On The Jacaranda Trail

The other day, armed with my trusty little camera, I decided to go on a Jacaranda trail in the neighbourhood. Apart from the lovely purple blooms set against a very hot, blue sky, and the fallen petals forming a lavender carpet beneath my feet, I got a few more interesting little nuggets along the way.

There was a retro horse float that was parked by the side of the road. It was the cutest thing and didn't look quite big enough for a regular-sized horse. Maybe a Shetland pony? Or maybe horses in the old days are smaller than those today, a little like people?

Then the tri-colour of yellow, pink and purple blooms set next to one another caught my eye. The sunny Spring weather has caused all the plants to flower and what a visual treat that is.

Yet another retro-looking object along the way, a drinking fountain in the green patch overlooking the lovely views. It actually works.

So I got more than purple flowers along the trail. Life is always interesting, even the small, little things you observe along the journey.

Spring And My Anti-Green Fingers

Some people have green fingers, I know my mum does. Unfortunately, I did not inherit those genes from her. In fact, I have what I call the anti-green fingers. Everything I attempt to grow, inevitably dies sooner or later. I've managed to kill hardy plants like cactus, usually by enthusiastic over-watering.

Thus I've developed what I think is an idiot-proof way of handling cacti. Not that I've gone out intentionally to buy more plants - just to end up killing them. But this cactus was 1 of 3 that I picked up just outside my first flat when someone was moving and left them out, together with a lovely jade plant which I've handed over to a friend when I went away for 3 weeks and never took it back since I figured it would thrive better in his courtyard.

But back to the cactus, there were 3 of them but now there are 2. I cannot remember exactly what befell the third as I've probably blocked the trauma out of my memory, but the last 2 have survived the last 3 years with me. My idiot-proof solution is to ignore them and not water them. For weeks. It seems to work. I water them when I remember that I haven't done so for a long time, especially when it hasn't rained for a while. So the other day I went out onto the sunny balcony and saw 2 furry grey nubs on the top of my cactus. I figured it was a sure sign of impending death. Something was growing on it, some fungus or parasite or something. So I did an act of kindness and fed it some water to send it on its last journey which I was pretty sure would be forthcoming.

Little did I expect the bigger of the 2 furry nubs to sprout open the following day and yellow petals could be seen. OMG, it's not a parasite, it's a flowering bud and it's started to flower in the sunny weather once I've watered it.

That was really amazing. And today, the bud has opened up into a lovely yellow flower with a red dot centre. Spring is truly here. I've not killed the cactus, but instead have helped ("nurture" would be going too far I think) it blossom.

Summer In Winter

We've had a few really sunny days here coupled with some lovely warm nights which created a false expectation that Spring or even Summer is here early this year. I mean who has 27C in the winter? And people walking around in singlet, shorts and thongs? Who??? I guess Sydney, that's who.

Of course we celebrated the sunny weather with some typical summer activities. With the inlaws in town last week, we traipsed off to the North Sydney Farmers' market and got some nice spinach and fetta sourdough, lovely honey and garlic smoked trout, blue cheese, avocado and tomato and headed out to Balmoral beach for a picnic. Perched on the wooden bench with the warm sun beating down on us, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The following day saw temperatures soaring up to 27C and we headed down to the quaint little Southern Highland towns of Bowral and Berrima. Eating, drinking, exploring cute shops and bakeries and trawling through lots of antique shops with amazing inventory, made for a very interesting way to spend our time. I learnt a few new things including what an "anti-macassar" is. For those who are interested, it's a cloth cover placed on the back of chairs to prevent staining by hair cream (called macassar oil).

We also drove up to the Blue Mountains where Neil, my father-in-law was the only person there wearing shorts, just because he's from the South Island and was warm enough even though we were up on the mountains. Even though it was quite sunny (but still relatively cool up on the high altitude), the rest of us preferred to protect our legs with more clothing.

The lovely cooperative weather meant that it was perfect for us to take our out-of-town visitors on these day trips and to enjoy the outdoors activities. The Kiwis basked in the sun and tried to retain that warm feeling before they head home the following week into the cold.

This summery weather has also tricked plants into flowering early. I've seen lovely cherry blossom trees blooming everywhere on our street. Crowned with lovely, big, pink flowers, they were a sight to behold. Pretty blooms of orange and yellow flowers were also sprouting up on neighbourhood garden lawns. Nature's beauty is everywhere. Spring will be here soon cos it seems like summer is already!

BBQ Marathon

And so we did it. A 9-hour BBQ marathon that began at 1 pm and ended at 10 pm when we sent off the last guests, well-fed and watered, into the night. A success. But we weren't that sure to start off with...

