Sheer indulgence

So we've been to Japan again. Three weeks have we indulged ourselves, and our feet barely touched the ground! This is the land of the best - THE BEST - trains in the world, the most efficiently run railways there are ... and what do all Japanese do when on such paragons of the train culture?
They all fall asleep!!

The end of an era.

Today was a sad day. Yesterday we took our last guinea piglets to Launceston to the pet shop and today Drew took his last pig in her cage up to a new home.

He has decided after all these years - and pigs - that it is time to give up his guinea pig keeping. It started all those years ago when Shannon went to Japan and left her Elspeth in his care. He bought Twistie as a mate for her and dozens of litters later it is all over.

Here are some of the memories.
Twistie's offspring were Abyssinian types with longer hair and crazy cowlicks! There were fabulous colour combinations and patterns.
And finally, the last pair that he kept, The Stig and Easter Bunny. All their offspring were smooth haired and solid coloured. When the Stig died unexpectedly, Drew rather lost heart and made the decision not to get another male. So when Sally, who has one of the Stig/Easter offspring already, was happy to accept the offer of Easter Bunny and her cage, it was time to say farewell to the cavy connection.

The garden seems a little quieter now.

In the pink ... or not.

It's been a cold winter this year and I've relished my nightly open fire and my sinful electric blanket at night. Come the equinox each autumn I also slip into my old faithful pyjamas. I bought them as separates and while they don't fulfil Drew's ideals of sexy nightwear, they've been a comfortable and discreet beige and taupe outfit. The knit top has short sleeves and scoop neck. I don't need the extra warmth around my neck. The pants alas have suddenly developed extra unwanted ventilation, so I took the opportunity of a trip to Devonport to replace them.

I mean, how simple is that? I sidled past the lingerie shop with its racks of long nighties and frilly little numbers and made a beeline for Sussan. There I was confronted with the colours of the season - pink and mint green. Now of all the colours in the world, the ones I can't wear are green, pink and yellow! So although I trawled through all the racks on special, there was nothing in my size that I could wear or even want to wear.

So what is it with pink? Why are we thrust into wearing it - from birth in fact? I guess it suits some people but it's such a helpless, ineffectual colour. I even find it difficult to place in the garden. It's hideous with red or orange or even most blues. It's such a fifties and sixties colour. In fact when we moved to our house at Riverside when I was in my teens, the 40s house was painted out in pink and pale green! Gran had one room repainted and we had one wall in pink, one in primrose and one in aqua. The other wall was polished blackwood cupboards. Eeeyuk!! I guess that's part of the reason for my cringe of pink, and, yes, pale green. It's all tied up in the angst of my adolescence!

But I have a favourite joke:
A man (from the sub-continent?) applies for a job at a call centre. The challenge is to use green, pink and yellow correctly in a sentence.
His response: "The phone rings, 'Green, green.'

I pink it up.

'Yellow?'"

He got the job!

In the end, I did find a pair of pj pants at el cheapo Best and Less. They're dark blue with owls all over them.

And, yes, the owls are pink!

The adventures of Shropshire Lass

I've always had a soft spot for my Rosa 'Shropshire Lass' ever since I rescued it as nothing more than a stick with a few miserable roots at one end and a couple of leaves at the other, languishing in a bargain bin on a late Spring Launceston street about 20 years ago. I could find out nothing about it at the time other than it was a David Austin rose so, in my ignorance, I planted it in the corner of a new garden bed I had created. Gradually it thrived and by year 2 it produced its first flush of large single blushed flowers hovering over the bush like scented butterflies. I knew by now that she flowered only once but I still didn't know that she was not a bush but a large shrub - and a wickedly thorned one at that.

And so it proved. She began to throw out long trailing arms, ensnaring the unwary visitor and as, at the time, I was a participant in the Open Gardens Scheme, something would have to be done. So Fer kindly helped me dig it out and we moved it to a choice new spot in the middle of a new bed where she could grow and flower unhindered. We had to cut her back of course and for two years she was very ugly and stunted and produced only one or two butterflies. Then she took off and she has been a miracle every November/December producing a breathtaking display.

