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

Melbourne.

On Saturday I escaped from the shackles of my housewifely duties and went solo to Melbourne for the day......to go to a surprise 40th birthday lunch. I had a six hour day pass.  Talk about hedonistic decadence beyond my wildest imaginings....and of course I had the start of a nasty little flu to take with me. Here is a photo of my Jetstar plane sitting on the tarmac at Hobart airport.....and yes, of course it was delayed:

Saturday is the biggest day of the week in our house. Rest and relaxation never get a look in. There is too much tricky coordination involved in timing dancing drop offs and pick ups with soccer matches, play dates and anything else randomly thrown into the mix. I had to get my mum down from Launceston to help.

We flew in from Hobart, Sydney and Launceston and rendezvoused at Melbourne airport. When I celebrated my own landmark birthday late last year, I took it upon myself to organise my own party as I wasn't sure about how I'd cope with a surprise element.....with my luck I'd be caught with messy hair sporting bathrobe and ugg boots. We gave a bit of thought to the fact that this particular birthday girl might not relish a surprise, surprise. Luckily, she knew that she was going out to lunch so on Saturday morning she went from the gym, clad in lycra, to Scanlan and Theodore from where she emerged totally glammed up in a whole new outfit. Bring on the surprise!

We had lunch at Golden Fields in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda:

(Images from their website)

It is apparently the best new restaurant in the 2012 Age Good Food Guide and is kind of Chinesey. It was perfect for the twist on the banquet style lunch that we had....without a lazy susan or chopsticks in sight. Look how delicious the food was:

This was me getting a tad artistic with my camera and the present (a bronze sculpture) and the slow roasted lamb shoulder with salted lemon. I forgot to take photos of the chicken congee and the twice cooked duck which you shredded and then put inside a steamed roll with plum sauce. Oh, and the peanut butter and chocolate dessert. It was all good.

Eventually we were bounced from the table that we had occupied for six hours. As you can see it was getting dark....and a bit messy:

Time for me to head to the airport and catch my flight back to Hobart. Happy Birthday again, Mon! 

R

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

North.

Today, Tobes went to school and I wagged Bikram Yoga and drove the rest of us to Launceston so that I could go out to lunch. On a map of Tassie, Hobart and Launceston are at geographically opposite ends of the state, one north, one south, 200 kilometres apart. It's possible to drive between the two extremites to do something as fickle as lunch.

In  Aussie slang, of course, a map of Tassie is also more than just a map of Tassie. If you aren't familiar with every schoolboy's favourite joke - consider the shape. A girl I went to school with has great fun with the double entendre and makes Map of Tassie Necklaces for expat Tasmanian girls nostalgic for home. It's all in terribly good taste though - apparently she has supplied the Royal House in Europe  which has the Tasmanian connection. Nicole Kidman also supposedly has a more sedate map of Australia necklace.

Anyway, I digress. I had lunch here at Pierre's in George Street:

We decided that we would frock up, so I wore this Collette Dinnigan dress I found in Melbourne and not Paris as people instantly assume because of the fabric. Out of necessity I had to wear a jacket, as when I left Hobart this morning it was cold and summery (as usual):

The occasion was to catch up with my best friend from school and meet her new beautiful new baby:

 

We had such a nice time. I really should drive north more. We both ate the special salad:

It was beef with tomato, mushroom, olive and onion and had scrambled egg on top. It was a curious combination.

Here's a confession - way back when, I went to school in Launceston. On my walk back to recue my Mum (who still lives there) from my children, I coincidentally bumped into not one, not two but three girls I went to school with. Twenty two years later. That's Tassie for you, I suppose.

I also walked past the pub where I spent an awful lot of time in my misspent youth, mostly with the friends I saw today.

These days I can't remember the last time I went to any pub. Maybe it's time to organise a trip down memory lane. 

And I still got home to Hobart in time to pick up Tobes from school.

R