cement slab top with a moldy white marble headstone and we were planning to go back there with some some hand made ceramic tiles to decorate them with. I lay awake last night planning designs and glaze colors. But then we found that there are rules and regulations set in place by the local council that say we can not do anything to their graves without special permission and approval from them. So....even in death we are owned by rules. Hmmmm.
I have bought myself a new camera but have not learned to use it yet. When I work it out, with my dear son's help, I will be able to share in here again. The new camera is supposed to be faster, hold more, be good in low light, even be easy to use, has better zoom and more pixels etc etc etc, or so the sales person said. Which is.... as yet, to be proven to me with my limited technological abilities.
That's all for now.
Linda.

Sting - RUSSIANS (Live in Moscow)

G'Day again,
I posted this second song to go along with the previous song I put in here by Billy Joel.
It says more along the same vein as the other. Maybe we could direct the sentiments towards the war against terrorism and the way some interpret their religion, namely some branches of the extremists Muslim religion.
We have been through the same scenario many many times throughout history.
WHY!
Will we never learn?

Billy Joel - Leningrad

G'Day, G'Day, G'Day,
Someone I know in blogland said something about Billy Joel the other day.
Anyway, this is a favorite song of mine by him. If you have a listen to the words you will see why it stirs deep feelings within me. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye.
I don't like politics much and this song is a lot about that. However the underlying feeling that I get from it is .....
We are all human.
We all are the same.
We have the same set of needs where ever we live.
We love our kids, we want to get along with others...

maybe that is a big sweeping statement on my part.
Anyway I do.
I want to get along with the Russians, the Jews, the japs, the other peoples that we have fought with over our recent history.
Political or religious differences placed aside.
That's what the song is about.

Nowadays there are so many hurts between the Muslims and the other religions of the world.
Lashing out and kicking at people who are different to ourselves is causing much pain. And that takes a long long time to forgive.
The song is about making peace with enemies.
Or am I just another dreamer. A female's perspective to the worlds problems. Can they be solved by love. Can we forgive. We must.

Just back.

G'Day,
Yep we have been to the south coast again. These next few pictures were all taken this morning of Foxglove Spires garden at Tilba Tilba, south of Bateman's bay. I have been here before, years ago when the kids were small, but as is commonplace at that life stage, we didn't have the spare pennies to pay the entry price to go into the gardens to look around. Today we did. Oh they are so beautiful. Even in winter time. The owners sure have pulled off a coup showing their beauty and potential at this time of year. I must try to go back in a few months when everything is in bloom for spring. They would be wonderful then. I couldn't take many photos today because I think the memory card in my camera is going to die soon because it kept saying that the memory was full and even when I deleted some of the pics it wouldn't change and let me take more so...I really will have to go back, won't I.
Ok pic above is of Arum lilies at the gardens.
This is an iris. I have the same plant again at home in a large pot. My beautiful potting friend Kath Breed gave me a piece of it years ago. Here in Canberra it is colder, so mine is no where near flowering yet.
The gardens there are so lovely, down each pathway and around every corner are secret places to discover, to sit and soak up the view and contemplate. There was a for sale sign out the front, so If you have the money I am sure you could buy it for me,,, nah on second thoughts the present owners work would be too hard to live up to. I do so want a garden of my own again but not 3.2 hectares of it to look after. Hehehe.
Meadows of bulbs, scented with daphne and violets. Flower buds just beginning to swell with their promise of perfect spring colors to come.


Pathways that draw you down and around the next corner to discover a new vista.

