Scatterdays

Scatterday again! I'm sure those Time Monks have been pinching time off me this week. Stop it!

This week's letter was A again and the categories were Restaurants, Things you find in the dark and Turquoise. I ate at the Austrian Schnitzelhaus with our Swiss friends last weekend but of course, I didn't take the damn camera, did I? I haven't been back since to take the photo I should have taken. The food was good and our friend appreciated the opportunity to drink a few authentic Austrian beers.

However, I did better with the other categories. The Things you find in the dark around here are Arachnids. We had an accumulation of leaf curl spiders early in the summer, followed belatedly by the more usual St Andrew's Cross spiders. The leaf curlers are annoying because they insist on their particular abode, despite the annoyance of always rebuilding their webs. The St Andrew's Cross spiders are smarter - if their webs are annihilated, they build them higher, above head height. I am accustomed to gardening under an umbrella of arachnid accommodation!

I had trouble finding turquoise at first. My acrylic paints don't include any turquoise just at present. But then I realised we have many turquoise Artefacts - a turquoise hippo, copy of an Egyptian artfact in the British Museum, a turquoise owl (of course), also a copy of an Egyptian artefact, and a modern pitcher bought from an artisan's atelier. I also own a cute Album, full of photos of my god-daughter and her sister, an attractive and appreciated annual event.

So please overlook the absence of the Austrian Schnitzelhaus. Clearly I need to take my camera with me *everywhere*!

Scatterdays

After a little break when the Real World impinged, I'm back to playing Scatterdays. Of course, this week the letter is X, but we were mercifully excused from categories.

I know everyone will have the obvious Xylophone, but there are not enough X words in the world to be exclusive. So here is an extremely elderly xylophone, which has excited many children over the past thirty years.

Of course I could have shared my x-rays, but instead I extol the xylosma. This beautiful plant exists happily in a difficult spot in my garden that is both shady, and hot and dry, depending on the season and time of day. It provides shelter for more exotic examples, without expecting exceptional treatment, and expands exponentially until it is abruptly excised. which is accepts with equanimity. It has tiny white spring flowers but is exalted for its pretty new growth, pink on lime green. Isn't it exquisite?

Finally, in extremis, we have Xenocide, part three in the Ender Saga, which begins with Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card. He is among my favourite fantasy/sci-fi authors adnd his books often raise interesting ethical questions.

Scatterdays

Scatterdays begins with an E this week, and requires something white, something from the garden and something terrifying.

Energy and enthusiasm eluded me this week, but eventually I extricated myself from ennui. I chose one of the several White Elephants that live in this house for my white objet. I have a white elephant Christmas decoration, now sadly packed away, and another white stone elephant thatlooked extremely ecru in the photo. But this one looks and is white, beneath all its gold embellishment.

My "something from the garden" actually inhabits the street outside. I was assured by elderly residents that it's a eucalyptus sideroxlyon (OK, I admit, I had to look that up!), otherwise known as the Red Ironbark or Mugga. Its native environment is the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, but it's also an everyday street tree throughout Australia. We once had an avenue of E. sideroxylons down our street but now this example is exceptional.

"Something terrifying" extended my expertise extensively. In the absence of ideas, I was going to share a photo of an extremely terrifying thing I found recently - one of the red wines we bottled at the third N.Epping Wine Bottling in 1995, which emerged, blinking and dusty, from the back of a cupboard. From memory, the 1995 bottling was not an especially good drop, so only an extremely enthusiastic oenophile would attempt to experience it. (Or do I mean the exact opposite of a oenophile? More like a couple of desperate university students?)

