My summer holiday

Just before Christmas, Mum, Dad, Al, the girls and I went down to Bicheno, a small town on the east coast of Tasmania, and Freycinet National Park, for a few days by the beach. I remembered just how lovely it is to live here.






But the beach holiday in Tas. is a different experience to those I'm used to. Growing up, summers were spent in Queensland, where there is heat and surf and bikinis. I miss jumping in the water without fear my bits will drop off in the cold, but there is something very free about visiting beaches here, which are often really wilderness areas that just happen to be next the ocean. All the sexual energy and lethargy, the bikinis and posing and judgments have no place on the sand; there's an intimacy and an expansiveness as we tear about, the only beings in sight.

Going out with a whimper

In the face of the overwhelming productivity of our zucchinis (and I'll hear no 'I told you so's, thank you very much) I've started making zucchini loaf. It is delicious. But it's a somewhat prosaic end for something called costa romanseque. It's such a sophisticated name, so glamorous but authentic, the name of a swarthy heart-throb. Those fruits were surely expecting to end their days on a grill, next to sardines, eaten with a spritz of lemon under a pergola overlooking the blue, blue Mediterranean. Instead, they're grated and stirred into one of the most 80s suburban of all baked treats.

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Lucy has discovered the newspaper. She sits at the breakfast table, baby latte to hand, and asks us to tell her the stories about the police and car crashes and drownings and landslides and the arrival of a scrub python at the local wildlife park. She's got a well defined appreciation of the dramatic and we all find it a relief from telling Rapunzel and the Pied Piper of Hamelin ad nauseuam.

Lu also has a strong aesthetic, it turns out. She looked at me today, pushed her toast away and whined, "I don't like blueberry jam, it's too blue". Feminist mothers can complain about Disney princesses all we like - they're not as annoying as a real one in the house.

Our Christmas

... was full of good things.

Good things to eat. On Christmas Eve, our traditional time of celebration: oysters, salty and buxom, like Jane Russell; salmon terrine; olives and pepperberries and artichokes. And on Christmas Day: beef cooked blue; potato salad with gherkins; crisp salad; good bread.

Good things to drink. Bay of Fires Pinot Noir Chardonnay; raspberry syrup in soda water and the bubbly.

Good things to see. A Christmas tree looking just the way I've always wanted one to look - sparkly and modest and maybe even elegant (maybe); my girls reveling in time with Meema and Grandad.

Good time. No work (no thought of work), no deadlines, no lists, no email. Hours in the garden, tidying and replenishing. Waking up yesterday and then again today with absolutely nothing planned, nothing expected of the day. Napping when I want to, feeling my body clock tick-tock back into its own proper time and feeling so much better for it. Remembering the way the hours drip slowly by when there's no push and no pull, just the lazy currents of time at home with my family.

But the spirit of Christmas? Two huge lollipops in the Christmas stockings - all artificial, teeth rotting, mood disordering joy for my girls. There's been a lot of talk about hand made Christmas on the blogs I read but in our house, the ship's well and truly sailed on that idea.

Bright Christmas

I do love Christmas. The origins are somewhat lost in many of my own traditions and delights but there's a such a strong sense of thanksgiving in my approach - all this goodness and love; perhaps it's a bit like Thanksgiving in the U.S. My family's a nice group of people and we've got no real difficulties in our lives (touch wood) and so there's much cause for celebration.

And I love a Christmas tree and the decorations. But all the bits associated in my mind with a white Christmas - the cotton wool snow, the spray-on ice, the reindeers - don't resonate or appeal. I love the glare, the heat, the golds and sharp sky blues of my Australian Christmas. So I've been thinking about decorations that reflect this in a not-too-kitsch way. I'm also a little sensitive to where the baubles and bling are made - it seems a little too Dickensian or Grinch-like to get my sparkle from a free trade zone filled with little kids and peasants breathing in lead based paint. But when fair prices are paid Christmas decorations are awfully pricey and I like a lot; I like the tree to be laden with pretty things which can quickly turn into an expensive proposition when people aren't being exploited.

