One small task short of perfection

or maybe two. The dishwasher didn't use up all the stuff on the bench first time round. And as it doesn't have a Cat in the Hat type side arm, I need to be involved in the cleaning of the bench. At 9.30pm.



The one small missing task was actually, bloody dishes notwithstanding, that Favourite Handyman fell asleep with the children tonight instead of uploading all the garden photographs which I took this morning. Today was going to be a blog-with-pictures-day. Now it will probably be next month and everything will look out of date and I will sigh and not use it. And you won't get to see what happened when we cleared lots of scrubby trees and put horse poo and pea straw down and then let the sun, the annual weed seeds, the pumpkins, the blackberry, the sunflowers and the rampant perennial weeds do all of their many growing things. Last month when I wasn't looking, another adult and his Dad put a small gate and some chickenwire there as well, which adds to the rampantness of it all. A gate doth not keep out ivy/blackberry/nasturtium/convulvulus - but it does provide a frame for the glory of these imports.



So the perfection of the day part. All of our firewood is now stacked. Much of it is stacked under our new lean-to, a sunny space with a transparent roof where there is still room for winter pots of blueberries and lemons and silverbeet and maybe just maybe some ginger. The chooks had some time out in the temporary shelter while I made alterations to their palace. They don't like being grabbed by children much, and Brighid and Fionn are alternately frustrated and enraged by this.



Favourite Handyman mowed the lawn. Brighid and I are going to rake up the long clippings tomorrow.

I went to the dump. We filled the boot of our station wagon right to the ceiling with beer bottles, broken crockery, endless broken plastic pots and bits of tarpaulin and just junkety junk. I am going again soon. The look of simplicity that I want, the calm almost emptiness, is a way off yet.

After more than 12 months of gentle cajoling, stroppiness and just plain endless persistence, FH has agreed to me gifting two of our lounge chairs to the Salvation Army. So we now have no wallpaper, vastly fewer items of clothing and possibly no more bank statements from 1996 in our lounge and there is going to be more space yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Two fewer chairs on which to pile nappies and socks and underwear and then all the much bigger things on top so it is really difficult to find the little things just before work and then they fall down the back and. well and and and and and. If you don't recognise this, then you should say a prayer of thankfulness for your skills of not being hopeless. Or maybe you should go and open your smelly cupboard and do some washing. At least my lounge laundry mess is clean.

We have been eating from our garden. So have the caterpillars. When the chooks eat my garden, I eat their eggs. When the caterpillars eat my garden, I do not eat their butterflies.

Yesterday I made clever food. Clever food is when I haven't made it before. Clever cheapo special food is when it grows wild in my garden and I haven't made it before. Yesterday was my debut effort with nasturtium leaves. I made pesto with the remaining pine nuts from that week when I went mad and spent $23 just on pine nuts. (Supposedly to save money by making my own pesto. Supposedly.) Not content with just nearly burnt and then whizzed pine nuts, I added garlic (from my garden of cooooooooooourse), parsley, nasturtium leaves and mint leaves (allllllllll alllllllllll allllllllllll from my garden) and some olive oil. Then I folded in some parmesan cheese and then I mixed it into some mashed potato and made it all green speckled and then I cooked up onions, carrots, broccoli (er, yes actually the broccoli is from our garden, as were the caterpillars which I fished off just before cooking), thyme and fish in a oven-proof and element-proof dish and then I plonked the green speckled mash on top and put it in the oven and everybody ate it. It tasted nice, but it looked pretty homely rather than dinner party fare.

Oh how could I forget? I ate our blackberry harvest.

One blackberry.

It was very yummy and yet - and yet - I do look forward to an improved yield next year.