Springbrook.

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent. ~Dave Barry

You either like camping or you don't. I do. I like getting up close & personal with nature & Australia is very campable as a rule. My friend Sian & I like the Gold Coast hinterland which consists of sub~tropical rainforest. This sort of rainforest doesn't consist of palmy things although the trees do that *reach for the sky* thing tropical trees do so well. It is also pretty close ~ only a couple of hours down the coast so nice & accessible.

Friday was an absolute scorcher. Because we aren't allowed on the site until after 10am we stop for food en route ~ in Ditz's case this usually consists of something sweet & sugary. To Die for Chocolate cake & Ditz at her cheesiest.

This is a really nice little restaurant with rustic furniture made from slabs of eucalyptus & plenty of homemade goodies.

The other important stop is the Fudge shop that makes seriously good fudge. We bought a awful lot of this but as it turned out it was a real blessing as we had one afternoon confined to the tent & fudge & a good book was the order of the day. They make a lovely Raspberry & cream fudge & several different sorts with either Baileys or Cointreau that are addictive!So long as I get something with caffeine in it I'm all good. This time around I had Turkish bread with avocado, tomato & feta. mm Ditz was meant to share with me but she turned her nose up at all of it except the bread part. I ended up a little too full for comfort & the end result was we hit the campsite in absolutely broiling temperatures, put the Tarp up & collapsed in the shade for a snooze while Ditz gleefully took horrible pictures of us.We did eventually surface again to get on with the serious business of erecting the tent & finding the gas bottle. Tea & coffee is absolutely essential. Without it life as we know it is not sustainable.

This time we seriously wanted to hike the Wari Circuit which is an all day hike through some of the most rugged walking country & to this end I had pre~prepared trail snacks, water bottles & remembered to pack a first aid kit with a constriction bandage in case of snake bite ~ all to no avail. The full circuit is closed as it has been our last 2 visits. Heavy rainfall has caused landslides, tree falls & other things that have made the trail a hazard. We've done the Twin Falls circuit twice now & as that is the first part of the Wari Circuit, though a loop of it's own as well, we have a good idea of the terrain we'd be covering. We were disappointed but there are so many good walks it's not as if we didn't have other excellent choices.

The campsite is a five minute walk from the Purling Brook Falls. The whole place is littered with creeks & rivers & water cascading down cliffs; lookouts with the sort of spectacular views that make my stomach drop out & me edge away from the ledge; huge trees & huger variety of birdlife. The water rushes headlong for the cliffs but there are spreading pools of quieter water as well & it is along these quieter stretches we platypus watch. This is one of our favourite haunts. We think we saw platypus here once. There are burrows that can be seen along the banks & Dearest reckons there could be as many as 12 platypie in just this one small stretch of water. There is another burrow we've found further up the creek & Sian has definitely seen a platypus around there so we are always hopeful. Ditz wishes we weren't quite so hopeful. She finds platypus watching exceedingly dull.The edges of the rainforest are rather weed infested. The rainforest is always considerably cooler that outside & I rarely travel far without a jumper. The further down & the closer to water you get the colder it is. The temperature plummets towards evening too so we try to be back in camp before it gets fully dark.Mostly we cook on the gas bottle or stick to fruit & yogurt or salad but Ditz decided pancakes were in order & headed over to the BBQs to get going while Sian & I recuperated with a hot cuppa!Yes, even in summer it gets cold enough for jumpers & jackets & the first night was the only really warm night we had. By our last night we all decided we hadn't brought enough warm bedding despite the fact we've done this often enough to know we need to be prepared for freezing night temps.

Ditz & I fought over Liddy's camera so now I have to sort out who took what where but between us we've got some great pics of our walks & I will get around to putting those up over the next day or so ~ just in case anyone is interested you know. ;) However we are going away with Liddy at the end of the week & I have a doctor's appointment with Dearest today & all the laundry to get done as well so I guess they will be full & busy days.

In which my soul hungers after mulch.

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn

I know this is true & am mourning the lack of the first because something is amiss when the pumpkin vine is not producing pumpkins. I have bees. The Basil is out of control & determined to produce flowers before dying. I am just as determined it should live & not flower so am constantly removing the buds from the swarms of bees hovering jealously over the scented heads. If I have bees & I have flowers I should have pumpkins but I do not. The thought of wading about doing the job myself does not appeal.