And many woven archways and corridors , now bare branches but soon to be covered in flower, then cool green swathed tunnels in summer.
One of the things so nice about living here in Canberra is the access we have to wonderful places to see. We are close to the beaches, close to the bush, close to the snow and also close to the big smoke, Sydney. All within a few short hours drive. We drove down the King's highway, east to the coast at Bateman's bay, then turned south along the coast. We usually turn north from there, but this time we had a change. I have over the years been along all these roads before, but it is nice to recount old places and we have not been that way for years.
I may be biased but I still think that north of Bateman's bay is my favorite. But south of there is nice too, just rockier and smaller beaches mostly.
Anyway we visited some of the little towns in the area. Tuross Heads district; beautiful lakes there. Mirror surfaced and filled with tiny fishes seen from the boathouse wharf where we lunched on fish and chips, of course, what else would you eat in such a place.
Stayed overnight in a small motel at Narooma. We parked my little car right at the door of the suite and Rufus (our Jack Russell doggie) slept in the car. Had dinner at O'Brien's pub just down the road. Rufus enjoyed his doggie bag, lamb shank bones. Was funny though the bones were gone this morning, I guess a wandering doggie or a crow or some such, found them and cleaned them away for us. Sunday morning dawned damp but the rain soon disappeared.
This pic above is of a tangle of bushes at the bottom of the cliff face at Narooma. They looked like a great hiding place for kids to hide and play, they are most likely hollowed out underneath, as a pathway for animals to make their way down onto the beach below.
These two pictures are of a weathered rock formation on the beach at Narooma. It is called Australia rock, the reason for this, on viewing is obvious.
As my camera wasn't doing what it should so that is all of the pics I was able to share.
We also had a dawdle around Tilba village and visited the cheese factory and lolly shop there and of course, who could resist those, We didn't. The village is heritage listed and full of little craft and gift shops. We drove down further through Cobargo, and Bega down to Tathra where we stopped in a park beside the beach and cooked a BBQ lunch. Then had a bit of walk along the beach and a coffee on the footpath at the local bakery. We have been very naughty all weekend with our eating habits. Lollies, fried foods etc.
I will be good again tomorrow. ....I will!
Traveled home via Cooma. The traffic was substantial, with strings of cars heading home wards from the snow. Oh My God what do some of them think they are doing driving that way they do. I know they want to get home quickly but it would be nice if they got home in one piece, which was doubtful considering the risks some of them were taking. Bloody idiots. I saw some overtaking in very dangerous places with other cars coming towards them, tailgaters, even a semi tailgating a learner rider on a small motorbike, who nervously kept looking behind him but wouldn't pull over and let the truck pass. Temporary Australians, shame they might take someone else with them though.
Anyway. Must get myself a new memory card for my camera.
Bye.
Love Linda.

Change of direction.

G'Day,
Just thought I would pop in here and add a post to record what I have been doing this week. I have had a bit of a change in direction during the week. A compulsion to pick up a paint brush and take my scribblings one step further than bits and scraps of paper scribbled on.
So...what led me here?
On Thursday afternoon I went with a group of Potter's society members to the National Gallery here in Canberra for a guided tour of the indigenous art galleries and a talk and display in their study room of some ceramics held by the gallery of work by indigenous artists.
The first few pics added here are of a large ball placed near the entrance of the gallery done by an artist I have long loved and whom has inspired me with her works. In the study room we were given a talk which was mostly centered on her. We got to see and discuss about 5 of her pots not on display at the moment plus some other works.
She died earlier this year and as is custom after an aboriginal person's death, we should not say her tribal name. I don't know is that applies to writing it, as I do here. The plaque actually says she is called Thapich, which translated in her language is "that person". I always knew her by her other name, Thancoupie, which I have also seen spelt as Thanakupi. Her Mission name is Gloria Fletcher. The tour guide at the gallery gave 2 explanations of the reason for this. First one was that it would disturb her soul from concentrating on it's rest and the second possible reason was given as, If we don't say that person's name, we have to concentrate on not doing that, so we are thinking of them.
She began her study at east Sydney tech in the very early 70"s, so she was in Sydney the same time as me. She came to Sydney from the far north of Australia to study arts and came to love clay work, though that was not her original intention in studying arts. The custom of her people was that women did not work with clay, it was only men who were meant to do that, it was something done by men in their ceremonial practices and therefore sacred. So she had to go home to Weipa and talk to the elders and get their permission to work in clay, which, as reported, was quite a feat for a woman to achieve. It must have taken a lot of persuasion on her part to get them to bypass their traditional taboo and allow her to do that. Anyway she got her permission, and went back to study in Sydney with no other than Peter Rushforth (also recently deceased) and Shiga Shigeo, two people at the pinnacle of pottery here in this country. Wow, I wish I could have done that.
Gloria used her pottery pieces to tell her traditional stories, using the animals and symbols of her area. As aboriginal art does, of course, but Gloria did it in 3d, something that was pioneering work in indigenous art circles.
I walked around the sphere at the front of the gallery to show the different sides of the huge work. The ball is made from aluminium, a material she also chose to work with because, she said that where she comes from, Weipa is a bauxite mining area so she felt that working in aluminium made her closer to the country she came from.



