New Beginnings

I often find this time of year very reflective. The crazy busyness of the holiday season tends to bring out hours of thought and assessment of the year that will soon be over and the new one just around the corner. 

For awhile now I've been looking for a change. A new challenge to sink my teeth into. So I decided to apply for uni. I'm very excited to say that I have been offered a place next year to undertake a graduate diploma in arts management! I think this is the intellectual challenge that I've been looking for. 

While I don't remember the enrolment process being quite as involved last time round, largely to do with the questions asked for their statistic data collection, it was relatively easy and I'm looking forward to it. There seem to be a few people I know who are going back to or are already studying so I'm in fine company.

So now that I've enrolled it's time to start getting ready and also to enjoy a bit of pre-studying time as I'm sure I'll be busy next year!

Melbourne's weather has held up its reputation in the last couple of weeks. After a scorching 38˚C day followed close to a week of low twenty degree days. Sadly the respite is over and tomorrow we are expecting it to warm up to 37˚C. Of course Melbourne being the fine city that it is... Monday we're expecting rain and the temperature to drop back to 20˚C again. 

My plan is to drop the blinds in the house, crank up the fan and hope that the apartment retains the lovely coolness that we've cultivated over the past few days until the cool change comes through. Sadly I don't think I can haul all the plants back in off the balcony to do the same... something about most of them liking sunlight.  I really hope that they'll be okay in the heat as it was the heatwaves that decimated our balcony garden last time!

Our garden has grown a little with the addition of borage, soapwort, woad and some alpine strawberry. 

The borage is looking a little worse for the wear after spending two days in transit before seeing the light of day. Luckily the latter three are quite hardy and have perked up quite nicely after planting, a good water and some sun. 

Today we had our first harvest of spinach:

This was happily eaten for dinner along with some delicious wagyu burgers. 

I was also very happy to see the first zucchini buds for this year:

There really is something quite soothing about spending time tending to plants. Not to mention the immense satisfaction of harvesting your own home grown produce! 

Intentions

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” 
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

After a hiatus of close to 18 months I've decided to pick up my proverbial pen and start writing again.
It's taken me nearly two years to find my words again and if I'm being honest with myself I'm still finding the words to express myself after what were some of the hardest times in my life so far.

In the last 18 months I've been learning a bundle of new hand crafts including spinning yarn and weaving which have both taken up a bit of room but made me immensely happy. There's lovely sense of achievement processing raw fleece and turning it into yarn which you then make into something. Not as hard as you might think either!

I'm teaching myself to weave on a rigid heddle loom and so far my projects have been limited to some sample fabrics, scarves and tea towels. I have a vague obsession with the idea of making tea towels. Everyone one needs tea towels right?

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to head to New York with Andrew for a week long holiday. We saw some shows (Warhorse, Once, Bring it On, Peter & The Starcatcher, Newsies and Spiderman), ate some great food (a lot of pizza) and caught up with some friends. It was just the change of scenery that I needed.

Oh and we narrowly missed Hurricane Sandy. We flew out just before they closed New York. Despite watching the news while we were there, as the US Election was on, we managed to not hear a thing about the storm until we were at the airport where a little girl kept repeating "Mommy are we flying into the storm?". We thought she was referring to a thunderstorm.

A week after returning from NY I started work on a short touring gig which was great fun. Now that I'm back from travels, both work and play, I'm back into a bit of a nesting mode as we've just planted our first lot of plants in our second attempt at a balcony garden. Our new balcony has a lot more  light than our old one did. We also have a translucent blind now which means that we can actually see the plants so with any luck it will be harder to forget that they're out there.

We managed to (miraculously) germinate from seed some tomatoes, basil and capsicum. It was one of the most exciting things to wake up and discover a tiny shoot of green in the pot of dirt that hadn't been there when you went to bed last night. Possibly I need to get out more... but it was exciting to me! We've also planted some spinach, rosemary and zucchini seedlings.

Hopefully all the plants will have had the chance to establish before the blistering hot Summer hits. On that note it's time to check on them. It's our first 38˚C day this year... of course this being Melbourne we're set for storms and the low 20˚s tomorrow. Love it!