First there was the debate of cooking 2 different meals - lunch and dinner, for 2 separate groups (total 14 people) vs a BBQ marathon. Good sense finally prevailed and we went with the BBQ marathon. It would have been even more stressful to design and cook 2 different menus, I am not sure if the kitchen (or the relationship) would have survived the pressure.

We did our planning and preparation work on Friday night and Saturday morning. We heaved bundles of veggies, ice-cream and other nibbles back on Friday night and I started work on the curry, seeing as curry always tastes better after it has the chance to sit overnight for the flavours to seep in. It had to be a veggie curry, as we had to cater to a couple of vegetarians, so I made a Malaysian-style curry of eggplants, zucchinis, carrots, tomatos, onions and chick peas. Along with veggie shopping, was a bunch of pink flowers to liven up the room.

Saturday morning saw us scurrying around Chinatown, buying little veggie and peanut dumplings for the vegetarian entree (I've already taken care of the chive and pork dumplings for NORMAL people) and 3 different Thai desserts. That saved us a bit of work. The seafood was next - we got fish, squid, baby octopus, prawns and scallops. Several of our meat-eating friends had offered to bring sausages, while we bought a pack of veggie sausages.

G was in charge of the cooking on the balcony, while I was in charge of cooking indoors and serving food and replenishing drinks. Food and drinks flowed endlessly until we finally gave up at 4 pm and could eat no more.

With the second round of guests arriving at 5 pm, we had a brief respite before we conducted an encore performance. And finally we got to the finale. After the first round of dessert of the little Thai cakes and jellies, we seduced the dinner guests with a promise of an adult-version ice-cream, which was a chocolate and honeycomb nougat ice-cream liberally doused with kahlua and topped with shaven dark chocolate flakes. The dinner guests, stuffed as they were by then, could not refuse this offer. The lunch guests were left out of this as we had completely forgotten about the ice-cream after they had their Thai desserts. The adult-version dessert was a resounding success. People ask for an extra shot of kahlua, neat. We finally sent off the last group at 10 pm, happy and stuffed to the gills, staggering to catch their cabs home.

And with warmer weather coming our way, we can all look forward to more BBQs with our friends, celebrating summer, friendship and life.

Flower Power

Spring is in the air. These really colourful flowers which looked like poppies, carnations and a cross-breed chrysanthemum were really beautiful.

I had little vases of them around the house when we had Alex and Pete over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. Dinner consisted of little chive dumplings and siew mais for entrees (bought from our fave Thai supermarket), the main course was Malaysian fish curry with basmati rice with raisins, and a dish of stir-fried tang-oh. For dessert, we had some taro and water chestnut cream Thai confectionary in aromatic cases made of pandan leaves. It was a success and didn't tax us too much because we had combined store-bought and home-cooked dishes, all the food were personally tested by us in the past.

We had brekkie on the balcony that weekend and the flowers added a nice touch to our breakfast table, even if it's for our personal pleasure. A small gesture, but a a lovely addition to starting the weekend on a pretty note.

Permanence

Spring heralds in new beginnings. We are really well into Spring now but there are still new beginnings to be shooed in.

Today, I finally received the letter making my job permanent. This has been verbally promised a couple of months ago, but really, one shouldn't completely believe anything as things can change, people can leave/die/resign etc, until one sees it in writing. After some intermittent follow up on my part, while waiting patiently for the cogs in this great corporate organisation to slowly turn, the letter finally arrives.

There. It. Is. Effective date - 29 August 2007.

And with it brings a sense of permanence not just in the job, but in the entire "being". I can start to look for real furniture, a less transient home, a more permanent life.

That Wedding

Finally, the big day. Not ours but G's old flatmate's which we had been getting ready for, with the hair, dress, shoes etc (for me of course, G just wore his fave work suit aptly nicknamed "the wedding singer suit" when he bought it, for the shade of slightly shimmering bluish-grey). It was a chilly Spring day which saw a bit of the sun peeking through but quickly went back to being windy with a cold nip in the air.

I think the best part about going to Church which I like, is the singing of hymns. It never fails to evoke a sense of ... being moved. It's inexplicable. The service was quite short, the sermon was interesting, modern and meaningful. The pastor said that it's people's differences that brought people together, and should not be a source of conflict but a source of strength to complement each other.

The dinner reception was held at the University hall, quite reminiscent of what I would imagine Hogswart's great hall would be, except on a much smaller scale.

