Ah, a non-work day. Bliss!. It is so warm for the end of March, still in short sleeves. I was having a leisurely cup of tea looking out the window at my favourite view. I will miss this very much but looking forward as well.
I love libraries! I have requested a pile of herb garden books and can’t wait to pick them up. It is so fantastic that it is free. I remember talking to Hone Tuwhare and how the library opened up a magic world to him. Long may it continue, imagine, he may never have become a poet otherwise.
My latest library books…herb gardening for dummies.
My recent knitting obsession is chunky knit rugs. Not that I have made one yet but I am thinking about it.
I am a creature of habit so I decided to knit my dish cloths in wool and sew them together, back them with linen and then make it into a cushion (well strictly speaking asking my sister to do the cushion part). What do you think? Am I turning into a nutty old lady?
Love having the roses from the vege shop about. Bit of an extravagance at 7 dollars but I’m not buying coffee…. and they last much longer.There is nothing in life but to love and be loved. Well except beautiful linen, china tea cups, knitting….
It is so lovely having the day free to potter and make and do. Hope you are having a good day too, FG
In the last week or so a 53 year old fit, non-drinking, healthy-eating friend has had a stent put in his arteries, a friend’s 22 year old daughter has been diagnosed with MS and I’ve come across some other young people my Sam’s age who have so much to contend with.
I have just been having a drink at the local cafe, Fact-tree with a friend who gave me a gentle reminder that I am very lucky. (I may possibly have been voicing my concerns over money…)
And it reminded me of something that happened yesterday that I had pretty well put out of my mind. A friend’s car had broken down a few days ago and had to be left down at Waiouru. He had then had to hire a rental car to drive back to Auckland only to return yesterday to pick up the repaired car. As it is more than a 10 hour return trip I agreed to go along to keep him awake with my incessant chatter and generally keep him company.
We were driving along quite sedately in clear weather conditions in a fairly old Nissan rental when out of nowhere two tyres having fallen off the back of a truck, hurtled across our vision. This caused Bruce to slam on the brakes and swerve wildly, narrowly missing a steep ditch on my side of the road.
Fortunately we missed crashing into the ditch and continued shaken, but on our way. The truck driver was oblivious of the mayhem he had caused and we saw a further tyre that had also fallen off just down the road. We called *555 to report the incident because it was clear the driver had no idea what was happening.
There are so many “what ifs” -what if there had been a car right behind us, or coming in the opposite direction at exactly the same time. What if it had been raining as well, what if we hadn’t stopped to look at slippers? This blog post could so easily have been about something a great deal more serious.
So what am I dribbling on about? Same old stuff which I seem to forget at very regular intervals. I want to make time to have fun,
I took the opportunity for a bit of a laugh when we stopped just out of Tirau 🙂
enjoy the journey,
stop and smell the roses or…the cheeses. We love Over The Moon
I really must stop moaning about trivia and be grateful for health and friends and the sun on my back and a nice pear, ginger and mango smoothie.
I am anxious, just quietly, ( well, not very quietly) about my Sam being in Europe and going to countries like Turkey even though I went all through Asia on my own at the same age, including Iran, Syria and Turkey. But shit happens and you just have to hope you can deal with it. I can’t and wouldn’t want to stop him doing anything, just as I wouldn’t have stopped my husband going climbing. He died in a freak accident on a perfect day on the walk in when a crampon broke. And anyway, life happens while you are worrying so there is no point at all in worrying if you know what I mean ! I must make more effort to take my own advice…
I had a fabulous day and night with my BFF at the weekend so I’m going to savour that.
I am meeting another good friend shortly to discuss and repair her small knitting woes, I love doing this,-how lucky am I?
Time for a bit of March-end reflection. My life has been a bit topsy turvey this year with a having to return to work albeit only two days per week, going in a new direction personally, my son going overseas, selling this house, buying another and so on.
My health is suffering a bit, I haven’t been doing yoga regularly and I m not getting enough exercise (as usual) so I am trying to slow down and take stock. It is such bliss waking up knowing this isn’t a work day, not that I am not grateful for the work, I truly am. Sadly though, I am going to have to work at least part-time until I retire in 6 years time and do some saving as well. A younger friend has just been diagnosed with heart disease at 53 so I constantly remind myself to make the most of each day.
