That was the week that was....

exciting, nerve wracking and busy!
Busy, because I am still in the throes of decluttering, brutally tossing out things that have accumulated like debris on a beach after a major shipwreck.
I have to search back into the memory banks to figure out when I decided that two complete sets of Blue Willow china, enough to cater for 16, became necessary. In future, to hell with the environment I say, if I ever have 16 people cluttering up my new much smaller place I will use paper plates! ( hope my friends will excuse my little outburst about the environment, I will recycle the plates).
After a visit from the local "antiquarian" my cupboards are a little like Mother Hubbard's but alas my purse is not much heavier. Nevertheless, it is a relief to unburden oneself of too many things, there is a definite spring to my step as I toss yet another accumulation of shredded paper into the recycle bin.
Nerve wracking because we have made an offer on an apartment and been accepted and pending paperwork we are committed to living in a very small two bedroom apartment until the local nursing home or undertaker gets first pick! The trade off in space will, I hope be compensated for by the view from the large deck where I plan to spend every  clement moment watching the passing parade of ships and people.

This is the view, courtesy of the Real Estate agent's brochure, from the deck. Newcastle harbour is very much a working harbour and is busy with large cargo ships, tugs and on the weekend pleasure craft. The view of the wheat silos and loading facility is especially dear to the Prof's heart, he being a plant geneticist involved with the wheat industry for most of his working life.
So I am trading this,

For the above and hope I don't live to regret it!

A bit of this and a bit of that and a whole lot of mess!

A fairly long break from blogging but I have not been idle.
Itchy feet ( ?) a change in health and the need to declutter have kept me busy. Almost fifty years of married life and I am horrified by the amount of 'stuff' we have accumulated. This is notwithstanding several major moves and previous attempts at clearing out our possessions.
What is exercising my mind at the moment is how to dispose of the many non valuable but sentimental items that I have inherited. I am sure  that neither of my children will want them, certainly the grandchildren will not but they do not fit into my contemplated future. Does one bite the bullet and cast them adrift or leave it to the next generation to do that? All of these things have become quite burdensome and one feels guilty to even think of giving them away. I am constantly reminded of that awful song by the very naughty Barry Humphries,'The Night We Burnt My Mother's Things".
We are currently searching for an apartment, with a view, to compensate for the loss of the garden. Believing as I do that I am quite an adaptable person I am sure nonetheless that I will have a balcony stuffed with plants as I go through the process of grieving for the garden. The Prof is completely oblivious of his surroundings and as long as there is a cup of tea and access to sports on cable TV he will be happy. You may wonder why we are thinking of the move but I have seen too many older friends sitting in a big house as the wind whistles through the deserted bedrooms and watching it slowly deteriorate around them. Better to jump than be pushed I say!
The changes may be in the medium to longer term as we hunt for the perfect place but in the meanwhile it is sooo good to toss things out!
A couple of etegami fitted in between slashing and shredding this week.

 

The Dog is a stamp and I tried many captions but I like this one best as it suits my present mood.

The answer...

What is the question? Well it is the question that bugged the ancient Egyptians terribly, in fact they even deified a bug that rolled around a ball of dung for goodness sake!
The question is; "Where does the sun go when we can't see it?"I do strain to see the similarity of said dung and the sun but it made sense to the Egyptians I guess.
Now you can tell me the earth is round yadda yadda, but my answer is much more palatable, edible in fact. The sun sleeps in the fruits we grow and every morning a little bit stays behind!
Do you like that explanation for the wonderful colour in my latest crop of persimmons? (Don't ask me what happens in winter, some things just have to be taken on faith). I have been enjoying the crop, trying to draw it in Adobe Illustrator (#&*#) and just admiring the colour. I finally went back to my most enjoyable option and did an etegami.

The persimmon tree is in the front garden and almost every day when it is in fruit someone asks what it is. Some people don't like the slippery texture of the ripe fruit but the Chinese lady who serves us dinner every Thursday night at the local club didn't hesitate when I offered  her a share.
We have had bumper crops this year of grapes and mangoes. The grapes are the old Isabella type,which have a delicious intense musky flavour but many are put off by the hard skins and the seeds. It is funny that all of my friends, when they eat the grapes,  say "My grandma grew  these and I love the memories they bring back". My grandma grew them as well.
The mangoes have survived because I bagged the fruit (sometimes in a fairly unorthodox way by putting our odd socks on them..a funny sight but it worked) the fruit bats and fruit fly left them alone so it is mangoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner but I never tire of them.
Winter is when the citrus fruit comes in but this year is not so good for them, you win some you lose some.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Be warned before reading and take note of the subtitle of this blog "Diary of a wasted life". Ah well, the Prof assures me that most people do not rise above the mundane so I am not alone in filling my time with trivia.
A little potting up of succulents in the three pairs of superannuated Crocs I have been hoarding, naff (adjective, Brit. lacking taste or style) I know but a good way to keep something out of landfill. The inevitable etegami followed.

 It pleased me to consider myself sabotaging the natural progression of such things from factory to rubbish dump but I guess it is only a temporary reprieve.

Another project is the passel of bunnies ready to go off for Easter, they do seem to multiply like, well rabbits!