The food was beautiful (when it finally came). We had to resort to various tactics to attract the servers who were bearing platters of finger food at the cocktail reception before dinner was served. We tried telepathy, moo-moo hungry eyes, the evil we-are-hungry-and-we-mean-business stares, forming a line to direct them towards us and creating a welcoming circle to enfold them into our midst type of formation as well. Towards the end of the cocktail reception, they started to fall under the charms of our various methods and the food which barely made it near us earlier started to come in streams. But it could also be that they realised that dinner was going to start soon and they had to get rid of the hors d'oeuvre - quickly! My faves were the prawns with shredded coconut on skewers and the chicken salsa on mini pikelets.

The dinner itself was also fabulous, I had the rack of lamb for my main (G only ate the accompanying french beans and the potato rosti as there were no vegetarian/seafood option, strangely enough) and enjoyed the cheese cake with raspberry compote dessert even though I am normally not very keen on heavy cheese cakes. The biscotti that went with my tea was deliciously light and flakey, and G wanted me to sweep the leftover handmade chocolates into my little handbag, but I staunchly refused to cave in to such boorish behaviour (I said I might consider if the other people at our table had gone out to the bathroom or for a smoke).

I have no pictures of the food as the camera was too bulky to slip into my little dinky evening bag. But the memory and discussion of the yummy dishes continued long after the dinner and proved how much we had enjoyed ourselves.

Mittagong

We vowed to brave the constant drizzle that was supposed to afflict the APEC long weekend despite the fact that we were into the first week of Spring. Warmly clad in a jumper, my woolly scarf which hasn't seen the outside of my cupboard in a month, my waterproof/windproof long overcoat and armed with a brolly, I was ready for Mittagong.

The train ride to Mittagong took 2 hours, it started to look like countryside landscape after an hour on the train. The grey clouds looked threatening but at least they didn't result in lashing rain, just a light drizzle when we got to Mittagong.

It was lunch time when we arrived and the main street was not a really long nor busy one. We checked out a few cafes and I vetoed the first large one we came across, even though it was crowded because I figured that was because it was the first cafe nearest the railway station, hence convenient to the tourists and hence not local enough. We agreed on a little, local-looking cafe, and I ordered a quiche lorraine with new potatoes. That was pretty tasty, however G's fish burger turned out to be 2 tiny strips somewhat like fish fingers, sandwiched between a toasted bun and was disappointing.

After we had somewhat satisfied our hunger, we started to explore the little town. First stop was a Vinnie's shop and boy, did we find some treasures! Ever since we saw "La Vie En Rose", G has been on the prowl for hollow-stemmed champagne glasses. We found some in a shop in Glebe, the set of 6 was going for $60, G convinced himself that he didn't need 6 champagne glasses, considering he already has champagne flutes. We then saw individual glasses for sale at the Surry Hills Antique Centre, at $20 apiece. And these at Vinnie's? A steal at 30 cents each, $1.20 for 4 glasses. It was such a shock, we couldn't believe our luck. We also had an animated discussion as to whether we needed the other 4 with rose etchings for $6, and we concluded that they were such a bargain, we would find some use for them, or a deserving friend or occasion that would warrant such a gift. The ones with the etchings could be from the 1950s as identical etchings on different-styled glasses at the Mittagong Antique Centre, were so labelled. Our joy and excitement at our luck just could not be suppressed, we were GLEEFUL.

I picked up a tea cup and saucer set at the Antique Centre, which were touted as a "Victorian duo" (more like "in the style of" I'm sure). What caught my eye was the unusual lime green shade, usually these English tea cups are in pretty shades of pink and red. I had been meaning to add to my meagre collection (by chance) of 2 tea cups which I had found forlornly discarded at the ground floor of the apartment block of my first flat. Those were a good find, and one of them was actually a light green as well.

In our excitement of finding these treasures, including the bottles of fig jam and whisky marmalade that G bought at the Information Centre (after forgetting to buy some for our breakfast that morning before we left for this trip, this purchase was just so convenient!), I had clean forgotten about the Sturt Gallery, just about the most famous landmark and reason for anyone to go to Mittagong. I still can't quite believe that I had forgotten about Sturt. This just means that we will have to make another trip back sometime soon...

Spring?

Spring arrived with a promising start.

My little cactus flowered, a once a year event, it knows the changing of the seasons and the budding and flowering heralded the coming of Spring. Then 2 days into the new season, the weather turned chilly and windy and I almost froze last night because I didn't have my winter coat. It has been 3 weeks since I last put on a winter overcoat to go to work, and today, the fourth day of Spring, I had no choice but to pull an overcoat out of the closet again. It was a very good decision because the temperature dipped to 16C maximum, it was windy and felt like Winter all over again.

I certainly hope this Spring isn't like last year's which really felt like Autumn. I look at my flowering cactus and hope.