Time Out

A full moon cycle has passed since we've been back. This morning when I set out along the path which traces the shoreline around Iron Cove, I noticed our old friend above me, barely white against breakfast hour blue, and already on the wane. By the time I turned for home at the Haberfield canal, she'd dropped down into the western suburbs.
A son has announced his engagement. Another son has finished his undergraduate studies. Yet another son and a daughter flew out yesterday, he to meet a girl in Spain and she to Vietnam and beyond. Agnes writes from Sweden. "Why are people living so far north at all? It is SNOW   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! outside and COOOOOOOOOOOOOOld!" The world expands and contracts with the seasons, and time is slippery, very slippery.

Dave and his fiance Pauline

The tomatoes I planted out three weeks ago have doubled in height already, while the rest of our small garden - our lemon and lime trees, herbs, rambling roses and sundry rampant climbers - is making a rapid recovery from its winter of much neglect. Passionfruit and grapes are ripening on their respective vines, strawberries are growing in pots. The second vegetable bed is planted out solely in salad greens. Snail paradise.

I am leaving the garden in Alex's hands for 11 days while I am in New Zealand. I am going to stay with my mother in the country, play with my sister and my friends in the city, go to the beach house which hugs me tight and see a man about a boat. Ah, you say! Her name is Grace, and she's 46 feet long. It's that last bit which interests me most (it goes without saying that she's Swedish). What does a boat that big feel like when you are on board her? Just right, or overwhelming? Alex is happy to let me go ahead to find out. He's looking forward to recovering his solitude.