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What is the connection between bloggers and CATS?
It would be easy to conclude that blogging and cat loving go hand-in-hand. Are there others, like me, who are allergic to cat hair and have an aversion to endless photos of smirking felines?
This, just posted by Sandhill Trek, says it all -
Thanks to the old Kerr Mudgeon for turning me on to this Bish cartoon (© 2005 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.).
I’ve just been reading in Anna’s blog, Self-winding, about the current Show and Tell on bedside tables. I wasn’t surprised to see that bloggers don’t have the neat sterile tables you see in display home bedrooms, where there is nothing but a designer lamp, a tasteful ornament and one presentable hard-back volume.
I had thought of photographing my table, but decided that a picture wouldn't do justice to the range of items hidden under the layers. My table has only 6 books on it at present – two of them lying open, face-down to remind me that I want to get back to them soon. But under the table is a shelf bearing 14 others and I must admit that some of them have been there a mighty long time. I am determined that I DO want to read them though, and am not ready to relegate them yet to the living-room book-case. Among them is a dictionary because it is so maddening to have to get up to look up a particular word when you find it impossible to read on without doing so.
Among the books on top are an unopened bushwalking newsletter (I never seem to get time for walking these days) a half-read Organic Growers’ newsletter and a long letter from an overseas friend who steadfastly refuses to learn email. Then there is the weekend newspaper 'Arts and Culture' supplement – from 2 weekends ago – and the bunch of business papers my husband insists I should make time to peruse. A few days in bed with a dose of the 'flu would come in rather handy - or perhaps that should be a few WEEKS.
My reading lamp is one of the swinging-arm types that directs light down onto the page and reduces glare for the other bed occupant. Until recently I had one of those wonderful little ‘Itty Bitty’ bed-lights that plugged into the power and clipped onto the page, but something happened with the wiring and I don’t think it's repairable. Behind the lamp is a phone extension handpiece, a box of tissues and one of those pop-top sports bottles that you can drink from while still lying down.
No hand-cream for me – but there is lip balm and heel balm to heal the cracks and fissures that come from having bare feet in open sandals almost all the year round. There is also a set of those wireless headphones for watching late-night TV, or slotting in a favourite CD while drifting off to sleep - but I don’t seem to have been doing much of either lately, since I took to staying up late at the computer reading my ever-expanding list of favourite blogs.
In surveying my bedside table the nagging thought comes to me once again - about doing something drastic to clear some of the clutter that always seems to surround me. I received an e-mailed ad. yesterday for the latest edition of Don Aslett’s Clutter's Last Stand -
When you can't find your way through your living room because too many things block your way; can't eat at the kitchen table because of the newspapers, books, car keys and canned goods piled on top; trip over shoes and clothing on the floor heading to bed, then you have a problem-you're a prisoner of clutter!
Things here are not quite that bad, but the book is an inspirational read and I think it’s time I read it again!
Well another interlude in our life is over. It was a surreal kind of weekend holed up in 5 star luxury at the hotel where the nuptials took place surrounded by family and friends - some old, but many new. Now back at home, for the past couple of days we have been in a strange kind of ennui as we contemplated all that had gone on and began picking up the threads of our usual existence.
Weddings, it seems, are a never-ending, sausage-machine business. At the Brisbane riverside hotel venue our daughter chose, we discovered that she was one of 5 or 6 brides last weekend. In the lobby and from the window of our room we were able to get a bird's eye view of the wedding groups who went before her - all more-or-less indistinguishable apart from the colours that the statutory three bridesmaids wore - one lot in pink, another in pale green and even one in black, for-goodness-sake. Twittering clumps of over-dressed guests were obvious in the lobby and courtyards, and from time to time another white stretch-limousine glided through the portico. Agile, black-clad photographers darted back and forth herding their respective quarries into the pre-set, obligatory spots for shoots. Their hyped-up, jovial bevies were first fanned across the sweeping staircase, then swept outside to be draped beside the fountain and finally jostled off to be shot in a casual cluster on the landing beside the water.
