At least I'm keeping out of trouble...

Hello! I have much I want to write about, but I have gone and made myself stupidly busy. Instead, here's a photo from the Hobart Botanic Gardens back in September. I can't quite get my head around it being November already later this week!

The work week just gone was busy, but in a good, productive way. My project is finally coming together, and I'm also doing some environmental auditing work which I'm finding surprisingly enjoyable. I got out on a site visit on Friday, and as always it was great to get out of the office and into the real world to talk to people and learn about how everything works. So a good week, but tiring after being away up in Scottsdale last weekend, visiting the estimable flinthart clan, where it was discovered that bad marshmallows make for excellent blow-gun ammunition. A mighty battle, of course ensued.

As flinthart himself explains it:

"The marshmallows were a bit disappointing, though. We thought we'd scored, when we found them in 'Chickenfeed' - a Tasmanian overflow store. I mean - they were plain! White! No nasty pink or yellow or swirly shit. What could go wrong?
Ah. Artificial vanillin. That's what could go wrong.
Tastes almost but not quite entirely unlike vanilla, to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams. Marshmallows shouldn't leave a bitter aftertaste, should they? Nor should they burn in quite the fashion these did. They were unnervingly like unto marshmallow, without actually being marshmallow, and even the kids gave up on them in short order.
Happily, we had some decent lengths of PVC tubing about. I took the opportunity to deliver a lesson in the use of the blowgun, using my children as moving targets, and rather nasty half-marshmallows as projectiles. The kids took to the idea with alacrity. They climbed the big swing-fort, and blatted marshmallows back at me. Meanwhile, Smileyfish grabbed a blowgun for herself, and ran around shooting at either side as the opportunity arose.
The whole situation was made more ludicrous by the marshmallows. They didn't quite fit. We had to tear them in half, and sometimes they still didn't fit, and sometimes they got sticky as hell. You never knew if you were going to successfully blast a marshmallow at your opponent, or perhaps blow up your own sinuses with back-pressure, or simply just make a sort of flubby, farting noise while a half-marshmallow vibrated its sticky way down your blowpipe and fell out the end with a pathetic sort of flup.
A good time was, therefore, had by all."

Genghis Flinthart prepares marshmallows for battle!

This weekend disappeared in a blur, despite setting time aside to chill out and relax. I was out Friday night (the date - more to come on that - plus drinks and conversation with friends) and Saturday night (dinner and Circus Oz with Kat), so I've been quite the dirty stop-out. Today I've put in a mammoth effort in the garden, doing about 8 hours work (and consequently could really use a massage). It's starting to look mighty fine out there, and I'm finding it surprisingly satisfying to be able to wander out and pick myself the fixings for a salad or some veggies for dinner. There's still much more to do though: the back yard is a total disaster. It's pretty much bedrock back there, so it's not worth the effort of trying to grow anything, and until recently almost nothing at all grew there, which kept it very low maintenance. But now the big gum trees are gone, the sun shines down there, and with a thick layer of sawdust still covering everything, there's nutrient and substrate enough for life to find a foothold. The result: weed central. *sigh*

The garden will have to wait a while though: my old Brisbane friends B&A are coming to visit this week! They're arriving Thursday afternoon, and I'm taking the Friday off to lose myself in weird art at MONA, which I'm really looking forward to. Saturday, I'm planning on taking them over to Bruny Island if the weather's fine, then Sunday is slated as a day of feeding my friends a veritable feast of the finest in Tassie produce.

In fact, I don't seem to a have an un-booked weekend now until December. Given I have a massive end-of-year deadline as well, the rest of 2011 is looking pretty crammed. As well as work, guests and other adventures, there's swimming Tuesday nights, Taiko on Wednesdays, and brass band on Mondays if and when I get my act together. Somewhere in there I need to fit in catching up with friends I don't see often enough, keeping on top of the domestic front and getting enough time in the forest to keep me sane. Good thing I thrive on challenges, then!

I hope your weekends were filled with all kinds of goodness. Samsara people: can't wait to here how it went!

Much love,
T.