Dates.

It's a red letter day in Hobart today. It's Show Day. Officially, due to Southern Tasmanian custom, we can now plant your tomatoes outside, uncovered, without fear of them being destroyed by frost. It's an idiosyncratic Tasmanian version of the Fete de La Musique which of course is code in France for signalling the real start of balmy, summer weather. Except that today, here in Hobart, Mount Wellington is covered in snow and it is all of 10 degrees out there:

My tomatoes are still being loved up and nurtured along in the artificial warmth provided by the double glazing in our north facing sunroom....maybe I'll plant them out in the veggie patch next week. Am also holding off on the four packets of sunflower seeds as it would be just too devastating if these hopeful, signals of summer were decimated by an unseasonal wintery frost.

The inclement weather meant that this morning my husband was unable to ride his bike all the way to Orford, on the East Coast. He is a serious bike riding MAMIL. I'm pleased to announce that I too have recently acquired a bike and become a cyclist......yet I'm most decidedly not a female version of a Middle Aged Man in Lycra.....apart from blatantly apparent reasons.....my bike colour coordinates with most of my shoes.....and has a wicker basket:

I deliberated over the choice of bike for ages.....honestly, I was thinking about it back in the mists of time when I would have needed two baby seats. I had my heart set on a Pashley Princess, much to the mirth of the chap in the neighbourhood bike shop, an English import which looks the business yet weighs a tonne. I had to compromise because the tyranny of location meant that I needed as many gears as I could get and quite frankly pushing a 30kg bike up to the top of my hill would have seen me dissolve into a puddle.....especially as most of the time it looks like this:

I couldn't help myself and my first ride after taking possession was over the iconic Tasman Bridge which links the city of Hobart with the suburbs on the Eastern Shore:

In hindsight it was a ridiculous route to choose as my bike looked startlingly incongruous next to the five lanes of traffic:

The cycleway is so narrow that if you accidentally lost control of your steering you would pitch over the knee height rail and be rendered road splat.

So, where do you go when your bike is much more suited to riding around town? Well, for starters not only did it take me up hill and down dale all the way to my yoga studio for class, it also took me out to lunch twice last week.....although I may have to rethink my cycling attire as half way down Macquarie Street (steep incline, three busy lanes of traffic) my scarf blew into my face and I couldn't see where I was going. The high heels though, were fine.....much to my husband's distain, as he would never, ever be seen dead in anything other than bike shoes with cleats.

Anyway, another exciting date looming on the calendar for Hobartians is this coming Saturday evening 6pm - 8pm at the Stanley Burbury Theatre (at UTAS) when Tim Winton will be in town talking about his new book 'Eyrie'. If you are thinking of going, tickets are $10 or $7.50 concession and you can pick them up at Fullers Bookshop in town. I've just finished reading it in anticipation, although I must admit that my head is still spinning from the intense paranoic hyper reality which is the mind space of the main protagonist......and thinking about the ending. I'm very curious as to what Tim Winton will have to say....and to hear him talk about this book in person is just too good an opportunity to pass up. I've bought my ticket.

Rx

Compulsive.

I've been exhibiting behaviour verging on compulsive in the garden. I can't help myself. It's been helping me cope with an unexpected root canal (in the tooth with my one and only filling which seems just too cruel) and the fact that I have two harrowing years worth of complicated tax returns which need to be work through...yesterday. This morning, when the chap who has been helping us with various projects around the house, dropped by to present his account he found me in the back garden still attired in my bathrobe and ugg boots......yet accessorised with gardening gloves......strewing Dynamic Lifter as far as the eye could see and as though my life depended on it....OK maybe not my life directly although most definitely the life of my roses. To this vision he commented that he hadn't even bothered to knock on the front door as he knew that he'd find me out there. Maybe it's time to feel ashamed.

I have been sleeping with this....next to the bed:

The basic premise of Steve Solomon's book is that home grown veggies produced on soil of balanced fertility can contain more than twice the nutrition found in supermarket veggies. Which is quite a scary statistic really. Especially as it is more difficult (in Tasmania) than just adding compost and manure to your backyard garden bed to have 'balanced fertility'....you need to follow the recipe, in the book, to concoct your own fertiliser which includes such ingredients as guano.... aka sea gull poo. So I have been doing the wrong thing by going in heavy handedly with the Dynamic Lifer.....yet I have already planted such virtuous crops as lettuce and kale. While I'm struggling to get my head around some of the more complex scientific methods for growing healthy veg espoused in the book I must say that I did find the pages about 'Hoes' and how to most effectively use them for weeding and 'Zen and the Art of Raking' strangely comforting.