All so contrived. At times it seemed that all the photography had overtaken the event itself, and I thought about the awful unnecessary expense it was when so many guests were busy catching candid digital shots that would have far more popular appeal. I also thought about the magnificent white padded album of a niece's wedding photos that we only got to see when her mother pulled it down from a top shelf long after the couple had gone their separate ways. And the other neice who still had the debt for her video-taped Cinderella wedding to pay off after her marriage, also, was over.
Notwithstanding, our wedding went off without a hitch; it was a joyful time and everything turned out just as our CM had wanted. She is now formally attached to another family we hardly know, and gradually she will become more one of them than of us. But as far as we can see, they are a true-blue, solid, close-knit family who are ready to love her as much as we do. We are confident that she and her fine young man will make a go of it, and that is all we can ask.
People who live in the hinterlands are usually comfortable also living on the periphery of society; they enjoy their own company, have no yearnings for the high life and have forsaken all interest in fashion and style. But every so often an occasion demands that these reclusive types step out of their rural comfort zones. For example when a daughter elects to have a posh city wedding and creates a temporary vacant position for an elegant mother-of-the-bride. A position that you win without having to apply.
The feeling of being in unfamiliar territory begins with mild feelings of discomfort stepping into the first dress salon, progresses to some truly excruciating experiences in a beauty parlour and leads on to the horrors of being the oldest chook at a noisy hens' gathering of preening young urban pullets. To keep some perspective you need to watch out for some unexpected highs along the way. Hearing the manicurist's awesome life story was one of them. Meeting some very down-to-earth future in-laws, another.
Needless to say, this sow's ear isn't planning to be hoggin' any limelight on the big day!
It's been many weeks since anything new went into the garden. The potted cuttings from friends and other plants picked up here and there, have all been accumulating in the shade of the verandah or under the eves, waiting for cooler weather or even, heaven forbid, a shower of rain. Saturday was a little overcast and had a mellow feel. Time to clear some plants from the wings and get them into the garden's centre-stage.
First the two small babacos. Jenny Allen waxes lyrical about these in Paradise In Your Garden. With the reputation for being even nicer than a pawpaw, '... tasting of sherbet, melon and diluted pineapple, laced with a tinge of strawberry or even rose...', that was good enough for me! We had bought these from the nursery as one plant, but some weeks after planting, it had rotted off at ground level. We followed our instinct and chopped the still-live stem into two, and buried them in sand until they took root. Presto, two healthy plants.
Next we put in a yellow mangosteen. Promising exotic golden fruit on an attractive tree - it fitted the criteria we had set for our long term orchard.
Then came a clump of turmeric ( curcuma domestica) that had grown from a piece of stem we had purchased at last year's Herb Fair in Brisbane. The turmeric went in beside its ginger family relative, galangal, and near the similar looking clump of cardamom - all happily grouped in a semi-shaded spot.
cardamom clump
Each was tucked in with some buckets of home-made compost, with blood-and-bone and other organic additives. Last of all came a huge dousing of water and a little drip line to irrigate them from now on. By Sunday they were all postively beaming as they stretched out their roots into the softened soil and it seemed they had each grown by a foot overnight.
Lovely autumn! We don't have the coloured leaves or the bare branches of the cooler climes, so we don't always know when it has come. It's more about the sun losing its sting and the shadows stretching further - and being able to venture out in the midday sun.
Yesterday we brought in some kaffir limes, rosemary and chillies from the garden; I had found an enticing recipe for The Perfect Italian-style Lamb Shanks by David Herbert in The Australian that I wanted to try.
Whenever I see an attractive arrangement of fruit or vegetables it always brings to mind the paintings of Margaret Olley, one of my favourite Australian artists (although she herself 
prefers to be called a painter). Some of her works have been reproduced on this gallery site.
Margaret, now 82 and still painting in her Sydney home, was some years ago declared an Australian National Living Treasure. She specialises in still lifes - mostly sumptuous studies of flowers, fruit, or vegetables that she arranges and re-arranges on the antique furniture pieces dotted around her studio home.
