Australia Day

Today is Australia Day, so I thought you might all appreciate an appropriate cartoon.

The great Aussie Barbecue.
Happy Australia Day!!

here is our national flag

and a description of the symbols

each state has their own version, that's mine centre top.

this is the flag of the indigenous people, the Aboriginals, original owners of this wide brown land.

and an idea for a new Aussie flag. It has a football, a beer stubbie, two sausages, uncooked by the look of them, and the black surface of the Aussie Barbecue.
(*~*)

Musical Monday #44

Now for something completely different, I bet not too many of you remember this.

Eddie Hodges.

I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door

I remember loving this way back when I was ....

Sunday Selections #208

Welcome back to Sunday Selections!

This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock, as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs.

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post

3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted.

4. hop on over to The Elephant’s Child to see more of her wonderful photos.

  Andrew often joins in too.

I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week my theme is: 

Market Day.

Every month on the third Saturday a community market is held in the grounds of the Fullarton Community Centre. There are stalls with jewellery bits and bobs, stalls with books and dvds, stalls with plants, others with home baked goodies, still others with clothes. 

I went along yesterday with one purpose in mind. 

Herbs for my garden. 

I avoided the books tables as if the owners had the black plague.  I had only taken a small trolley with me, there would be no room for books.

Here is what I bought:

ha ha! eggs and tomatoes. I'd been to the supermarket earlier, but when I saw these delicious looking tomatoes for only $2 a kilo I remembered that I hadn't bought any and only had one left in the fridge.
The extra large free range eggs for only $5 per dozen couldn't be passed up either. 

just look at the gorgeous red and gold of these dwarf marigolds. There's no way I was going home without them too.

I bought the intended herbs too of course. This one is mint, for cooling summer teas.

'red' sage although the colour is a little more on the purple side, it will look lovely in the garden and you can't have too much sage.

regular green sage, another cooling summer tea which has several other health benefits too.

lemon balm, again, destined for the tea infuser, it has the added benefit of attracting bees to the garden when it flowers. 

oregano, for pizza and spaghetti sauce; this one also brings bees to the garden.

here they are all crowded by the front door, waiting to be planted. I decided to eat lunch first and read a few blogs, because it was too warm outside to be planting. They would all wilt immediately, so I waited until late afternoon.

I spaced out the marigolds in a curved line linking the other two groups of three that I'd planted a few weeks ago. I plan to eventually have a long line of these snaking through the garden.

the mint went into a pot of course, as I don't want it taking over the garden.

the green.....

and the red sage were planted side by side with about 60cm between them, they'll eventually grow into each other and make a nice two-toned mound.

oregano in a sunny spot,

lemon balm in another sunny spot between two trees so it will get a little shade sometimes.

the red and gold variety is my favourite of all the marigolds.

I have discovered the easiest way to worm a cat

Since he was a tiny kitten, I have allowed Angel to lick the spoon clean whenever I've finished eating. I'll scrape down the sides of the bowl and Angel happily licks off the remains of porridge, weet-bix, ice-cream, yoghurt, gravy. 
Never more than about half a teaspoon , I'm pretty sure large amounts of  ice-cream isn't good for cats.

Anyway, when it came time for his regular dose of worming medicine, I squeezed the dose onto a teaspoon, held it out and he licked it clean.

Finding a spot of skin to squeeze the flea treatment onto is a harder matter.
I just hold the scruff of the neck like his mama would and poke the nozzle of the tube deep between his shoulders and hope it's deep enough. 
 
Just look at this cat.

here he is asleep or watching TV

see how dense his neck ruff is? I can't part the hair anywhere and see skin.

waking up

settling down again
what you're seeing here is not overfed fat cat. It's fur. 
His tail hairs are 10cm long and  the body hairs are 7cm long with the neck ruff fur being a little shorter but more dense.

he squeezed into the little gap I opened for him and pushed his feet against the screen door until he'd pushed the front door back a bit. I don't like to open it too wide on hot days, I'd rather keep the inside cool.

his favourite spot.

