Outside our cottage

This is our back porch! See my garden in the sand ( not much dirt here, lots of sand)! In the right corner is a red bottle brush tree under which is my worm farm. By the door is a three layer sign," bee happy, bee fruitful, bee blessed".

Outside our cottage

this weekend we added these shades to the back. It is so hot and the sun heats the back bricks to the extent you can not touch them with your bare hand.--so imagine what the kitchen feels like! These shades have lowered the kitchen temp 10 to 15 degrees. In front of the shade is my lemon tree. We have harvested one already! Lemon trees grow really well in pots and do best if some one pees on them weekly--no kidding!

outside our cottage

Our outhouse was built at the same time the cottage was built--beautiful brick! Stevie says well into the 40's the outhouses had a bucket and the Night Cart Man came dressed in a rubber suit and emptied the bucket. All the homes in the older part of our village have alleys behind them. When a flush toilets was added to our cottage, the owners at the time, also added a flush toilet into the outhouse. it is pink!

Outside our cottage

this is my own personnal beehive! a few weeks ago we saw a feral swarm on the fence across the street.

Stevie captured it. Yesterday, we killed the queen and this morning we added a new queen. The bees are very black

Queens cost about $15.

Outside our little cottage

This is our shed out the back. Stevie made the table. Everyone here names their homes--so we named our shed. On the left are the beeboxes we had irradiated. they had to be double wrapped in black plastic

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I read last week a moving book and I want to tell you about it. The Road is a love story, parental love, father-son. The world is dead, everything is ash, gray black. Nothing is living, except humans, mostly evil and an occasional dog or rat. The father and the son exist by foraging for cans of fruit in deserted houses. Very bleak, and I couldn't put it down.

At some point as I read, I remembered a seminar Patte had taken me to that lasted 2 days about the historical Jesus. The mission of a hodgepodge of theologians was to find the words and phrases Jesus had actually spoken through linguist technology.( Mary Jean says Thomas Jefferson did this too without computer help) The list is short. One lecturer's belief was that Jesus was lighthearted, and full of wonder at the gifts God had given--that what Jesus meant with " the Kingdom of God is at hand"is that Eden is right here , right now.

And that is what this book so clearly showed me. I loved it. Thought it life affirming-- easy, poetic, full of terrible beauty.

It won the Pulitzer in 07.

Merimbula

the weekend before the picnic races in Lockhart we were in merimbula on the coast. We had a lovely time, stevie took me to beach after beach.