I have no pumkins & no mulch. Mulch is necessary on a garden.

England was the first place I saw hay rolled up in a cylinder. It has a

certain other worldly charm I found appealing. Ye olde worlde charm & all that. What I get when I order my mulch is the usual ugly oblongs that do nothing for my soul.

The only continent that is drier than ours is Antarctica. [It rarely even snows there. The wind just moves the existing snow around]. Therefore mulch is absolutely necessary on the garden. In summer it conserves water & keeps the soil cool. In winter it keeps the soil a little bit warmer. It helps keep the weeds at bay & my plants disease free. So I went to order my mulch to find the financial crisis has finally hit my little corner of the world. My $5.50 a bale bales are now $7.75! Or I could get 10 bales for $70~. I got 10 bales & I whinged about it. Daylight robbery, that's what it is!

It particularly stings because with all the rain the slasher is doing the rounds slashing the nearby paddocks. In years gone by my thrifty mulch hungry soul has followed the slasher round like a scavenger raking up the mown paddocks & dumping lovely piles of mulch the way mulch is meant to be, piled around the drip line till it almost touches the bottom leaves. Now I am forced to eek it out because the slasher has brought pestilence to the land in the form of a virulent pest called *sticky weed* & I am paying for my mulch. As its name suggests sticky weed sticks to everything. It is a rampaging vine & I loathe it. It leaves raised welts on anyone forced to handle it & it keeps invading my land. It is down the hill & through the ferns & even poison is not enough to rid me of it! What was it Henry II said? "Will no~one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' That's how I feel. That someone would murder it for me! A church and alter is not necessary & I don't care what method is used.

So sometime today I have 10 bales of mulch arriving to be spread along the southern side of the house in an effort to neaten it up & keep the weeds at bay. We don't want to do too much because all our plumbing is along there & our council keeps promising us sewerage ~ which will mean everything has to be dug up. I'm not holding my breath but I don't want to plant a perfectly good garden only to see it murdered by council workers who are not known for taking care of other people's property.

Interviewed by Sandra.

Sandra at World's End Farm is doing this cool interview thing. As I will be away for most of this month I'm not offering to interview anybody but certainly go & play with Sandra!

1. You are a busy mother and homeschooler. In the moments you get for musing, what do you see yourself doing when your children have grown and moved on? I have a list of things a mile long for when I no longer have kids to run after! I want a really BIG garden ~ acres of it. No lawn. I don't do lawns. I want lots of psychotic/neurotic cats fawning at my feet. I will paint & garden & write more unpublishable novels & have my sights on getting back to Scotland & traipsing around all the outer isles. What Dearest is going to do I don't know. And what will probably happen is the grand kids will start arriving in the middle of these grandiose plans & none of it will come to fruition ~ but isn't the unexpectedness of life one of its joys?!

2. You live in Australia and it seems you have travelled extensively. If you could live anywhere, where would that be? Skara Brae! I'd do the travel back in time thing too. This is such a cool place to have lived. Have a look at the kitchenware. Wouldn't you like a stone dresser just like this one?

I've liked almost nearly everywhere I've visited. There is something special about any place you visit but some places make a deep connection with the soul & for me one of those places is Scotland, & in Scotland the places that have really seared my soul have been the oldest ruins imaginable ~ the henges & standing stones, the hidden cellars, the old black houses ~ but I think knowing the history helps. Mind you I know modern history too & modern places don't have the same effect on me. Maybe I just like really old things. The thought of some woman pandering to her vanity in a bronze looking glass, or using the mortar & pestle to grind her family's evening meal does something to me.

3. You are a Celt and you have a vast knowledge of the old civilization. Do you think you would have been a Druid or a warrior in the old times? I'd have been a ban file [woman poet]. They were part of the druid establishment but separate. I'm not cut in the warrior mold but meddling with language, I really get into that & Gaelic does things you just can't do in English. A Welsh poet composed an entire poem just using vowels! The rhyme & metre for different types of poetry were really strict so it was a very disciplined art which also relied heavily on meditation & visualization. When you read some of the Irish sagas where they talk about a file composing he wraps himself in a cowhide so it's dark & visualises the images. There's a Scottish bardic reference where the bard says he just watches the pictures on a blank wall & retells what he sees. I actually understand what they're talking about which is a little scary.

