You will recall, no doubt, that prior to 2011 ending, I admitted to wormicide. The weather got hot, and I was vacillating between sickness and busy-at-work-ness. When I finally peered at my worm farm box on the weekend, there were no worms in it. I dug, I sifted, I hunted. Just rotting vegetable matter; no wriggly red worms. You can imagine the despair.

My partner theorised that, in addition to the heat, I should not have turned the scraps as often, as I was speeding the process up. Something that is beneficial in compost heaps, but is less so for worms who make the compost by moving through layers. I was always destroying the layers and ruining the worm’s beloved environment. You can imagine my despair.

We set off to Tasmania for a couple of weeks of riding, hanging with family and eating. Before departing, I had put some old potting mix into the former worm farm and decided to leave it be. There was a second box, which I had just started and into which I had moved about five worms. These were still alive but I did not have much optimism that they would remain so. Into that box, too, I added potting mix and newspaper. And then I left them.

On our return, I tidied up our pot plants, filled with desiccated lettuce and shrivelled strawberries. Some crazy winds must have blown through as the lid of one “worm farm” box was halfway across the courtyard. The newspaper on top was dried up, with cracks forking and criss-crossing the print. Underneath, the rotting vegetable matter had turned into lovely dark compost. Hurrah! With my little gardening fork, I sifted through the matter, intending to turn it as I would turn compost in a heap. I unearthed worms. Lots and lots of red, wriggling worms. They weren’t too happy with me disturbing them, but I was thoroughly happy with them. Double hurrah!

I haven’t learnt my lesson, of course. The lesson being: leave worms alone! Instead, I spent most of this morning sorting through the compost, collecting worms and transporting them to the second worm farm box, the one that I am actually adding our kitchen scraps too. I think this degree of interference is acceptable, and I will endeavour to not stir up the worms too much.

There, a new year’s resolution.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel was not what I expected.

It starts, almost exactly as I expected, introducing an investigator, a victim and mysteriousness. What exactly happened? And why? The first, brief chapter is very good – lots of detail, no substantial information. And then we plunge in; the story progressing with a different narrator each chapter.

Had it not been for the many positive reviews of this book, coupled with the fact that I have listed it as one for the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge 2012, I might have put it down. I like stories told from different perspectives, but I found myself wanting to edit things – sentences, phrases, clichés. But somewhere along the way, there was a turning point. It helps to read this in one – or at least only a few – sittings.

This novel is about loyalty. Only the surface is a crime novel. Like all good books should, you’ll think about it long after you have finished reading it.

Click on the awesome picture to find out what it’s all about. (Precis: Aus Women Writers are fantastic and y’all should read more of them.)

I am not great at challenges, but this is one lasting an entire year, and it requires only that I read (do that already) Australian women writers (tend to gravitate towards them anyway) and make at least four (that’s not too many), reviews (should be manageable) of a substantial length (no requirement to stick to 140 characters? I’m your woman!).

Genre-wise, I’m going to bravely (or foolishly) be a Devoted Eclectic.  Eclectic in my genres, I am.  Devoted, I am not.  We shall see.

Levels wise, Franklin-fantastic seems achievable.

I met the wonderful Fictional Julie Koh recently-ish.  We got to talking books – unsurprisingly – and trading favourite authors.  My list gravitated towards Australian women – Thea Astley, for example, I plugged with all my heart – and upon Julie’s querying why, my response, I think, mirrors the purpose of this challenge.  I just want to redress the balance.  Yes, someone will tell you Patrick White is good (I haven’t got around to reading him yet so cannot comment) but has anyone told you M Bernard Eldershaw is ridiculously awesome? No? Well, then, I will.

And that, my friends, is hopefully what I will do in 2012 as part of this here challenge.

*Thank you, Tseen, for leading me challenge-wards.

Also, I will be doing so via Goodreads.

It wasn’t meant to be like this.  One mere week of work craziness has somehow seeped out in all directions and I am drowning.  I blame a thoroughly awesome weekend at Asian Australian Film Forum, followed by a cold, followed by more work shenanigans, followed by laziness, succeeded by guilt, topped with exhaustion and, as a final twist of the knife, despair about the state of my worm farm.

