Trooping the boards

Dolly, Sheep-sheep, and Punchinello were unwitting participants in this tableau. I always ask if I can bring my camera out and take photographs. She is okay with it perhaps 50% of the time. Alannah is just becoming comfortable with singing songs. It takes a lot of effort to develop a 'singing voice'. But then, she also has to remember the aounds to make, more than the words to sing. She does enjoy it.


I sing songs at the drop of a hat. When the local bus comes around the corner, I burst into song with its call sign and its destination and whether it is going up the hill or down the hill. I can never remember the latest 'tune' I used, but the musical phrases are all found in English folk songs of the 19th century. Often handed down to us as nursery rhymes.


This little song and dance was to 'Baa Baa Black Sheep', which I have now found as a video ... a dreaded video. Why they insist on having adverts in a nursery rhyme, confounds me. So just ignore, or remove the advert near the beginning. Instead of one of the bags being for the little boy down the lane, I always allocate it to 'Alannah Jane' who lives down the lane.


There are so many maturing signs going on at the moment, not just evidenced in the singing. We are also getting a more regular timetable. The mornings are a bit cold (and often wet) to be in the courtyard, so the day kicks off with sorting and colouring-in at the dining room table. We have morning tea about 10am which is followed by a 30 minute reading session. then we are outside until lunch just before midday, with a sleep starting about 12:30pm. I have a firm pattern with getting her to sleep which involves singing about 15 nursery rhymes. I am trying to find time to put these into a book for her upcoming 2nd birthday. Can you believe that Alannah will be 2 years old in under a month!


There is another reading session during the afternoon period, and I ensure there is a madcap chase-each-other session with dress-ups and singing (again!). This week just gone, street-watching came back into vogue, with Alannah even waving to people when prompted. It is astounding how many people wave and smile at her - young people as well as old. We are often out there now with a cat plonked on each of the gate posts, so I guess it is a cute sight.

Who doesn't like NOISY!

Being overhung with deciduous trees, and three story terraces, the courtyard is a challenge in winter, especially if the wind is whipping the leaves around our ankles. But, being troopers (read pig-headed and determined), we carry on regardless. Once we have surmounted the contretemps of the necessity for jackets and beanies. One out of two aint bad ...

We cycle through games and activities. Today's 'must-do' is tomorrow's 'meh'! And 'street-watching' is (temporarily, I'm sure) shelved for the mentally challenging game of 'Noisy'. Remember those little book-shop stuffers (like jelly beans in the check-out at Woolies), the Mister Men books, and their female counterpart. One of them is a 'noisy'. But they aint seen nutin' till they experience my Little Miss Noisy.

She did not need much, indeed any, encouragement to embrace this game whole-heartedly, and to recognise its potential in a myriad of situations. Take a plastic container (like an ex-yoghurt tub) and partly fill it with metal bells, like Morris Dancers have on their socks. Ensure the lid is held on tightly, then shake for all your worth, at the same time yelling at the top of your voice NOISY. Hunch your shoulders, put your finger to your lips, keep your hand still and whisper 'quiet'. Then seamlessly hit the noisy option again. Presto! A game is born.

Of course, there is nothing like a pesky adult to reverse the labels for the action, and, initially cause confusion, then the peak of hilarity. Ah, yes ... the Noisy/Quiet game is a wonder of the modern universe.

Talking the talk

I had a wonderful play date today with my 21 month grand-daughter, Alannah. It was a bleak, grey day where the mercury did not break 20C - which is cold for Sydney. We both kept our jackets on all day, but still spent most of the day in the courtyard.

Mummy and Daddy wore flowers in their hair. Mummy also wears a flag. Then you see the apartment and the steps we built.

We had two sessions of 'street watching', two sessions of Lego, read the same book twice ('A Fly went By'), sorted the slide pins into colour tubs and made lots of noise shaking them, then wrote a card which I put in the post immediately after her father arrived to take her home. While we were street-watching today, we watched the post-man cross the road with his heavy back-pack and his fist-ful of letters to deliver. Alannah will find the card in her letter-box tomorrow, which is her home-day with Mummy.

Ma frequently laid down on the job. Whereas, Alannah was 'taken' by her self-named figure, being given a lot of work to do.

