Upon arrival I did my customary tour of the main street, saying hello to the Op shop ladies, and Denise & Steven. In fact I grabbed Denise and we went and had a coffee and a natter at the Empire which was lovely.
While there I also received a call from Damien and Nicole who invited me to their place for dinner. Unfortunately, I had to reluctantly decline, as I already had dinner plans with the charming Jill from Kingower, I hate having to refuse invitations, but we'll catch up at another time.
Denise went back to her shop after our coffee, and I went up to MGM and said hello to Michelle. On the way back, everyone was gathered in front of the Emporium - Steve, Denise, David, Ruth & Michael - so of course I stopped for a quick hello also.
Finally got back to the house, and put my overalls on as I had a lot of weeding to do. With the rain, and the warm weather weeds have been rampant - and I wanted to give the actual plants a fighting chance.
Concentrated on the front beds - and got stuck in. It was an overcast day, and a bit cold (not freezing), but weeding is a relatively stationary activity and I was getting cold. Gordon dropped in to say hello, and I continued weeding as I chatted. I also commented that it didn't even look as though he had mown the grass/weeds a couple of weeks ago, as the weeds certainly had got quite high again. I recommended that he not cut the grass until after we were there for the long weekend, as last time I had gone around the bricks circling the trees with shears, so that Gordon could see where the bricks were, This was quite labour intensive, would have been much more efficient to use a whipper snipper, but I'm not really sure how to operate ours, - that's Justin's job. So I'll ask Justin to do this when we're there for the long weekend, and then Gordon can cut the grass after this. We also both agreed that it looked/felt like rain. I must be becoming a "country" person to have these weather premonitions.
Lots of other people also passed by and said hello - Val, Barb and Wilma walked past, and I gave Barb some calendulas on the way back. A couple from Gippsland, a woman took some photos as she was helping research a book on an Irish priest who had ended up in Inglewood, a couple of blokes from Bendigo - although none seemed to want to come and help me do the weeding. I even told them I had some gloves and overalls for them, but to no avail.
Anyway I gave myself until 5.15 to keep on weeding, and then I would gratefully pack up. I must admit I became something of a clock watcher, and jumped up at 5.15 to go back inside. If it was cold outside, it was even colder inside....and quite dark too, given the gloomy day. But, the shower was beckoning, for warmth more so than for cleaning, and I enthusiastically stood under it, just hot water, no cold at all, and gradually warmed up. I might have stood under it a bit longer than the Water conservation approved 3 minutes, but I had to get warm again, as Jill was coming at 6.30, and I wasn't going to light a fire for such a short period of time.
And yes, Jill arrived right on time, and yes, by this time it was raining gently, so we uncharacteristically drove the 100m or so to the Royal, as Jill has a walking cane, and it wouldn't have been comfortable in the rain.
Gordon was there with his wife, and some other people including Chris from Sharps, and Merle from the Op Shop was there also. As per last time there was a great selection of buffet foods :- spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and corn soup, at least 4 different Chinese meat dishes, fried rice, dim sum, stuffed capsicums, salad, mixed pizzas, meat and vegie lasagne etc. And then there were desserts, chocolate fondue, tiramisu, mini pavlovas and trifle. We had the tiramisu, and it was superb!
Jill l and I thought it was all pretty good, and talked about all sorts of things. At one stage I was talking about my preferred mode of seeing big ticket art exhibitions. As that was how we had seen the Viennese Masters exhibition at the National Gallery
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| internet photo of the Viennese Masters exhibition |
The Age newspaper subscribers were invited to attend a special Austrian dinner at the Gallery restaurant, and could then wander around the exhibition and look at the paintings without the crowds. Brilliant!
A lady at the next table joined in the conversation at that stage and mentioned Klimt, who was one of my favourite painters from that exhibition (call me a tradionalist but I find Egon Schiele a bit too tortured).
