midwinter

It's midwinter here in Sydney and its been cold, in fact one of the coldest winters in years. But then its never THAT cold in Sydney! We did go out west in the holidays and see some minus temps and ice skate though.

I love this time of year when the air is crisp but the days are getting longer. I don't mind the cold but I do miss the daylight hours. I'm much happier when we get past the shortest day and we're heading towards spring.

I'm sure the plants sit up and take notice. Spring heralds start flowering. My daphne is out, I saw a magnolia in flower just yesterday and the jasmine is budding up. The last few days there has been a real feeling in the air that warmer times are coming!

The most exciting thing this spring is that I have my garden back. Last year's building work really trampled a lot of the garden as predicted. And changes to our house mean the whole layout of our outdoor space has changed.

These past few weeks though have seen the new garden emerging from the rubble, to the point where I have spent the last couple of days putting new bare root perennials into empty beds! I'm dreaming of how they'll look when they grow, and back to my daily garden walks watching seedlings emerge and shoots appear.

But more of that in another, overdue, garden post!

This post is more a check-in, to say I'm still here, I'm still blogging so please come back and visit me soon. I've been a bit tongue tied, which happens when you don't blog for a while, you get out of the rhythm. But I have some new creative pursuits, an update on our reno and other stuff to share.

Thank you to all those lovely, lovely people who sent messages or left comments here or on instagram about my Dad. Those messages mean so much to me.

Talk soon.

p.s. want to take that pesky new Flickr watermark off your photos, just remove the code between  a and href in the html which says data-flickr-embed="true".

climbing the mountain

We've just finished two weeks of our renovation and the school holidays, a crazy mix! The whole back of the house is gone and there is half a big hole in the backyard, soon to be a whole hole next week.

I think this is the scariest part of the build (I'm hoping so) before they start putting it all back together again!

Luckily we managed to escape the dust and noise for a few nights up in the Blue Mountains this week. It was so nice to be away and destress a little. Though the place we stayed at was called Serenity Cottage which made me think of this :-)

The Blue Mountains has some of the most amazing views I've ever seen. Photos don't do them justice, they are jawdroppingly grand and there's something about the experience of standing on the edge of these huge canyons that can't be reproduced in photos. We visited a few years ago which I blogged about here.

The villages in the western part of the mountains have a lovely old time air to them, people have been holidaying in this part of the world for over a hundred years and they have managed to keep some of their old worldiness. Old guest houses, antique shops, park monuments, blossom trees. Its a world away.

We visited an old favourite lookout, Pulpit Rock near Blackheath on the first afternoon. Then did a major bushwalk down a million stairs into the Grand Canyon area. Once we dropped into the rainforest area it was like a fairy glen, and the path stepping stoned back and forth across the creek which ran down the side of the cliffs.

Coming back up those stairs was hard work and I was huffing my way up one part, groaning to myself as I rounded another corner to another staircase of steps, when I was surprised by a bird ahead. I thought it was a bush turkey till I got closer and was dazzled to find a lyrebird instead. He didn't even look up at me as he browsed his way through the leaf litter looking for food.

I managed a few photos till the others caught up with me, but he is camouflaged so well in all but this one. I was a bit starstruck but glad I have a record of this delightful meeting.

drive

I love the Australian landscape. It took time living overseas to really see it though, to realise how much a part of my identity it was. I remember soon after I returned to Australia driving from Melbourne to Sydney and just staring out the window at the greys, browns and olives greens, the grasses, the gum trees and feeling a wave of belonging.

Our road trip to Mudgee and back took us through lots of different landscapes, steep flinty hills, rows of vineyards, green rolling fields filled with sheep, cows and one lone emu in a paddock.

The driving was punctuated by food stops. Yum! My highlight was the amazing 29 Nine 1999 Dumpling Restaurant in Rylstone, an oasis in this tiny town on the road out of Mudgee. Run by Na Lan who married a local lad and came out from China to live here, it was a delight. After our big late breakfast we had room for six different dumplings each and endless pots of jasmine tea. I'm dreaming now of going back to try some more of the 30 different handcrafted dumplings on the menu.

We tried some of the local wines over dinner and found them all to be delicious. We didn't get time to visit any wineries though, but I'm going to track down a mix of wines at my local wine shop to buy.

The day before we returned home we went to Orange to have lunch with some friends who have relocated there from Sydney. It was so nice to catch up over a long lunch, and the brownies and lemon curd cheesecake were an added perk!
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p.s. do you run like a girl? Lucky you!

gold

We often travel out west from Sydney over the Blue Mountains to visit Mr Flowerpress's family in Bathurst.

Last week we decided to take a roadtrip to see some more of the surrounding countryside. I love to travel to new places, and its always amazing to me just what you can see quite close to home.

We planned an extended journey, staying overnight in a hotel in Mudgee and driving there via the small town of Hill End, one of the sites of the Australian gold rush back in the 1850s, and later home to an Artist's colony which included Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend.

This lovely little town is steeped in history, and after a lovely counter lunch at the Royal Hotel we had a wander around, imagining the place back in its heyday. A short drive takes you out to the local creek and Bald Hill mine (which never produced much gold apparently) and then further on to a lookout where you can look down on Hawkin's Hill where the really big finds were made, including the Beyers and Holtermann Specimen the world's largest single mass of gold.

I've got some more pics of the rest of the trip, the landscape, the little towns, the food... I'm going to share them later in the week.

soup weather

The autumn winter weather has finally arrived in Sydney.

I'm taking credit! We went west on the weekend to our nephew Fin's 18th birthday party and brought the chilly temps back with us over the mountains on Sunday.

Our flying visit to the country was a breath of fresh air literally. Its always such a treat to have the whole family in one place. We got to catch up with the new babies in the family, the teenagers, the young adults and the oldies. Mr Flowerpress is the youngest of four kids which means lots of family in all shapes and sizes.

We made a quick trip out to his sister's bush block where she is building and decided to come back soon, hopefully in the next holidays, to help build a crushed granite floor in her straw bale house.

On Sunday we fitted in a visit to see our nephews' collaboration. They are milling sustainable timbers from a wide range of amazing trees, including bunya pine, casuarina, pin oak, English elm and poplar.

Autumn means soup weather and slow cooking and crusty bread and bakes (including Hugh Grant macaroni!). I have unconsciously changed what I'm cooking as the days get colder.

Off to the Etsy Craft Party tomorrow for a bloggy/craft catchup. Can't wait.

Oh and good news on the ceramics front, but more about that next week!