Meh

I haven't posted on here for a while, because there's nothing much happening in my life at the moment. And what little has happened has been bad. My dear little black cat, Jiro, was run over and killed last Wednesday, so things have been a bit doomy here. He should have had a longer life, he was such a sweetie. I still have my lovely Thomas, who has been a comfort, but it's very quiet without Jiro, who was a full-on little guy.
   We've had a terrible summer here, cold and wet. The farmers are overjoyed, because the countryside has been in a drought for some time, but for townies who wanted a summer it's been a disaster. The fruit is a sour, for lack of sunlight, and vegetables like tomatoes and zucchini, that normally go well, are non-existent. I have some tiny green tomatoes, but there's no way that they will ripen by summer's end, even if we have another five weeks of good weather. Our first frost is usually about the second week of April, so there's not much time left now. The pears are starting to fall, but they are tasteless; even the birds don't seem very interested.
  Ho hum.

Rediscovering tea

One of my New Year's resolutions was to drink less coffee. As I've got older and my digestive processes more delicate, coffee has become less palatable to me, and now gives me cracking indigestion. Much of my coffee drinking is habit, the same way a smoker smokes; get to the end of a task, sit down and have a coffee, get tired or bored, have a coffee, stumble out of bed in the morning, have a coffee. Going on the premise that it is easier to replace a bad habit with a better one, rather than just going totally cold turkey, I've been rediscovering tea.

I've put the coffee-making equipment away, and have given more open shelf room to teas of various kinds. My standard teas are Lapsang Souchong, Earl Grey and Irish Breakfast (tastier than English Breakfast to my palate). Lapsang is very refreshing after a hot, tiring day in the garden; its smoky taste reminds me of billy tea. Earl Grey is for when I want to go posh, with little sandwiches and tea-cake and amusing company. Irish Breakfast is my breakfast tea of choice, tastier and more nuanced than English Breakfast , reminding me pleasantly of Mrs Doyle and Father Ted. ("Ah, go wan, Father, will ye have a cup of tea, there?")

And then of course, there are the herbal teas. Lemon and ginger is refreshing and warming, peppermint and spearmint for the digestion, lemon balm when there's no lemon available, or you could use lemongrass. (Iced lemongrass tea is wonderful on a very hot day. I had some once when I had a day stopover in Singapore and was exploring the old fort, in filthy humid weather that made me feel feverish.) And I have Indian tea spice mix, which can be brewed on its own or added to ordinary tea. The great thing about the herbal teas is that you can grow them very, very cheaply in the garden. I'm growing some spearmint cuttings in my Bramble teapot at the moment, and  I'm pretty sure they've rooted so I'll pot them up soon and give them away. Teapots and caddies are also nice to have on display. I think there's a name for people who collect tea paraphernalia, but I can't think of what it might be. 

Of course, the other appeal is that tea is much cheaper than coffee, and I have less sugar in it, which will hopefully result in better health and a slimmer waistline. I'll still have coffee but not at the rate of consumption that has been my wont in the past. Or I'll have it at work where the company pays for it!

Happy Epiphany!

                                             One candle for each Wise Man

Seeds

Red hollyhock seed.

Sorting seeds today, part of the decluttering/rationalisation project. I have bags of seeds that have been sitting around since last year:

 I put them in brown paper bags to dry off, then stuffed them in a shelf in my writing desk, where they've taken up a lot of room. So now I've removed the chaff and bits and packaged them up like so:

Much more compact. I'm not sure whether these are still viable, I'll have a go at germinating them soon. Meanwhile, the cats have been busy sleeping.

Thom shares my bed

Jiro gets the whole spare room to himself

In the afternoon, they both move to the conservatory, to take up their favourite chairs...

and rest some more.

Christchurch City Art Gallery

Today I visited our art gallery for the first time in over five years. Not because I dislike it, but because it has been closed since our 2011 earthquake. The gallery has just reopened, after extensive repairs, not to the windows as might be thought, but to the foundation. This has been re-levelled (they squirt resin into the ground beneath the foundation, gradually raising it up) and base-isolated, in effect placing the building on giant rubber tyres so that the building moves with a quake rather than resists it. The building was the Civil Defence headquarters during the emergency phase of the disaster, then had to be closed as two nearby office blocks that leaned over it had to be demolished. (These blocks actually banged together during the quake, and ended up leaning against each other).

The upstairs level of the stair well. A sculpture of upside-down chairs and florescent tubes hangs from the ceiling like a chandelier

The bull on a piano has become something of a symbol of Christchurch's resilience. First exhibited outside in a post-quake wasteland, it now has pride of place in the foyer. The work is "On first looking into 'Chapman's Homer" by Michael Parekowhai.

A great view out over the surrounding streets from the upstairs foyer.

This is the view you get when you sit at the piano.

Main foyer and stairs

There are several exhibitions on here at the moment. One I particularly liked was of the work of Margaret Stoddart. One of the first New Zealand women to have a career in painting, she was an adventurous explorer of the local landscape, using the 'respectable' pastime of botanising to travel through some of the wildest country of the province. The picture above is of her homeplace of Diamond Harbour, painted in 1909.

The gallery was quite busy even early in the morning when I visited. It's great to be able to enjoy looking at art again in such an interesting building. 

Decluttering days

Hosta flowers - you can see some of the hail damage on the leaves. One of the hostas in my front garden was shredded; sadly, it will look awful for some time yet.

Now we're coming up to New Year, I've bitten the bullet and am doing some serious decluttering. It won't make a huge difference to the way the interior of the house looks - I like most of my tchotchkes and they will stay - but more to the inside of my cupboards. There is a lot of stuff that I have kept, with the best of intentions, meaning to fix or alter or repurpose them. 

Part of the decluttering process is absolute honesty. Do I really want this? Will I really use this ever again? Will I take up this hem, alter this curtain...etc. etc. I tend to keep things like old curtains, just in case I move house and the curtains will fit the new windows (they don't fit the current windows, which is why they are in storage). And duplicates of things - two (or sometimes three) of everything, in case I lose or break one. It's best to give them to charity, I think, then at least someone can use them, instead of just filling up a drawer or a cupboard. I keep ancient seed packets with ancient seeds. They will not germinate and I know this, but still I keep them. I found two brand new spanners in a box. I have no idea why I have them or when I would ever use them; I do not fix my own car or plumbing or even my bicycle myself. 

I have kept a lot of newspaper and magazine clippings, about gardening and cooking. These were yellowing and musty and I have never looked at them again after clipping them. The Internet has obviated my need to keep such stuff; if I want to know how to prune a fruit-tree, Google will tell me. And I will still keep my books, my many gardening books.

So I'll continue, and then have a big houseclean so I can go into the New Year all bright and shiny. Many cultures have this "clean before the new year" custom, but I've never bothered before. And I may not bother again!

Merry Christmas!

   This is a photo of my garden taken this evening. Southern Christmas is a summer event, which can be a bit odd; cards with reindeer and snow are a bit out of place down here. Our Santa wears red board shorts and a T-shirt and jandals (aka thongs or flip-flops) and eats salad and ice-cream and enjoys a cool beer rather than egg-nog.
   Those of us in the Southern Hemisphere have almost finished our Christmas Day now. In the Northern Hemisphere, you'll just be starting, so to both hemispheres I hope you had and have a very Merry Christmas.