tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47814497310739237352024-03-14T11:15:54.089+11:00Some Home TruthsWhat 'home' means to us todayGermaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-76160096714408457802012-12-18T14:28:00.000+11:002012-12-18T14:28:35.286+11:00A lesson about patience
These chooks are reminding me of my children at the moment: pecking each other in the head one minute and curling up together sweetly the next.
I don’t know if there is a head of the pecking order, as each morning it’s a different chook doing the chasing or flapping, but they all seem to be equally assertive when it comes to competing for Lily’s leftover weetbix and the boys’ leftover Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-81759645207456460972012-11-18T22:22:00.000+11:002012-11-18T22:22:13.071+11:00When Holidays Collide
I've been thinking a lot about holidays this last week. Yes, I know I'd have to get someone to look after the chooks... Perhaps reminiscing about previous holidays will have to do for now. And this is the one I keep escaping to in my head...
The beach was huge and deserted – aside from the massive driftwood logs and the colony of seals living at one end – and all we could hear was the wind Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-66562115572044053662012-11-14T08:23:00.000+11:002012-11-15T07:47:35.668+11:00Re-establishing the pecking orderUntil having our own girls, I never noticed how many English idioms and phrases relate to chickens.
While they cluck and scratch I peg the clothes on the line feeling like Henny Penny and my children run around like chickens with their heads cut off. While I don’t like to hen-peck as I know Stuart is busy scratching out a living for us, creating our nest egg, I do sometimes feel that help Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-66162672674244572812012-11-11T08:48:00.000+11:002012-11-11T08:48:39.878+11:00Thank you You Tube'Make sure you don’t clip through the living part of the feather. It will start bleeding and that can be potentially fatal.’
Not the comforting words we wanted to hear on a Sunday at 9.30am. It had been a calm morning up until that point. Mum had popped over with coffees, the kids were playing upstairs and we were sitting on the deck.
All of a sudden there was the sound of wings flapping and Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-5778226949765454592012-11-07T08:08:00.000+11:002012-11-07T08:08:29.757+11:00A change of nameWhat is it about 6pm? It’s been four days now and each evening at 6pm, Chippy and Axy jump the gate. It’s like they’re flying home to roost – in the wrong direction. At no other time of day do they attempt the crossing from the run into the garden.
It’s not so stressful for me anymore: they don’t venture far on our side of the gate and they don’t attempt to fly anywhere else. They also don’t doGermaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-13893187496060261302012-11-04T12:21:00.004+11:002012-11-04T12:21:51.916+11:00The excitement from the night beforeStuart left for the airport at 5am. It was the chooks second morning here and my first morning of letting them out. I dosed until daybreak, dreaming about the chooks running up and down our street dodging cars. I woke with a start hearing strangulated clucks – oh god, the chooks! What’s wrong with the chooks?! It was a few seconds before I realised the strangulated clucks were instead a magpie Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-69805230270651671912012-10-31T07:50:00.000+11:002012-10-31T07:50:10.082+11:00Cheeky chickensNed came running up to me as he left the classroom after the bell went. With his huge smile and arms outstretched I felt touched that he was so pleased to see me on a Monday afternoon.
‘Yay! I’ve been waiting all day to get home and see the chickens!’
Ok, so not so much about me...
‘Oh yeah,’ said Lily absent-mindedly, ‘I forgot all about the chickens.’
As we walked home, Louis and I told Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-23531327380248046072012-10-28T15:32:00.000+11:002012-10-30T12:20:36.830+11:00Who knew choosing a chook would be so hard?It was a Sunday afternoon when we found ourselves driving out through the suburbs of Sydney to collect our chooks. A beautiful Spring day, we stopped off to have brunch with friends on the way.
‘What great weather’, we commented to each other while eating bacon and egg rolls in their garden.
‘It sure is great weather for collecting chooks’, said Ned with a big smile.