But it is not all bad news.  I am being a wee bit facetiously melodramatic.  Mostly, work’s been busy and I’ve been lazy (Also, my computer is so slow I have not the patience for it; indeed, tonight’s blogging effort was almost ended by the desire to violently hurl the computer across the room.  I managed to suppress that – though my frustration and rage created a lovely ambience in one corner of the sofa for a good 45 minutes – and, thus, I still have a computer.  And you get a blog post.)

So, the worm farm.  There was a heat wave.  I was busy at work. The worms died.  Guilty, your honours, as charged, of wormicide by neglect.  I started obsessing about (1) what I had done wrong, (2) what I could do better and (3) whether I was allowed to buy more worms.  Just prior to the heatwave, I had started a second box and had transferred two or three stray worms to that second box.  I was still, optimistically if a little despairingly, putting our vege waste into that second box.  And lo, last weekend, there were baby worms! I am hopeful again.  And I promise to look after them better this time.  (Which involves leaving them alone most of the time but *doing something* should temperatures rise.)

Also, I have some fantastic ideas for improved homemade worm farms.  If ever I execute the ideas, I’ll let you know.  Lucky you.

There is so much I wish to do with this blog.  Yes, yes, writing some posts is definitely a good start, but so, too, is updating – the About page (my hair’s long again) ; the “Blogs I Enjoy Reading” page (um, I’m still reading almost all of the Blogs on that list that are still updating; plus I’ve found and am loving a whole lot more); some picture other than those forget-me-nots (although they are awesome, I must modestly concede); and trying to regain the sense of myself as a writer.

But I know, and you know too, that after this post, I am unlikely to update again until 2012.

So, loyal friends, new followers, and randoms who find me because you want to know what noises puffins make*: have a wonderful end of the year period and I’ll be back, really I will, in 2012.

*hint, check RSPB.  Just saying.**

** although, by doing this, I only improved my chances of staying the number one internet expert on puffin sounds***

*** yay! Puffins!

Puffin, hiding. (Skomer Island, Wales, July 2009)

This isn’t really a review. It’s just my notes from Goodreads, but I thought it was worth sharing on this blog.

Resurrection in a Bucket: the Rich and Fertile Story of Compost by Margaret Simons
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was awesome. It had me laughing out loud. Partially, I was laughing at the fact that I was finding so enjoyable reading a little book about compost, but also just because it was funny.

I showed my partner a section about the effects of compost on marriage, which made me laugh so hard I had to put the book down and wipe tears from my eyes (perhaps it won’t affect you in the same way, but if it does, let me know. We should talk.) Basically, the couple have two compost bins, one in use for adding to and one composting. Fairly basic if you’re a composter. The member of the marriage not dealing most often with the compost kept adding waste to the dormant bin and a series of escalating passive aggressiveness occurred in the backyard.

I’m the one responsible for panicking about organic waste in our house, and the one who used to turn the compost, and the one who mostly takes it out. I’m also the one who rhapsodies about compost, but I try not to do it too often. People stop inviting you out if you do. At the moment, I’m worm-farming,(*) or trying to, due to the lack of dirt in my “garden”.

Anyway, this book is a heap of fun. Compost is a heap of fun, too. I highly recommend both.

(* By the way, dear readers of This Blog, the worm farm comes along wonderfully.  It is almost time to make another box but everything seems to be working well and no terrible smells, no sludge and not too many dead worms.)

There is something so satsifying about turning a pile of dirty laundry into neatly folded, sweet smelling clothes that just appeals to my obsessive compulsive inner housewife.  (Also, have I mentioned that I like cleaning?  Yes I do.  I don’t even know how I ever became a feminist.)

I am one of those people who match socks when hanging them.  I am very particular about how trousers are hung (you peg near the ankle and never, ever hang from the waist.  Never. That is against all natural laws. I hyperbolise not.)  I bite my tongue when my partner does the laundry and try my best not to re-arrange, although he’s almost learned by now the specific way I like laundry hung.  He always does knickers and socks right.