However, I found something more E-related in my mother's extremely elderly educational resources from Another Age. She was educated in an era when England had an Empire. The title English History is self-explanatory; that's all they were taught at Adavale and elsewhere in 1931. The book sections are: The Growth of Civic Freedom (from the Anglo-Saxon moot to female emancipation), The Growth of the Industrial System (from Manors and Gilds (sic) to The Industrial Revolution) and Growth of an Empire Based on Liberty ("How the American Colonies Were Lost" [sob]through to.. oh gee, a couple of chapters on Australian self-determination, via chapters on the British bringing liberty to India and being cruelly rejected, and bringing liberty to the South Africans and beating those evil Boers, who eventually saw the error of their ways and showed "such a loyalty to the Empire that has surprised and pleased all its members." So there!). Why is this scary? I wonder how much of our modern world view will stand the test of time, or will future generations look at what we take for granted now and laugh? Will they snort, "Global Warming? They were so naive back then!" or "American cultural imperialism? They didn't last long, did they?" I sometimes think that it is the things we all know without doubt to be true that will turn out to have been egregiously in error. Just as the British Empire was going to last forever, bringing enlightenment to the entire world.

Scatterdays

This week I bring you V, from the car, the office and the kitchen.


As I know no-one who owns a Volvo, I valiantly considered photographing a valve from a vehicle, but this vesicated the vestiges of my feeble wits. Instead I bring you various vents and a visor, all thoughtfully made from vinyl and much more available.

As my office is virtual these days, I could only find these volumes on Visual Basic in my office, and a verso from one of them. (This is one of those occasions when a classical education comes in handy! A verso is the back of a manuscript sheet or, in the case of bound books, the left hand page.)

My kitchen is full of various victuals, vivers and viands beginning with a V. Here are some red wine vinegar, some vanilla and those essentials to vivify Australian life, iced VoVo biscuits! I didn't photograph the many vegetables, including the bucket of potatoes and inevitable volume of beans I just harvested from my vegetable garden. All we need is the vodka (ah I forgot, we have the potatoes for that!)and starvation is narrowly averted, yet again.

Scatterdays begins with an S...

.. and that's appropriate because I just scraped in!

My first Scatterday is Medical and it's that most useful of gadgets, a sphygmometer, or more correctly, a sphygmomanometer. Sphygmo, from the Greek sphugmos, pulse, and manometer, a pressure gauge, from the Greek manos, thin and metron, measure. So you won't be surprised to know it's a device for measuring blood pressure! (Medical types have literal minds, it seems.)I'm relieved to tell you that the stress of Christmas hasn't caused my blood pressure to soar, or anything serious like that! I don't quite know why we own one of these things, but we do.

My second Scatterday is a beverage, Sabra. This is my favourite liqueur of all, and possibly even surpasses my love of schnapps (none of your fancy flavoured rubbish, the real deal!). I don't have a bottle of schnapps in my cupboard at present (sounds like a reason to buy one!) but I do have this bottle of Sabra. It's an Israeli liqueur, which tastes like alcoholic Jaffas. (For those not lucky enough to live in Oz, Jaffas are round orange-coated chocolate sweets. They are delicious but they are also famous for being rolled down the aisles in picture theatres when I was but a young thing, making a significant clatter. It was always a hard decision whether to eat or roll.) This is quite an elderly bottle of Sabra, and I'm not sure you can even buy it in Australia these days, certainly not in mainstream grog shops.

Then, we have Christmas. Now it would have been so easy to photograph one of the several seasonal Santas that have stirred from their annual sleep, but instead I've selected a Star. This star has graced my Christmas tree since 1981, and was bought from an early precursor of the Oxfam shop, somewhere down in the inner city. It was constructed in India and the miserable smidgen I paid bought someone something, way back when. If you look closely, you can see one of the Santas below it (he's banging his own drum, I think) and over to the left, a snowman, who for some reason is carrying a shiny parcel. He dates from 1984, from a set that included a downhill-skiing Santa, some soldiers and a sitting-down snowman. Sadly, they are somewhere out of shot, but certainly present. David the chief tree dresser insists that every decoration must be included. Since I buy at least one each year, this number is not inconsiderable. One day, the tree will fall to dust beneath their weight.