4. What besides your children, books and cat makes you tick? You forgot the Celts! :)
Writing. Before I'm anything else I'm a writer. I've always written. I think in images & words. I'm always thinking how to put stuff into a story but I don't have the time to focus on it properly at the moment. I guess if I gave up homeschooling I could but bottom line, people are more important than writing & there are already too many books in this world so while the world is undoubtedly waiting on my contribution in this area it is waiting with infinite patience.

God. I try not to fuss at people about it & I don't believe in bible bashing, or evangelizing the way it is usually done but without God I am nothing & nobody. He is my joy in times of trouble, my strength, all of beauty I know ~ My friend, Sian, says when you handle an animal they can sense Jesus in you. I thought she was a bit wacky at first. Now I don't. I own a cat that likes being preached to. He loves purring on my lap through a sermon. He senses when I've been close to God & really seeks me out then. Strange animal. Besides I like the odd things I find that link up science & religion: the sun pulses to a beat [there are several biblical references to the music of the spheres], that if water didn't freeze life on this planet wouldn't be sustainable ~ odd things.

5. I'll ask this question of you also. What movies do you think would make a good double feature?

Oh my! How to Lose a guy in 10 days & 10 things I hate about you; Babette's Feast & The Red Lantern [I may have that title wrong; it's a Chinese movie & completely harrowing. edited to add: I knew I'd got that title wrong. The movie is Raise the Red Lantern];The Lion in Winter & Curse of the Golden Flower; Edward Scissorhands & Fly Away Home. Or any combination of the above.

What can I say? I have girls. Chocolate & a good movie is always a goer! We watch a lot of movies. Do you do a psychoanalysis of my movie answers?

One for the money...

Camping: nature's way of promoting the motel industry. ~Dave Barry, Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need

My friend Sian looks forward to this time of the year all year so she can whisk us away into the Great Dividing hinterland rainforst & camp somewhere where it cooks us by day & freezes us by night.

I've camped all my life so I am more than happy to be whisked; Ditz less so. It's not the lack of soap & water in a teen girl's life that troubles her as much as the eco loos. I have to admit I see her point. These no flush contraptions remind me of nothing so much as the old thunder boxes down the back paddock with the resident red back spider under the seat! Liddy is envious but she must work.

Then there is the hiking. My *no exercise please* kid gets to be hiked all over the Springbrook ranges & some of it is pretty difficult walking. Ditz's legs ache just thinking about it. Sian & I keep saying we want to do the Wari track but it is an all day hike & we need to leave early. Ditz wilts every time we mention it but so far we sleep so badly none of us has woken early enough to get us all moving in time. It's the thought of the Yowies. Any time Sian or Ditz wants the loo at night they want company, just in case you know, because it is Yowie country. I will get a hard time for teasing. lol.

This will be our longest stay so I have invested in a couple of camping chairs for Ditz & I. I am getting too old to find sitting on the ground for prolonged periods terribly comfortable. I am Sian's *wildlife watcher* buddy. She has other people she likes to go camping with but I'm the one prepared to sit indefinitely [& quietly] beside a pool watching for platypus. This exercise drives Ditz demented. I'm also pretty good at spotting wildlife, especially nests because I know what to look for ~ & what I'm looking at! [memo to self: remember the bird id book this time for the birds I don't know].

So today I pack & tomorrow I cook; Friday we leave. I really only have to prepare 2 evening meals; Sian will do the other 2 but I need some Ziploc bags with a *trail mix* ~ mostly nuts because I don't like dried fruit ~ & to buy the fruit, salad & noodles [noodles are a lunchtime staple] that we are going to need for 4 days. I'm always a little ambivalent about holidays. The extra work involved always makes me tired just thinking about it but I always have such a great time once I'm over that quirk in my personality. However bags won't pack themselves [more's the pity] so I'd better get moving.

Shopping with Ditz.