My weeding frenzy has resulted in a new recipe for dinner. Double bonus. Last night, I used the plague of parsley suffocating the front beds to create a pesto sauce with garlic, walnuts, parmesan and toasted local walnuts....the children declared it delicious...and most importantly ate the lot.

I've also been reading this:

Doesn't it have a pretty floral cover....designed by Kath Kidston, no less. 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady' transported me directly to a version of domesticity experienced in rural England in the 1930's and I was surprised by how recognisable the experiences were then....to the here and now in Hobart, 2013. Except that I don't have a live in cook, a daily, one child at boarding school AND a live in French nanny to look after the child remaining at home. I wish. Anyway, as she so succinctly sums up the eternal lament....'Query, mainly rhetorical: Why are non - professional women if married and with children, so frequently referred to as 'leisured'? Answer comes there none'. I must agree, being a housewife is the hardest job I've ever had.

Yet today, I managed to have my two loads of washing on the line by mid morning....so I went out for lunch with a friend...after the stars aligned and somehow we managed to have the nine children that we have between us either ensconced at school or looked after. There may have been a scary moment when her husband materialised pushing the pram through the restaurant....yet mercifully the child in the pram went to sleep so we were able to eke out another hour of borrowed time. It was as EM Delafield would have surely described a '...sensation of leisured opulence, derived from unwonted absence of all domestic duties'.

If you are looking for a momentary escape...and be warned....Jilly Cooper wrote that when she first read this book she devoured '....it in one sitting, leaving the children unbathed, dogs unwalked, a husband unfed'....then this book could be winging it's way to your place. As an unashamed ploy to try and grow my blog followers....sans guano......I'm giving away one copy of 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady' (not 'Growing Vegetables South of Australia') to somebody from my list of followers. All you need to do is join....for those of you who already have, then you are immediately in the running. So, next week, I'll randomly pick a name from the complete list. As Mrs Doyle from 'Father Ted' would say....'Go on'!

Rx

Flowers.

Spring, of course reminds me that I nurse a rather serious flower fetish:

Although, since I've stopped up most of the holes in my garden beds, I now no longer take the local garden centre's rose catalogue and Botanica's Roses to read in bed during long winter nights. These days, I must admit to having this charming garden book next to my bed:

Sitting on top of Vita Sackville - West's Garden Book and In Your Garden Again inspired by her garden at Sissinghurst in the UK and a selection of Susan Irvine's books about her garden at Forest Hall in Northern Tasmania.  As Katherine Swift so succinctly states, most gardening is done in your head.

Even though my full name may be a herb rather than a flower, it still contains the word 'rose' which is lucky really, as it's my very favourite flower:

And that glorious 'coconut ice' coloured bloom in the front is 'Pierre de Ronsard', which if I had to choose only one rose to grow on a desert island, this would be it. I'm trying to festoon the front of our house with it....hopefully this season it will finally reach the second storey....it already clambers up two posts on the back veranda. It is utterly ravishing. Yet, I'm also rather partial to David Austen, Delbard and most heritage roses as I love a good story or connection.....like 'Souvenir de Malmaison' which was supposedly grown in Josephine's garden. Not in mine though, as when it flowered it treacherously turned out to be something else.

I was shamelessly flower centric when deciding on our daughter's names and each includes a bloom in their name  - Primrose for the eldest and  Camelia for the baby. In the language of flowers.....yes there is such a thing....Primrose means 'first love' and Camellia means 'graciousness'. I also toyed with Marigold and Magnolia....or 'dignity' and 'desire for riches'. Neither quite worked and unfortunately marigold's are a rather unprepossessing looking flower.....although I suppose that you can eat the petals in a salad.