I swear if this cat dies before I do, I'm having this pelt made into a hooded scarf, to be worn fur side in like the Eskimos do. 
Right about now, you're probably all laughing your socks off, those of you up there in the snow and ice countries. "She lives in Australia!" you're saying. "It doesn't get cold down there!"

Well, yes it does. Not below zero, ice and snow, blizzards and freezing, type cold, but compared to our searing hot summers, our milder winters do feel cold to us. 
And I rug up accordingly. 

I think a cat fur hat with the tail as a neck warmer would be great. Or maybe mittens and ear muffs. Oooh! Both!

Not that I'm wishing Angel would die soon, no, no, not at all, I love the little shit furball.
Just not at 2.30am. (*~*)

Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a word challenge meme which she calls “Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of six words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

This week's words are:

1. basement 

2. fulfilled

3. spastic

4. imbecile

5. swimming

6. gentile

we also have::in and out of time, in and out of rhyme, with you

Today I have just used the 6 words.

Here is my story:

Meckleberg's Bargain Basement was having a sale. 

A sale! And I had to go. I'd promised.

The designated bag holder, that was me.

A few weeks ago my wife had done me a favour and I had promised to return that favour whenever she had need of it. 

Today was that day. Going to the sale fulfilled my part of the favour promise and let me tell you, I never want to do that again. 

A favour for my wife, of course. But a sale in a bargain basement? 

Never!!

Pushing and shoving through hundreds (thousands?) of women, I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. Watching the spastic jerking of arms reaching towards panties, slips, girdles etc all piled on tables with no order whatsoever was a nightmare I never want to see again. 

Meckleberg's is a Jewish store, (owned by Stan Meckleson and his cousin Hiram Goldberg),  and for most of the year 99% of the customers are Jewish women, but today there were Gentile women in the crowd and let me tell you, oy vey! when it comes to snatching a bargain from the hands of another, those gentiles were as bad as the Jews. 

This was worse than mark-down hour at the butcher shop!

I never heard such hissing and muttering before in my life! One woman even called another "imbecile" as the first stubbornly hung on to a blouse clearly many sizes too small, and those two were best friends!

Let me tell you, next time I promise a favour, I'm going to ask for specific conditions.

No bargain basement sales!

Thursday Thoughts #30

"We're always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down." from Harry Dresden of course.


I wrote recently, last year, (that sounds so long ago doesn't it?) about the awful smell permeating my home from the cypress tress and hedges around here.

Some time later, I heard a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, known around here as CCR, and in one line there is mention of meeting by the cypress tree. 
For years I'd thought the line was "meet by the big red tree", until I looked up the lyrics, because I'm unfamiliar with their pronunciation of cypress.

They say "sip-ress" where I've always thought it was "sigh-press" 

So I'm asking all of you, which is it? 
Is there a definite pronunciation or is it one of those "depends which country you are from" things? 

Being partly deaf, I've had this mispronunciation thing going on all my life. 

If I have read a word, but never heard it spoken, I'll make up my own pronunciation as I'm reading.
Now that I'm older, that works quite well, but when I was much younger, the pronunciations I came up with didn't often make sense to the story I was reading at the time. So whenever I came across that particular word I would skip over it and just continue reading.

The word that comes most forcefully to mind is "underfed". As a small child, I had never heard this word spoken. Under fed. Meaning of course, someone who doesn't get enough to eat. 
So I read it as "underf-ed" and it never made sense to me. Until I heard underfed in conversation many years later, then it suddenly clicked. 
Another is "subtle" with the silent "b". I didn't know it was silent until high school.

Anyone else have/had this problem? 



Here's something new. I've just heard on the news (7Jan2015) that Tony Abbott is thinking of adding GST to fresh foods. 
WHAT????
Increase the cost of foods that are already too expensive for many people? 
What the hell Mr Prime Minister??
There is already GST on so many things, including processed and fast foods, with the idea that this would drive more people to eat fresh fruit and vegetables. Now you want to tax those too??

Whimsical Wednesday # 159

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday!

The day for your googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend.

alright! alright!
I'll talk!! 
I'll tell you everything...
Please, just turn off the heat!