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.-- Elayne Boosler

Ditz & I are abnormal. We do not like to shop ~ with exceptions. Ditz would happily invade & takeover a large music shop while I'll settle for anything that has a book in it. We couldn't do an Imelda to save our lives. At this point in my life I don't even own a pair of shoes & shoes shopping is my numero uno hate. I have odd feet. Nothing ever fits properly & I can look for weeks with no success. Ask my mother. She used to dread the *back to school shoe shop*. We'd both be in tears. My mother would be getting desperate & I'd be getting angrier, condemned to another year of shoes that slopped around my heels & pinched across the toes. I hate shoes.

Ditz is getting that way about clothing. Maybe it's the fashion just now. Maybe it's Ditz. I am at my wit's end. I gave Ditz plenty of warning. I told her it must be done, we had to shop for clothing. Ditz wiggled & squirmed. She begged & pleaded, she argued & when that failed she procrastinated but we were on a boat this morning headed for a section of town that houses more than one smallish clothing shop.

My feet are killing me. My knees are aching. My hips need replacing & Ditz still doesn't have clothing. Ditz wasn't being unusually difficult but everything was too uncomfortable or too ugly or too immodest & we came home with exactly 2 camisoles, 2 bras & 1 T~shirt for 6 hours frustration. Poor Ditz was in & out of clothing in a vain attempt to find something. The child may be only 13 but she has a grown woman's body; too well developed for the children's section, or even the teen section & no 13 year old wants to dress like somebody's grandmother! I really wanted to get her some good long shorts but we tried & tried with no luck. Anything wide enough across the beam swam round her waist. Ditz has a Marilyn Munroe figure & Marilyn Munroe figures aren't fashionable anymore. They don't make clothes like that.

I have offered to make Ditz shorts. I can sew & shorts is one of the things I actually make well; I got plenty of practise with the boys but Ditz has no faith in me. She doesn't want to look that homemade. I couldn't even buy a good plain T~shirt! Questionable slogans were the least of it. What's with cutting the sleeves so you can't move your arms freely? Try playing a flute or violin in one of those monstrosities. It can't be done. Or those smock like contraptions that make everyone look pregnant? Or how about bunching up the sides so you just look fat? That falls where Ditz is widest & does not make her a happy shopper. Plunging Necklines? Eeew! From both Ditz & I.

We settled for a camouflage T with Felix on it ~ which is a tad better than the Morticia look Ditz is fond of. She's trying not to draw attention to herself at present but then went & bought fluorescent underwear. She reminds me of some of the early Quakers, all sober on the outside but wearing a concealed thread of bright colour somewhere on their person!

I guess we're back to checking the shops every time we're in town but I was really hoping to update Ditz's wardrobe before choir resumed. Talk about prolonging the agony! This could drag on for months yet. Maybe we should just consecrate her to a nunnery & dress her in sack cloth?

One spotty dog.

"Even the tiniest Poodle or Chihuahua is still a wolf at heart." - Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, Dogs: The Wolf Within

We have only ever owned one dog; a dalmatian named Christy. Well actually she was officially named Island Cooler but she was my son's dog & he was 5 so not only was it not a suitable name for a child's dog it was a real mouthful. Try shouting that after a bolting Dalmatian.

I have yet to own a completely sane animal & Christy was no exception. From the very first what she liked best to eat was Dearest's underwear. Yum.

Now I didn't enter into the purchasing of a dog lightly. I'm a cat person. Always have been. Dogs mystify me but the kid wanted a dog, you know, & little boys should have a dog a least once in their lives so I began researching dogs. Lots of people wanted to tell me how great labs are but I have serious issues with labs. For starters I think they are incredibly dumb. I'm sure there are exceptions & I'm assured they make wonderful pets but I never got over the lunatic dog that lived beside us in Sydney & insisted on grabbing me by the wrist & escorting me home. Having my hand held by an overgrown bird dog was never my idea of fun.

If I was sane I would have gone for something smallish & manageable. Our neighbours had foxies & kept assuring us they were wonderful pets & never bit. Their dogs bit all my kids at one time or another & they were yappy as well. No yappers for me. I'd have gone for an Irish wolfhound but have you seen the size of those things? The thought of the food bill put me off. I like setters but Sydney friends had one. They saw an awful lot of Sydney because they were always getting calls from complete strangers to come pick up their escaped dog.