I never realised how much I liked doing laundry until we moved to the UK.  In Brisbane, laundry was always done on a weekend morning.  All of it.  Saturday mornings were given over to listening to the washing machine whirring away.  Things dried on the line in a matter of hours and were taken in and put away.  A weekend of rain meant a larger pile of laundry for the following weekend but very rarely did it rain two weekends in a row.  You could always trust there would be some sunshine to dry everything.  The only danger was if you left your laundry on the line at around 3pm in summer.  Your lovely, dry laundry would get drenched in a matter of minutes if a storm blew in.  But in Brisbane, I resented laundry.  Sometimes, it absorbed my entire weekend.

In the UK, we first lived in a flat with no balcony.  The only place to hang laundry was indoors.  To (one of ) my sister’s great amusement, the washing machine was in the kitchen (in Brisbane, it was in the space under the house, always outside, always separate.)  I got into the habit of doing loads of laundry throughout the working week: my clothes hung drying while I was away at work; I put them away when I got home and the living room was useable; I’d fill it up again with laundry shortly before going to bed.  It was a system that left our weekends free.  A system I continued even when we moved to a house with a yard, and one I carry on in Melbourne, too.

On our bike trip, I obsessed over laundry.  You learn when on the road that you don’t actually need to do laundry that often and clothes can be worn more than three times.  Maybe even more than five times.  This I already knew from hiking: when you hike and camp, you have three sets of clothes: one for walking, one for sleeping and one set of clothes for travelling to and from the walk.  That’s all you need. (okay, you also need warm clothes and layers and waterproofs but you get my drift, yes? I am not wearing different walking clothes every day. I just put on the same stinky shirt, because I’m just going to stink it out some more any ol how.)  I had roughly this policy for riding: one set of clothes for cycling and one set for off the bike.  As we were travelling for a long time, I splashed out and carried two sets of clothes for cycling and two for off the bike. Total extravagance.

But on ‘rest days’ (non-biking days), I worried about how to get everything clean.  (Actually, I was more organised with my worrying.  I usually did it a day or two before our rest days.)  Only France had laundromats and sometimes we did not want to spend hours in a laundromat when there were chateaus to visit, cathedrals to gawk at and crepes to eat.  In other places – notably Spain, Morocco and Albania – I worried about logistics.  When, where, how?  Hanging laundry was never a problem: we had two bikes and a nifty laundry line (two elasticated pieces of string twisted around each other, a clippy-hook-thing at either end.  If you ever intend to travel for a long time, buy one of these.)  And I had to resist photographing our drying laundry.  I wanted to, almost every time I did laundry, because it all just looked so lovely to me: the prospect of clean clothes was so sweet.  And we have maybe about 20 photos of our laundry hanging in a multitude of campsites, but I’ll only show you one.

Laundry, La Jardin de la Koudyas campsite, near Taroudannt.

Finger Orchid (no, really, that is its name, promise. Unless I identified it wrong. In which case, please correct me!), Boar Gully, October 2011.

Having been ramblers for the past few years, we are now bushwalkers again.

I had wondered how we would get on with bushwalking without a car as, unlike UK, Australia’s parks, forested areas and bushland is not usually easily accessible by public transport.  Serendipitously, I did not have to wonder long as the job I got came with a car.  I like it when difficult decisions are taken out of my hands.

The next hurdle was to find walking spots within a reasonable distance for a day’s worth of hiking.  Surprisingly, there are plenty.  Our first trip out was to a park no more than a half hour drive from home: Organ Pipes National Park.  It was such a tiny park that our walk was but a short stroll.  We paused to admire the eponymous rock formations, paused for longer to admire some Superb Fairy Wrens (and they really are rather superb indeed) and paused for even longer still to read our books in the sunshine, surrounded by the sounds of the bush: high-pitched clicks and whistles from wrens berating us for invading their space and the creak and swish of tall eucalypts.

We forgot to take a camera with us on our walk.  I was glad of this because I know I would have tried and tried to get a photo of the superb fairy wrens, only to fail.  Instead, freed of the burden of documenting, I just watched and delighted.

