Plum jam

My lovely local organic grocery supplier had a special this week. With every box of mixed veges/fruit (that they chose) they'd include a free kilo of plums. I ordered the box. It included about 15 different veges/fruit, but luckily no capsicum which I've read is in short supply and which is about the only vegetable I can't eat. (Thank you Doorstep Organics.)

This morning I made plum jam, my favourite, and as I bottled it I thought of my mother. I was using the same recipe book she would have used, published by the manufacturers of Edmonds Baking Powder. I have a German recipe book also published by a baking powder maker, Dr Oetker, so I assume recipe books were a good advertising tool in years gone by. 

Anyway, the recipe book said to use 6lb of plums and as I bottled I thought of how my mother's generation must have had very large preserving pots to make such quantities. I had half the amount and made more than 7 jars of jam. 

#Robodebt Royal Commission

It has been heartbreaking watching the livestream of the Royal Commission into the 'Robodebt" today. I knew the system was bad, but I had no idea it was intentionally defective. 

Robodebt was/is the system dreamed up by the recent LNP government to recover money from people they accused of committing 'welfare fraud'. They 'streamlined' the process by automating it and removing client service officers from the information collection process. Problem was, the system assumed income was earned all year when clients typically had patchy employment records. 

The result was that debt letters were sent to a great many people who had no debt at all. Not only were they sent letters saying they had $3,000 or $30,000 debt but the letters were threatening, written on AFP (Australian Federal Police) letter head, with  no telephone number which would allow people to ring and query. Many people didn't respond to the letters, either because  people had sent all their records to Centrelink and assumed they would be ok, or for example because they didn't understand the letters or had no access to computers to check records online. A ' no response' would result in more threatening letters and calls from debt collectors who were sent to collect these 'debts'. With such a vulnerable population it is no surprise that recipients suicided when they saw no way out. 

Minister Tudge was being examined today and it is clear that the government was focused on kicking the opposition (by showing they had never followed up 'welfare cheats') they didn't care who was trampled in the process.

Today we heard of a case of a young woman who had left her job because of workplace bullying. She had given correct records to Centrelink but she was issued a debt and even though she rang them, staff were forbidden to look up customer records. She couldn't win.  The system issued another debt letter even though she was identified on the system as vulnerable. She suicided. 

Tudge, a trained lawyer himself, seemed unconcerned by this heartbreaking evidence, only interested in shifting the blame and puffing his chest. 

Such a Kafkaesque system could only operate in an atmosphere where the bosses believe all welfare recipients are cheats. 

I'd put them all in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Let then strutt and blame-shift behind bars.  

Floods, fires, climate responses.

Our Sydney weatherman loves records and our weather is providing him with plenty to talk about. In late 2022 it was all about rain, how much we've had and how much was still coming.  Now he is talking about temperature and the fact that it is a long time, 140 years, since Sydney, the part of Sydney on the seaboard at least, has had such a long run of below 30⁰C days. Our summer has been very variable so far but also unseasonably cool. Yesterday the run of cool days was broken with a hot humid day, but barely over 30⁰. A cool change and rain deluge swept in from the south last night and today is a moist 23⁰C. 

La Niña is expected to ease over summer but the thought of El Niño doesn't bring much joy. The bushfires in 2019/20 are still vivid in our memories and now we know that their increased ferocity makes it impossible for people to stay and defend their homes we are not nearly as sanguine. 

Floods, fire and our industry-captured governments continue to approve new gas exploration and forest-felling licences while legislating more draconian punishments for people who protest them. Perhaps the only way for the population to save themselves will be to drop tools and simply sit down on the streets, Mahatma Gandhi fashion. 

Painting on board

I have my easel out again after a winter hiatus. This board with sketch of cellist has been waiting patiently since autumn. 

I've only tried painting on board instead of canvas once and it resulted in many over paintings. I'm not sure if it was the beach scene or the board that was the problem, but I will find out with my cellist. 

