January Goodness

Hello folks,

Laura here. Happy belated Australia Day. It’s an amazing time to be down under- the worst of the summer humidity is over (touch wood, as the say down here), lots of great produce is at peak season and we’ve got ~4 months of great fall-like weather to look forward to. The thing that would just put us over the top in terms of happiness would be a nice visit from family/friends, preferably both. Any takers? 2009 was a great year for visitors here, I hope we see lots more this year.

To celebrate Australia Day (though there are those who choose not to celebrate, for good reason), Australians generally eat lots of meat. I have yet to find out why this is the case (there are a few theories floating out there, one involving a polish prince who had a soft spot for sausages…the details are vague), but we decided to join in on the action with a backyard BBQ on the 26th. Our friend Steph the Canadian attended our celebrations as our special and only guest, and because she is gluten intolerant, carbs were scarce to be found on the menu. Oddly enough, Tim and I have been really good at not eating meat for the past few months…Ya. Broke that streak. On the morning of Aus day we went to a family carnival with a petting zoo, pony rides and lots of fun stuff. Unfortunately Miss E was a bit under the weather so it wasn’t as well enjoyed as it could have been. She did have fun watching the ponies though.



So there is a crow that hangs out on the corner of a street near us that harasses Tim every morning and evening as he rides by on his bike. Sometimes it just makes its presence known by making a large swoop above him an casting a shadow, other days it’s a full on attack where Tim has almost been in numerous accidents from having to swipe at it while whizzing by. I tell you this as a) a concerned wife but also as b) someone who has a hard time not laughing at others’ misfortune (not real misfortune, like starving people, more like at that guy who unfortunately just slipped on a banana peel). I’ll admit it. I laugh to myself every time I picture Tim swiping at this crow, even though he could be seriously hurt someday. I’m not proud of this, but I think I might come by it quite innocently…I’ll explain with a story…The other day I was pushing Edie on her swing and bent over to pick something up. When I came up, I miscalculated her speed and she hit me square in the hip. I doubled over in pain but couldn’t help but laugh as I heard the biggest giggle I’ve ever heard come out of the Edester. She laughed so long and hard over that one. Which left me with two conclusions to choose from: 1) I’ve laughed at others’ misfortune enough times in front of Edie that she thinks it’s ok to do it herself (yikes) or 2) That she’s genetically predisposed to doing so. Given the pranksters in my family, I’m going to go heavy on the genetic influence on this one.

If I do say so myself, our lasagna garden is looking good these days.
Miss E is a big fan of being outside, so we spend a good chunk of time everyday watering, weeding, trimming or just looking at it. I’ve already had to trim everything back numerous times, but everything just keeps coming back healthier and greener every time. After suffering from a black thumb in Australian gardening for so long, our herb garden has brought back my plant-growing confidence. It has also supplied us with more herbs than I know what to do with. We do have a second garden that we started shortly after the first in which we hopefully planted two tomato plants and a cilantro plant. After about a month in a half of no growth and painfully slow discoloration, I finally pulled the tomato plants. I also made the decision to live and let die everything else that popped up, since I’ve been fertilizing the garden with compost. Good old natural selection at work.
It has been about a month since I stopped pulling up the ‘weeds’, and the lucky dip garden is thriving. A couple of tomato plants have shown up, a few unidentified melon plants (or pumpkin/zuccini…can’t tell for sure), and an avocado tree…and my cilantro is still hanging on. Lots of blossoms but no fruit yet…We’ve got a beautiful tree in our backyard that’s in full bloom right now as well, it’s called the Pride of India, and has provided countless hours of beautiful shade during these warm days where it’s just way too hot to be in the house. It begs the question- is it really January?



So, I’m currently working for the man. Quite literally my man. After receiving the bad news in December that I didn’t get the scholarship to start a PhD at Griffith this year, we’d made plans for me to be going back to work as a research assistant in January. It turns out that Tim needed some sample processing done ASAP…So I’m cutting fish for 5 hours a day at the moment with intention to be starting up with my old supervisor in a few weeks. How do I feel about this? Pretty good. Tim’s not such a bad boss and it‘s nice to leave work at work and not have to think about it otherwise. Edie’s been happy to be spending time at the family-based daycare that we’ve got her enrolled in. We get a daily write-up of all of the fun stuff that she gets into there, trampoline, sandpit, swingset, painting station, etc., and get artwork on a daily basis. It feels so good to know that she’s in good hands everyday.

We’ve been hooked on tennis these past two weeks. The Australian Open is happening in Melbourne, and the action is good. Sadly, this means that reading has taken a backseat, and we’re feeling like couch potatoes every night…We make ourselves feel better by exercising earlier in the day, and remembering that it’ll all be over by this weekend. Then instead of feeling fat and lumpy from sitting in front of the TV every night we’ll feel great about having worked up a mental sweat by reading on the couch.

I must tell about some new friends that we’ve made here. We have been pleasantly surprised by the arrival of Tim and Lindsay from the US who have an eerily similar story to ours. They arrived here late in the year last year, ~3 months pregnant, Tim working for the same institute as Tim on a 3 year contract, and quite overwhelmed at what it’s like to move from North America to Australia knowing that there is a bun in the oven. We’ve been spending lots of time with them because we like them and also because it makes us feel good to actually be able to help someone else out when we’ve been receiving so much help from others since we arrived back in 2008. The last three weekends we’ve been hiking together on Saturday mornings and Lindsay, Edie and I have been doing lots of hanging out during the week since they arrived. We are really glad that they are here as it helps us to have them here as well. Case in point- Our camera broke just before Christmas, they happened to have a spare and handed it over gladly. So you can thank them (and Steph the Canadian who’s always got a camera in her hand) for the few, but lovely photos we’ve posted over the past few months.

Love to all,

Laura