Below is the plaque for the large sphere sculpture. I was not allowed to photograph the works inside the study room to share.
So on Saturday morning I went back to the gallery to purchase a book she had written and had another look at the indigenous galleries. Fantastic. Love that style of art. I was looking at some lino prints there and was thinking that the style of those was akin to some of my paper scribblings. Which, I think have been developing more lately and I have been spending more time playing with pens, textas and paper so I thought I would give it a try. Not to copy them, but to develop my stuff along that style. I have been playing a lot with sgraffito on my pots and the patterns I have done on some of them have been transferred from my scribblings, so I tried it with brushes in 3d. The next 3 photos are what has come from this over the last 3 days.
This one is called "Jump, Fly" It is sort of about getting out of a situation by flying over it. See the figure's feet are being hurt, so it grew wings to go above that. I did this today, it took me about 4 hours.
The scribble above is sort of about tree growing in rocky ground but surviving and what lies below that.
And... this one is called Pods. I find kurrajong seed pods keep popping up in my scribblings a lot. I did this one yesterday and last night.
I bought an a4 size pad of nice paper and some acrylic inks and acrylic paints to play with. Maybe they would look nice mounted between sheets of clear perspex? I dunno. I like them though. They are a bit weird, like me. Double click on the pics to enlarge.
Other than that....
I am still here, under difficulty but hoping for better. Idiot that I am.
Bye.
Love Linda.

Just because..

Cold Baby.

G'Day,
I haven't been in my blog for a while, as you can see from the date of my previous post in here. I am bad. I do so enjoy scribbling in here. I have been lazy, and busy, cold and working, tired and full up with other people and my house and family. Same as all women I guess. Anyway. Here I am.
I visited Josie's blog this afternoon and she has inspired me to write about my everyday. So what I did today.
This morning I stayed in bed. Lovely on cold mornings. I had my son's latest beau stay over night and he had to take her to work this morning. They didn't tell me what time she was to start so about 7.00 this morning i was thinking, Hm mm how to handle this one. She had previously told me that she started work early in the mornings, but today was a public holiday. I got up and decided that I would move around the house and make a bit of noise to wake them up discreetly without actually going into the room and disturbing them, so I flushed the toilet, walked up the hall scratched around in the kitchen and put the pots and fry pan away from last night's washing up. Turned the kitchen tap on and off a few times. Nope! no response. I went back down the hallway and popped back into bed to get warm watching the clock thinking "oh come on, don't be so silly" so I went and knocked on the door. Her starting time 10.30. Hahaha. Sorry kids.
Pete and I stayed in bed until a bit before 10.00 when I remembered that today was the day that there was a one day sale out at Watson for well known wood fire potter and his wife, Ian and Moraig Jones of Gundaroo, who had lost their home recently in a fire.
I had wanted to go and have a look because pots were donated by some very well known (big name) established potters from around the country and locally. There was some great work there. I really wanted to hear the opening of the exhibition by Janet Mansfield, if you are a potter, How's that for name dropping? Haha. What a wonderful gracious lady. She even made some small talk with me about a pot we were admiring.
Well we got there late and missed that. We went through the exhibition and I drooled over some of the luscious pottery and glazes there, but of course the ones that I drooled over were the ones I could not afford to buy. Didn't take my camera. They were very pleased with the turnout and much of the pottery was sold very very soon after the exhibition was opened.
Had a cuppa and a scone then I snuck out the back to the workrooms and checked up on some work that I had made a few weeks earlier and couldn't get back to on my usual Thursday pottery group day for the next few weeks because of extra work commitments. They were still soft enough to work with. I had this idea of little milk jugs with the handles cut from around the rim of the pot and bent down to form the handles. You know? one of those ideas that goes through your mind at 3.00 in the morning during a sleepless night when you can't seem to shut your whirring mind down no matter how hard you try. There were 6 of them. Three I wasn't pleased with so they went back into the clay bucket. The other 3 I played around with a bit. I liked the look of them but am not quite sure of the handle's functionality. They need more smoothing and finishing yet before I decide if they go back in the recycled clay buckets.
From there Peter and I decided that we would go over to have a look in the camping type shop there, at the kayaks. We both love kayaks/ canoes and have wanted a single one each to play with for quite a while now. Canberra is a good place for them with Lake Burley Griffin running through the middle of the city giving lots of lovely quiet water to play in. We saw a few we liked, which will give us a better idea of what we want when it eventually comes time that we can get them.
Went home via Manuka whee we were hoping to go to Zeffirelli's for a yummy pizza lunch but it was closing just as we got there so we missed out. A few doors down from there we went into a bakery and got a pie, cake and coffee for lunch instead. Was nice but nothing special as our taste buds had been awaiting those nice pizza's at Zeffirelli's. Oh well. On the way out of the underground car park I couldn't see the guttering because of the angle of the driveway and scraped my poor little car's tyres on the divider, Grrr!
Got home and sat on my bum in front of face book and brought my farm ville games up to date. Made inane comments to my friends posts etc. wasted time in general.
Went out the back to the garden and picked some nice silver beet leaves and said G'day to Fiona next door. Came in and prepared the silver beet to make into a spinach and fetta pie for tea. that's about it.
During that last few weeks I have been very boring. Much the same as always. Work, home, sleep, merry-go round type of thing. Our Boss Brett bought Michael and I a pair of redback work boots on Thursday last week so I am now legal to go onto construction sites for work. I look really pretty in my high visibility lime green vest, my hard hat and big boots. Yep!
My Mum who has been here with us since just before Christmas went back to Queensland on Friday morning to stay with my sister for what remains of the cold weather. We have , or more correctly, my sister has decided that it would be best all round if she were to go there for the cold weather and here for the warm weather, so we both know when we will will have her and when our breaks are coming. Poor old thing, it isn't fun being old. It is hard all round.
Anyway. After my break from writing, if you want to call my scribblings in here that, I am back.
Bye again......for now.
Love Linda.

