Sunday digest

Hey, it's only been 3 weeks! Here's the latest news from around here:

Work/school We are deep into Term 2 and everyone is working hard. DP has started teaching his intensive master's program; I'm trying to help launch a major organizational initiative which is taking a little longer than planned; and Miss B is into her second round of Year 7 electives - which involves cooking!

Last weekend I helped her with her first Food Tech assignment - designing a recipe for and making a salad. I managed to capture a few action shots; here's Miss B chopping celery:

And here's the final result:

Miss B's personal tweaks to the standard salad recipe included chopped salami and pickles - surprisingly delicious, since guess who ended up eating this salad for lunch all week?

Recreation Hanging around our local places playing cards and board games; streaming lots of movies now that we've finally figured out how to work our cable system (it only took 18 months); and indulging Miss B's renewed interest (not to say fangirling) in Doctor Who.

Food Two sets of dinner guests in the space of a couple of days this week meant thinking of ways to be efficient in the kitchen. For the first round, I made my favorite slow cooker chicken recipe, served with potatoes and peas; then, for today's guests, I used the leftover chicken, sauce, and peas as the base of a chicken pot pie:

I rounded out the filling with sauteed bacon, red onion, carrots, and celery, plus a few porcini mushrooms, then stuck it in the oven to heat through and combine. I made a variation on my Emergency Scone recipe for the topping (swapped out sugar for rosemary salt, and some of the cream for olive oil to make it more savory), cooked it separately (I don't like a soggy bottom on my pot pie topping), and slipped it on just before serving. It made a great and frugal late-autumn Sunday lunch (with bread and salad and brownies for dessert) for four adults and three children.

Weather As I may have already mentioned, it's late autumn here: fall foliage, warm days and cold nights, flannel sheets and hot water bottles. And my latest discovery about this season in Australia - native flora are back in season:

 Hope you're having a lovely weekend wherever you are.

Eight weeks (part 2)

April arrived in Canberra complete with an April Fool's Day joke from Mother Nature:

...making our local landmark, Black Mountain, topped by the Telstra Tower, disappear in the morning...

...and reappear in the afternoon.

Other highlights of the month included our quarterly care package of American goodies from sister/aunt L...

...two weekends at the coast - one to Kioloa...

...and one to Durras Beach in Murramurang National Park...

...where we got up close and personal with some of the locals...

...and admire some of the oldest gum trees still standing anywhere in New South Wales.

Most of the rest of April was taken up with a combination of school holidays and solo parenting, which meant juggling work with activities around Canberra - and Miss B's and my now-traditional Sunday breakfast of crumpets when DP is away - making the batter the night before is definitely the key to success.

And my latest foray into flower arranging brings us up to date, with autumn taking hold in Canberra - the heat is on, the nights are drawing in, and the slow cooker is getting a workout. What's happening where you are?

Silent Sunday

Spring in bloom in Canberra (anyone know what this flower is?)

Wordless Wednesday

Cheering up the flat with some local colo(u)r - Canberra Farmers' Market proteas, July 2012

Wordless Wednesday

Come on spring!
Hydrangeas, Canberra, Australia, December 2009

Winter's end

I keep expecting winter in Canberra to turn into something I'm familiar with--biting cold, howling wind, snow (please?)--and it keeps surprising me. When August began, I couldn't stop thinking about the old adage, "When the days begin to lengthen, then the cold begins to strengthen" and bracing myself for an onslaught of some kind. When one of my friends (originally from balmy Queensland) recently told me that she was all done with winter, I told her I was still waiting for it to start.

The reality is that, instead of my fevered winter imaginings of northern origin, we've had some much-needed rain, some frosty mornings, and some warm, sunny afternoons--sunny enough to encourage preschoolers to take their coats off and flowers to bloom, sometimes where you least expect to see them. I don't know if it's climate change, or just typical. It's pretty different from my expectations, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Local color

The weather is getting colder by the day, and we’ve broken out the hats, gloves, and warm blankets, but even so, this season in Canberra is not late autumn/early winter as we know it in the northern hemisphere. Amidst the falling leaves and morning mists are splashes of brilliant color, flowers in bloom that I more commonly associate with spring and summer. And a few that are new to me, at least outside a flower shop: the picture you see here is of a camellia in bloom, taken one day recently on a walk with Miss B. We rounded a corner in a residential neighborhood near Miss B’s preschool, and were presented with a dark-green wall, taller than I am and extending along the whole front of someone’s property, covered with these vivid pink blossoms: a whole hedge of camellias. I had no idea what they were, but a few days later I pointed them out to an Australian friend, and she identified them for me.

Check out some more floral sights of the season that I've recorded for posterity—as well as a few of our many neighborhood feathered friends!

Canberra autumn

Before I moved here I had heard, over and over, that Canberra really and truly had four seasons (unlike many other parts of Australia), so I was expecting autumn to come around in due course. After two summers in a row--a sticky Boston summer followed by a scorching Canberra summer--I’ve been actively looking forward to it. But I wasn’t expecting it to be, you know, autumnal. But it is: crisp, clear, dry days with brilliant blue skies. Early twilights and frosty nights. Acorns falling off trees and piles of leaves to scuff through. Foliage. All of my favorite parts of a New England autumn--right here in Australia.

I keep forgetting that the calendar says it’s the middle of May. Every other day I have a ten-second panic attack that I need to start my Christmas shopping. Then I remember that Christmas isn’t for another seven months and go back to enjoying the bizarre wonderfulness of it all. Because there are just enough things to remind me that I’m not really in New England, and the middle picture above is my current favorite Australian autumn sight. It may look like three ears of corn growing in a pine tree (obligatory food reference), but it’s really a Silver Banksia, a native Australian shrub that flowers (yes, those are flowers) from February to June--in other words, late summer to early winter.

I felt very disoriented by t-shirts and flip flops in November, but I don’t seem to mind wool sweaters and apple pie in May a bit.

Just really ready for some cooler weather? Or could it be that I’m going native?