Funny cat in a Christmas tree

Yeah, I know, cats can be a total pill about Christmas trees. We had a Blue Somali who climbed our tree each year. We’ve had other cats who simply redecorated whichever branches they disapproved of.

Our new cat, the Little Cat Prince, simply sits on presents and messes up the paper. I’ve had to re-wrap several gifts already. OTOH, we don’t have a Christmas tree worthy of his attention. We bought a little conifer and it’s sitting on the balcony ready to be re-potted in a much bigger pot.

I was going to re-pot the tree last night but after fixing up the herbs (sweet basil, Thai basil, lemon thyme, sage) in new pots, my shoulder and arm couldn’t take any more work. Maybe tonight.

Maybe I’ll post a photo of our growing balcony soon.

 

To honour myself

I ironed pillowcases today. No biggie for many people. After all, why else would manufacturers make pillowcases that crumple like fine notepaper? But you should know that I am not keen on ironing either for myself or for others. I can’t remember the last time I ironed pillowcases.

The only person I did that for was me, and I am slowly remembering that while I honour my guests when they visit, I don’t probably honour myself sometimes. To show myself the same respect. So today’s big efforts were (1) iron pillowcases so that I have something nice to look forward to the next time I change the bed linen, (2) iron the supposedly-non-iron work shirts so I look more professional, (3) scrub the toilets rather than just cleaning them, (4) cook brownies which deserves a paragraph of its own, and (5) have homestyle linguine tricolore con pesto for dinner.

Now, family members would point out that having pasta on its own for an evening meal doesn’t count – after all, it’s a primo, not a secondo, but honestly, I went to the effort of making sure the pesto was carefully blended with some of the water from cooking the pasta, and stirred con moto. Delicious, and DD even ate it. (Hope she likes the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.)

I have to admit that this effort doesn’t come easily to me on a work day when my energy levels have been sapped well before 5 pm and my pain levels are ramping up rapidly. Today was a public holiday and I had spent my 60 minutes decluttering earlier that day while DD had some play time. We also planted some snapdragons which are in my top 10 list of favourite flowers, watered the pot plants on the patio and all the roses, willing the fertiliser to break down into the soil and decrease the lingering pong, and tipped lots of vegie peelings into the compost heap. The rubbish bin is nearly full and there are lots of old papers that have gone into the recycling bin.

 

So that’s where it went

That’s the feeling of the past weekend.

With help, I have gone through one of the garden sheds. The trash pack and the rubbish bin are now full and there are bags beside the trash pack. Way to go! I was horrified to see what was sitting on the shelves of the shed. Paint tins that dated back maybe 8 years. An oil can that had rusted out on the bottom. And, oh horrors, a redback spider that DD pointed out to me. Thank goodness she doesn’t like spiders and didn’t touch it.

One shed up the back is meant to be a children’s play house. It was used by DH to store some of his weather-proof things. Those have been taken away by his fellow hobbyists. Now there appear to be some aluminium shelving struts and so on there. I will phone the recycling company to see if they will take it for recycling. No sense in wasting metal. Besides, that will save me some space in the trash pack.

The lawn looks very neat. The gardener came on Friday and did an excellent job mowing the lawn and trimming the edges. When the strong wind abates, I think I’ll go out wearing protective gear and use glyphosphate on the leafy weeds that refuse to get a clue. Some are very resistant to my skills with a daisy weeder. We also have an invasion of sticky weed, blasted stuff. It’s in all the corners of the garden so I guess that the winter rains and wind and sweet spring sunshine have been exactly what that weed wanted.

There are two white irises blooming now. The blue ones are being shy. The tulips have shown foliage but no blooms. We have lots of star flowers and some brilliant daffodils. One lavender bush is in full bloom and it won’t be long before I can harvest it.

 

Rain

Rain last night – all over the clothes that we’d accidentally left on the clothesline. Oh well. They might dry out today.

After being on water restrictions for so many years, it seems churlish, even downright anti-social to complain about any rain. You’re likely to be glared at if you mention any sport or activities curtailed by precipitation without putting the A.C.T disclaimer of “Of course, we really need the rain and I’m grateful for what we get.”

The nerines are all green and dressed up with no flowers.

 

Rain, rain

I would run outside and do a little dance of gratitude in the blessed rain if I weren’t aching so much. Small thing to pay for a change in weather fronts and a much-needed drop in our city’s dams. It also means that I am looking forward to planting new plants in my front garden.

DD was a bit better about walking from the car to her childcare centre in the rain this morning. Until today, she has tended to freak out massively at the idea of getting rain on her. To be fair, she has only been out in the rain on a few occasions. Sometimes it rains at night and she sleeps right through it.

Many of my childhood memories involve being wet, damp, or trying to dry off after being outside. It can’t be true that my entire primary school career consisted of wet autumns, winters and springs, yet my memory suggests otherwise. To this day I am a little nostalgic about the smell of wet wool steaming gently in a classroom, mixing with a faint hint of manure from my classmates’ boots that they wore at home as well as school.

 

Gardening and Decluttering

I decided to be brave and spend some of my hard-earned cash on a gardener. He has made fantastic progress with the front garden, aka Messy Anonymous Spiky Green Stuff Central. There’s a lavender bush that is still OK, a leucospernum which is still trying to flower, an anonymous shrub and two enormous gum trees to start with, and then there’s the who-knows-what mess in between, all knotty and scrubby and too hard for me to tackle on my own.

I am once again horrified at the amount of clutter that has invaded my family room and kitchen. I was pretty good about throwing out stuff, keeping on top of DD’s toys, my correspondence, filing, and so on, but another bout of illness threw me for a loop. I feel embarrassed to let people see the mess.

First thing is to sell the cot since DD’s in a big girl’s bed (her term, not mine). Plus the second car seat and the bottle steriliser. While doing that, I need to throw out a heap of out-of-date magazines, newspaper cuttings that weren’t used for a chapter I never wrote (a long, sad story), and there’s the back shed. Oh boy. The Back Shed – definitely needs capitalisation. It looms at me, stuffed to the gills with junk and maybe only 5% of useful things. I need to wear a cap for protection against spiders dropping on me, long-sleeved shirt in case of creepy crawlies jumping up my arms, sturdy boots in case I tread on something icky, and hold a phone in case I get bitten by something … who knows what is in my shed! Yes, I know. I’m making it sound like Indiana Jones and the Back Shed of Doom. If you laugh too hard, I’ll make you come and help me.