I wanted something smart enough to train. Dearest wanted something smart enough to keep an eye on our lunatic kids. Yes, the dog was smarter than my kids. What we got was Christy.

There's lots dog owners don't tell you about dogs. Dalmatians, I read, were carriage dogs & good if you had a fire because they were strong enough & smart enough to drag you out if you were overcome with smoke. No~one mentioned they were also once used as hunters: bird dogs, trail hounds, retrievers & in packs to hunt boar & stags. I got a dog that would suddenly stop in the middle of nowhere & go to point! The first time it happened I thought the dog had lost what little mind she started with. And stubborn. Once on point nothing could distract her. I'd be dragging a dog down the road still trying to point.

Dalmatians are thought to be the first dogs bred selectively for specific traits & they are the only pure bred dog to come with spots ~ not that being spotty is any recommendation in & of itself. They were depicted in paintings as much as 2000 years ago & as guard dogs patrolled the borders of their original home in Dalmatia [now part of modern day Croatia].

Hunters, dogs of war, carriage dogs...so why did no~one ever mention these dogs smile. I am not referring to the usual doggy smirk common to many breeds. Happy Dalmatians lift the upper lip in a serious grin. It was quite handy on unwanted visitors. They'd approach going, 'Good doggie,' Christy would lift her upper lip in happy anticipation, the visitor would freeze then hastily retreat. Only the chooks were more effective.

The thing with dogs is they are all descended from the wild. One of the most fascinating documentaries I ever watched was on a breeding program for Russia's Black Arctic Foxes. The breeders were looking at how wild dogs got to be tame so began breeding for just one trait: friendliness. What happened wasn't what they expected. They got friendly foxes but they also spawned a whole plethora of mutations: colour changes, coat changes, eye colour variations, curly tails, straight tails, short tails, long tails. You name it they got it. Weird isn't it?

Christy was really good with my kids. They used to ride her like a horse but she got her revenge. Waiting till the boys were standing in a close huddle she would sweep through their centre swinging her hips left, right left, sending them flying then stand & grin at them but she would put herself between them & any snakes they stumbled across, rounding them up & herding them homewards out of harms way.

Eventually on Easter morning she presented us with 9 puppies. I had 4 overexcited kids trying to feed chocolate to newborn pups. I had my hands full. Dalmatian pups are born pure white so we had to wait a couple of weeks before we knew how spotty our pups were but Christy was an excellent mother & all 9 survived to eventually go to new homes.

Christy met an untimely & sad end & we never got another dog. I don't think we are good dog owners but we have been lucky with our cats. They have all been happy to parade down the road with our boys & laze beside them while they fished. Mind you they didn't necessarily come home with them & come cat meal time I would have to go look for them & carry them home drugged with sun & satiated on stolen bait.

Sunday Cricket.

Many Continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.- George MikesWe are not doing well about getting to church on the mainland regularly. I do recall that it was one of the reasons we committed to doing church on the island originally. We will be all organised but I will still be sitting in the car waiting on Liddy appearing when our boat pulls out because, though the shop is open all day, everyone arrives just as they are about to lock the doors & shop till they drop.



Liddy, who is in charge Sundays, gets terribly frustrated. Her girls are always all Juniors [because you don't have to pay them so much] & after the inevitable string of kids who don't show up for their shift, or arrive late & the one who kept dashing to the loo [morning sickness; Liddy rang wanting a *cure* for morning sickness yesterday; I suggested plain potato chips & ginger beer], & the bungling of lunch times & break times she is inevitably spitting chips when she walks out that door. And that is a shocking sentence but I don't think I have the willpower this morning to fix it. I keep telling her that she just needs to accept that the manager can't schedule to save herself & go to work knowing she will have to tweak everything in order to make it work & knowing she will have the inevitable *no shows* instead of getting fraught about something that happens every week.






This week we didn't even try for church. Firstly I have had Dino flat on his back on my couch most of the week with his dislocated shoulder. He wasn't good. He looked like death warmed over & slept most of the time in front of the t.v. I'm grateful we're on holidays because when he does that during school it is not good for Ditz. The girl has no concentration as it is. He's started crabbing again so I guess he's about ready to go back to work & I get my couch back.







