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Guess what I did last night?...
I met long-time blog friend Jacinta from One Little Acorn! Yes, met in real life! She and her Mum, Shirley, are up in my region this week taking part in Camp Creative, and as they were so close (compared to being in Melbourne, where they are from, in a whole other state!), we organised to meet up.
The three of us went out for dinner and can I just say it was so comfortable and natural.
We've only seen the very occasional, small, not too detailed pic of each other on our blogs, but we recongised each other immediately. Then spent the rest of the night chatting away as if we were old friends who hadn't seen each other in a few years. I think we probably could have lingered on chatting for a few more hours. :)
Co-incidentally, it was only a few weeks ago I sent her the prize pack from my Thanksgiving Giveaway this year.
And guess what else?! They gave me a gift!!!
Hand-knitted (by Shirley) baby booties! With the loveliest "blackberry stitch" cuffs. THEN they shouted my meal!!!! I couldn't stop them. So generous and kind they both are.
Anyway, I had a really really nice evening with them, and I'm so thrilled to finally have met Jacinta after aaaalllll these years as blog-friends.
Thanks so much you two, safe travels all the way home, looking forward to doing it again next time. .xx.
I am in love with our giant tree. Each week it completely changes. Just the other week it was covered in some kind of flower, and all you could hear was the gentle hummm of a mass of bees, happily going about their important business, way above our heads.
The town where we live is always in the depths of discussion and planning suggestions of how to make it more appealing... To make the beachfront more attractive to visitors... To help our town become as interesting to tourists as the rest of the towns on this pretty coastline.
While there are 20 year plans for development and restructure, I believe (while it certainly needs alot of help) it really wouldn't take much to get it started; just a little soul.
Last weekend we took a day trip to visit a little town only 40 mins from here. We've been here before, and I LOVED the mosaic wall in the centre of town. But this time we went down along the waterfront, and were amazed by the beautiful breakwall.
Each rock is "graffitied", but in the most loving, pre-planned, community minded way imaginable.
It's a little tourist town, and on each rock is a record of people's visits, from near and very far, and even some which we're told are freshened up and added to each year when the original artist revisits the town. One rock (a local lady pointed out to us) has a new grandchild's name and picture of a toy added each time a new one is born.
Surprisingly, we only saw one painted rock that had been needlessly tagged over the top of. The rest are left as they are. We vowed to return one day when we have a family, armed with paint and brushes.
This clever couple had constructed an entire flowerpot:
The white side of this one invited all other Swiss tourists to sign their name:
This one took advantage of the shapes of the rocks:
And my personal favourite, for no other reason than I love a good pun:
 We have returned from our time at the eco wellness retreat, and it was lovely. Nestled deep in the Blue Mountains, the lodge was small, surrounded by bush and a long way from anywhere. We spent the first afternoon resting in our room. Mr You made use of being able to stretch out in the king sized bed, and caught up on some sleep. I sat in a chair in the sun and flipped aimlessly through magazines. The caretaker made all the meals, healthy and hearty, and we ate on large tables shared with the other guests. The water we drank was from a nearby spring.  The next day we each had a wonderful massage, discovered lots of beauty (and a prayer) on a bushwalk, reached an escarpment over a giant valley and I let out a soul-satisfying "coo-eee" from the cliff-top (hehehehe, how long has it been since you've done that? It's so fun), then returned in time for me to enjoy the best facial I've ever had in my life.  We ventured to a nearby town for dinner by an open fireplace, and had an unforgettable hot chocolate. The last day we drove to the town where Mr You's Grandparents met and married, and explored the ruins of the old steel works.  The only thing that could have made it better would have been a big bathtub. But, I guess it is an eco retreat. Saturday night and Sunday were back in Sydney, checking out the museum, lying in the sun in parks, catching up with friends, and taking photo's of my good friend's very first baby-bump. It was lovely. And I feel rested and ready for what comes next. :)
After the big storms and floods a few weeks back, we discovered the most amazing thing washed up at the end of the beach.  It was a long, thick, twist of twigs... like a giant sea serpent washed up onto the rocks.  So long it would have covered the length of one and a half tennis courts, and stretched straight it surely would have been longer.  Winding and weaving its way between the rocks, left resting heavy where it lay.  It must have been formed by the constant rolling motion of the waves against the shore. Unable to escape. A dense felted twine of dried sea forestry, dislodged from deep below the sea surface.  One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. We felt as though we stumbled upon one of Andy Goldsworthy's artworks, honoured and amazed (who doesn't love his work). Only even more so because it was a completely natural formation, proving again that nature is Queen! For anyone unfamiliar with Andy Goldsworthy's work....   