Finally, as an extra, I bring you Stones, given to me by my god-daughter several years ago. And with them, I wish everyone a very happy Christmas, and a peaceful, safe and satisfying New Year!

Scatterdays D

Sorry, no actual photos this week, it's been that kind of week.

Had I taken photos, they would have been:
Sewing: My trusty darning foot on my sewing machine, and the difficult darts on the stretch cotton sateen pants I'm making, from my tried and true pattern, that did not want to describe my diameter but rather develop it to new dimensions. Dastardly darts! They have been disciplined into doing their duty now.
Vehicles: The dump truck and digger that the helicopter pilot I showed earlier drives when he's not detailed to fly helicopters. I think this toy set might develop into a theme like Pennie's Babushkas!
Touchy Feely: Well obviously, something I like the touch and feel of is David, but to keep this clean and family-oriented, I decided to photograph dirt. Yes, dirt, specifically the very lovely rich clean smelling dirt of my veggie patch, which is rewarding me by producing beans and tomatoes and silverbeet and beans and basil and baby squash and... did I mention the beans? Should anyone desire a few beans for dinner, by all means descend upon my garden to your delight and delectation. It's fast reaching the point when anyone foolish enough to visit me is obliged to leave with a bag of beans. You have been warned.

I also planned to photograph my collection of Dupioni silks. I have metres and metres of maroon Dupioni and magenta Dupioni,and a deep purple and a bright watermelon (this one a find at St Vinnies' op shop), a cerise one and a turquoise shot with purple, a bright blue shot with purple and a dusky pink and a silvery grey-brown. Yep, I love this fabric and whenever I see it at a good price (like half price, or in the case of Vinnies, 2.2m for $6!), I just have to buy it. I expect someone will have to drape them over my coffin in due course, but until then, I love it and occasionally make myself something from it, when I want to feel really special. OK, maybe if I get a minute one day, I'll photograph them for you anyway - they really are delicious!

So this week, you get to exercise your imaginations! On to next week!

Scatterday begins with a K

I'm early this week, because tomorrow I'll be partying with the Sydney SCQuilters. This week's Scatterdays photos begin with a K and are In My Neighbourhood, Dangerous Things and Blue Things.

In my neighbourhood, there is a kindergarten, of course. (I'm sure I'm not the only one to have one of those!) But it's right across the street from the shopping centre, where you will find our lovely pharmacist, Kim. We also have a Kent St, along with streets called Dorset, Somerset, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, Oxford - bit of a pattern here, do you think? But I didn't get over there to take a photo.

My dangerous things are Knives (and I bet I'm not the only one to think of that too!)since I put the kibosh on kern (an Irish footsoldier) and a kestrel (hunting bird dangerous to smaller birds) and our collection of weapons doesn't include a knobkerrie. Though I think there's a kris about here somewhere. I included the Staysharp knife because a policeman friend of mine told me, back in the seventies when they became popular, that they were the Number 1 implement in domestic stabbings. There's dangerous for you!

My blue thing is my knitting bag. I made it in the fourth grade, so I was probably about 10 years old. Back in the dark ages, we girls were taught sewing while the boys did woodwork, and I remember being very envious of them! See my beautiful embroidery? I think it was probably unpicked a dozen times - Mrs Muller was a perfectionist! But by gee, her lessons have stayed with me these many years.

Scatterdays

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date.....
Sorry, it's been one of those weeks and yesterday was just one long party. I was busy being the ATASDA librarian (and enjoying the marvellous Christmas Party food)and last night was our neighbours' significant wedding anniversary. My life is just onelong party... So belatedly, here is my Letter M Scatterday, with the categories of Weapons, Textures and Hobby.

My weapon was easy - it's the Mace. On our travels around the Pacific, we collected a club or mace from each country, and here they are displayed. It includes maces and clubs from Samoa, American Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand and Australia. One of the Samoan ones was made by David from a traditional design, while we were in Samoa, so I guess it counts as a hobby too.