I am very excited as my BFF is coming to stay tonight. We have known each other since intermediate and while we don’t communicate all the time we know we are always there for each other.
I really enjoy thinking about things to eat and enjoy, getting the bed ready etc.
Fresh spinach for dinner.
I also spend far too much time looking through library books for things I love. I am going through a coarse line phase right now. I know it isn’t living the simple life! but I am hoping to at least buy quality and revive old furniture so I’m not buying and throwing out all the time. Some of my favourite things are highly recycled. The old oak table below belongs to a dear friend I met when babysitting her children. It was their dining table for five and I spent many hours around this table discussing my teenage angst.
My friend’s dining table. It holds a lot of important memories.
I read the quote below recently and having been really working on not talking about people so at least I become average! How easy it is to slip into meaningless and sometimes mean, gossip. Another friend was telling me recently that she ended a friendship when the person seem to relish the drama in this friend’s time of crisis. So rather than being supportive, she seemed to enjoy gossiping about it and reveling in the horror of it. Good decision to end that relationship!
Because I wanted the house to look as lovely as possible for the open homes I retrieved an old London habit of buying flowers from the fruit shop. I’d forgotten how much pleasure there is in a simple bunch of flowers. I had gone off flowers in a big way when my husband died and I now think of florist shop flowers as funeral flowers. I don’t like the stiff, formal arrangement in layers of paper that gets immediately thrown out but I do love bunches of the same flowers. My favourites are poppies, violets, and the blue and purple flowers whose name always escapes me.
Most fruit shop flowers are around 6 dollars so I am going to continue treating myself as they bring such pleasure.
They must have worked as we had a pre-auction offer straight after the first weekend of open homes which we accepted, brought the auction forward and it was sold before the billboard advertising had gone up. The sold sticker went up the same time as the billboard. I am a little sad for the people who made the pre-auction offer as they didn’t actually get the house and that must have been horrible for them.
We don’t move out until July 3.
Wasn’t so keen on finding this fellow down my night shirt this morning!
I have started attending a small poetry group and this is the poem I took along for it. I am still working on it.
Packing Up the Ties
Sitting amongst the packing boxes
He is sorting his ties. Some came as sets
with matching shirts, paisley was in for a while.
He has divided them into keepers and op shop.
Tweetie Bird is definitely op. Others he is not
so sure. The colour appeals or nostalgia.
Silk and stripe, bought at Waterloo station, the OE stint.
Gifts from friends with dubious colour sense,
The tie in the shape of a trout.
Actually he doesn’t wear ties anymore.
Still, the keepers are folded neatly for storage,
the ops in a recycled bag.
Loosened and loosed
they lie around our separate necks.
Nooses, now useless,
except for weddings or funerals
We will not attend together.
The last 6 weeks have been very busy getting- the house ready for sale, getting some work so I have an income and Sam leaving for his overseas trip. This has meant that my yoga, blog, knitting routine has been thrown into disarray.
Today, now that the house is on the market and all the hard work has been done I am trying to get back into a routine of living more simply and more stress-free. So yoga this morning, and knitting as well 🙂
Sam left last week for his big trip and is currently in Dublin. I try not to worry too much and just believe that he will be safe and have a load of experiences.
Last month I went to the Waiheke biannual sculpture walk. I think that I have been nearly every year. I have to say I was a bit disappointed this year and nothing really captivated my attention on the trail. I ended up taking pictures of the sculptural qualities of the plants rather than the actual sculptures. It occurs to me that nature must be the inspiration for so much art and sculpture work.
However, in the gallery that is part of the exhibition I was tempted to buy a small Michael Tuffery with which I plan to anoint my new house. Most of my paintings and art bits and pieces hold memories for me about an event or special occasion. I hope to put this up as a new beginning, a place to enjoy and be comfortable in.
The Māori kite is known as manu tukutuku or manu aute. Manu means both kite and bird, and the word tukutuku refers to the winding out of the line as the kite ascends. Kites were also known as pākau, a name for the wing of a bird.
