Some perspective for tea.

The power went out lat night for an hour and a half. I faffed about for 10 minutes in the twilight gloom looking for matches to go with the candles we bought after the last blackout, before I managed to locate a lighter in the desk drawer. Then I had my three candles on the mantle-piece, amongst my pot plants, lighting up the living room.
Then I went online, onto Facebook, with my mobile phone and had a bit of a tongue-in-cheek bitch about the power going out, and being reduced to eating broken crackers and pate for dinner.
Then I realised, that TIC or not, that had been an incredibly dumb thing to say. What was I thinking? In the same day that there is a 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch, and the day after Pakistan experiences it's latest bombings in amongst the floods (and the cricket scandal, let's not forget!), and I manage to be online, on my fancy mobile phone, in the middle of a blackout, eating my crackers that I found in the darkened cupboards in my kitchen, with the vegemite, and the jam, and above my flours and sugars and cocoa, with pate that I found in my fridge with the milk and the butter and the cheese and the eggs and the fresh vegetables and stock-in-a-carton and yogurt and tamarind paste and curry paste and tomato paste ...
Mmmm.
I had food, and more than enough of it. I still had hot water in the tank. I had candles, and a lighter, and a torch, and a phone. The house wasn't particularly cold. SP was safe and warm and fed, asleep in her bassinet on top of her sheepskin and rugged up in her wraps.
A blackout for a few hours is perhaps not such a big deal, after all.

Before the storm...

There's a storm on the way, but I took advantage of a calm and warmish afternoon to get out into the garden again, SP sitting in her bouncer under the verandah with her Scrunchy Doll. I finally planted the potatoes I bought weeks ago (they're Desirees), four of them in my temporary vegie patch along the fence (it doesn't get enough sun I think, and I'm dreaming of raised beds in 'Ocean' corrugated iron), and two in two big pots which is a bit experimental. The pots are only half-filled with potting mix (and a dash of cow manure) and I'm hoping to be able to top them up as the plants grow, as per old-school 'pototoes in hill' method. After that exciting event, I wandered around in the dying light and took some photos of what's going on out there. It's getting warmer in the days, I think, it just not quite so bitingly cold and it's actually starting to feel like winter won't go on forever. So, here we go!

My snow-peas and broad beans are coming along nicely, and I was thrilled to notice there are going to be flowers soon on the jonquils I planted under the letterbox!

I'm not sure how well bluebells do in 'marshy soil' though, AKA that bit where the water-meter leaks (note to self: call water-people to come and fix it).


I did a spot of shopping at the nursery the other day, bought some Snap-dragons for old-times sake; a memory of my great-grandfather in England showing me how to 'snap' them.

Also bought myself some mints, creeping-thymes, and yet more seaside daisies to further the campaign to pretty-up the front garden. If you look very very very closely, you can see them as a few specks of green in the right-hand corner of the garden bed, near the blinding-white gravel (side note: gosh, we have such a cute front fence!)


But they look much nicer close-up.

(Pyrethrum)



(Creeping Thyme)