My photographic study includes a bunch of herbs collected a few days ago - rosemary, winter tarragon and pineapple sage. I usually have a jug or two of fresh herbs on the sink or sideboard - anything that is blooming and will bring some fresh sights and smells to the kitchen. It's also easy then, to snap off a piece to toss into the teapot or the stew.
David Herbert's lamb shanks (cooked by my husband, to give credit where it is due) were superb. We added the kaffir lime zest on impulse, because they were there and seemed to have an affinity with the other ingredients. That is how it is when you have things sitting around in the kitchen. There are rather a lot of kaffir limes left for us to think about. We'll see where they end up in the coming week or two!
I have never been able to walk past a second-hand bookshop without having a trance-like experience of someone leaning out to take me by the shoulder and drag me inside. It’s nearly as bad at the general bookshops where I am always bailed up by those groaning tables of remaindered stock on the footpath (at practically all of them these days) and when I pass a few special ‘op shops’ that I know of, with caverns of wonderful musty volumes hidden down the back, where the books are not only grubby, but dirt cheap.
When a book is an absolute bargain it’s hard to pass up – even though you know deep down it may be more than 12 months (if indeed ever) before you get around to reading it – and by ‘reading’ I mean probably just selectively dipping in.
My shelves are crammed with hardly opened volumes, but I keep bringing more home; and they then have to jostle for space on the bedside table with two or three current library books, or on my desk with the unread catalogues and newsletters, or on one of several coffee tables with the flicked-through subscription magazines and piles of out-of-date middle sections from past weekend newspapers. (I love the way the newspapers are all in sections these days, so that you can quickly pull out the meaty more readable supplements and discard the Sport, Employment, Real Estate and Business sections without a second glance.)
I’m well aware that my eyes are bigger than my reading capacity, but I’m saving this vast stock of reading material for some future long train or car journey – or for the time when I may find myself laid up with a broken leg, or perhaps recuperating in hospital for a few months after some unexpected, massive surgery.
Yesterday I just couldn’t pass up SuperFoods: Fourteen foods that will change your life (with must-read sections on tofu and pumpkin) and from a Welsh born Australian - Nerys Purchon’s Handbook of Herbs (good pages on herb tea blends, to justify yet another herbal) – and both only $5.95! Last week it had been the RHS publication, Climbing Plants (only $4.95 and with a picture of my yearned for cobaea scandens!) and Stay young with yoga (my 6th yoga book, but better illustrated than the ones I bought back in the sixties and later for an eighties revival). [I am going to take up yoga again you know, I just need to make that start!]
Earlier this year I picked up second-hand volumes of The Gourmet’s Garden by Sydneysider Richard Beckett (a bit dated – written 1975), and Outback and Beyond, by Sidney Nolan’s wife Cynthia, on their intrepid travels in the Australian centre, back in 1949.
Before that, two previously unvisited op. shops had yielded The Meaning of Life (Ed. Klemke), Flowers for the Australian Cottage Border (Sarah Guest) and a recipe book, Almost Vegetarian by Karen Meyer (striking a chord with its by-line - ‘for those who can’t quite make the break’), while in an antique shop I came upon the aforementioned Flow, by Csikszentmihalyi, a writer I had previously only come across on the net.
I have to say that this is by no means a full list of my aquisitions; garden books are my biggest weakness and a few other recent finds have been the Reader’s Digest tome, Short Cuts to Great Gardens, an Australian classic, A Perfumed Garden, by Frances Kelly, and The Pleasures of Bush and Glasshouses (bought to inspire the completion of our half-finished shadehouse).
I love it when I can turn up an especially significant volume for a family member or friend. (Like Tjilpi's friend M, who delighted him with a copy of the very apt Tracks, Scats and Other Traces, about Australian mammals). Not long ago my son's girlfriend suprised me, too, with a little treasure - an anthology entitled My Favourite Plant (Ed. Kincaid), that she picked up at the Lifeline Bookfest. There have been several obscure war histories that I acquired for my husband over the years, and I have just purchased the richly illustrated Spiders and their Web Sites, for my insect preoccupied grandson.