No idea pink heath like bell flower (not its correct name; tell me if you know!) Boar Gully, October 2011.

Next, we headed towards the Brisbane Ranges National Park.  A guide book (Daywalks Victoria by John Chapman & others) informed us that the area had excellent wildflowers, especially in late Winter / early Spring; the day was overcast with the sun intermittently shining through rather ominous clouds.  I think I’ve mentioned before that we’re fairly sanguine about the weather.  It does its thing; we do ours.

We packed our waterproofs; we hunted around for our compass and could not find it. We looked into our first aid kit and discovered that it was empty of contents.  Presumably, I had binned everything before we got on the flight from Germany back to Australia and we’d yet to replenish it.  Ah well.  I tossed some bandaids and some paracetamol into my back pack and called that our first aid kit.  In the past, they are the only items I have ever used from a first aid kit.  We also had no sunscreen.  Before I left for the UK, I would never have gone on a bushwalk without sunscreen.  Never, ever, never.  But I shrugged and went anyway, surmising (correctly) that we would mostly be under tree cover for most of the walk.

The walk we did – Boar Gully Circuit – was a fine and fairly easy yomp through dry eucalypt forest with lots and lots of grass trees.  I like grass trees.  They have a stump from which long stalks of grass sprout like a fountain.  You can run your hand through the grass and it makes a delightful swishing sound.  I camped among some grass trees, once many years ago, and was lulled to sleep by the sound of the grass in the evening breeze.  In the morning, I listened as some creature rustled about inside the grass, finally emerging with a surprised plop somewhere near my head, scuttling away from me and leaping back inside the grass before I could focus my eyes sufficiently to attempt an identification.

Twining Fringe Lily (I'm fairly confident of this identification ...) Boar Gully, October 2011.

The flowers, too, did not disappoint – as demonstrated by the photos interspersed throughout this post -, although perhaps we were a wee bit early for the best show.  There were certainly a few buds promising something more spectacular in a week or two.  I’m still somewhat photography-averse post cycling trip, so I was rather lackadaisical in my photo-making.

A promise. A reason to return. Boar Gully, October 2011.

Once, in high school, I even forgot my own birthday.  I remember the occasion well because a sister came running after me, shouting something as I strode off down our street, towards the park and creek, towards the train station, off to school.  I was in a white polyester blouse with a stupid maroon and blue tie and an even stupider polyester navy skirt with four sets of pleats and stupidest of all black stockings.  Most ridiculous, Brisbane inappropriate school uniform, ever.

“Oanh! Haven’t you forgotten something?” Big sis yelled from our home’s verandah.

I paused.  I took stock.  School bag weighing down shoulders? Check.  Stupid tie? Check.  Stupid badge on tie? Check.  Lunch in bag? Check.

I looked down at my feet. For some unfathomable reason, I wasn’t wearing shoes.  Just black stockings.

I turned around and trudged back home, calculating how quickly I could put on shoes and get to the train station.  My sister watched me walking back, wondering why my shoulders were slumped so morosely.

“What’s up with you?” Big Sis demanded.

I looked at her funny: scrunched up eyes, one eyebrow raised, chin tucked into my chest.  After all, she was the one who called me back because I wasn’t wearing shoes.  Words being too much, I pointed at my be-stockinged feet.

“What? You want new shoes for your birthday? Too bad. We only have money to give you, as always.”

“Huh?” (This was the most eloquent, poetic thing I could think to say.)

“Happy birthday, you idiot!”

***

Email makes things much, much easier.  Many of my siblings have contiguous or near-contiguous birthdays. (You would think that would make it easier for me to remember their birthdays, but, nope, still forget.)  Below is a recent email exchange between me and three of my sisters.