Kites were flown for recreation, but they also had other purposes. They were used for divination – to gauge whether an attack on an enemy stronghold would be successful, or to locate wrongdoers. They were also a means of communication. It is said that when the founding ancestor of Ngāti Porou, Porourangi, died in Whāngārā, on the East Coast, a kite was flown and his brother Tahu, the founding ancestor of Ngāi Tahu, was able to see it from the South Island. Sometimes people would release a kite and follow it, claiming and occupying the place where it landed.
Kites were flown to celebrate the start of the Māori New Year, when Matariki (the Pleiades) appeared in the mid-winter night sky.
I am also doing quite a bit of fun day dreaming about the courtyard garden I will have. I will making an excursion to the library today to get some garden books out. I know I definitely want fragrance from herbs and lavender and also a kitchen potager for cooking. But, I am also quite inexperienced and a bit lazy so it has to be something manageable. The space is around 50 square metres so enough for sitting, dining and herbs and lemons I think.
The picture of the house shows the grass patch but I really don’t want this. I hope to have a lovely mystery kind of garden that doesn’t require mowing! I like the stones in the above picture.
I’m thinking I won’t have a place for my French bed inside…I guess it is a bit ambitious to think I could enclose a bit of garden for my bed…
I am going out to buy a card and some flowers as our lovely neighbour, Norm died on Saturday. Nobody could wish for a kinder, more vigilant neighbour. He tended our drive way and generally kept an eye on the whole lane. Thinking if his family.
Hello Fluffy Georgers, it’s me, finally finding time to sit and write. Sorry I have taken so long but a lot has been going on.
My partner and I have very amicably chosen different paths so we have been very busy getting the house to rights for selling. Quite a big job, doing all that packing and sorting and cleaning etc.
Fab friends who spend hours cleaning the pantry. thanks Sabina 🙂 xxDepressing stage of getting stuff packed but not yet stored.Sam’s room finally empty of the floor robe….The Spartenised kitchen!
We both love our house dearly and will miss the sun and light but also look back on the lovely nine years we shared here.
So…moving on. I have bought a terrassed house off the plan from Hobsonville Point and hope to be in by Christmas.
I looked all over the place but the pieces didn’t fit until I went there. I have always wanted to establish an eco village with friends and this is the closest I have found. Read all about the market, the sculpture walk, the eco principles etc. here:
This is my house, I am in the middle somewhere there. A friend looks to be buying one just two doors along which is really exciting as we will go through the process together.
I hope to get back in the swing of things now as the house will go on the market on Saturday. So if you know of anyone who wants to live in a loved and lovely sunny home do let me know. We live in the aptly named Sunnynook.
Sadly, as my financial parameters have shifted I will have to work at least part-time and am very grateful to have two days per week back at AUT. I am also having fun working with Dayle Candy from Harcourts. I came to know her while stalking open homes and now she is going to sell our place.
As I have had to store my tile gear for the rest of the year, I took my display boards to a cute wee shop in Milford called Arazzo and she has agreed to put them in her shop.
Please call in and see them if you are passing. Just in the main street down from the lights by the new cheese shop.
I have had a quiet day at home helping my son Sam sort everything for his four month adventure overseas. He leaves tomorrow. Feeling a little melancholy but of course delighted for him and hoping it will be fun, challenging, and interesting but also that he comes home safe and sound. He has been at home for a few weeks so it has been brilliant having live music in the house again. He is playing his travelling ukulele in preparation for his trip. Go well, Sammy, you are the best. xx
I hope the simple life will not elude me and just as a token reminder I sat and knitted a dish cloth last night in a rhythmic trance :). I have let yoga go by the wayside these last few frenetic weeks and so it isn’t surprising that I became quite sick last week. I will get on track now and loved reading a bit of Lauris Edmond last night.
She says:
I want to tell you about time, how strangely it behaves when you haven’t got much of it left: after 60 say, or 70, when you’d think it would
find itself squeezed so hard that like melting ice it would surely begin to shrink, each day looking smaller and smaller – well, it’s not so… (‘In Position’)
I am not going to shrink my life, so onward, with love! FG