Other remaindered books that last year came home clasped to my bosom, were the RHS Encyclopaedia of Herbs, and permaculturist Jenny Allen’s Paradise In Your Garden, a FABULOUS book for which I would have happily paid full price.
I wonder which book I will find time for reading today. Right now I’m flicking through my latest acquisition and contemplating putting together a cup of Nerys Purchon’s Refreshment Blend tea - made out of bergamot, lemon balm or lemon grass, borage leaves / flowers and lemon rind or orange peel. That, I hope, will justify buying her book.
A post script. My husband has kindly offered to break a leg for me if it will help with my reading schedule - and even more so if it will mean seeing the tops of a few tables once again.
I decided that the line the book meme had turned up for me, about edible evening primrose roots, must have been for a reason. No doubt a prompt to sample some for myself. I have only one evening primrose plant and hadn't noticed it for quite some time - in fact not since it had stopped flowering. I took a trowel, prepared to lift out the root if it appeared ready for eating. It was far too small - and I didn't want to lose my only plant anyway - but I did notice that the flower heads were now all brown and dried and full of tiny seeds. I also saw that I had originally noted on the plant tag that the seeds could be eaten on cereal.
I gathered some up for sampling. They were fine and crunchy like poppy-seed, and once inside, some more quick research turned up a confirmation that they could be used as a poppy-seed substitute. Since the highly beneficial evening primrose oil is pressed from these seeds, it would seem that eating them direct would have those same health benefits.
The seeds have now been put aside to be germinated and maybe to plant a small primrose crop. *Sigh*- one thing inevitably leads to another.
A new book meme is circulating and its rules are these:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
So -
Young, first year roots are sweet, and resemble salsify or parsnips.
This is as thrilling as life gets when you don't read novels! The quote is from the book I was reading yesterday, Isabell Shipard's 'How Can I Use HERBS In My Daily Life?' She was writing on Evening Primrose.
My other current read had little better to offer - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 'FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience', had this to say:
My grandfather at seventy could still recall passages from the three thousand lines of the Iliad he had to learn by heart in Greek to graduate from high school.
Yesterday was one of those dismal days that can occasionally take hold, when I just feel vaguely depressed and can't put my heart into anything. I had been away participating in a training course on a topic that had been absorbing and stimulating - as had been the company and the conversation. When I came home my head didn't come with me, so in desperation I took a walk outside to take stock of things in the garden. There were weeds everywhere, and fallen dead branches and rampant growth overdue for pruning! Apart from that, everything was dry and so watering became the first priority. Even though there were storm clouds gathering, we know well enough now that they can never be trusted, and so we drip-irrigate or hand-water anyway. Just on dusk I picked the last of the rosellas to make some cordial and gathered the calamondins and cumquats that were beginning to drop. Cumquat marmalade on toast is my absolute favourite for breakfast, and with a few from each of three trees there were just enough to make a batch.
So my evening last night watching the royal wedding was not entirely wasted; during the commercial breaks I slotted in the tedious task of de-seeding and finely slicing the fruit. This was then soaked overnight and the boiling took place today. The marmalade was a nice tart one and I can heartily recommend the recipe I always use - one I picked up from Don Burke's website some years ago. Cutting up the fruit is the hardest part, but is worth doing properly I tried a short-cut method once, where you boil up the whole fruit until soft and then slice it, but that was quite a messy process and the end result was not as good. So if you have a couple of cups of cumquats (the soft, oval Nagami variety are the best) or some of the bigger juicy calamondins or some chinottos, give Don's Cumquat Marmalade a try.
As it turned out, it did rain overnight and this morning I was up early to boil the marmalade and make a pot of lentil and herb soup. Wanting some background information on the New Guinea beans (cucurbita species) we found at yesterday's local farmers' market , I began browsing through what is for me the definitive herbal reference book, Isabell Shipard's How Can I Use Herbs In My Daily Life? Before long my mood had lifted and my mind was on potting and planting and more recipes to try. Isabell's book is like that - her knowledge is amazing and her fascination with herbs is infectious.
