Happy campers?

With S away on a business trip, and the promise of a 'Tasmanian Heatwave' - this I had to see- I scooped the kids, a tent, bathers and not much else, into the car and away we went to see the East Coast. Tasmania is breathtakingly gorgeous; it never ceases to impress my inner aesthete. I encouraged the girls down a steep ravine in a Forest Reserve to see Hardings Falls. We were somewhat shocked to have the place to ourselves. Yes, it was 33 degrees, and we had to schlep it in with backpack, water bottles and food supplies, but to have not one, but two fantastic deep and bone-achingly cold rock pools to ourselves was good fortune I didn't anticipate.

And Bicheno is easy on the eye too, but I wont go on about it, as I'm sure you'll all just get jealous!

But camping? Not so easy, perhaps. To me, camping seems like an opportunity to air your dirty laundry in a public place, literally. Its a great leveller. No point whispering when you've lost your patience and you telling them for the 3rd time to 'clean their teeth and get to bed' as everyone can hear everything anyway. Just yell at them will a full throttled bottom-of-yer-lungs style bellow, cos that's precisely what everyone else is doing! Actually I was pretty amazed by how easy I have it: my two girls were remarkably independent, there was simply no need to bellow at them, which is just as well as I don't really subscribe to yelling as a parenting tactic. (Just so you know I'm not holding my own parenting skills up as a paradigm of perfection, I have been known to yell at them sometimes, although I'm not terribly proud of this) Yet it is strangely reassuring to know that other parents also get to the end of their tether at 9pm!

And its not just the campers (read lower end of the socio-economic food chain) that were lambasting their kids. The cabin dwellers (with fancy Audi station wagons) were just being more private about their disciplining. (Although those cabin walls are pretty thin too). Its pretty clear that smacking and yelling, although derided in current parenting how-to-manuals is still being practiced. But I'm not about to enter this fraught territory of parenting blogs, as there are others that do so far better than I. And really, there were many great things about living communally like this; the camp kitchen become a great site for ping-pong showdowns, the out door BBQ a great spot for a beer and a chat. And if you forgot a can opener (like I did) there were about 50 people happy to help you out.
And the kids really enjoyed the free range lifestyle of the caravan park; something I do remember doing as a child myself, so I'm sure there will be a repeat the event real soon...we still have the North West and South coasts to explore.

Oh, and a Tassie heatwave?...its really just another term for beach weather.

Potaroo Exclosure

ARRRRGHHH! I'm under attack!

Found this morning at 7am: 2 juvenile potaroos
Crime: chowing down on my lettuces.
Punishment: banished forever from my 30m2 of productive patch ... ;)

I really do like the little guys, and I still really don't mind sharing the garden with them. I had hoped to be able to exclude them from just a small area of productive veggie patch, and leave them the rest of the garden to munch on. They seem to like the roses and are great at keeping the lawn under control. Cute too, but not so cute when they eat your entire crop of mustard greens, chard, choy-sum, oak leaf and butter lettuce. These guys have specialised tastes in greens it seems. I should just confess that this image was taken in spring, before i planted out the seedlings, but apart from my corn and a couple of zucchini bushes, its looking pretty similarly barren. Bugger!

WANTED: (x2)

Corny question

Does anyone know how to tell if corn is ripe?

I have about 30 ears on 20 plants, and they seem big enough to be ripe. The tufts at the top of the ears have turned a bit brown, but i dont want to pick em if they are not really done yet.

Ideas?

Happy Chinese New Year!

Usually Chinese New year is much later in February, but the vagaries of the lunar calendar means that the celebration begins this year on the same day we celebrate the birth of White Australia.
Steve (my husband) is an Malaysian Chinese bloke, by birth, but has lived in this country for more than half of his life. He reckons that the fact that Australia day falls on the first day of Chinese New Year cancels out the joy of Chinese NY for him. Kinda depressing really. When pressed, he admitted that he is so despairing of the attitude of many white Australians towards people of another colour that he thinks its not possible for him to contemplate NY festivities.

I would like my children to be able to be proud of being both Australian and Chinese, so I suggested we make noodles (traditional for the first day of Chinese NY, especially on the eve) and share them together as a family and talk about both cultures. We had a low key day, without fire-crackers, dancing dragons and extended family, but we did share a lovely meal under the wisteria in the divine Australian sunshine!

Happy New year of the Ox to you all , and happy Australia day!

Cooler Climes

Inspired by Mad Gnome, and her post on Adelaide's predicted 7 day scorcher , Ive checked the long range forecast for Launceston, knowing that my fellow Taswegians are talking of a 'heat wave' on the horizon here too.

Launceston 5-day Weather Forecast (dont laugh)

Monday 26° C 11° C
Tuesday 24° C 14° C
Wednesday 32° C 16° C
Thursday 32° C 19° C
Friday 34° C 19° C

After this, the weather bureau suggests we will be back to the low 20's, as is normal in this part of the world at this time of year.

After living in Adelaide for umpteen years, temperatures in the low to mid thirties do not constitute a heatwave. Hey, this is happy, get-out-and enjoy-it beach weather!

A slice of China

The abstraction of space in drawing urban developments is alarming. At a scale of 1:10,000 a 100 home block of flats is the size of a Monopoly hotel piece. The panoptic view, or bird's-eye view seems to erase the on-ground experience of city life.

I have this on-going issue with my job as an architect and urban designer: as soon as I attempt to draw a building, or urban plan either on paper, or an a computer screen, the level of disengagement with the 'lived quality' of the architecture is increased. The drawing becomes an object itself to be manipulated in its rarefied state: it becomes an object of beauty. The subject, the space of city itself, is largely forgotten in the mind of the designer. Or at least this is what I try NOT to forget when i design myself. And when teaching my students, I remind them to hold the human implications of their form making in their minds as they design.

Steve and I were asked by a Chinese University to team up with them to come up with ideas for a large slab of farmland, reserved for the ever expanding city of Anyang. We designed a scheme with a giant Chinese character which we intend to be read from space, Google earth, or even an aeroplane window. The character means "trace" or more specifically 'historical trace', and I wanted it as to become a parkland, filled with cherry blossom trees. I imagined that this would be a fantastic experience for the city dweller-to have a fragrant refuge in a cheek-by-jowl urban environment. I know the scheme has been shortlisted, but the design has been taken on board by an army of Chinese design students, and office drafters to turn this whimsical design idea into a concrete proposal. I just know the parkland is being eroded, as the scheme is turned into a more economical and dollar driven enterprise.

Will give updates as we know more of the fate of our ideas!

Friday Haiku: Glow

warm sunshine in me

handle in the darkness glows

way finding, mine

Inspired by a self guided yoga session...