Today, I took a turn around the garden looking for flowers. The camellia's were out:

Yet this was all that was left of the spring bulbs - three different daffodil varieties, muscari and forget -me - not, which, of course, is not a bulb but almost a weed:

I had more luck finding flowers inside. A Designer's Guild cushion:

And in the bedroom, a Coalport vase that belonged to my grandmother:

And a teacup and saucer that I bought at Gowans because of the foxgloves:

My favourite flowery dress is emblazoned with foxgloves:

I wore it to my 40th birthday party in our garden last year, after I spent the best part of a year weeding the waist high twitch out of it.....the garden that is:

Just before my party, my husband took me for a day trip to Melbourne to find 'the dress'. He endured sitting in numerous ladies change rooms around town all day while a friend and I conducted the search. We fortified him with steak frites and chocolate profiteroles, washed down with lashings of red wine at France Soir for lunch. I'm happy to report that his spirits didn't flag once.

This dress is a riot of sprays of flowers and birds:

I bought to wear to the Henley on Thames regatta:

I was a little bit pregnant, so was unable to make the most of the Pimm's Bar. Maybe next time.

Seeing yesterday was Thursday, I was compelled to make my weekly pilgrimage to Gowans Auctions. They were filming the new series of Auction Room with Gordon Brown:

Look how many flowers there were. A reproduction Faberge egg:

Lots of plates:

And this book of 17th century engravings, circa 1976:

Someone else was getting rid of their Princess Diana memorabilia.....only fifteen years since her tragic car accident in the Parisian tunnel which claimed her life:

What a pink larkspur......which represents 'fickleness', in case you don't speak flower.

Rx

Fertiliser.

Yesterday, after I picked up the boys from school, I detoured through the senior campus and bought two $4 bags of sheep manure - ostensibly to feed my hedge yet at the same time support the boat club. I had a brief reminisce about the summer of sheep poo, way back in our misspent youth, when Janey and I haunted various shearing sheds around Northern Tasmania, bagged it up and then targeted well manicured streets in Launceston with our product so that we could finance visits to the Royal Oak. It was only $2 a bag then. Before I went out to lunch today I had a gardening blitz whereupon the heavens promptly obliged and rained it all in.

I have been rather worried about my worms lately. Out of the thousands that live in my worm farm the majority were refusing to move on up to the next level and seemed intent in drowning themselves in their own pee. I took advice from Alistair, who knows about these things, and have now transformed the top level into a worm paradise:

Look how happy they are:

No doubt because I picked out by hand all of the spring onion that accidentally went in with an old salad. In case you are wondering, worms can't stand onion, citrus or meat. Fingers crossed I will have compost for the garden sometime soon. It is an excruciatingly slow process, worm farming.

And then as it was Thursday, my husband took me to lunch at his club as he does most Thursdays:

He wouldn't let me take any photos inside in case you are intending to steal the silverware or any of the paintings. And there is some beautiful old stuff yet on the whole the atmosphere is a tad fusty. Oh, except that we had lunch in the room in which we also attended a 40th birthday party last year. I can still see various people, who shall remain nameless, doing frightening disco manoeuvres on the dance floor (cleverly revealed by lifting the square of carpet away). Today, we only had a steak and salad and one glass of wine.

R

Tomorrow.

Today I got up early so as to have my sixth consecutive day on the mat as tomorrow I am bound for the Gold Coast and the Bikram Yoga Advanced Seminar with Bikram Choudhury along with 250 other people. It was a particularly tough camel and lying on the mat in Savasana after I was convinced my inner voice was taunting me by telling the class about my blog. But it wasn't me it was Anna - speaking out loud!  So a big welcome to everybody reading from Studio New Town.

During Pada Hastasana, with my head pressed below my knees and sweat dripping into my nose the thought occurred to me - why am I going on a resort holiday to subject myself to this every day?

I must say that while I am a tad trepidatious about so much yoga I am very curious about what it will be like and absolutely exhilarated by the concept of a week in a Queensland resort without nappies, washing, meals to prepare and the other everyday elements of domesticity which accompany my usual existence.

What else did I do today? I walked the dogs and the children to the park and cut all of the red hot pokers out of my front garden beds. This is the after shot:

I thought I'd finally eradicated them yet every year there they are demanding attention and clashing with the more sedate pinks, whites and yellows.

Suppose I'd better go and pack.

R