Spring abundance

My garden gets ever more colourful as Spring progresses. It is full of self seeded butterfly flowers and poppies and the cuttings of all the other plants have grown as well so there is a spring abundance. I planted some kale in the middle of all this but I had to harvest it early as it was suddenly full of caterpillars. There was probably not enough air circulation amongst the masses of flowering plamts. 

COVID ups and downs

My blog has had few posts since Covid  made travel difficult but I just read my post from November last year and realised that I should be post a bit more often, if just to help remember our  progress through this pandemic. Also, Musk has just bought twitter, so who knows what happens to that site if he fires as many people as he has threatened to do. We may all return to blogging.

Australia is at the end of a Covid wave but as the epidemiologist Prof Crab points out, the baseline prevalence of virus is still high. There is a lot out there so I am not the only one with friends suddenly sick. 

In the meantime people are adapting. I bought an air purifier when a trip to the dentist became unavoidable but the reaction of the dental assistant (not the dentist) was to mock me. I went back for a second appointment this week and there was no hint of mocking, so either they have decided they will lose customers if they mock them or they have become better informed. I imagine it is the former because you have to seek out Covid information if you want to know it's prevalence. 

It is extraordinary how we have adapted to a high and continuing death rate and long Covid is not yet getting the attention it deserves. Australia is not dodging it though so one day we will be forced to pay attention to the increasing numbers of Australians who are now too sick to work. Maybe after the coming NSW and Victorian State elections? 

In the meantime spring has sprung and since I have replaced almost all the small lawn patch with flowers, my garden is even more colourful than last year.

A visit from the Prince

I have a visitor, a cat called Prince, who was with me while his owner was on holiday for a fortnight and continues to visit while his owner gets rid of a flea infestation. Fleas can last more than a fortnight without a host, and they did. 

Prince is a pretty little animal and very friendly. He is most comfortable when sitting on his human or as near as he can get and is very persistent. Start something on a table (breakfast, painting,sewing) and there he is, wanting to take part. 

I won't be sorry when the flea problem has been dealt with and I can bid a fond farewell to my house guest. 

Sweetpeas, spring 2022

Spring has sprung, though you'd not know it from Sydney temperatures. It is cool and wet, but the sweet peas are happy that there are no hot days to kill them off. These are plants from red and pink seeds I collected last year. I avoid deep maroon flowers as they are barely visible in the garden, but they seem  to predominate in bought seed packets. 

The Queen's Funeral

I watched the funeral of the Queen on TV yesterday. So much pomp and so many inherited arcane rules but the choreography was wonderful. Not a step out of place in all that ponderous marching. I noticed someone complaining online that there hadn't been a eulogy and that 'it could have been anyone'. I don't think they realised how funny their remark was. 

The chair of the ABC is reported to be a royalist and to have fitted well into the Murdoch newspaper world where she worked for years. I guess the twenty seven (27) ABC reporter in London for the Queen's funeral proves at least the former. I wonder what their brief was though, as the ABC funeral coveral was taken from the BBC.  I was grateful for that, as at least one of the ABC staff has been acting like a swooning teenager in London and I don't think I would have wanted to watch her commentary. The BBC reporter didn't recognise PM Albanese but kept a dignified silence, not like channel 9 reporters mistaking PM Truss for ' Minor royalty'. Oh the pitfalls of live reporting. 

Vale Merran Esson

In memory of Merran Esson who died prematurely last week

When I applied at the National Art School in Sydney in 2010 I was asked to bring work to an interview at the painting department. 

I took my work and showed it to two  interviewing staff who looked very bored and who, after listening to what I had to say, said there weren't any places anyway and they had no idea why I'd been invited. I was dumbfounded but then asked if I could apply for the ceramics department instead. Oh if you want, they said and I went back outside to sit once again in the queue on the benches. Eventually I was asked in to talk to the ceramics staff, one of whom was Merran Esson.  

What a difference. These staff were bright faced, enthusiastic and supportive. They knew of the work of the Dunedin ceramic artist Jim Cooper with whom I had studied at the Otago Art school and invited me to join their student intake. 

