fiveandtwo

In Progress

So much in progress. It's a bit overwhelming. 

The hearth of our new cooker/heater/hot water heater. I looked and looked locally for tiles but nothing suited. For me, it was an excess of bland and ugly. Driving to pick up Giles from work one day...I  remembered. Ten or more years worth of broken china. I've always kept the patterned and coloured stuff. I'm about two thirds of the way through. Then to grout it.

Then there's the seedlings:

 

Which means I need to spend some time preparing here:

 

And then I need to make some clothes for me. Pants in particular. My last decent pair has been stained by "gardening in passing". You know, you see a weed or something as you walk past, bend to pull it out and before you know it you've been there half an hour in your "good clothes".

 

I'm a bit demoralised, I finished sewing pants that I began months ago. They still don't fit. Even after letting the darts out they're too small. Damn. 

I am really enjoying this book. Really. Much that is useful for me, and I consider myself a gardener with some experience. The magic square is one square metre which is the beginning of a larger garden or a garden that is in a tiny space. Or one that's manageable for a person with many other commitments. Add as many square metres as you can manage.

I read Lolo Houbein's Wrong Face in the Mirror: An Autobiography of Race and Identity many years ago and found it good. Then, recently at a market I found Walk a Barefoot Road. Haven't read it yet though, it's on the teetering "to read" pile.

I'm also in the throes of painting the latest round of built-ins.

 

This is the one in the kitchen, waiting for paint. There's also one in the loungeroom for TV/DVD/Video/CD Player, books and CDs. I'm doing this post while I'm waiting for the first top coat to dry.

There you have my excuses for posting sporadically. And also that the computer freezes for some unknown reason while I'm using Typepad - the only time it happens. I've learnt to save the draft after each paragraph and photo upload, since the only remedy I've found is to switch the computer off and resart. Anyone have ideas about this? It is very irritating, happening multiple times.

The Offending Vegetation.

Yes, I do have an overplanted nature strip, something I consider to be a Good Thing.

 

There are six young trees in amongst the shrubs and grasses. I'm aiming for a park-like effect in time. When the shrubs get all rangy and straggly I'll remove them. Spread around are walnut, almond and mulberry trees, two judas trees and a black wattle.

The owner of my favourite local CD shop was telling me that the council bulldozed his nature strip plantings a couple of years ago! I consider myself lucky after hearing that.

Just have to show these little coffee spoons that I found at the op-shop this week.

  

I've been keeping my eye out for some of these for years. The oppy Gods were smiling this day, for sure. Not just one spoon.  A complete set. In original box.  Swoon.

The very next shop yielded large, lustrous mother-of-pearl buttons. Those grey ones are the size of a fifty cent piece!

 

Ahhh, lucky me.