You know those times when you go for a walk on the beach and there are heaps of bluebottles washed up on the high-tide line along the shore? Well, we found the same thing while walking on the beach the other afternoon. But because we live in some sort of fairyland, instead of bluebottles there were hundreds and hundreds of lady beetles! I've never seen anything like it before. It was so very very odd. But pretty and enchanting at the same time. It raised many questions; What were they doing in the water? Why were there so many of them together when we're so use to seeing them solo? Do they usually travel across the sea in swarms? Most of them hadn't survived, some had. But they weren't sharing any answers. So curious... (p.s. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, bluebottles are a type of, um, stinging jellyfish I guess. Except they're not jelly, they're like little inflated air sacks, and blue in colour. Photo's here and here). Sadly I have no photo's of the lady beetles on the beach. Sorry. You'll have to attempt a painting of that one yourself. :)
 A couple of weekends ago, I downed tools and took a Sunday away from my little studio room. My Mum and Stepdad drove north a few hours, Mr You and I drove south a few hours, and we met up at a little country town to spend a Winter's "exploring-Sunday" together.  It was so pretty, we jumped in one car and drove to lookouts and a waterfall. We perused the little shops in town, ogling the plentiful antiques, filling up at the old fashioned sweet shop, admiring the huge intricate wall mosaic and a lovely little gallery. We stopped for lunch at a gorgeous cafe, went for a walk in the sub-tropical rainforest, and took turns with the binoculars. It felt so good to have a mini-holiday, filled with all the type of charm only a tiny country town can give. Tomorrow we're heading on an actual holiday to Sydney to catch-up with friends and favourite haunts. So I'll leave these images of the country to hold the fort, while I go and drench myself in a weeks worth of city!!! See you in a week :) 
 It's coming to the end of school holidays, so we've been entertaining visiting nephews for the past 2 days. Skateboarding with Uncle You yesterday... we all went ice skating this morning, and we finished the day with a trip to the Butterfly House. The butterfly photo's are worth looking at in large scale. In one of them you can even see the big long tongue all curled up!
 I don't have anything to say, I just wanted to show you the tiny bright puffs of wattle that have just bloomed in the front yard. It's smell is faint but sweet, and the bees love it.
 Looking in my garden for inspiration I never have to go too far. A couple of these shots were taken from inside, looking through the window of my studio/front room/office. It's Winter, yet there's still so much colour.
  Just a few pictures from my weekend I thought I'd share. The top two are a small tree over our neighbour's fence. It is so full of berries, blossoms and bees at the moment that it's seriously listing under it's own weight. It normally stands upright. This other little one is in my front room/office/studio. I've never caught this before. The morning sun coming through the window at such an angle to create a perfectly crisp photogram of the trees and ferns outside, projected on my wall; but with motion, like the delicate image cast from a camera obscura. If you look closely you can even catch an elongated version of Tilli staring out into the front garden. One of her favourite spots.
 Sunday was the first day we had seen a break in the heavy constant rain in about 3 weeks. Honestly, it’s the most rain I can ever remember. For the first few days the sound of the rain on the tin roof was gorgeous and relaxing, but after a week of unrelenting rain day and night it just sounded like static and was driving me batty. We don’t have street gutters or storm water drains down our bushy end of the street, so the run-off from the road all cascaded down our yard, turned the front yard into rice paddy-like terraces, our driveway into a series of rapids, and our backyard into the Serengeti wetlands. The locals refer to it as “storm season”, but it’s more like a monsoon if you ask me. In any case, Sunday was spent walking the beach perusing all that had been washed up on the shore. Glad to be out in the air again and to feel the sunshine. I've been to the beach each day since then, still enjoying it all, and the sand (much like our garden) is still soaked through with tiny streams trickling from the bush to the ocean. The creek that comes out on the beach has turned into a torrential river (well, almost). Where normally you can leap over it in one go, it took Mr You and I about 4 mins to cross; pants rolled up above our knees, carrying our shoes, tip-toeing along the river stone bed, navigating from one shallow patch to the next, all the while pushing against the current. I half expected to see salmon leaping up stream. The rain did dampen my spirits (mainly because it lasted so long), but we really really needed it, and it's effects have been instant on my new herb garden :)
 The weather is heating up; it's humid and clammy, and in the past two weeks there's only been about 4 days where we haven't had a giant storm. When they arrive it's dramatic and bold. Although the sky looked threatening this weekend the storms held off... Now suddenly everything is green. It's so green it's iridescent. We spent yesterday in the hinterlands. We met our friends parents at a place called The Old Butter Factory, we had coffee together in the cafe there and mosied through the craft galleries. Then after having lunch at their house, Mr You and I took the long way home through an out-of-the-way area known as The Promised Land. You know when you come across a landscape so beautiful a lump wells in your throat, and tears catch in your eyes? Well I had one of those moments. We drove along a dirt road, through archways of trees, over carpets of fallen blosom, across a timber bridge over Never Never Creek. We passed a country wedding in progress; Tables set out under the shade of a row of huge trees, nestled next to a tiny country chapel. White tableclothes blowing in the breeze, children running about, musicians playing, and people laughing. It was just gorgeous! Like a scene from a movie, only better, and real. We returned home to find a tiny city of mushrooms on the ankle of one of our big trees. It all started to feel like the storms had rained droplets of magic. It made up for the night before, when we went to our first gig in this new town. The gig itself was fine, but I had a head in hands "where I am?" moment after walking in and seeing everyone sitting at tables. It wasn't a seated gig, yet everyone sat at tables. And the guy next to us had bought his own stubby-holder from home for the evening! I felt envious of my friends who have an amazing Summer of gigs lined up in Sydney (Bjork, Interpol, Sufjan Stevens, etc). But, then again, there IS the iridescent green, Never Never Creek, the sound of crickets, and the tiny tiny city of mushrooms. 
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