I thought my Texture was going to be easy too, as I took photos of some marvellous mud patterns at Emmdale Roadhouse (even the name is slightly M-ish) on the way out to Broken Hill two years ago. But the photos have mysteriously vanished. So instead I have Minerals, very appropriate for the child of a mining town! I photographed them in the Mining Museum in Broken Hill.

Hobby was also easy, since I'm married to a man with so many of them! Here we have some of his Models. The first is a Ferrari, an early one of his models of which he is inordinately proud, shown mirrored in its cabinet. The second is a working steam engine model - one of the two we own. The other one was made from scratch by David's grandfather - this one is a kit model, which was a present from Ben to David for a significant birthday.

So, all in all, it's taken me more time to type this message than it did to assemble the photos. Just as well, really, as I'm running so late! OK off to see this week's Scatterday.

Scatterday T

This week has been touched by the letter T, and the categories clothing, purple and hot things.
This week is in honour of Tribes, those long relationships with a group or family. For clothing, we have the assistance of the delightful Tahlia, granddaughter of my friend Fran, modelling her school uniform of T-shirt and Tartan skirt. She also offered to model her Togs, as she was off to a swimming lesson.

To demonstrate purpleness (and clothing), I was going to model the purple Top I made last year with my newly-finished Trousers. But I'm Too idle to Transfer into Them for the photograph, so instead, There's the quintessential purple Tree of Sydney, the jacaranda. They Triumph with purple Tracery all around my local area at This Time of The year and, along with the start of the cricket season and the deafening Trills of cicadas, are a clear sign that summer has Truly arrived.

Finally, Tahlia's grandma, Fran, provided a delightful afternoon Tea for her friends, from *her* grandmother's very hot Teapot. Talk about continuity!

Scatterday H

Happy Scatterday! Today's letter is H and the categories were Human, Toys and Soft.

Here we have some of my favourite humans, a happy Jeremy playing hobblijig with his grandpa. It hardly seems any time at all since we were playing hobblijig with his father! There is a family rhyme that goes:
Mummy's horse goes jig jig jig (jiggle child a little)
Daddy's horse goes trot trot trot (jiggle child violently)
But old farmer Hobblijog's horse goes.... (expectant pause)
Hobblijig! (Allow child to fall between your legs, holding firmly despite shrieks of laughter)
Child says "Again!"
I'm told this is a translation of a German version of the rhyme, which makes sense since David's forebears were German.

A toy helicopter inhabits our toybox, along with many friends who drive tractors, mend the roads,and put on circus shows for the many children. Today, the pilot is taking a holiday from his truck-driving duties because he wears a hardhat and has such a lovely handlebar moustache, in honour of Movember. (If you know anyone growing a Mo for Movemeber, to raise money for and increase awareness of men's health issues, sponsor them!)

I was stumped for soft things until I realised I am surrounded by soft hand-made goodies. So here we have hand knits, hand embroidery (Kas made me the beautiful cushion) and a reminder to hang onto Hope.

Scatterdays Letter A, round things, vegetables and Things you like the smell of

Another Scatterday already!

Today's Scatterday is brought to you by the Letter A:

I love vegetables but artichokes are awful and aubergines barely acceptable. The article I adore is asparagus. Lightly steamed, with a dab of butter - bliss! Here is my asparagus in all its glory, in various states of appreciation and... utterly absent! Yum.

In the round, I bring you those blessings of the modern world, analgesics, including the useful aspirin, and for those who prefer to keep the doctor away, apples.

Lovely smelly things include my roses, which are just finishing their annual, or sometimes biannual, appearance. This rose was in my garden when we arrived in 1984. I was told by a rose fancier that it's called "Abraham Lincoln", though my books say that the red rose like this is actually called Mr Lincoln and I don't think this is it anyway. But today I'm believing the rose fancier. The scent is one of those dark rich rose scents that fill the house from one bloom.

