Summer has arrived. People with glasses in their hands are swelling out of the cafes and clogging the streets as they bask in the warmth. More tables than ever are squeezed onto the narrow footpaths of Carlisle Street and everyone is smiling.

This exciting city of Melbourne is my ‘Seachange’. And I can’t believe I have been moaning about the winter and how long and cold it has been this year. Melbourne today and yesterday have been magical compared with August in my home city. How complacent I have become since I have been here. Expecting the winter to be mild and the sun to shine daily. It is so easy to become accustomed to our good fortune. Melbourne is my lucky city. Today and yesterday I felt bathed in sun, luck and the delight of daffodils. I drank tea in my courtyard and purred.

I’m trying to see where I can put some vegetables in my tiny garden. Years ago I read a cook book written by Don Dustan the then Premier of South Australia. I hadn’t been to Australia at the time and knew nothing of South Australia however his book captivated me – he cooked and grew his own vegetables. It was very evocative and if I remember it correctly full of good recipes and gardening hints. I’d love to come across it again especially now I live in Australia. I wonder if he mentions vegetables that possums do not eat?

Recently I heard a snippet of a radio programme asking listeners who they thought was charismatic. His book had that sort of pull. I wonder if he was charismatic in real life.

Where I’ve lived in Melbourne there are dead trees. In this house there are two in the property behind me. Pigeons like them. I can’t tell one pigeon from another but when I’m in my courtyard several of them will sit and coo at me from one of the dead trees. In the photo my still living silver birch is softening the dead limbs of the next door tree.

Spring has come to Melbourne

A daffodil munched by a possum.

I think I mentioned how exhausted I felt. Yesterday I was overcome with tiredness. It took an amazing effort to actually get to work and during the whole day everything was an effort. Finally when I got home I crawled into bed.

This morning I slept and this afternoon I basked in the sun, pulled weeds from the front garden and took some photos of my garden's greeting to spring.

As I walk in the gate I am surrounded by the sweet smell of violets. They have survived the drought and produced a surprising number of flowers. They spread around the water meter and the garden tap.

The daffodils were planted by kind and thoughtful hands and are popping up all over the back garden. They give spots of sun on grey winter days.

I have a visiting possum. I haven’t seen him but he enjoys a diet of passion fruit vine. He eats every new shoot. He is also partial to daffodil flowers. I have a mental picture of spots of yellow moving through him as he digests yet another golden bloom.

In my last house in C Street I enjoyed the sight of a possum running along the top of the board fence. I felt it was a treat to live so close to the CBD and have the privilege of wild life in the garden. I don’t feel quite the same now that he is eating things I treasure. In the garden in C Street there wasn’t anything that he fancied or anything that would have mattered if he had nibble away at it.

The daffodils have been spots of sun in an otherwise grey landscape. First there was one then a second one then three at once not counting the ones the possum has eaten. What did Wordsworth say about them? I’ve forgotten but I think he was seeing hundreds at a time. Just one bloom in an inner city garden is enough to bring a yellow glow and a smile.

Magpies

For the last few weeks I’ve been woken about 5.30 every morning with the raucous sound that has come form a group of about five Magpies on a lamppost opposite my bedroom.

As suddenly as they came they have gone. For the last two mornings there has been silence at that time. This morning I roused about 5 and decided to lie there and listen for them. It was just possible that I had become used to them and didn’t “hear” them any more. A bit like the trains when you live close to a railway line.

About 6pm this morning a few other birds started up with their version of the dawn chorus but there was no sound a magpie. I missed what the NZ poet Denis Glover called the ‘quardle ardle oodle ardle wardle doodle’ of the magpies. I'm curious as to why they came and equally curious as to why they've gone.

Good news for my mother she has passed the test and will be going home from hospital on Wednesday. She found the exam exhausting and thankfully sank into bed when she arrived back at the hospital. If all goes according to plan she will be home two and half weeks after her slide from her chair.

Moving On

The job is mine!! I want to shout it from the rooftops and dance in the street. However the process was exhausting and I’d like to go to bed for a week. It’s not just getting this job but being out there looking and looking for something that I want that has been exhausting. When a current job falls apart there’s a great temptation to rush out and think anything is going to be better. At one stage I was almost persuaded that a position on the other side of the Westgate Bridge would be okay. I hate long heavy-traffic journeys to work.

So I’ve given in my notice but it looks as if I will be forced to work the full 28 days. Now that is a depressing. I want to wave goodbye to my old job and move on immediately. It is so hard to feel interested or engaged with what is happening now that I know that I’m going to be released. There is sadness to that, too. Before this year I have had a number of very happy years there.

