levitating

our house is levitating!

when we bought it

after re-cladding

this week

we're re-piering and have raised it just under a metre from the ground.  doesn't sound like much, until you add the height of the house and suddenly it looks quite strange. the base of the kitchen door has gone from one step above ground level to the top of our recycling bin. the new height has certainly added a lift to the street and to our little cottage.  it's been stopping traffic as people check it out.


built in 1926, probably as a fisherman's cottage, the original building was one room.  since then the living room and verandah have been added, later again, the kitchen and dining room were added. the roof, which originally would have run north/south blew off in a big storm in the 1980's and it's had a funny flat roof ever since.


the main bedroom is what would have been the original house, you can tell by the lovely old floor boards and the front door with the bell on it. you can also tell by the position of the old steps on the north side of the building. the room faces north and i think our house was one of the first to be built in the street, the boy's window is really big and faces due north, which once would have had a beautiful view to the bay, now the room with a view, as i love to refer to it, has a great north facing view to our neighbour's wall. as time has gone on and land has been subdivided, our house has shifted it's frontage west to address the street.


when we bought it we took off plastic cladding and discovered old weatherboard cladding below.  charlie had the profile of the cladding copied and we've re-clad the house in the wide weatherboard.  we also discovered old doors with coloured glass in them that had been wallpapered shut and we uncovered the closed in verandah to discover the lovely old wooden posts.


we'll be adding a new bedroom and a back deck to the house in the next few weeks.  we'll also be reinstating the front door to its original position.  more face lifts for an old shack.  i'll keep you posted.

first summer harvest

cos lettuce in flower

My vege patch was looking a little under the weather today, so after over a month of not watering it, I caved in this evening.  Yesterday was supremely hot and a few of my plants look dead. Our vege patch has been a very consuming project over the past two years.  Charlie has built a huge cage to protect the plants from the alpha male bush (brush) turkey who has made his mound in our neighbour's yard.  This is his third nesting season with us and we find ourselves extending garden protection defences every year to guard our precious plants from his obsessive raking of leaves and mulch and digging for sweet roots and worms.  I spotted a baby turkey in our garden last week and I hope this means papa turkey will stop this season's raking soon.


The grass is growing high against the chicken wire enclosure and it's going to seed, making the garden look really quite messy.  I'm not looking forward to the grass weeding, but I have to get into it soon. The diversity of edible plants, my ad-hoc version of companion planting, is working though and my veges are thriving. Zucchinis, cucumbers, pumpkins, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, parsley, rocket and bok choy have all re-seeded from last year's crops.  This spring I harvested my very first purple artichokes, baby carrots and spanish onions!  I have corn on the way and my leeks are getting really big! This morning River and I ate about 10 strawberries and the blueberries are starting to fruit too.

french purple artichoke flowering like an edible waratah

the heat has woken our resident diamond python

mother duck and ducklings waiting for their breakfast

bootleg mystic spunk rat

I've bought a new bicycle at last!!!  Of course it's Italian and of course in my eccentric way, it has no gears, it's a 'fixie flip-flop' - so after over 10 years of not having a bike and spending years rowing to my home in a place where there was nowhere to ride a bike, I have bought the toughest bike I could, especially considering I live at the bottom of a HUGE hill and I'm really unfit. That's right, NO gears. Well, perhaps I exaggerate.  I can ride with a spanner in tow and change the gear by removing the back wheel and turning it over to use the other sprocket for a lighter gear to head up hill.  The likelihood of me doing so is low, but I still love having the option and I harbour a little dream that I will soon be fit enough to ride my 'fixie' sprocket all the time, without the 'freewheel' sprocket I am using now.


BUT it's beautiful to ride!  It's smooth and light and inspiring. And it has a blue chain to match its blue handlebars. Sadly I've had a few teething problems with the shop I bought it from, but I'm hoping to sort that out amicably because I want a good, long lasting relationship with them.  I brought my 'spunk rat' home today on the train from Central to Woy Woy and then squeezed it into the back of our tiny Fiat Punto - yes, there is an Italo theme going on here.


On the train my bike inspired a friendly conversation with another passenger. I had squeezed the bike into the carriage so I could sit, it was not peak hour, though at Hornsby we picked up a bunch of school kids on their way home.  The sweet lad was impressed I had travelled so far to get my bike and told me of his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend who had funky tricked up BMX's.  The girlfriend had a pink chain and even pink brake wires... with a black frame... it's apparently such a cool BMX her boyfriend wants it.


My first bike was a clunky fold-up I was given for my 8th birthday.  I learnt to ride in Centennial Park and to this day remember the spot where I first rode on the grass without training wheels. River, my 5 year old son graduated from training wheels a few months ago when he was still 4.


Within 3 months of my 8th birthday, I was in Rome with my parents, purchasing my second bike, a Bianchi silver 10 speed!  My parents and I proceeded to cycle from Roma, to Firenze, Siena, south to Napoli, Sicilia and then over the Mediterranean by boat to cycle through the Peleponese, the Greek islands ... Rhodos, Cyprus, the birth place of my maternal grandfather, Irsael, Jerusalem, the Gulf of Eilat and back again to Firenze for my 9th birthday.


My last bike was a gift birthday gift from my dearest friends and built by one of them.  Sadly it was stolen.


I love Italy and I love to ride and I hope my new toy will bring both loves together. You never know - you might bump into me huffing up Ward's Hill Rd, puffing in Italian some time soon.

inspiration

inspired by the lovely hazy jane, i have finally taken the plunge and begun this blog - in part it is a legacy to my cafe, jasmine greens, that grew from a dream into a thriving organic eatery with a great following, live jazz on sundays and some of the best coffee and french toast to be found on the coast!  i closed jasmine greens in may '08 exhausted and ready for new adventures - emma had suggested I start a blog for the cafe way back in '07, but i just couldn't find the time to understand how to set one up.  in retrospect a jasmine greens blog would have been a great way to share recipes and new stock alerts with my customers.  emma and jasper came to lunch today and set me up. it is my intention to use this blog to post recipes, thoughts on slow food and even to establish a sustainable community shopping group.  i will also use the blog to post memories of the three month adventure through indochina my family and i embarked on in december '08, and more, as life's roller coaster progresses.

jasmine greens sunday lunch, umina, 2007

in the apatu mountains, laos, february '09

perched near the peak of the mountain, we stopped to take in some fresh air and decide where to eat and sleep.  the air was cool and misty. it was about 5 in the evening and girls were washing their long hair on the street, using drums filled by hose with cold water.  this house looked grand in a tiny town where the main economic activity seemed to be making grass brooms. the mountains were so steep there seemed to be nowhere to grow food or raise stock.  chickens and pigs roamed the street and steep mud tracks led to plantations of pineapples and tea in impossibly hard to reach terraces on the mountain.