Email 1: Oanh to Dragon Sis

Happy Birthday, sis!
Hope it was a beautiful one and sorry I’m not there to celebrate with you!
How old are you now anyway?!
much love
Oanh x

Email 2: Oanh to Sensible Sis (sent shortly after the above)

Hi!
Happy Birthday!!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply: work has been really busy! (and then I don’t bother turning on the computer at home because my computer is SO SLOW, so I am saving up to maybe buy an iPad… maybe

… [long email about how to do something Sensible Sis has asked for my help on] …

Let me know what you decide to do, if you need any more help etc.
much love and hope you had a lovely birthday!!

Email 3: Dragon Sis to Oanh

Hey Oanh,
Thank you for the Birthday wishes but you are 1 week early..mine & Sensible Sis birthday is next week. Today is Oldest Sis’ Birthday…:)  I will be REALLY OLD next week…

Email 4: Oanh to Dragon Sis

oh man, I have so many sisters, I get confused!  And I’ve been worrying about it all day today, too …
Better send my big sis an email then!

Email 5: Dragon Sis to Oanh

you are funny..yes you do have a lot of sisters..

Email 6: Oanh to Sensible Sis

Subject: Negative Birthday Wishes

I take back the happy birthday.  You can’t have it for another 7 days.

Email 7: Sensible Sis to Oanh

!!!

Thank-you for the birthday wishes, I keep it now (just in case you forget).

Email 8: Oanh to Oldest Sis

Happy Birthday big sis! I hear you’re getting even older.  You must be so old now.

I am yet to receive an email from Oldest Sis.  She’s probably just working on a witty response.  Oldest Sis likes purple and likes flowers, hence the otherwise gratuitous inclusion of the below photograph.

Gleaned Daisies.

When I say I think a lot, I don’t mean I think deeply, profoundly interesting thoughts. Just that I think. I notice and observe and record (by which I don’t mean I actually make a record – photographic, written, etc) which someone else could later retrieve, just that it’s something a bit more than, “Aha! Leaves on trees!”(*) although sometimes, that is all it is. Told you, profound I am.

There’s always a conversation inside my head. Sometimes the conversation is just with me; sometimes it’s with friends; sometimes it’s with this blog. I’m not always good at remembering whether I had a conversation inside my head with my friends as I perceive them, or whether I had a conversation outside my head, involving my vocal chords, with my friends in corporeal form. These things, they’re but minor details.

What goes on inside your head? Do you have a running commentary as you go about your daily life? Is it musical? It is full of images? Is it colourful? Does it make sense? If someone were to say to you, like they often do to me but they rarely mean it: What are you thinking? do you ever actually tell them? I do. (Well, when I’m asked by someone who either (a) deserves to hear my thoughts; and/or (b) who won’t think less of me despite what I tell them, then I go right ahead and tell them. And isn’t it disappointing when you’ve rambled on about what you were thinking about and then turn the question back upon them and they say, “Oh, not much.” I want to shake the person. I ask because I do want to know, and your trivialities actually do intrigue me. Tell me! Tell me!)

And why is it that telling a thought takes longer than thinking a thought, even though, if you are like me, most of your thoughts are in words.  I’ve already formed sentences while thinking, so why is that when I speak my thoughts, it takes so much longer; and why must my mind continue flying away with other thoughts, so my tongue trips over itself?

Sometimes, I think I would like to diagram my chain of thoughts. Things kind of just bounce around inside my mind, like the groovy and rather silly Japanese computer game, katamari damacy, where you roll along collecting objects becoming bigger and bigger until you’re the size of a planet. Of course, if you try to collect something too big, when you’re not big enough to have the right amount of gravity so that the item adheres to your increasing girth, then you fall apart. I think katamari damacy is an excellent depiction of the way my mind, in repose, works.

(* I’ve been thinking this a lot, lately.  It’s spring, see, and the leaves are coming back.  Or rather, they’re sprouting fresh leaves, pale yet somehow bright green, looking a little shocked to emerge into bright sunshine, a little nervous, like they need sunglasses.  Spring in Melbourne, Australia is not as dramatic as Spring in the UK, but it is, nevertheless, wonderful.  Although I feel the temperatures are not that different to a week ago, plants and birds and animals, knowing better than me, have started to become more lively.  Even my worm farm worms wriggle much more violently when I disturb them to enquire after their health. <- They’re doing wonderfully, thanks for asking.)