It’s been a good week for my mother. She has progressed to the stage where today she is going to be given a test of physical ability. She is being driven to her home to see if she can cope on her own. One of the tests is make a cup of tea. Level one of this test would be to put a tea bag in a mug and pour on boiling water. My mother’s tea making requires an honours degree. She uses leaf-tea kept in a caddy on a shelf, the teapot needs to be warmed, the tea spooned in and then the pot filled with boiling water. As she only drinks from a cup and saucer both these items have to be assembled before she can pour out. She can eliminate one step because she doesn’t take milk. She has described her moving speed to me and it appears to register only a flicker above stop on a speedometer. The cup of tea will take some time. If she passes this and other yet unknown tests she doesn’t remain in the house she is still to be returned to the hospital. A pass means an ultimate discharge – a failure? Well, I was wondering if the test could be taken again. She says she is sure she can manage and that she will have to because she is more that ready to go home.

In Limbo

This week has been a roller coaster of a week. I wanted to think of a different way to describe it but roller coaster was what it was.

On Monday I worried about my mother and what was happening to her. On Tuesday I had a second job interview and for the rest of the week I worried about my mother and whether I was going to get the new job.

The week has started with the uncertainty about the new job still in place but my mother is making progress and is moving slowly about the rehab ward on a pair of crutches. I ring the hospital daily and generally get to talk to her on the ward’s cordless phone. Today it looks as if she will be able to go home and continue to enjoy her sunny house.

Today I was supposed to get a job contract in the mail. This was promised to me last Thursday and it was a great let down to rush home from work to find it wasn’t there.

I put on my runners and walked for an hour in the very chilly evening air. I walked fast so by the time I reached home the endorphins had kicked in and I was feeling better. It gave me the courage to ring to say I hadn’t received the job offer. I set up an appointment for 2.30 Tuesday to go into the office and read the contract. It’s worth being pro-active in these things!

There needs to be a resolution regarding the job tomorrow. Limbo is exhausting. I got my last job through an agency – easy. They did all the negotiating and came back to me with feedback and interview times. It was in their interests to get me into the job so they could get their commission and they organized it well.

Rosellas believe spring is here

The Melbourne Rosellas are washing away the winter dust. I caught this group having a midday swim and frolic in an over flowing guttering as I walked to the shops. I love the pigeon as it gazes at them from a superior position on the roof ridge.

New Zealand Police

I ring my mother every Sunday evening at 5pm Melbourne time. I get home to do this even in the summer when the days are long and 5pm is like the middle of the day. This Sunday I was in the studio of my artist friend J. We were talking about painting in the style of Henryk Szydowski or HS as he has become to us (see my blog of May 27th) J has bought a book of his work and we poured over this choosing symbols and colours and making a list of the ones we liked. We were engrossed and time took off. I rushed to the Acland Street Safeway to get S's ‘heart-smart mince’. This is what she eats at the moment. I grabbed that and a couple of other things and raced for home.

At five I had dumped the groceries put some mince on a plate for S, poured a glass of red and was dialing my mother. I got her voice mail. I tried again. I still got the voice mail. I waited a few minutes and dialed again. Still voice mail. I tried to check the line for faults with Telecom in NZ. It’s impossible to do this from Australia.

My mother is housebound and my hour-long phone call on Sunday is part of her weekly programme. She has the phone in her hand waiting. What to do? I walked around the house, stared at the phone then called the local NZ Police.

They were fabulous, wonderful - courteous, helpful and understanding. Have I gone over board here? I couldn’t. There was nothing I could fault and a weight rolled off me.

Two cops headed for her place and found her on the floor. She sits on a cushion at the table and the cushion had slipped off the chair and onto the floor and she had gone with it. The cops who rang me here, in Melbourne, explained all this and told me how she was and that they were sending her to hospital.

Such a silly little accident but she was on the floor struggling to get up for about 3 hours. She listened to the phone ringing but she couldn’t get to it. Tonight she is in hospital. The X-rays say nothing has broken but her right leg is too sore to put weight on.

My mother lives in a house with the entrance on the ground floor and the living on the first floor. Over the years various people have suggested she move and live on one level. She has resisted and continued to slowly make her way up and down the stairs with one hand on the banisters and the other using a crutch. Living on the first floor gives light and views and sun and with these things comes a boost to the spirit.

What next? She sounded defeated. She told me she couldn’t move about even with a walker. I told her that strained muscles usually take a while to heal.

South Yarra Views

I took these views of South Yarra on Friday. We have just let the apartment with these views. The apartment is small, old and rather shabby but the outlook gives it this fascination. I love these inner city Melbourne views. This is South Yarra near Toorak Road. Grey slate roofs with verdigris. Old houses that are to me European in flavour but at the same time essentially Melbourne and then the massive gum tree with is beautiful pale grey trunk and branches.

My August horoscope is all about finances. My job interview went well on Thursday and I’m back for another interview this week. I’m visualizing myself doing the job. It’s three days a week!! And I want to keep putting exclamation marks. How blissful would that be?? It would also offer a challenge and I would have to prove myself. I am also visualizing handing in my notice at my old job.

My horoscope has nothing about a job change but a comment on my last blog mentions that the astrologer that I read is jumping the gun with Capricorn. I’ll keep visualizing!