And so, despite a long history of being Not At All Crafty, I made my own out of gumnuts and glitter. I can't believe I did it, and that they turned out so beautifully - I must have been channeling Amanda Soule. They don't look quite so gorgeous on the photos here but you probably need to view them through the eyes of immense pride, and that particular program can't be downloaded. But I don't care; handmade: what a buzz.

White Christmas

The trees with papery bark, just down the road, are covered in this. Not icicles, but fluffy flowers.

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The vacation message is enabled on email, the phone is forwarded through to reception, the office is cleaned out and drinks have been had by the river: I am officially on leave until the New Year. I feel giddy with the freedom of it all.

Sweet Nell

One (of the admittedly many) things I find challenging in mothering two kids is the competing demands on my attention. Neither Nell nor Lu want to share me with the other and so any interaction with one almost always gets cut short by the other. I'm sympathetic to both: before Nell, Lu was the sole recipient of our almost continual regard and adoration; with Lu on the scene, Nell has to work hard to make herself heard, to get what she desires. We're doing our best to make sure both get equal airtime and special time with each of us, but it's a challenge. I find it particularly hard because I'm away all day - there's an hour in the morning and about two in the evening and even that time is broken up by getting ready for work and cooking dinner. I hear people say it's about quality not quantity but the amount of time is important too, especially for my little kids for whom quality only means 'being with Mum'.

This weekend's been really nice because Al and Lu are in Melbourne, taking in the sights and meeting up with old friends and their kids. I miss them - I'm not a fan of breaking up the unit for even a short period of time - but it's been delightful to spend quality and quantity time with Nellie, doing the things we both enjoy: eating as many raspberries and peaches as we can possibly fit in our bellies; strolling into town to buy books for presents and chutney from the markets for Xmas day; playing with the dog; and lolling about the house.


I love my kids because they are my kids - that chemical connection started when I held them the very first time - but the more precious bond, to me, is the one that grows as we come to know and appreciate each other. Usually, the only Nell-MumMum specific time is the first ten minutes of every morning, when Nell wakes up and we snuggle in bed together. This is very intimate and smoochy but too short to really get to know each other. What's been great these last two days is learning or more deeply appreciating some Nell specific things. To wit:

* Nell can pack away five peaches before breakfast;
* Nell has a modest outie belly-button which pops up like a pompom on a beanie when she eats her fill;
* When she's finished a task to her satisfaction, Nell slaps her belly and then rests her hands there, sitting like one of those fat happy buddha statues;
* Nell practices things - she went up and down the stairs today for half and hour, getting faster and faster and more and more pleased with herself;
* She loves her Jasper-dog;
* She really enjoys picking clothes off the floor and stacking them up on a bed (I know, I'm so lucky!);
* She's a really bossy kid, even with only about ten words and most of them starting with 'b'.



In short, she's quite the perfect Nell for me.

Finding ways to fix the big problems

We eat a lot of pasta at our house - it's a quick meal I can make in the half hour window between getting home at 5 pm and facing the ravenous hoardes at 5.30, after the daily episode of Skippy has been viewed and discussed. We also eat a lot of zucchini, in season - deep down, despite all evidence, I still believe we might not see the summer through if we don't have at least three plants in the garden; it's seasonal eating at it's most oppressive and we don't even look at another zuke until the next summer swings around.

And so it has, and the first zucchinis were harvested today. They were costa romanseco, which I planted for the name. I'm liking them. The bush is compact and the fruit will give you a few days grace before they morph into baseball bats. This is a nice change from the Black Jack in particular, which is a staple of our summer garden, creeping and sprawling all over the paths, and whose fruit transforms into something the size of a submarine if I dare take a break to drink my morning coffee. But these new ones are spiky - they prick like thistles. Caveat emptor and all that, but why don't seed catalogues mention this? - the yellow ones we planted last year were untouchable without gloves. Or is this a my garden specific problem?

But all solved by peeling them and tossing them in a saucepan with garlic, spring onions, bacon, parsley, salt and pepper and cream, which I let thicken. I sprayed the lot with lemon to cut the richness and Nell and I gobbled it down with skinny pasta. Quite delightful, and a happy way to begin the months of gobbling the seasonal veggies.

I say it again - it's going to be a good summer.