When I want to take photographs, I always ask her permission. Often she says ‘NO’ (or today I even heard the variation ‘nope’), but every-so-often I will get a shy grin, a direct look and an ‘Okay’. Recently, on e-Bay I purchased a whole bunch of Duplo figures, because I want the play to revolve around people. I guess we have over 50 now. So we named them – Mummy, Daddy, Alannah, Ma, Grandad, and Pam. And then she spent ages opening the windows, getting the figures out, naming them, and returning them to different windows. She chats continuously, and rarely needs me to interject. Although, I chat about what I am playing, too. She is very good, now, in constructing with Duplo. She cannot build a house or anything like that. That is not what I mean, but she can join blocks together and sort the blocks into same-piles, either by size or by colour.

And our friend just likes to be with us and hear our chatter. When we play Lego he ‘sleeps’ often with one eye open. When we ‘street-watch’, he sits on the brick gate post beside Alannah.

Did I hear someone holler 'play'?

In another place, I am having a discussion about 'play' and how it differs now from when I was a child in the early '50s. I guess we look at our own upbringing with rose-coloured glasses to some extent, and we may also forget some of the things we did and why. I cannot remember back to when I was 18 months old, as Alannah is. However, I do have strong memories from when I was 5 until I was, let's use 10. For some of that time I lived in Hornsby, and for some of that time I lived on a farm outside Denman in the Upper Hunter Valley.

I had neither play-dough nor a sand pit, but I did Matchbox cars, and I did have a dirt patch in which to play.


This week, playing at Ma's, we introduced play-dough. I have no idea whether Alannah has used play-dough much before. She was hesitant on the Monday, but by the Wednesday she took to it with alacrity. For her, it has a very physical proponent. She like the feel of it, and the fact that she can mould it and pull it to bits. She is learning to roll it in her hands, and by next week maybe a ball will result. On Wednesday, I made her a Daddy and I made her a Mummy. We made balls, and snakes, and stars.

We have played with a sand-pit all year. We have play with small cars and trucks for longer than this year. But for the first time on Wednesday, we combined the two. We also used our collection of rocks, and shells, and leaves, to decorate the castle in the middle of our sand-pit, while the trucks brrrrmmmed around in the moat. I suspect this game with be expanded this coming week.

The solace of sweeping

There is a certain calmative effect engendered by the rhythmic sweeping of a courtyard.

See that massive tree towering over my courtyard, resplendent in its summer livery? Hiding within that livery lurk spots of bright orange, thousands of tiny seeds. Circular seeds. Hard seeds. Seeds that are now, in this fading summer that never-was, falling inexorably onto the bitumen and courtyard below. Just yesterday, I heard the first crunch-crunch as the passing traffic squashed them into oblivion. Noisily into oblivion.

Those that fall into my courtyard, do so silently, but nevertheless messily.

Following that denuding. comes the autumnal falling of leaves, and leaves, and leaves. For months on end. Seemingly until the lime shoots find their way through the branches with the turn into the spring. But before they sprout into incipient leaves, we have the floating of 'fluff'.

A spawning if you will ... a mess of a spawning.

A cycle that encompasses the year. A year of messes, which require sweeping. And sweeping is such sweet solace.

Saving grace

Every time that I move my place of abode, and it has been fairly frequent in the last 15 years, I declaim in my over-the-top way, that I must have dirt. I need to be rooted. Where I am at the moment is fairly expensive (and getting moreso with each contract), but the size of the outside is nearly as big as the size of the inside, and this suits me just fine. Not only does it sustain the inner me, but it also enables me to play host for play-dates with my grand-daughter, Alannah.


There have been, and continue to be, so many wild'n'wooly things happening in my 'greater' life in the last 12 months, that my daughter and I have agreed that it is time to move onto the next phase. We have agreed to find housing that suits her young family, and includes me as well. We are giving ourselves this calendar year to sort it out, and to find a property. They are all horribly expensive, and there is a specific layout that we are after. We have found one, but it is on the market now and we are not ready to action anything just yet. What we do know is that neither of us want to be involved with residental care for me, if we can sort an alternative.

But it will have a garden, and she is more than happy, nay overjoyed, if I were to take that on as my own personal fiefdom!

