As mentioned on my Facebook page, I have slipped into an episode of Monty Python.

Shoalhaven City Council promised access for those properties bordering on the Council Public Road.

Council says illegally planted trees on Council's Public Road must be removed.

Council contacts the person who planted trees illegally and tells them to remove the trees. 

The person who planted the trees says NO. 

Council spends the next four months backpeddling so fast they almost end up in the Bega Shire (about 600kms sofrom here).
  
Somehow Council becomes responsible for removing and maintaining the trees. 

The good neighbours and I keep lobbying Council. 

Council then decides to remove a limited number of the illegally planted trees to give limited access to us and our neighbours. 

Location of said trees for removal to create enough room for a double gate leads onto our subsurface irrigation (effluent disposal) system.  

Council Manager says that's not his problem.  He just has to provide access.  The fact that we can't use the access is irrelevant. 

I am so pleased great coffee is only seven minutes away.

Let me out of here !!!!

This photo is to remind me, more than anyone else, that I have invested a lot of time, money and energy into moving from visual art practice and management toward writing. 

Here I am with my constantly bewildered mother who somehow manages to keep a brave and proud demeanour about herself despite having to adjust her thinking about who her daughter may actually think she is during any given decade.

It should be mentioned that said mother is referred to as Cecily these days which has nothing to do with her real name - she just likes it better.  Reinvention is apparently genetic in our family so understanding is the least we can do for each other.

I am sure I mentioned that this year was the one for a commitment to writing and to my blog (commitment to the garden will be discussed another time) so on Tuesday morning, I headed to the city for my monthly writers' gathering - two hours of engaging with other writers and exploring ideas.  Tick for commitment. 

Dashed out of there around midday, met the ever-loyal-and-accomodating Badger, grabbed sushi for lunch and headed to Cecily's for tea and cake - the latter purchased en route.  Niceties done, we crammed the great junk that Cecily had found for us on the side of the road into the car-of-ever-expanding-capacity before we raced off for a blissful two hours to the discount fabric shop for me while Badger ventured further afield to organise new bowls shirts for his chums.

Around 5pm, having left home at 7 that morning, we finally get to our home-away-from-home in the city.  Unpack car and off to dinner with The Son and his one-woman-support-crew for a fab time and great veggie food before ending the day with a bit more knitting on my patchwork blanket - my first-ever knitting project. 

I am up before the sparrows on Wednesday to put the words that have been whirring around in my head since 4am onto paper.  Yes, writing.  A quick weed of the garden so paths can be found, load up the car with jigsaw puzzle precision before hurling myself around the local shopping centre in search of soccer shorts for Mr Five Years Old.  The Badger meets me at pre-arranged pick up point (not joint) with take-away coffee in hand. No success with shorts for the boy so we head back to Cecily's to drop off the things I forgot yesterday via The Son's letterbox to drop off the things I forgot to give him the night before. 

With those boxes ticked, we fly up the highway heading north to collect a fan light for the bathroom which we have been waiting on for two years (long story), then to the picture framer for yet more work to be framed and the ever-ensuing discussion about the need for more walls and/or present lack of such due to too much framing.  Petrol purchased then back in a southerly direction to the city for the not-to-be-missed Anish Kapoor exhibition with quick bite of hopefully gluten free lunch (fingers crossed) to follow.

Finally on the way toward home, we pop into an outdoor furniture shop to look at some chairs that we love and have been driving past for 12 months.  No room in car so purchase delayed (and credit card relieved) so grab some more petrol as it is now cheaper on Wednesdays than Tuesdays and make a quick stop at the lottery that is service station toilets.  We are moving along nicely and out of the suburbs, when we strike a thirty minute delay on the freeway due to an accident  - and aren't we glad we stopped to look at chairs or this could have been us.  With home almost in sight, we stop to do our supermarket shopping because who knows when on earth it will get done otherwise - and Cecily is coming to stay next week - and the vegetable peeler was thrown out sometime last week with the vegie scraps.

Into the home turn with a desperate dash to the newsagent just before closing time to get the daily paper so vital to Badger's state of mind and collect the mail from Post Office Box.  

An hour and a half later, a very basic dinner is on the table with a few phone calls amidst the cooking, unpacking of groceries, locating storage spot for great junk and washing school shirts for Miss-Teen-Nearly-Eighteen.  As I inhale my meal, I realise something is not quite right in the gut department - the Mocca guzzled while shopping must have had wheat in the chocolate - so away from the table to commence an energetic evening of running to the bathroom between catching up with emails and phone calls as I endeavour to plan the next day/week/month ahead.  Finally I take some anti-nausea medication and crawl into bed with cup of tea in hand and bucket at my side.