I'd really only applied as a way to reintegrate into Sydney life after several years away, but I had a ball in the ceramics department, worked like a beaver and took home all sorts of ceramic objects despite primarily seeing myself as a painter. 

The people in the painting department didn't seem to be very happy, so I was pleased I'd been diverted to the ceramics group. Merran was instrumental in making the department a happy place to be. Thank you Merran. Vale. 

Water

This summer has been cloudy, or rainy or stormy and after so much wet the water has nowhere to go. This morning's photo is similar to any I could have taken over the past four months. 

I feel so sorry for the many who have had their homes destroyed by the floods and who are having to wait such a long time for help from our tardy governments, state and federal. I live on a hill but even here we have had an overflowing stormwater drain that is causing problems. The drain is broken and blocked, probably ever since the NBN was installed. My neighbours tell me the pit was open for months and now the storms are here that is the very place causing problems. 

I've been washing the stones my predecessor put along the wall. They had become slimy and smelly in standing water. I left an empty bucket outside last night with stones in the botzom - it became a sort of rain gauge.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Sydney.

Its a lovely day at last after all the rain but the city is awash with Covid and people are staying at home if they can, unwilling to take our new Premier's advice to go out on the town. 

He thought getting rid of masks and letting it rip would help the economy but instead small businesses are closing down for lack of trade. Frightened people don't go shopping. Where have the Premier and his advisors been these past two years that they have remained so blinkered? 

Just like you, we'll be watching the Sydney fireworks on TV. As you watch, let them remind you that putting your fate in the hands of people who don't understand science is not a good idea. Climate change needs urgent action this year, choose your leaders wisely.

 

Merry Christmas

 

The little gum tree I planted when I arrived here two years ago has burst into flower just in time for Christmas. 

May you have a year of joy, peace and health. 

Tenacity

My morning walk takes me down a set of  stairs to the bottom of the hill, then around the corner and up the hill again along parallel streets.

 

On the stairs this little testament to tenacity is doing its best to brighten our days. 

Spring garden colour

Spring has sprung and the garden is a riot of flowers, at least as much as a garden can be that is on slowly-improving soil. Thankfully the builder here put a layer of earth over the clay ground many years ago when the place was built, but it has previously only hosted grass and needs a bit more compost to be really friable. 

 

New beginnings but all masked up.

Today I went out for the first time (apart for my two vaccine shots) since May, to the post office and chemist. I have been so isolated that I somehow thought that life was back to normal outside my four walls. Lockdown ended a couple of weeks ago and our new in-a-hurry NSW Premier announced that masks were no longer needed outside or even in the office.

I thought perhaps I'd be the only one masked up but everyone else I saw was wearing a mask too, with the exception of one woman. It looks as if people, at least in my area, have decided for themselves that the Premier is being a bit gung-ho. 

Meanwhile, the sweet peas are flowering with abandon. 

Two Cockatoos and a Little Bird

 Lots of dawn activity in the trees with two sulphur crested cockatoos chasing a little bird.

Sulphur crested cockatoo with little bird disappearing

to the right

Second cockatoo (enlarged below) turns cartwheels as the dawn sunlight creeps over the rooftop. 

National Tree Day

We are in lock-down again in Sydney and the online sketch group I joined in 2020 has started to organise  online exercises again. On Saturday we all drew trees as it was National Tree Day.

New growth

 

The small gum tree I planted on the verge at the front of the house in February 2020, just before Covid came to town and changed our lives, has some bright pink new growth leaves.  It took me a while to find my watercolour box, unthinkable in normal times, but when I did I painted the new growth leaves.

I realise now that this is the first time I have painted this year. I had been too busy writing up the interviews with German women.

No wonder I feel the painting itch.

Too windy for cacti

It's been so windy here in Sydney that the tops blew off a neighbourhood cactus. 

Out of darkness

https://youtu.be/yAG0kPovQe8 

 

Covid lockdown bears all sorts of fruits. Music by a talented young mate of mine Girl Platoon.