Then this winter I looked at what she had become ...

She was overwhelming, choked and tangled, full of dead and spindly wood, and smothering everything around her. No more pussy-footing around - it was time to prune!

I know you're supposed to prune once-flowering roses after they've flowered but in this position everything else is growing around it and it's just too difficult to get at it so it has had to be now. It has taken me two days - agonisingly prickly days - but at last it's complete - and what a transformation!

She's had her revenge. I'm covered with scratches and embedded rose thorns and I have a bloodshot eye where she poked me in the corner with one of her freshly pruned stems. But I know she'll forgive me and the butterflies will fly again in early Summer.

Taking the line of least resistance.

It's August now and the last month of winter. It's time to get all that pruning and weeding done before everything starts to sprout. I've spent the last two weeks working my way around the garden cutting back, moving, transplanting and mulching as I go. But there always remain the hard tasks...

The current trend for using grasses in the garden has not left this gardener untouched! After a disastrous encounter with Miscanthus sinensis 'Zebrinus' which grew so massive that I had to take an axe to it, I've fallen in love with Miscanthus transmorrisonensis - so graceful and magic. But pruning these grasses invariably leaves a bunch of stubby stems on a dead looking plant and the grass doesn't always want to flourish afterwards.

Last year I burnt a clump of foxtail grasses and the result was decisive. Within a few days the clump sprouted again and performed better than before. So I tried it on the Miscanthus. Fire is so exciting! I know it's not PC to burn stuff, what with global warming and all that, but it proved to be the most effective way of treating the rather overwhelming clump. It has now been reduced to a cleaned up tuft brimming with potential.

Now ... where are my matches ...?

Pheobe's Garden

This is the final quilt in the series I've made for my niece's 5 children. Pheobe is the middle child and the quietest and least easy to get to know. The only thing I could find out about her is that she likes frangipanis. I'd always admired the medallion style quilt and I thought it was a good chance to make one.

I managed to find a fabric which had some frangipanis printed on it. There weren't a lot of them but it did have some butterflies printed on as well. It also provided me with a colour scheme for the quilt. I used a Cynthia England pattern to piece two larger butterflies for the central block: I later embroidered details onto them to give more definition. I found the medallion style quite challenging to make - so much bias work! Some parts bulged but thankfully it did"quilt out." the quilt is machine pieced and hand quilted using a poly/wool batting.

Ferry interesting

I'm now tackling the second piece of my intended opus and I'm focusing on my memories as a child of travelling on the trans-Derwent ferries in Hobart. My aunty Francie was living in Bellerive at that time and the ferry trip was the quickest and best way of crossing the Derwent. For some reason I want to make a piece of work celebrating these memories.

But which ferry to portray? The waters still held many of them in my early lifetime. My favourite was the Cartela (mainly because it began with the letter C and I had a preference for the letter C!) But Cartela was an excursion ferry and ranged far and wide up and down the Derwent. It was a special occasion to travel on the excursion ferries. The main timetabled ferries plying the Hobart-Bellerive route were the Derwent and the Rosny, double-ended and fast. When I knew them they'd been converted to diesel, as had the excursion ferries, their towering smoke stacks replaced with streamlined little modern caps. But at peak hour and holidays out would come the old back up ferry, SS Reemere. I'll never forget, on a bitter winter crossing, escaping my mother and finding my way to that big opening in her side were one could gaze down at the steam boiler and the men working her. The sensations of heat, sounds, the smell of burning coal, the flash of polished brass and the grime of grease and coal dust are indelible memories. I stood beside the men and other fascinated children and gave my heart to the steamers in all their grimy glory.

So that is why I'm using the Reemere as my inspiration even though she was less than pretty. You can see from the pictures that she went through three stages of development, from her construction in 1909 to her second phase, probably after purchase by the Reemere Steamship Co in 1926, to her final stage in 1942. Sadly she was later converted to a fishing boat and after an aborted attempt to restore her, she's ended up on a lake in NSW, possibly as a house boat.

Finally, here is a gratuitous shot of the Cartela in her glory days.