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| Klimt - the Kiss |
Anyway the lady introduced herself as Bridget and joined in the conversation with great gusto. She also told us that when she was young her aunt in Brisbane was great friends with Charles Blackman.
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| Internet photo of Charles Blackman in his customary beret |
and that he had given her a large painting from his Alice in Wonderland series.
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| Internet photo of one of the Alice in Wonderland photos |
As a 15 year old school girl, Bridget was not overly impressed with the painting, but tolerated it for her aunt's sake. Some years later, Barbara Blackman called up the aunt and wanted the painting back. The aunt initially refused saying that it was a present as they were friends, but Barbara insisted, and so the aunt gave it back. What a fab story!
Bridget also had a conspiracy theory that the missing Malaysian airliner MH 370 had been flown to Diego Garcia, and that the passengers and crew were being held there for some nefarious reason. I've just had a look on the internet and this view is held by other people also.
Well, the conversation kept flowing, and it was fabulous and varied. Jill told me some more stories from her life, and what an interesting life she has had. Makes me feel quite suburban and beige! We didn't really notice, but suddenly we were the last ones left in the dining room, everyone else had left. By this stage it was about 9.30, and we called it a night.
I got back home and watched an episode of Justified on the portable dvd player in bed,and fell asleep during the 2nd one.
Sunday morning, and it seemed to have rained all night, and then all through the day. I had planned to go out in the garden again for some more weeding, but it was just too miserable and wet.
So I planned some inside jobs ie putting the dried herbs in jars that had been hanging the kitchen for a while.
First the rosemary
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| Rosemary about to be put in jars |
Then the bay leaves
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| bay leaves about to be jarred |
And lastly the lemon thyme
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| dry thyme |
But I wanted to do more than this, Justin had recommended that I have an easy/relaxing day, but I wanted to get some things done, if not outside then inside. I thought I'd have a shot at putting some skim coat on the cracks in the small upstairs room in preparation for painting. I found a yellow tub of prepared skim coat. It wasn't polyfilla, (can't remember the brand) but some other equivalent. So I filled the small cracks, and hoped that I did a good enough job to satisfy Justin's exacting standards
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| proxy photo of yellow filler tub |
Also, given that Jill had said that she was thinning her Flanders poppies in her vegie beds, I thought I'd go and pay her a visit in Kingower and take her some calendulas that I was pulling out of my front pebble paths.
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| Internet shot of Flanders poppies |
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| internet shot of calendulas |
Seemed a good swap to me. Yes, she had already given me some poppy seeds in January, and I had scattered these, but I didn't see too many poppy seedlings during my weeding. Jill also gave me some Asian greens from her vegie garden, and commented that poppy seedlings often look like young cape weed plants. Whoops, I may have accidentally pulled out some poppy seedlings then.
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| Jill at home |
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| Ridley |
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| Jill & Ridley |
Well, we had a cup of coffee too, and warmed ourselves by the fire, but then I drove back to Inglewood, put a spray jacket over my overalls and planted the poppy seedlings and Asian greens
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| an off centre selfie in the rain |
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| the Asian greens and poppies from Jill's |
Yes, it was still raining, but I had to get those seedlings in the ground, as poppies are a bit tricky to transplant because of their very thin central root. But I'll hope for the best.
The legs on my overalls got quite soaked - but I persevered as I want to be rewarded with beautiful red poppies over Spring/Summer.
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| wet legs #1 |
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| wet leg #2 |
While wet, I harvested some ripe tomatoes, and was amazed at how vigorous the tomato plants still were. I understand that we've had a bit of frost already, so they'll die back soon, but there are still plenty of green tomatoes on them.
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| harvested "winter" tomatoes |
Water was also rushing out of the overflow pipes from the rain water tank, and puddles were forming
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| wet #1 |
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| wet #2 |
So, after the planting was all done, I changed into a new dry pair of overalls and recommenced filling cracks upstairs. Unfortunately the photo isn't that thrilling
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| filled cracks |
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