Designs over dessert

As I meditate this morning a male satin bowerbird rests for a while by the garden gate, checking out how the garden is coming along, seeing if there are any tomatoes yet. The bower birds are thieves. Untouched tomatoes are rare throughout summer and their bowers are always decorated with bright blue debris taken from around the house – pegs, string, lids. Their eyes are almost unsettlingly bright blue as well, seeing the world through cornflower-tinted glasses. Sue and Rob have a bower at their place in the garden.


There’s an interesting show on at noon so I go up to Sue and Rob’s with Noah to watch it. It’s about increasing the connection between producer and consumer in the Australian beef industry using social media. It's great to see that relationship created and strengthened and it will be interesting to see what affect the direct feedback will have.


Noah and I decide to hunt for a bower near the Dairy and go and explore the gully behind us that feeds into Blackbutt Creek. It needs work, full of cow trails, blackberry, privet, lantana. It has only seasonal flow and now the creek bed is easy to follow. We don’t find a bower but treasures from the junk heap up ahead have been washed down for us to find along the way – old bottles, a rusty milk can.


Mum goes tomorrow and we’re still working – painting windows and architraves, scraping and cleaning windows. She’s a good trooper, keeping at it despite a sore knee from getting on and off chairs. It feels so good to be finishing something else, moving it into the past. Time and again I notice I’m staring at them, dreaming. Noah amuses himself through the neglect creating machines out of Lego for catching stars, harrassing the duck, being helpful. I’m cleaning the toilet window when dark clouds blow up the valley from the south, bringing rain and then hail.


We have a roast dinner up at the big house with Sue and Rob and then watch the new series of Grand Designs over dessert while Noah has a bath. Emma should be here. One sad omission from the Dairy is a bath, and as the water's still warm when the show finishes I hop in with him. Nana reads him some books before bed for the last time before she goes. She's holding it together well.


“I’m grateful that we went for a walk and seen all the great things with you in the gully too.”
(Confused? Look)