Ice Cream Been

We've got rid of the big jacaranda and ice-cream bean trees by the back verandah - there will be sunny winter afternoons, hopefully also involving hot tea and buttered choc-chip muffins. Currently it's rainy season, so we only venture onto the deck to dry clothes really.
In an unexpected twist, clearing these trees away has allowed some Telstra signal into our back garden, so I can now get 1 bar on my phone, and can tweet without having to be within WiFi range.
We've also suddenly got about 300 bananas to eat (and give away!) now that the banana trees are getting sunlight and they're all ripening at once. The birds only seem to go for the top fruit, and they seem to have ripened pretty well without being bagged up or otherwise assisted - my favourite kind of crop.

Last week was a long week at work, and also involved plenty more chainsawing, breeze-block laying, and trench digging. I ended up staying up till midnight to get the crossword in for the local paper, and I was very pleased that I'd decided to take a break from doing an IT article each edition as well. C has been equally busy - as well as finishing off a commission for logos and artwork for a local business (Subject to the usual 300% bloat on the original requirements) she has also taken over responsibility for the monthly Nimbin events calendar, which is distributed to thousands of local homes, and keeps the village abreast of all the upcoming events and functions... I'm expecting to be on the inside track for any local gossip.
Despite the rush-rush, there has also been a sense of respite - it was also our first week with K in daycare all day Thursday and Friday - she seems to love it, and gets home pretty tired, which is, frankly, quite wonderful.

I've noticed that there are lots of flowers in mid Autumn here, almost like a second spring. I'm pretty ignorant about such things, but I'm guessing a lot of the plants here hedge their bets by flowering a second time for the migratory birds heading North, which are also very abundant around the autumnal equinox.

Our friend Amanda's 30th more or less coincided with my birthday this week, so we made her party the focus of the weekend - She and her partner John have a lovely place up at the Tuntable intentional community, and they threw an impressive bash complete with DJ. We usually seem to visit Tuntable at night - must get up there when it's light to check out the gardens and the views.

With the heavy rains, all the tree-stumps of the recently cut trees in our garden are sprouting little mushroom patches. When we turned the lights off for earth hour they seemed to glow white in the starlight.




Andale, andale.

Back down South

We went round to a friend's place in Holland Park for earth hour. They had bought candles to light the place up for the big lights-out at eight pm, and apparently didn't see any irony in sitting in their spa-pool on the balcony (which they said had pushed their last electricity bill to $700) to watch Brisbane's lights go out. It seemed churlish, as guests, to point out that there might be a contradiction there, so we relaxed with a glass of bubbly and enjoyed the evening instead. Why's the planet going to hell in a handbasket again? Oh, yeah...
Next morning, we had breakfast together in a Gabba cafe and headed into the CBD for yet more provisioning, before meeting up with Oscar and Aida, who wanted to see K again before we headed South.
My last week at work flew by, and we met up with my colleagues in town on Tuesday - because they wanted to say hi/bye to K as well. We also ended up trying to pick up the Tasmanian meatsafe twice more before it was finally ready, and even now there are bits of the original paint sticking stubbornly to the metal mesh. Getting the thing to a presentable state is becoming a labour of love.
After putting it off for a couple of years, I finally bought a walkman last week. I'm much happier with music in the background when going about everyday tasks, and should remember to never leave myself stranded without it, even for an hour or so - it can make the difference between a dark mood and a light mood, especially when alone.
The final packing and drive South was something of an adventure - tessellating all our possessions from our West End room into the car took me 4 hours, and unpacking everything at the far end took almost as long - so the packing and unpacking altogether took three times as long as the drive from West End to Nimbin. Foolishly, we decided to get a meal out in West End rather than trying to cook before heading out - our food took 90 minutes to arrive, and we ended up not hitting the road till after 9 Brisbane time, and getting home at 01:15 NSW time. Feeding the baby at 5am was even less fun than usual on Friday morning.
On Saturday we headed over to Nimbin sports ground for the first time ever. I'm not a great follower of any of the football codes they play in these parts, so I'd never thought to go along. On this occasion, it was because C had won a design competition for the Headers ( the local football-with -a-round-ball team) and three of her designs will soon figure on various bits of Headers merchandise. Once T-shirts are on sale, pictures will follow.
On Sunday we did the Lismore car boot sale - it's an unlikely venue for a great market, but I like markets and I'd venture that Lismore car boot sometimes verges on being a great market: It has live chickens, rednecks selling Eureka flags, a good selection of unhealthy fried food, and in excess of 50 stalls that sell absolutely nothing I could ever imagine being of any use to anyone, ever.
The first two days of the week back in Nimbin should have been all about getting ahead in my new job. Instead, both days were taken up almost entirely by felling trees. I'd negotiated a price on the understanding that I'd pitch in as a second groundsman while the chainsaw guy cut the trees down and the chipper bloke reduced the branches to wood chip. I'd expected the whole thing to be full-on, but I was surprised by how much bloody fun it was. I was also amazed at the speed and professionalism of the guys with the chainsaws - if you live in Northern rivers and need trees removing or shaping, I highly recommend the Treeshape guys. Not only did they take down four huge polonia trees and a large cocos palm, and reduce the whole lot (bar the trunks) to wood chip in less than a day and half, they also reshaped a fifth 30 metre tall Polonia to reduce the shade it cast and make it safer in high wind.
That's all done with now though, and I'm currently dealing with the more mundane issue of finding enough space around and about the place to dry out about a metric tonne of polonia heartwood - as I'm reliably informed it will only be good to use as firewood after next southern winter, in 2009.