Virtual world of zombied friends

On 'Sydney Eye' durng this week gone, I made a crack about the younger generation and their penchant for mindless computer games and electronic gadetry. And I did not twig that what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. Being someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in a virtual blogging world, does that make me, and those with whom I am in touch, zombies. Well, to reassure folks, that would be a definite 'non'! And this little parcel from Ararat which arrived late Thursday, is proof of that particular pudding.


Inside the parcel - to open I did not beat around the bush, but went straight to the Stanley Knife - was a cornucopia of goodies: two jars of home-made jam; two brown paper bags of purple potatoes; and, a handwritten note. What joy! I even put the parcel into my caddee and took it out to MUH to walk Kirsten through it. She was entranced. The fact that she threw up nearly immediately, was by-the-by.


All through yesterday morning as my 'baby girl' underwent yet another round of surgery (the 5th in twelve months), I slaved around my courtyard moving anything that was heavy. Actually, everything that was heavy. I wanted the taller things to provide afternoon shade, and I wanted more space for child's play. And there is another issue. I have been losing plants of late. Not meaning they disappear over the fence. No, they simply cark it! Why? Why? Why? I ask myself. Out loud.

Too much rain? Not enough sun? Not enough watering? Or ... eerie music ... Is my upstairs neighbour doing nefarious things when I am not looking? I lost a large Lavender. I lost my Wollemi Pine. My Lemon tree is sickly (now I ask you, who could kill a lemon tree?) And that Gardenia Augusta up near the gate looks out for the count.

Ah, well, what the heck! Look what I just had for brekkie ...

Three steps empty and two steps full

It is all very confusing and disheartening at the moment. It could be the weather. It could be me. More likely a combination of the two. I am losing plants more than I like at the moment, and I cannot figure out why. I lost a Redwing Azalea. I lost a French Lavender. I lost a lime, and my lemon is not firing on all cyclinders. Now my Wollemi Pine has curvature of the spine. I also have an influx of pests. More snails than normal. White butterflies chasing the tomatoes that I have and the guy in the flat above me has. Because I spray my tomatoes, the WB lays on nearly everything else. I have to be assiduous in looking under leaves for green caterpillars. I also have an invasion of sucking midges, which are keen on my 'erbs. Trials and tribulations.


Anyway, here are some Rockmelons I am growing from seed using the 'market forces' philosophy. Give them a chance to prove their mettle, and then weed out the runts of the litter. I shall weed down to perhaps four, and then see how that goes. Neither the pumpkin nor the zucchini is overwhelming me with produce. They don't seem to be able to carry fruit to term.

Here is an afternoon shot of my courtyard. I wonder if I do not get enough direct sunlight to be successful with a veggie garden.

Schizophrenic sans paranoia

My courtyard is bordering on the split personality: on the one hand, I want it to be productive; yet, on the other, I want it to provide sheer beauty, and tumbling variety. As you know, it is not large, although it is large in context. I cannot think of another apartment which has as much outdoor space as it has indoor space. That is one of the reasons I am paying a kings-ransom I suppose. And I hav just signed on for a two-year lease. But it is everything I could wish for. I need my feet on terra-firma. I like to think that my cat's have an outside available, even though the lazy blighters do not use in anything like as much as they should. Except for Cooper, who is making up for lost ground.

I was going to show you the black bins in which I am growing veggies. You can sort of see it in the shot showing the rhubarb and the capsicum. I need to keep the water AND the fertiliser up to these bins, as most veggies are gross feeders. I will learn from this year for next.

Next week I shall endeavour to show you a long shot, from above, to enable you to orient yourself. Today's shots were taken after the first wave of storm activity. In the first grouping we have Russian-Red tomatoes, then Black-Jack zucchinis. Below them, there is the rhubarb and the (red) capsicum on the left, and a couple of strawberries on the right. Don't know what sort of strawberries. Sorry.

In the second grouping we have Corn-flower blue Lobelias, together with a tumblng succulent. Beside them there is the staghorn and the fig, both of which are flourishing. The staghorn is particularly partial to diced banana skins. Following this are two shots of assorted succulents. I like succulents as they are easy to progagate making them cheap, and they can survive in small pots.