Late summer

A peaceful time of the year (when there are no bushfires, of course). Sunlight makes beautiful patterns on the walls in the afternoon and I am full of ideas for paintings, but no time to make them happen.

Paintings need time to germinate and bear fruit, but who has that luxury? No one I know. Still, I feel the need to make some creative stuff happen, and maybe I’ll insist on a day off next week.

A mountain garden

This time of year, late summer, my garden sulks. Everything is limp and tired and over it. Only the ornamental grasses still look pretty. The rest looks blah.

But my parent’s garden, which benefits from the relative cool of the mountains, looks lovely.

In which I grow older

It’s my birthday today. Mum had put some old photos together for me.

Me and Dad. Who looks younger?

With my mother and a random dog.

With Gran, my mother’s mother.

There was cake and champagne and cards.

And new books.

And flowers and a pretty candle holder from a vintage shop.

It was a good day.

(For those of you who want to know, I turned 45. I feel pretty good about that too.)

Today I am weary, but beauty surrounds me

You know those times when you are so tired, it’s like being drunk?

Yeah, I think this is one of those times. I shouldn’t be blogging or operating heavy machinery, so I’ll just leave you with these photos; a visual status report, if you like.

We’ll talk later, ‘kay?

Gratitude and loss

Dear Universe,

Thank you for bringing so many wonderful people here to this planet and to the tiny corner of it that I live in. I feel so much gratitude for their presence in my life.

Recently, one of my dearest friends lost her dad. Her loss is immeasurable, and not something I can speak for. But I can speak for my own smaller loss, for here was a man who had been in my life since I was, oh, I don’t know, around 14, when his youngest daughter and I became friends.

As a father of four, this man welcomed so many young people, friends of his children, into his home, always the warm and affable host. This man tolerated my own teenage foolishness and contempt for adult sensibilities with good humour. This man was always smarter than I realised and way smarter than me. This man gave me a reference that got me my first real job. This man took me to Miettas Lounge Bar for coffee after some staff function where I had too much to drink, and then made sure I got home safe and sound. This man gave me another reference that secured me a second, and more fun and exciting, job. This man came with his wife, my dear friend’s mother, to see my new-born babies, and walked the floor of our old Warrandyte house with a crying, colicky Max on his arm. This man has always looked out for me, for no other reason than his natural kindness.

So, thank you, Universe, for letting me be a small part of this man’s life; and thanks, not just for me, but for so many others who have also been all the better for knowing him. It’s a good thing.

All my love,
Shadygrey.

In which I take some time off and do some stuff

Happy Or-stray-lia Day for last Thursday everyone.

Did we take advantage and close the office on Friday as well, you may be wondering?

You bet we did. Un-Or-stray-lian not too, innit?

(Is anyone else addicted to these mints too? Cinnamon flavour, mmmm. I’m on my own with this in my household. Which is good.)

I came over all domestic and baked brownies. I make the best brownies, if I do say so myself. Yummy. If anyone wants to challenge me, I’m willing to stage a bake-off.

Also, I have been running. Every morning. I know. I thought I couldn’t too.

And stuffs a-brewing, artistically speaking. I have been playing around with pictures in my head and materials found in my art cupboard.

It’s all been fun. Back to work tomorrow, and hoping for a cool change. And rain. It’s still too darn hot. Love youse all. xx

Wrapping up Paris

I made a special gift for Pete for Christmas; a photo book of our trip to Paris in 2009. I have had the photos on my computer for 2 years without printing a single one of them, so it was about time I addressed that.

Once I had a look at the options, it got fun. I used Blurb to put it together; their software was very easy to use. I mucked around to my heart’s content with colours and layouts and text. So here is what I ended up with:

Two Weeks In Paris by A book by Shadygrey | Make Your Own Book

All printed up and delivered in time for Christmas. Didn’t I feel half smug? And the process was enjoyable; I could pretend I was some sort of book designer. And I was!

In which I am besotted yet simultaneously steely-eyed and resolute

It’s true. I am besotted with my new camera. All sorts of little scenes around the house are making me run to fetch it. Like; the colours of flowery china…

or the afternoon sun streaming through the kitchen window…

yes, even garlic looks poetic in that light.

Back at work this week, and I have continued photographing what I am wearing each morning; I am finding it so useful in assessing what I am wearing and forcing me to try new combinations. I have a lazy habit of just wearing the same thing over and over if I like it, but using the camera is breaking me of this. I don’t really want to put more of those photos on this blog, because it seems unnecessary and maybe a bit narcissistic. However, I would like to keep them in some order somewhere, just to jog my memory and keep me motivated. Maybe Flickr?

Hmm, more time on the computer. Not necessarily what I had in mind.

And how, you are asking, am I steely-eyed and resolute? Well, I have taken a good hard look at the state of the garden and at my ability to manage it. The upshot of which is that I have finally employed the services, for a few hours each week, of a gardener.

This is big for me. I’ve never paid anyone to help me with the garden maintenance before. It has never seemed worth spending the money on something I could tackle myself, if I just found the time and energy to do so. But to see Tony working in the garden, and to know that I have some assistance with that enormous weeding, trimming and tidying job that a large garden entails… well, I have actually felt a weight that I didn’t realise was there lift a little. Today he pulled masses of blackberries and weedy passionfruit rootstock out of the banksia rose hedge. And cleaned it away afterwards. Oh, happiness.

The plan is to have a bit of a blitz to get the garden under control, clean it up and perhaps simplify the garden beds a bit and then have Tony keep some less frequent, but more consistent, maintenance going.

I guess this all part of my on-going goal, which is to practise a little more self-care and not to succumb to the delusion that I have to do everything myself all the time. Learning to delegate work is now a part of my life journey. Well, it’s about time really, isn’t it? It’s all about time.

Random weekend photos

Wardrobe de-clutter

I did it! Yesterday I girded my loins and tackled my wardrobe. Yes indeed, there was much loin girding going on around these parts.

I pulled everything out, vacuumed, sorted and threw out stuff and put the remainder back in some sort of order. Triumph! I even sorted Pete’s ridiculously random pile of clothing into the proper drawers and boxes.

No, these are the AFTER shots. Seriously.

In my defence, I have a ridiculously tiny amount of cupboard space. I have a large chest of drawers to supplement this (not the blue one in the photo, that’s Petes), plus a mini chest of drawers next to my bed. But drawers are really only good for underwear and t-shirts, don’t you think? Anything else in drawers gets forgotten about. I also store some of my knitwear in a box under the bed. Being a fan of jackets, I tend to not wear much knitted clothing anyway, apart from a few cardigans. I loooove my jackets.

So I now have a bootload of stuff to go to the op shop.

I am hoping this re-organisation will invigorate my wardrobe and get me wearing clothes that I might otherwise have not considered. So what did I wear today? Lovers of flat shoes look away…

I love my gorgeous clogs. They’re from Funkis.

What else did I do yesterday? Well, I did one drawing, put on two loads of washing, watched two episodes from series three of ‘West Wing’, drank coffee and ate nutmeg cake and also rice cakes with avocado, mayonnaise, tomato and cucumber on them, took kids to the station, went to the fish shop and the supermarket and listened to David Bowie in between bursts of rain that was so loud on the tin roof that it drowned anything else out.

Yep. A lazy holiday day.