15th September 2009
8 years ago today we rocked the registry office… well, we said our vows and shed a few happy tears. It was only a few days after September 11 and the world still had that weird, tender feeling, but it was the day we had booked and planned for and we couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and get married. It was a lovely day.
Five years earlier Phil and I had moved into a share house in Fitzroy together and he gave me a cumquat tree for our first Christmas. It was a delightful surprise when it turned up on our front verandah, delivered by the wonderful folk from the Fitzroy Nursery.
I have always had this kind of (overly imaginative) idea that our tree reflects the state of our relationship – it’s always been happy and fruitful except for a short time during our first year when I think I may have been feeling scared and paranoid having met the “One”, and worried that he might not stick around. It sat out on our balcony above the dusty Fitzroy street away from light and water, and shed its leaves. Shortly afterwards we moved into a little house without the flat mates and it came back to life with lots of leaves and fruit.
13 years later, with love and pruning, rain and sun, our little cumquat is as happy as larry and produces chubby little cumquats in its cheery little pocket of our late Winter garden. There is a pot of marmalade cooking on the stove at this very moment, filling the house with delicious citrusy smells.
And of course, the One did stick around, otherwise he wouldn’t have been the One, right? I don’t know why I ever doubted it – except I thought he was too good to be true. But good he is, and true too.
Happy anniversary Phil.
PS. do you like my pun in the title? My Mum will roll her eyes as there is nothing she despises more than bad puns.
PPS. Oh no, I just burnt the marmalade. Now it’s appropriately BRONZE.
3rd September 2009
I was out picking herbs yesterday evening and I discovered the BEST smell combination. Fresias + Rosemary + Woodsmoke. If I was a freaky 18th Century perfumer, this is the exact combination of fragrances I would combine to capture a memory of the first days of spring.
20th November 2008
I am all over the place at the moment but it feels ok. I go where the mood takes me (which is quite often to the top shelf of the fridge door where there is a block of Green and Black’s white chocolate). So what am working on? From top to bottom: The hand quilting on Amelia’s quilt – that’s taking me a while. And I am still making lots of those punkdorf dolls. One for new baby Georgia, one for Lily, one for Amelia, a tiny one for Mirabel, one first cousin once removed Baby X and so on. The doll pictured is for new baby Georgina – the other’s neck was way too floppy and the puckering really annoyed me and this one is a vast improvement, (although, very annoyingly, the string inside the head which squeezes the face into the correct shape seems to have come adrift so she is still kind of wonky looking). Her name is Tali (until otherwise named) which is Tongan for “waiting”… she was almost entirely made while I waited for news of her birth. And under that? I am always working on the garden these days and I am waiting on capsicum seeds to germinate in my biodegradable toilet roll pots… I may have inadvertently overheated them. And below that are a couple of pieces of trashy old ebay finds which are waiting on the back porch for a lick of paint.
But the project that is exciting me most today? It’s not exactly a craft project, it’s more an exercise in project management. Here’s a little clue:
More to come later.
23rd August 2008
This has been one of those long winter weeks.
Phil is away working in California and both girls (and now me too) have been sick with temperatures and ear aches, and there have been sleepless nights and lots of hiding inside away from the chill and the rain. I am still not complaining about the rain (oh why didn’t we get a rainwater tank installed before the winter?)- but I took a fully recovered Amelia to a (disco) birthday party this afternoon and the car almost got bogged on the way home! Yes, it was Greensborough but honestly – that’s not exactly rural.
But at twilight tonight I realised I could hear blackbirds in the garden and I wandered outside and while the sky was still a cold-grey, I could smell blossom, so the end of our winter hibernation is nigh.
And look at the garden! Some serious work is needed in the vegie patch.
And I need to get to some marmalade making – the only cheerful thing in the garden are the kumquats.
Bring on Spring!