Next week: The letter is O and the categories are Breakfast, Shiny and Little Things.

Scatterday J, pointy things, restaurant and sport

Oh dear, a sad haul for this week! I decided at the start that the things I photographed would be on my daily round, not something I made a special trip for. There are no restaurants beginning with J, or Japanese resturants, anywhere I went this week, and while I had brilliant ideas about sport, no javelin throwers, ju-jitsuists, judoers or long jumpers presented themselves locally, despite diligent searching. The space in a croquet hoop is called a jaw, but the croquet players were washed out this week, and the local sportspersons have hung up their football jerseys for the season. C'est la vie.

I should have known it would be like this because I found my pointy thing almost immediately last Saturday. Here it is:

These are jenny calipers, also known as hermaphrodite calipers. They're used to scribe a line parallel to the edge of something, so the hook end goes around the edge and the pointy end does the scribing. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."

Scatterdays Letter P: red, sweet, metal

There's an overwhelming red tinge to my photos this week. So many P things on my travels were red..

First, I'm very partial to piquant red peppers, don't they look appetising? We always buy Pontiac potatoes, too. And lest anyone postulate improper premises from the preponderance of provender among my photos, here's a picture of a perennial plant called a pink, (which, confusingly, is red) in a pot which, with its pink and purple pals, will be planted in my personal plot presently. And who could survive without the postbox, which is both red and metal? Certainly not the person who pushed past as I photographed it, to post her very pressing piece of postage. Another metal, but not red, is David's Prius, of which he is very proud.

Oh, there's those peppers again, because of course they are sweet peppers, but in case someone perpends whether I'm paltering, there's also some plum jam which, curiously, is also red, and another plant from my garden called a polygala. OK, I know its flowers are purple, but its common name is Sweet Pea Bush.

Whew, this is becoming hard work!

Scatterdays

My friends Michelle and Pennie talked me into doing Scatterdays, an idea dreamed up by Michelle and Dy to encourage us to take more photos and blog about it. Each week we have one letter, 3 categories and have to find and photograph something from each category that starts with that letter. Why? Just for the fun of it! This week's letter was F and the categories were Cold Things, Signs and The Elements.

OK, I found heaps of signs I liked. Mr Fong and the entire Asia Pacific region seem to have joined together to sell Fresh Food in Eastwood shopping centre, and I couldn't resist the ubiquitous Fire signs (how often do you actually notice them in public places? Let's hope we never need to know where they are!) I am always amused by these Floodway signs in the middle of the same shopping centre (just outside the library). Guess why this is a Flood-prone area? Because, in my mother-in-law's childhood in Eastwood, this used to be a LAKE! People went boating on it. Now it's an oval and a shopping centre but nobody thought to tell the water. (I guess this could count as an aspect of The Elements too?) And Francis the Fresh Fish Man has been coming, in various guises, to my local shopping centre since before 1984, when we moved into this area. (I think we're on Francis IV.)If you look carefully you can even see a portion of Francis' anatomy that I won't name.

I had fabulous ideas about cold Food but, just to be on the safe side, I photographed the very tidy Freezer of my Fridge, with Frozen Peas and other Frozen Food. But then I thought of those great staples of Australian entertaining, Feta cheese and French Onion dip. And I am Fond of Feta and David's Favourite dip is French Onion. (OK, maybe Fish ones, but he got French Onion...)

I foundered upon The Elements. In the final absence of the photos of the Hawkesbury River in flood, which are clearly among those photos *not* carefully put into photo albums, I fell back upon this photo of fractonimbus clouds from Lord Howe Island. I should make you look it up, but I'll be kind. Fractonimbus clouds are raggedy, broken-up, wispy clouds formed by wind or air currents underneath a layer of nimbus (rain-bearing) clouds. You can see them on the lower part of the nearest cloud. So now you know.

P, you say? And Red, Sweet Things and Metal. Hmm. How obscure can I make this without driving myself nuts?