Gremlins in the works

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

The weatherman said it was going to rain. In a general sort of way I don't give much credence to the weatherman. He is wrong more often than he is right but in this particular instance it seemed that he was on track so Dearest & Ditz & I passed all our deck railings through the window & stacked them on the living room floor because the timber hasn't been treated yet & we didn't want it getting wet. Wet timber has to dry out again before it can be used.

The rain came as predicted. We patted ourselves on the back for being so long sighted. Alack, alas. Dearest went back to work as soon as the rain had passed.

It is very simple. We went to bed with blue skies & no hint of more rain to come. In the middle of the night the heavens thundered & roared, the roof shivered & shook & now all the timber leaning against the outside wall ready to be screwed to their appropriate uprights is soaked & unusable ~ just in time for the days I have free before the end of the month madness, when we have the boys around to give a hand before they head interstate for a cousin's wedding. It always happens; there are gremlins at work.

It has rained & rained & rained, good, heavy, soaking rain which we really need, which the garden really needs & which I would have appreciated so much more if it hadn't rained on my parade so to speak. Just when I was thinking how hard done by I was I wandered onto the deck to have a bit of a mope about all the work that wasn't going to get done this weekend & found that the rain had produced its own mirical. Many years ago I had planted a cluster of small plants in the solid clay under my kitchen window. They were not happy little plants. They did not often get watered & the soil set like cement. They struggled. Many times they came close to giving up the ghost & had to be revived. Eventually they grew rather scraggy & unkept looking but I was grateful they were making the effort.

The bronze tip is a native malaluka & the bottlebrush is a native too & I did rather expect to keep them. The shell ginger is pretty hardy but the Moria & the lemon & white yesterday, today & tomorrow I fully expected to lose. I am notorious for putting the wrong plants in the wrong positions & then telling them to stop whinging & get on with it. Well, they have. The shell ginger is heavy with sprays of blossom, the Yesterday is a mass of gorgeous lemon & limey white & the Moria is about to burst into bloom yet again. When the railings finally go up that end of the deck will have a lovely finish to it. As you can see everything has grown to deck height already.

When we first moved to the island it was quite difficult to make friends. The island was very insular & full of old timers who resented the intrusion of the incomers. [As an old timer now I fully understand this position! :)] Just down the road from us lived a young couple who were woken each morning by me roaring down the road to get Dearest on the first boat of the day for work. [No, he's not a morning person]. I would toddle home at a far more sedate pace & was surprised to find myself flagged down by people I barely knew. Apparrently they had fielded my twins who had woken as the car pulled out & performing one of their twin escape routines had hurtled down the road after their disappearing parents. I was immensly grateful & we became friends. [They fielded our boys regularly.]

A few years back my friend got a rare form of cancer with the inevitable result. Each year since her mother has had an art exhibition in her memory. This year Ditz was asked to contribute. No she's not, not because she didn't do several very nice paintings but because they had to be framed so they could be hung. I had intentions of getting some cheap frames from somewhere like Crazy Clarkes & canvases to fit but naturally my daughter could not wait on such a sensible approach. She found herself the longest piece of carboard available & painted this very vivid sunset. Do you think I could find a frame that would fit it? Of course not! I am going to be prepared for next year. We are bringing her paintings with us next time we visit you mum...if you don't mind framing them for us.

My mother is an extraordinary woman. She can turn her hand to just about anything & is quite a good artist in her own right. I like oils, which are forgiving, Ditz likes acrylics which are quick. My mother likes watercolours. Yes, she's somehing of a perfectionist. Dino has the painting everyone likes of mum's. It hangs in his room here at home. This is the way I like my trawlers ~ very pretty, very safe & my son not on one!