It is very much spring in every way now. The days are getting longer, my garden is full of flowers! And it’s rainy and I have no plans so its the perfect day to blog.
I picked my 7 lemons! And made Lemon Butter and a double batch of slice, which was pretty much a whole day of baking. But its my favourite thing to do with lemons, a lovely gift to share with people, so it’s worth it. Otherwise my lemons would sit in the fridge because what else is worthy of them?
At the start of the month my roses had buds.
My first tulips bloomed, and poppies and the usual flowers are bringing me a lot of joy. I am also starting some seedlings for summer flowers and eggplant. I don’t usually do much in summer because of the heat but I will give it a shot this year.
The veggie garden is amazing right now. I’ve got beetroot to pick, kale, silverbeet, and a huge tomato bush flowering already.
One particularly nice Saturday I visited my brother (with Dad to fetch a car back) and then I went to the flower markets. I haven't been there in a very long time, after my original obsession wore off. They have expanded into a nearby warehouse and now have a greenhouse for plants, a cafe, a play room, and some small providors doing sour dough and cheese for sale. It was excellent. I bought a few things as well as a huge bunch of pink flowers I shared with mum.
A church girl had her 21st at Nelson Bay. It was really nice to be invited and hang out in the sun with them.
Another Saturday I went to the Aroma festival with church friends, it was super super windy, but that kept the numbers down. I bought heaps of bread and treats.
I've had a bare bulb on a lamp stand for a while since I finally demoted my ugly brown lamp shade to the garage. I haven't been able to find nice lamp shades anywhere. I finally discovered Early Settler has a small range, but not enough to my fancy compared to covering my own.
So I bit the bullet, bought a plain shade from bunnings and some spray glue from hot dollar, and did some craft.
It's all about careful cutting and gluing.
I'm really happy with the result!
It's fabric I bought from Nerida Hansen back in the boxing day sales. Linen. Brings me pride and joy now whenever I see it.
It was a big month for work. I went to Sydney one Monday for a session on government advertising on social media. It was an experience. I met an interesting person who worked in births deaths and marriages.
The website was finished and I organised a photo cake to celebrate.
Then I moved on to focus on the book I am writing and designing about the ARTP (Aboriginal Rural Training Program). This is a capacity building job for me, quite a learning curve, quite potentially stressful.
I had to travel down to Leeton to gather material from the team there. I also had dinner with a cousin. This is the snow I flew over on the way down.
This is the little Rex plane I flew in.
This is the Roxy at Leeton.
This is my temp office.
This is the start of the long, tree-lined driveways to the Yanco Ag Institute. It has orange tree groves to the right as well.
I managed to eat a lot of food in my motel, but the morning I flew out I treated myself to a cafe breakfast, with orange juice farmed by the cafe owner. It was lovely and I took a bottle home to mum.
When I got back, my rose leaves had started to open!
And then I got a cold, so wasn’t able to push through on the book with all the material I had gathered until I was better.
The DND group I joined has started playing Werewolf Legacy, which is a form of Mafia that has a long story arc. We played that for the first time just before I got sick. I am looking forward to the next game next weekend!
At the end of the month, the roses are leafy little bushes! I am now wondering when they will start getting long climbing stems.
I had an intense week at work just trying really hard to bring the ARTP book into shape. I had a bit of a confidence crisis on Wednesday, maybe I was tired and sick of it. But got through that and it's almost finished I think.
So on Thursday my manager suggested I do some short days, and I left mid afternoon and went to the art gallery. There was a Kathryn Del Martin exhibition (beautiful, but as my manager says, SCARY) and some Aboriginal art by local school children. The ARTP book has helped me learn more about Aboriginal cultures so I enjoyed that too.
I had afternoon tea at the gallery too. I unfortunately didn't bring a book! Maybe I should start "reading in cafes" again, because I have quite a few library books I still haven't read.
When I came out, there were police cars everywhere and a huge police response shutting down the main street in front of the gallery and town hall. Bizarre.
I've had a couple of floor scrubbing sessions this month. I figure if I scrub small sections each time I mop I will eventually do the whole floor. It is fiddly even with a long handled scrubber, but I love the result. Compare the left line with the right line.
I have also had a plumber come and replace my flexi hoses and fix a leak in my ensuite sink. He came on one of my sick days so I got to see him work, I was impressed with him and glad that job is done now. I'm really tired of organising all these house things. I just had leaf free gutter guard put on yesterday, so that's another house job done. Before the end of the year I need to sort out the change of strata manager, and I would also like to steam clean my carpets. And then after that, I am done. I vow to do no more projects or maintenance next year. No painting walls or anything. This year has been huge, I've done the pergola and all the washers and the strata research and the gutter guard research and added shelves to my tea cupboard and scrubbed grout and I forget what else. Next year, I will sit back and just LIVE here. Take a 12 month break from the To Do list. I am happy with all my improvements, but I think I need to draw a line under it and take a break.
I've not done much exercise this month, with the travel and being sick. I did however have a pinched nerve thing in my right hip, tingly legs and tight numbing pain etc, maybe brought on by sitting around when I had a cold. Stretching to relieve it made me realise how tight I am! So I have started doing Down Dog app yoga a bit more regularly, and it has been good. After a week I felt less tight, and nerves much better. I'm working on my motivation to get back into Jillian, but at the moment I am bored with it. I might look into gyms and classes. Also I have my rheumatologist appointment next week, so hopefully I'll find out what is good to do for that. The first 6 months this year weren't great, and I think mild aches and so on make it a bit harder to want to exercise. Like maybe I should be swimming instead of Jillian.
I really feel like I'm coming to the end of the stressful and busy season that started in April or maybe March. I'm planning to hopefully go to Mudgee in 3 weeks, after the book is finished, and then the rest of the year will be much more regular. I'll do another kids book, manage content and promotion, and see how they renovate my office and who comes in to work there. That will be interesting.
I'll finish with my view from the couch. Poppies, seedlings growing, flower pots being watered by rain. Good things.
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