Late Saturday Theo arrived with his girlfriend. I am still battling the migraine triggered by waiting up too late to give them a lift home from the party they went to. Mornings I usually have quietly to myself. My girls aren't morning people & if Dino rises he departs on the water after an interim period of noise & bustle. Theo, who doesn't live here any more, couldn't find anything so banged about the kitchen opening & shutting doors, poking about in freezers & enquiring where I'd hidden the food then proceeded to cook up a storm of bacon, sausages, eggs , fried tomatoes & toast. For breakfast. Ugh. All that grease first thing! The smells wafting about dragged everyone from their beds, not necessarily happily, but as Theo pointed out he was taking Dino's place on the cricket team & required sustenance.







My morning then proceeded to run like this: drop the love birds at the cricket oval; drop Liddy at work; take water up to the cricket oval because Theo forgot water; take Dino up to the cricket oval because they needed an umpire; take lunch up to Liddy; grab Ditz & head back to the oval to keep the girl friend company & watch the lad for an hour or so. This is something of a hardship. There are some things duller than cricket [gridiron & baseball come to mind] but not many. Luckily the view from the oval is pretty terrific & it wasn't too hot.

We timed it pretty well. Just as we arrived a batsman got bowled out [that's always exciting] & Theo walked to the crease. That's him hiking across the paddock to do the front & centre let's bang the bat on the crease thing. What is it with that? I'm sure it can't be good for a bat.

He then proceeded to show off for the girlfriend by knocking the ball all around the pitch. That was pretty exciting too. As he'd already scalped the oppositions two most important wickets as a bowler he was having a pretty good day & ended up not out & man of the match. For someone who hasn't played this season he did pretty well.



Meanwhile the opposition's female adherents had spotted Dino [& that he was unattached] & were in hot pursuit. Between the heckling he was getting from his own team & the girls Dino didn't know if he was Arthur or Martha. We relieved his mind & took him away.



Sunday was neither a day of rest nor a day of worship & frankly I'm glad it's over. Next Sunday Ditz & I should be perched quietly beside a waterhole watching for platypus. I can't wait!

Food, glorious food, persimmons, mangoes & ginger.

When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering ofpraise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 19:23-25

Fruit is the glory of the plant kingdom. In bud the trees are a nimbus of delicate blossom. In fruit they feed the hungry with sweetness. The best of them gracefully shed their foliage in Autumn & winter naked reveal a dazzling beauty in simplicity of line. The Persimmon meets all these requirements except edibility. I have only met one other fruit I dislike more. Pawpaws are just gross. Persimmons will grow here in the Mountain hinterlands though I am still trying to work out why anyone would want to. Granted the tress are strikingly beautiful but the fruit is a squishy disaster. Eeew!

So here are some more of the summer fruits we enjoy ~ or not in my case.

Pawpaws will, unfortunately, grow at the drop of a seed. Everyone grows pawpaws. They don't take up much room being a smallish tree that grows palmlike & bunches its fruit along the stem. This is the fruit most likely to be given away. Everyone might grow them but very few people actually like them. I can't get past the smell, which always reminds me of the local tip on a particularly fetid day.

Custard apples also fall into the *eeew* basket. The tress are gorgeous being low & spreading but the fruit is peculiar. The outer skin is rough & coarse like an alligator skin. Cut open the white flesh flakes like certain types of fish. I can't get past that & the big black seeds in the centre.

Mango trees are fantastic. The flush of new leaf growth each year is a deep & vibrant red. A mature tree is a deep pool of cool shadow on a hot summer's day where the mosquitoes like to congregate in dense black clouds. The pendulous fruit glints under the leaves like golden suns. They have a huge seed in the centre & children will happily suck the discarded stones rejected by adults. The fruit is a rich orange colour. They are the smell of a Queensland summer.