Yes, I thought, this is Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-81831087850303942312012-10-25T17:06:00.001+11:002012-10-25T17:25:45.058+11:00Back to NatureIt’s been a while since I’ve been here – both figuratively and literally. This year has been a bit of a slog... nothing catastrophic but a feeling of teetering on the edge of catastrophe a few too many times.
I’ve learnt a little more about myself throughout these months. For one, the joy of gardening and watching plants grow and thrive. Something I never thought I would find relaxing or Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-54581875927659714282012-01-23T11:33:00.007+11:002012-01-23T11:45:23.084+11:00Loss and LifeThis year seems to have started with many friends around me suffering the loss of someone close. A constant reminder of the fragility of life and a sense of fear about how any of us will make it through to old age. Chances seem slim when you hear so many different stories.Since my father died, I have always found the new year particularly poignant. Another year that he will never know. Another Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-10483203069353341062012-01-16T13:57:00.005+11:002012-01-16T14:13:10.837+11:00Back to work but still time for a holiday readI’ve mentioned earlier my love of Penny Vincenzi novels so you can imagine my excitement when, just before Christmas, I noticed she had a new book out. My idea of escapist reading has always been a 700-odd page saga with a cast of more than 20 characters that explores the huge, messy themes of life. My perfect holiday read.To be honest, it’s my perfect-any-time-of-year read as her stories are so Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-28227465083351166562012-01-03T08:36:00.007+11:002012-01-03T09:00:18.356+11:00Up and down the garden pathThe 18th century architect William Kent once said that ‘a garden is a world unto itself, it had better make room for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones.’ This quote eloquently sums up my struggle with gardening my entire adult life – the emotional struggle. I couldn’t see past the ‘darker shades’, so much so that I stayed well away from getting my hands dirty lest nothing grewGermaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-80165591285082163672011-12-27T09:44:00.008+11:002011-12-27T10:11:30.922+11:00Sharing a home: The Life of a BiographerAh, the break between Christmas and New Year. A perfect time to sit down - regularly - with a good book. For this book it would make sense to enjoy it with a good wine... and a good meal to follow.What’s it like to inhabit the home of another person? A person you have never met and has already died? This is the parallel universe biographers have to absorb themselves into, but what happens when Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-79290804297005631942011-12-22T07:52:00.003+11:002011-12-22T08:15:02.708+11:00Merry Christmas... & Luck?!One recent midweek night, while making spinach pie for dinner and compiling boring lists in my head – check if there are clean school uniforms; don’t forget to put the bins out – I mindlessly started cracking eggs into a bowl. And suddenly, not so mindlessly, I noticed a double yolker. Not one double yolker but three. Three double yolkers in a row. I stupidly decided to Google what such a Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-35689296334183889152011-12-07T12:11:00.002+11:002011-12-07T12:17:01.982+11:00How organised are you?Have you ordered the turkey yet? Written the Christmas cards? Bought the presents? I haven’t. It just doesn’t feel Christmassy yet. Perhaps that is due to the unseasonably cold weather in Sydney at the moment but then I look at the calendar and realise we are hurtling towards the middle of December! School breaks up next week!Instead of writing lists, ordering the turkey, braving the shops or Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-54218411660564888742011-11-23T16:00:00.004+11:002011-11-23T16:11:12.401+11:00Was a Casserole enough?Ah, it seems Matthew Evans and my chicken & sage casserole has finally broken the curse of the infamous duck risotto. Not only did my sister's date love it, he asked her for the recipe. I like the sound of him even more.Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-17375304621940249962011-11-21T21:44:00.006+11:002011-11-21T22:00:22.775+11:00A Reliable Recipe – I hopeMy sister has been single for a couple of years now and a whole new world of dating has opened up for her (and me, vicariously). At different times she has met very different men, gone on a few dates, cooked a meal for them and – despite how different these men have been from each other – all dates have ended after this meal. The same meal she has cooked each time – once her signature dish, one Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-63966844139573797802011-11-08T21:34:00.003+11:002011-11-08T21:44:02.736+11:00WritingBefore we went away I was busy reading. Reading some of the best books I’ve read this year and two were the work of first-time authors. Their stories filled my creative needs and I realised a pattern – when reading takes over I just don’t feel like writing. Does this make me a fair-weather writer? Sometimes I wonder.On previous family holidays I stole time away from everyone to write and think; Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-57047192310445136822011-10-26T16:46:00.004+11:002011-10-26T16:54:04.322+11:00HomeHome. Is it a house, suburb, city or country? Or is it a state of mind? Such thoughts have occurred to me many times during and since we returned from travelling as a family of five for five weeks.For someone for whom the physical home is so important, I expected to miss my bed, my kitchen, my bath quite a bit. I hardly thought about them the whole time we were away.Of course, there was the Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-21164034391345163432011-08-17T12:05:00.004+10:002011-08-17T12:20:53.355+10:00When Home is... not taking the Dishwasher for granted
Do you find you often take the everyday appliances in your home for granted? I do. And when something goes wrong I panic. Then I realise how little I actually understand about how these machines actually work. And then I feel guilty that the thought of living without a dishwasher is so depressing. Really, I scold myself, we’re lucky we have running water.
During my lifetime, particularly my Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-76558830686418862692011-07-29T12:41:00.009+10:002011-08-25T18:39:44.727+10:00When Home is... Eating Well. An Interview with Cookbook Author Kathleen Gandy
It’s Sunday morning, you’re about to face the weekly grocery shop but you are 10 weeks pregnant, feeling sick and tired. You love cooking and food but you can’t bear the thought of meat or standing over the stove for hours preparing meals. You barely have the energy to make it through a week of work, let alone a week of cooking dinner.
Or, it’s Sunday morning and you have to somehow squeeze inGermaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-58697442246493143592011-07-20T18:57:00.003+10:002011-07-20T19:05:14.703+10:00When Home is... FictionI’ve been busy writing book reviews for Good Reading magazine lately. It is always fun to dwell in the world of fiction for ‘work’ when the books are ones I would choose to read for pleasure anyway.So was the case with the following two books. Both, appropriately, are about what ‘home’ means to the characters. Very different – one literary, one mass-market –both explore the ideas of what we need Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-33954624097386825302011-07-11T08:03:00.008+10:002011-07-11T08:22:57.171+10:00When Home is... Boarding School. An Interview with Author Jacqueline HarveyI think I have reached my favourite moment of motherhood so far... Lily and I reading the same book and both of us loving it. After reading at bedtime, Lily has started bringing the book downstairs so I can continue reading it while she’s asleep.‘But don’t go past Chapter 29,’ Lily cautions, ‘because I don’t want you to find out what happens before me.’Secretly I do read past Chapter 29, not out Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-18192239066458569632011-07-04T14:58:00.008+10:002011-07-04T15:12:04.268+10:00When Home is... Living with Environmentally-Friendly SolutionsWhen Paula Cowan first started buying the Solution Living brand (environmentally-friendly household, personal care and baby products) four years ago, it wasn’t just about helping the environment.‘I did like the fact I was buying an environmentally-friendly choice that worked, but more than that I liked the way the products looked and smelled!’After her daughter arrived nearly two years ago, PaulaGermaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4781449731073923735.post-19480599831057502802011-06-29T18:38:00.003+10:002011-06-29T19:17:19.199+10:00When Home is... Not an Old DeskI spent half-an-hour fighting with a piece of furniture this morning. I never thought I could feel so angry with an inanimate object but when I stood with the intention of going to get a hammer to smash open the stuck drawer I realised the battle was over and I had to walk away.This desk has been with Stuart and me throughout our entire relationship. It was his childhood desk and before that Germaine Leecehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08753423876539588308noreply@blogger.com3