Also, it seems I am destined to change home locations in the middle of winter. In 2007, we left balmy Brisbane to land in icy, windy, mid-winter England. This year, we returned to a lovely wintry Brisbane (temperatures usually higher and the weather more predictably pleasant than English summers), swung down to crisp cold Tasmania (where I thought it would be fun to get an almighty cold that laid me up in bed for three days) and finally reached Melbourne, our home for the foreseeable future, in the midst of its usual (so I’m told) drizzly, grey winter.

We ate a lot of soup to keep warm. Here’s my recipe – it’s very flexible. Almost everything can be substituted with something else. The main thing you do need are potatoes (at least 1, even if you substitute other root vegetables because potatoes just make the consistency *right*), onion or garlic (or both), stock (cubes, powder, home-made – although if you make your own stock, you definitely don’t need me telling you how to make soup!) and water.

Ingredients
- onion, 1 diced
- garlic, at least 2 cloves smashed, unless someone is feeling poorly in which case, MORE!
- potatoes, 2 medium-sized, diced
- other root vegetables (carrots, turnips, swede, parsnips etc), roughly same amount as potatoes, diced. I tend to chop my veges different sizes depending on how long they take to cook. You want all the veg cooked nice and soft, so carrot and swede get cut small; parsnip and turnips about twice as large as carrot.
- celery if it’s hanging around, chopped roughly
- stock: I tend to use stock cubes or powder and tend to use half of what is recommended for the quantity of water that I add (about 2 teaspoons, usually, but it depends on the stock powder. I have for a long time been a fan of ‘Vegeta’, in case you’re wondering.)
- ground black pepper
- herbs, a nice handful if fresh; a tablespoon or thereabouts if dried; whatever you have on hand: parsley, oregano and thyme are all great (as is a mix of them, of course)
- water, enough to cover the veg, usually a little bit more than a litre

Equipment
- saucepan
- handheld blender or failing that, a potato masher. I suppose you can use a normal blender, too, but, oh, the clean up involved!

Procedure

1. Saute onion in a teeny amount of oil. Add some garlic, too. Garlic is always good (repeat after me …)
2. If using celery, add shortly after garlic and keep on saute-ing
3. When the onion is translucent or soft-looking, add potato.
4. Add stock cube or powder and stir into potato, onion, garlic mixture.
5. Add other vegetables and stir to coat with stock powder.
6. Add pepper and herbs now. If using fresh herbs, reserve some for adding at the end.
7. Add enough water to cover all the veg, with maybe about an extra centimetre or two. If it’s too thick later, you can always dilute with more water. I like to have a boiled kettle ready.
8. Bring the whole lot to a boil.
9. Cover with a lid, turn the heat down so that the soup bubbles nicely, but is not boiling vigorously. For me, this is about a medium heat.
10. After about 15 minutes or so, all veg should be nice and soft. If not, let it boil on.
11. Turn off the heat and let it sit for about 5 minutes to cool a little.
12. Mush with the handheld blender, adding more water if it’s too thick. You’ve had soup, right? So, you know what consistency to make it. Spoon some up and let it fall. It should slide off, not leap off. If it just coagulates on the spoon, it’s probably too thick. But hey, maybe you like your soup like that.
13. If you don’t have a handheld blender or a counter-top blender, you can mash it with a potato masher. Make sure that you cook the veg even softer – about 25 minutes. You won’t get a nice smooth consistency, but it should be fine. I’ve even made soup and mashed with a fork when I had no equipment. Dearie me.
14. Sprinkle with some fresh herbs (parsley is best here), maybe a swirl of creme fraiche or yoghurt if you’re feeling all la-dee-da about your soup and a turn of the pepper grinder.
15. Enjoy that warm goodness sliding down your throat and warming up your belly.
16. Leftovers freeze brilliantly. I don’t think I need to tell you how to freeze soup. Or do I?

Of course, we in the southern hemisphere won’t need winter warmer soups for much longer … Hurrah! Spring is coming!