Monday Memories. Family members.

G'Day,
Monday memories prompt site asks us to share a memory each week. This weeks suggestion was to write about a family member.
I choose more than one. I choose my Aunties and Uncles.
I have been lucky in my life to have quite a few family members whom I identify with. My Uncles and Aunties being amongst them.
My Dad's only sister My Aunty Marion whom I loved and whom I think I am a bit like. An earth mother. I hope so anyway. I have written about her on several occasions here in my Blog.
She lived on a 5 acre block on the river bank in a small town in the Hunter valley of New South Wales. My father's birthplace, Merriwa. A life style like that would be my choice if I ever could afford a bit of land and house of my own again. But really, the material things that remind us of passed loved ones are not the things we remember best about them. It is their personal attributes and influence that we try to follow by choice in our own lives.
I loved that she was the kind of person who could not turn away a person in need. That is something I have failed to accomplish, for fear of consequence.
I loved that she was a real worker. That is something that I think I have succeeded at, no matter how unpleasant the work attempted. Ethics and hard work.
She loved her plants and animals and rocks and walks and maybe I inherited those loves of mine from her.
I loved that she stayed in the one house for ever. Something I would love to be able to do, ah well my life is not finished yet is it. I guess that you could call that a yearning for stability. I am between two worlds on that one though. Wanting to explore my country as well as have that home base stability. I don't think she ever traveled much from her own local area during her life.
She influenced me with her jam and pickle making, I love to do that and I hate to see the things I have grown go to waste and want to preserve them. This past season I made fig jam, sweet mustard pickles, bread and butter pickles from cucumber and saved herb and flower seeds to replant next spring when it warms up again. All from the produce in my garden.
Other Aunts and Uncles.
Uncle Bill for his quiet strength and family values.
Uncle Wal for his adventure, quirkiness and love.
Aunty Joan for her acceptance of me and her sociability.
Uncle Roger for his stoicism.
Uncle Charlie for his sense of humor and cuteness, my Dad's twin.
Aunty Marg for her amiability.
Love them all, and others whom I didn't get to spend as much time with due to distance or other reasons. Uncles and Aunties are a definitive influence in our lives. I hope one day I might be thought of as that by some of my family.
And the world turns.
Bye. Love Linda.