Island life Day #7 Fejoia and Passionfruit, Parsley and a green recliner
The blogging corner/drawing corner/reading corner/snoozing corner. (Recliner is stuck in semi-recline position... :/ )
It sure has been a rough first week. But there have been some lovely highlights. I think things will be much better when we are all well again, and I A: Have Trouble in child care a few days a week (he needs some buddies), and B: my art supplies arrive so I can spend time setting up the studio and get drawing/painting. It has been a pretty isolating start, being without wheels, phone, friends and having a sick toddler in melt down mode the whole week whilst struggling with fevers and earache of my own....
On the plus side, I went exploring around some of the neighbouring houses. Now that might sound a bit voyeuristic but every house in this street is a heritage Georgian house and they all look more or less the same from the outside, i.e. house with veranda, courtyard and servants quarters to the rear. The thing is however, that they are all in different states of repair or disrepair, have a slightly different garden, and are also all configured slightly differently. Some are residences like ours, one a museum and onother a research centre.
Next door for instance, which is to have a family of 6 move in in the next month (including a 3 year old!!, Lucky Trouble), has a much bigger servants quarters than ours, as well as a much bigger house that has a lovely open plan configured loungeroom. But the courtyard is fully paved and is quite...brutal. It needs lots of pot plants!! I also discovered mint and flat leaf parsley in the yard there, and bananas...so I pilfered. As you do. It was there in abundance, the parsley going to seed so I snitched a bit for dinner and for mint tea. The house is empty for the next month so I doubt the next tenants are going to mind.
I have been told that there are also Fejoia in the next garden, and that Government House across the road has Passionfruit! (The Passionfruit here is absolutely DEVINE)
The table (needs a bit more a clean), and awaits a chair.
Mr. Rugby told the relative powers that be that I am interested in working (volunteering) in the Government House vegetable garden which was received well. I popped over to Government House this morning with Trouble who was excited to see the ''Nemo'' fishes and to see Administrator Hargreaves wife (I'm not sure her honorific??) and we spoke to the head gardener this about me helping out. It looks like I will probably start tomorrow!! My understanding is that the garden has been established as a foodbank for the community, as a means to support the elderly and people in need.
Anyway I think it will be a good thing for me to do, to work with an experienced gardener, learn a bit about keeping a good vegie patch, and getting me busy beyond the four walls of this house.
On another note, I am slowly, with the help of the landlords (read the federal government staff) pulling together the studio furniture. I have now got a lovely little bookshelf, a chair, and rescued these lovely boxes and a table. I think the boxes will be lovely for storage, and a nice pot plant respectively. I just love the feel of this studio space. The outlook onto the courtyard is great.
Our first shipment arrives this week, so I will be able to unpack Art Supplies and books, as well as cookbooks.
Some light reading, and a new cookbook.
So, busy times ahead. Between meeting people, drawing, painting, walking and trying to make something of the glut of passionfruit and eggs......like learning how to make a pavlova for instance, I think I will be hard pressed to run out of things to do.
Have a lovely week my lovelies. x