My courtyard

Here are my new digs with my persona starting to show. I do have a table to go with the black chairs but have to use that inside until I find a dining room table I like. I have a dining room. A dining room!

A sunroom. A laundry. A courtyard.
A dining room. A living room. A kitchen.
A bedroom. A bathroom.

Each area is quite commodious to these eyes.

This is the largest footprint I have held sway over for quite sometime. The tiling is a very mediterranean thing to do (the owner is Greek) but it is easy to clean and the cats love its coolness.

I waited for a bus to come past to show you how far I have to walk! It is only one bus route: the 389, which meanders charmingly through Paddington.

Now ... where was I?

This is a little treasure, which we are so lucky to have found. I say "we" because although I first found it online, it was my son-in-law who was convinced it was what I was after and who took me to check it out.

It is all on one level. The shower has space for a stool and is not over a bath. There are no internal stairs like at Glebe. It is about 5 minutes by car from Kirsten's place in Double Bay. It is about 100m from my father's nursing home and there is a bus stop right outside - important if the driving ban continues. It is the ground floor of three apartments and is entirely tiled - meaning very cool which I noted yesterday when the mercury topped 40C.

This first image is of the north facing sunroom directly inside the courtyard and exactly where I have set up my work space.


The other criteria were that I needed space for my cats and for my plants. So there is a large courtyard (which I now know to be common area but not used "much") which is tiled making it very easy to maintain - except maybe for the eucalypt droppings but the tree has such other delights that it can stay! The little "out" building across the courtyard houses the garage for apartment 3 and my laundry. In my head, this laundry is now my "shed" with all that connotes in the Australian psyche. These photos were all taken whilst waiting for the moving guys to bring my junk over from Glebe.

Tomorrow, I will start a leisurely tour showing how I have made the space my own in the last ten days.

Pining

Having been away from my garden, small as it is, since Tuesday 20th October (nearly 3 weeks), it has dawned on me how rent asunder I feel. In that time, I have seen it twice, plus we have endured a 37.5C day. I expect a lot of damage when we are re-united on Thursday.

But that will be a challenge for me to overcome which I shall relish.


These photos were taken in Vic Park as I walked up to the University on Friday to hand back my swipe card and say hoo-roo. Agapanthus and Jacaranda flower at the same time and are close to the same colours - except that aggies can also be white.

Come Friday, I will start to post about the new venue for my transportable garden1

Francais en Double Bay

After my second collapse in two weeks I was given these rules by the cardiologist: no driving until further notice; no up and down stairs; no living by yourself. So I am camping out with my daughter and SiL for a few weeks. The cardy cauterized a wayward whatsit that was causing the arrythmia (?sp) and I see him in 10 days. The neurologists are still trying to work out the vertigo and the seizure.

Having a BP reading of 60/40 was not nice ...

The purple haze has begun

Jacarandas are filling the blue of the sky all along my way to work. I took these photographs about 5:30 this afternoon as I sauntered home, much to the delight of a snuffling doberman.

There is nothing like homegrown tomatoes!

I bought this seedling at Gardens-r-Us on Gardeners Road on 20th September. The growth rate is astounding.

A spray from Tassie

Read this post in conjunction with the post on the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens which is up on Sydney Eye.