Another tick for commitment ... or is that commital?

It's a new year.  A year for writing - a year in which I will turn 60 and the year that the house will turn 2.

It is also supposed to be the year for planting but the grass is crackly dry and even the established trees are struggling - some are dying.  With the days getting hotter and hotter, the dam now looks more like an open-cut mine than a water resource; even the ducks are getting a bit stressed.

So, where are we with garden plans ? and where are the writers?

The diggers and large scale machinery are becoming a permanent fixture in the paddock and the massive sandstone blocks that were to be a garden wall - along which crab apple trees would be planted - are all still sitting where the dump truck dumped them almost 3 months ago.

We had a small glitch, you might say.  The people who live behind - Mr and Mrs Misery - felt an overwhelming urge to be nasty so they complained to Council about our landscaping.  They didn't have an acutal complaint - apparently it's enough just to make the call - so Council having OK'd the job then decided that perhaps we needed more paperwork, more investigation, more money paid.

After much deliberation by Council - and some nervous conversations between departmental heads about being seen to do the right thing - the excavation for the proposed garden wall was deemed to be 100mm too deep and the job was shut down while papers were filled out, letters were written, and money was paid.

The excavator driver did offer (repeatedly) to dig a very large hole in which he would happily bury the troublemakers.  Tempting as it was - and a lot of fun planning how it could be done - I remain resolute that honesty wins out in the end and that the pen will always be mightier than the sword.  I am also quite naive sometimes

And then it was Christmas and all the workers disappeared while the Miseries settled into their illegal dwelling just over the fence (behind our sad pile of rocks) for a holiday season of horse riding and generally annoying behaviour.

On this side of the fence - the Writers Garden side - we patiently wait for digging to resume, walls to be built and some gentle prolonged rain.   It will come.  And then so will the writers.

I really should have some photos on here but I am too worn out to work out how.

A whole week of arts grant applications and all the excitement of diggers, rock moving and gardens taking shape seems to have happened on another planet with me locked away in front of a computer.

If I'd known how much work it was going to be, I wou'd just donate the money and go and play in the mud.

Lots of pictures and info very soon - I promise.  Only one tiny part of the final grant application to go and then it's done ... in time for Spring and some rain, we hope.

Am I supposed to tell people I am now thewritersgarden.net or will they just know?  Etiquette ... and I just thought it was about not dropping cake crumbs on the carpet.  A whole new world ...

There's something very therapeutic about a day in the garden - especially a day of hard labour.  After staring at the rather sad collection of kindly donated cuttings hapharzardly potted into an array of mismatched containers by the back door, the imminent arrival of a digger-of-mass-proportions meant that it was time to relocate them.  The movement of the forthcoming summer sun and hot dry days ahead also meant a new home had to be found.

It wasn't as straightforward as it sounds - as nothing ever is.  After the selection of a nice spot by the fence with morning sun and protection from afternoon heat, the first job was preparation of the site.  This did create some initial resistance from the Badger, and momentary grumpiness.  Badger doesn't necessarily feel the need to create that which is reasonable to the eye; he just wants the job done. However, once I had finally stopped pruning-in-readiness, and he could see the secauteurs were put away, he cheered up enormously and pot shifting commenced.

It was certainly a case of us-against-the-elements.  In gale force westerly winds, we loaded up the trailer on the trusty ride-on with dozens of pots for what seemed like dozens of occasions and I took the reins for my inaugural circuit on the mower.  Thankfully, the initial nervousness of the controls disappeared by the fifth or sixth trip from the old to the new pot-spot, and I was riding up hill, down dale like I'd been born to it.

The old pot-spot is now ready for the digger to reshape the earth into a garden.  But there is a small down-side to our success story  When the cuttings were at the back door (an entry/exit not often used), I didn't see their neediness.  Now when I gaze out the window, I can see all the weeny attention-starved plants, many in undersized pots, waiting patiently if not rather desperately for a garden bed.  They just want to put down their roots and flourish.  There was a time when I felt the same way.

It's an amazing thing - my family have come to stay and they are determined to push mother (happily and gratefuly) into a website for the writers' garden. 

Having waited since April for the landscapers to turn up to create the bones of the garden, at least documenting the miniscule changes will make it feel like something is actually happening.

I have been told (not for the first time in the past 5 months) that the diggers will be here on Monday to dig holes toward creating a retaining wall.  In the meantime, I have purchased three potted pink azaleas that now sit in a planter box outside the laundry. 

Each time I go out the door, I will delight at their beauty and, hopefully, not notice the dump that surrounds this beautiful house.