Ten days alone.

Yes, the Prof has been away for ten days, dealing with some issues overseas and I have been guilty of one (?) of the seven deadly sins, (sloth for the curious!).
It is so easy to slip into a routine of waking late, going to bed late, eating to please oneself that it will be difficult to go back to the well  established routines. A family health crisis has kept me from feeling very creative so any efforts have been rather of the 'handle turning' kind I am afraid. Things are sorted now, so, heigh ho, it's back to work we go.
The garden is burgeoning but in that "early autumn, we've had a lot of rain, miss Haversham kind of neglected look". That reminds, me I should clear the dining room table, a couple of friends are expecting to be able to eat there tonight.
Apart from knitting rabbits, egg cozies and various animalia, I have been captivated by my latest project, stuffed lotus pods. No, you don't eat them precious, they are stuffed with fabric and fiberfill to make rather neat pincushions. Saw the idea on a friend's FB page and finally got to do something with the pods I have been hoarding from the last few summers. My very first and rather pretentious blog entry was about beauty, illustrated with a photo of my lotus in bloom.
A couple of etegami, the first again about the garden, we imported a load of soil and also it seems myriad kinds of fungi which I am enjoying at the moment after our heavy rain. The second, a card to contribute to a call for a "Cat Band" being assembled by a Japanese lady, a friend of a friend. Of course every band needs a singer so that was my contribution.

I have recovered...

from the Haggis well enough to tell the tale.
IT wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (sheep's gizzards and various spare bits, mixed up with a fair amount of fat and oatmeal served with mashed 'tatties and neeps, that's turnip for you ignorant folk) but the fun thing was the ceremony surrounding it. Our host played a video of himself giving the "Address to the haggis" at a Burns night ("Oh Prince of Puddins" was about all I could decipher from the Scots brogue) . The haggis itself is rather gluey and I could imagine it stickin' to yer rrrribs on a cold Highland moor, being served up in the middle of an Aussie summer was possibly not fair to the Haggis. After the meal we kicked back with a wee glass in our hands and watched a video of The Highlander, well, anything with Liam Neeson is okay by me.
A quiet afternoon and some etegami making, still a little bit infatuated with making stamps,( not always successfully) I do like the dog though.

There are at least three other people in our etegami clique who are as besotted by dogs as I am.

I have been listening to songs from my youth and this one "Vincent" by Don Mclean is just about my favourite of all time. Anything by Carol King comes a close second.

A stamped version.

One of the joys...

of getting older, (received a missive the other day from the Labor party inviting me to a workshop on issues confronting the elderly, I was only momentarily insulted and then started to stare reality in the face!), I digress.  As I was saying it is nice to be retired and have more time (or less whatever way you look at it) and I got to thinking that now I do have more time for my friends, no longer tied down and busy, busy, busy. Looking back however that busyness was sometimes just an excuse for laziness.
So as usual I have made a postcard using a carved dragonfly stamp to remind myself that friends are all.

And on that note we are off tonight to a Scottish friend's house to eat...Haggis and work our way through his extensive whiskey collection....just wee sips mind you...(makes funny Scottish noise approximating throat clearing).

The Devil makes work for idle hands....

so, just in case he is lurking around I try to keep busy while doing mindless things such as watching TV or listening to trashy audiobooks. Hence, my ongoing obsession with knitting. Not the useful,"oh what a beautiful sweater, did you make it yourself?" kind of knitting, but fun knitting. In order to do this I trawl the internet looking for patterns such as this one; http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dog-tea-cosy, by Rian Anderson, a Grommit lookalike.

So while the Universe dictates that I spend a lot of time sitting around, the least I can do is clutter it up with silly stuff like this.

If my heart had wings...

It would fly a million miles and deliver my valentine etegami personally to all of my wonderful online friends in the Etegami Fun Club.
It would make an extra special delivery to our etegami "mother" DosankoDebbie who is currently snowed under (literally) in Sapporo. It is Debbie who has opened up a great wide world of friends through her Facebook page and her gentle guidance in the mysteriesof of Japanese "picture letters", all the while tolerating our individual interpretations of the "rules".
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words and in many cases that is true for a lot of us, Japanese, and westerners who do not speak the other's language. Sometimes the picture is enough and at other times Debbie will help by translating Japanese to English and vice versa, it is no surprise that she has spent a lifetime in Japan and made her career being a translator.

So a big Happy Valentine to you Debbie for opening up a world of friends for me and many others who cannot easily go out into the world as we would like.

These beans are not for throwing!

This season in Japan is called Setsubun and householders traditionally throw roasted soybeans across their doorstep in order to scare away monsters and the ill fortune that may have accumulated over the previous year. It also marks the day before the official start to spring but here we are going into autumn and my soybeans are  ripening into yummy crunchy edamame my favourite part of a Japanese meal. I certainly won't be throwing them anywhere but down my greedy throat!

Wild wet weather has almost destroyed the veggie garden so today is a day of cleaning up and replanting for the winter season, I'm thinking nice sweet round Japanese turnips, heaps of coriander (cilantro) and nice tender "pick as you go" lettuce.