Ginger I do like. The smell where it's grown...mmmmm! We pass paddock after paddock of the plants each time we travel to my mother's. There is a large ginger factory nearby & a visit is always worthwhile. I forget how many varieties of ginger can be grown; I have several myself in the garden, but the sweet Sharp taste, the rich heady scent, is delicious. The plants also grow a variety of exotic flowers. I like my ginger pickled & topping grainy toast spread with cream cheese.
The other thing we see plenty of when we travel north is the cane fields. Cane provides the bulk of our sugar plus molasses & syrup. I remember watching the cane cutters harvest, circling inwards round a paddock so that everything that had been sheltering in the fields was huddled at the centre until finally flushed out there would be a swarm of snakes, mice, rats & other small wildlife. At the finish the cane fields would be burnt & the air would smell of the burnt toffee smell of burning cane. The sky glowed like a burning coal, heavy with smoke. The fires would last for days, blackening the sky.
Lychees are something else that grows well here. Each year we used to help harvest the lychees on the farm down the road & always had lychees for Christmas. The outer husk is thin & dry & quite brittle. The white inner flesh is grape like with a huge centre seed. They are a bit too sweet for my taste but I will eat them.

I have saved the best for last; avocados! The little *alligator pears* have a delicate nutty flavour & a smooth, rich texture. The seeds aren't as big & difficult either. There are lots of good ways to eat these: as guacamole dip; with vinegar & cracked black pepper; with sour cream & brown sugar; spread on grainy toast & lightly seasoned with tomato sauce. The really brave spread their toast with Vegemite & top it with avocado. When we first moved to the island there were so many different varieties to choose from, all free on the abandoned farms, that we actually got a little tired of avocados.

Being sub~tropical we get a glut of fruit pretty much all year round but unfortunately I've never really developed a taste for the tropical fruits so readily available all around us. What I like are cold climate fruits: raspberries [my favourites], nectarines & peaches, kiwi fruit & a close second, dark cherries like drops of blood.

Food Houses.

A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless. ~May Sarton
Sienna & I have been learning about the importance of commas. They are needed for clarity when making a list. Clarity is important when you are trying to convey information accurately. For years I thought Americans were the most peculiar people on the face of the earth. Seriously; who in their right mind puts jelly on a sandwich?! O.k, I did finally work that one out but as a kid the only jelly I knew was the sort that wibble~wobbled on your plate & came with custard & icecream.

Not having travelled in America I have no idea how different American houses are to Australian houses ~ or European houses because I have been to Europe. I imagine there are both similarities & differences so this is a hotch~potch collection of the houses in my tiny corner of the world.

First off is our house, which is double storied in part, made of brick & has a tin roof. Tin roofs are fantastic in a thunderstorm. The rain drumming down makes a great tattoo on the tin & echos throughout the house. Lots of places like ours don't have a front fence to give a more open look but in our case we've used the footpath for years as an extension of our garden. Now our area is getting posher we can't do that so much but our veggie garden is still out the front because our house sits at the top of a hill looking over the water & that is the only flat area we have for the garden. My boys use the poinciana to dry their caste net.

Next we have a house that is along the lines of a more traditional *Queenslander*. These are always 2 stories high so the air can circulate underneath & theoretically help keep the house cooler, have 9' high ceilings [because hot air rises], & plenty of verandah space. The walls are usually *tongue & groove* cypress [which white ants don't like.] Originally the kitchen was a separate building built on the coolest corner of the verandah so the wood stove didn't heat up the entire house. I really like them but they have a tendency to get eaten out by termites. My aunt had cedar beams holding up her ceiling by the grace of God alone thanks to white ants.

This is one of the newer style buildings that are going up all over the place. The curved roofs are supposed to be cyclone proof. Jury's still out on that one. Lots of them are being built out of corrugated iron. Not my thing. I like the style but the iron idea is just ugly. The blue house alongside[which I tried very hard to omit from the picture] is an eyesore of a focal point because it can be seen from all over the place it is so ....bright.


I've included this one because this is my favourite house on the island. The owners built it themselves completely out of stone with inner verandahs & lovely natural timber trims. All houses should look as beautiful as this one. I am waiting to see what sort of a garden they now plant.
There are lots of these little one or two bedroom holiday shacks around that have been jazzied up for the modern market. They are very small & hot despite the renovations. This one has lovely views over the water to the west but I bet it heats up like an oven.

There is a two story modern building behind all that greenery but the fence it made of huge chunks of timber from the big trees they had to fell in order to put the house up. I think the fence looks terrific; far more interesting than the house, which is very dull.