En Masse

We made it! The weather here is still chilly and un-springlike, but the coldest wintry days feel like they're behind us.

We have walked and ridden our bikes on 90% of the journeys we made this winter past, and I am happy to report I haven't had a single cold. PJ takes a raw garlic clove at the first hint of a sniffle, but I swear by my daily intake of spirulina. And lots of time spent outdoors.

The advent of the warmer weather is bringing with it more people on bikes in this little town of ours, but not necessarily more bike awareness, so we thought we'd change that with our very own Critical Mass.

If you live anywhere near the Central Highlands, we're meeting at the zebra crossing outside Daylesford Primary School at 5pm on the last Friday of each month, which means our inaugural ride is tomorrow.

If you're going to come along, please do come say hello. For those of you I've never met, here's what I look like:

And yes! That is a puppy in my basket. Introducing Zero, the newest addition to The Artist as Family. He's a 9 week old Jack Russell and he'll be coming along tomorrow too.

Hope to see you there!

(Thank you, Kate for the photos.)

Starry Starry Nose

We have been watching with much delight, each weekly episode of the series Life, narrated by David Attenborough. We have been mesmerised by insects, enthralled by reptiles, and last night we were spellbound by an assortment of animals hunting and hiding.

Featured in the most recent episode is the star-nosed mole. I had never heard of it before, and I definitely hadn't seen one — it's not an animal one is likely to forget.

Isn't it remarkable? Aren't we lucky to be alive at the same time?

Just after the British colonised Australia, a platypus was taken from these shores to the Empire where people couldn't believe their eyes. They thought the animal was a hoax; that the sailors who had brought the specimen might have been playing some kind of joke on them. What would they have thought of the star-nosed mole??

If you're interested in finding out more, here's a great four minute vid:

Leave Them Kids Alone

The other day, when PJ and I had our heads buried in books, Z found an old chair in the shed.

The less we parent, the better for everyone — a sentiment PJ and I often talk about, and now that Z is growing up, a practice more easily fulfilled.

The book I had my head buried in was Tom Hodgkinson's, The Idle Parent, a book that expounds do-nothing parenting, just as Fukuoka posited do-nothing farming.

Hodgkinson writes:

We need low-impact parenting, do-nothing parenting, no-work parenting. Harness natural processes and nature will do the work for you. In the case of gardening, this may involve a lot of simply wandering about. Just sitting in your garden or strolling around it will produce umpteen ideas for low-effort improvement and refinement. So it is with children. Just sit near them with a book and watch them play and chatter.

...And incite new life into old things. And old parents like us.

Vaginal Corona

When I was 18 I went out with a guy named Ben. It was our first year out of high school, we were overseas together and we were in love. One warm night we were so in love we decided to bequeath our virginities to one another.

Afterwards Ben said he was surprised that I hadn't bled. I mumbled something about horse riding, tampons and masturbation, then I fell asleep.

Fast forward 18 years to a few days ago when I web surfed my way to a pdf booklet put out by RFSU (the Swedish organisation for sexual enlightenment), which starts like this:

Known by the established term "hymen," the vaginal corona is the subject of many myths and misunderstandings. The most important of these is the notion that a woman’s vaginal opening is covered by a membrane that ruptures on penetration. This is incorrect. There is no such membrane. RFSU wishes to dispel the myths and promote knowledge of the true facts. In this booklet, we aim to give you a more accurate idea of what you will find just inside the vaginal opening of every woman.

Holy popped cherries, batgirl! My entire life I thought I had a hymen, and that somewhere along the line between being born and meeting Ben, this precious proof of purity was disturbed.

Between clitoris and labia in my Cambridge Illustrated Thesaurus of Biology is the listing for hymen:

Thin membrane partially closing the vagina in a virgin woman. It is ruptured when coitus first occurs.

Ha! One more myth of the patriarchy debunked. I wonder if there's a word for the membrane that seals a closed mind.

Sugru

Thank you Rachael for my care parcel!

I don't know which I was more excited by, the packaging or the contents.

The contents: Sugru.

Sugru feels like modelling clay, or Blu-Tack. It fixes in 30 minutes into whatever shape you mold it, and is ready to be used after 24 hours. It fixes soft because it's made from silicone. It sticks to metal, plastic, glass and ceramic. It's waterproof, dishwasher-safe, heat resistant, cold resistant, electrically and thermally insulating.

I don't write this to advertise, merely to explain.

Or if you're more image inclined:

After I fixed the ring and knife handle I was walking around the house like a woman possessed, trying to find broken things, considering what I could chip or bust or smash, just so I could mend it. I gave myself a high 5 I was so excited, when I remembered the missing bit at the bottom of the food processor.

I must admit I had hesitations at first, thinking of all the energy that goes into creating Sugru, but then I thought that anything that promotes the Repair Manifesto, over buying new gear, is definitely a good thing by me.

Overheard

The train leaves the platform. After sitting silently for a while, a woman looks up from her newspaper and says to her friend, "It says here that 90% of all large fishes have disappeared from the world's oceans in the past half century because of industrial fishing."

Her friend looks up in dismay.

The woman continues. "Only 10% of the whole world's tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, halibut, skates and flounder are left. In the whole world! That's it—I'm never eating tuna again."

"Are you serious?" Her friend says. "I'm going to eat as much as I can before it's all gone."

Overlooked

Just over a year ago I was deeply moved as I took part in Deborah Kelly's tribute to one man's stance against the tyranny of his government.

So when PJ and I received an email about Ms Kelly's latest project, Muffled Protest, we jumped at the chance to be involved.

Here are some photos from yesterday's action in Melbourne, that aimed to highlight the overwhelming injustice of incarcerating asylum seekers and their children in detention camps—how blind we have become to the suffering of others.

First Things First

There was his first day of school and then the first time he flushed the toilet and washed his hands without having to be reminded. There was the first time he said I love you to me and the first time he offered to set the table without being asked.

When I became a stepmother to Z four years ago, he was four years old and could already walk and talk, dress himself and put himself to bed.

It's not that I thought all of his milestones were behind him, but that all of the significant ones that make parents reach for their cameras had already been lived before I met him.

But then last night something happened. I walked into the bathroom where Z was running a bath, and there he was, casually leaning against the wall, his feet in the water, his head buried in a book.

A book! Not a picture book, or a school reader, but Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox.

"Don't forget to scrub your knees," I told him.

"Yep, I'm just going to finish this chapter," he replied.

I raced out of the room and called my mum.

"He's one of us!" I squealed.

Four

PJ, Z and I celebrated our four year anniversary yesterday.

I was at work, and halfway through the afternoon I received this photo from PJ:

I called to giggle my gratitude, and casually mentioned that he in fact had a thought bubble coming out of his mouth.

Five minutes later, this arrived:

Four magical years, indeed.

Happy anniversary, boys! I wouldn't want to share this odyssey with anybody else.

The Plant In

Hello hello from Sydney!

We drove up five days ago to start working on the Food Forest project and have another six days of digging and planting to go.

It's all very exciting. In a few short days we have gone from this

to this

and will eventually go to this:

If you live nearby, come and say hello and check out our progress. And if you want to get involved, please come along to our Community Plant In Day this Saturday July 11th from 10am till 4pm.

We will have planted all the fruit and nut trees by then, but we'd love it if you could bring a clump of something edible, Cadigal and/or beneficial from your home or community garden, to plant on the day.

The location: St Michael's Anglican Church, Surry Hills. (Corner of Albion and Flinders, near Taylor Square.)

If you're a Facebooker, you can join in the fun here.

Why not bring a picnic and make a day of it.

Hope to see you there!