Going up and coming down

Today we went up to Monbulk for a belated Mothers' Day celebration with my lovely mother-in-law. There are more matriarchs in our families than can be visited in a single day.

First I took Cheekus Weekus to a rollerblading party at Caribbean Rollerama. For some unfathomable small-boy reason he spent the first ninety minutes refusing even to acknowledge he was at a party. Thankfully he eventually thawed out and whizzed very happily and competently around the rink with the others. I had promised Princess Pea I would skate with her, so I did. Most of my left palm is black-and-blue because that's what I mostly landed on. (The CFO took Running Boy to his footy match, which sadly the Under 10 Blacks lost. Again. It looks like being a character-building season.)

We love being up in the hills but usually we go straight to Granny May, and straight back. Today I was behind the wheel, the only adult in the car and I went off the straight-and-narrow in search of fresh chestnuts! There were only muted objections from the back seat. Bella Vista has lovely fat glossy nuts and also hazels and walnuts. It must be well-known in some circles as there seemed to be a constant stream of people going in buying kilos of them. Later the kids and I played Giant's Treasure with a slightly souvenired golfball while the CFO and his Mum chatted. Happy, happy day.

Nick R the Second

After helping the CFO wash dishes so that my breakfast could be cooked for me (and very good it was too) I went to the Stitches and Craft Show on Sunday afternoon, all by myself, as my Mothers' Day treat. I bought a little bag pattern from Nikki and a kinder girls pattern from Jodie and a Pippijoe basket kit. Now all I have to do is make them up. Easy.

Today was much more special. It seems happiness is a genuine St Kilda guernsey. Happy tenth birthday Running Boy! In his honour here is his favourite YouTube clip. Actually it's his second favourite but I can't stand to hear singing guineapigs any more.

BTW can anyone tell me how to do weblinks but without all the http stuff turning up - ie to make a tagline or word that acts as a link when clicked? [Edit - thankyou Stomper Girl, it worked...now my blog is just a little bit easier to read!]

Lest we forget

We all went to the Dawn Service. The CFO started this four or five years ago when we lived in South Yarra, taking Running Boy one year, Princess Pea another. Once we all went, but Cheekus Weekus was simply too little and wriggled and whined the whole way through. He wasn't sure he wanted to go this year but we explained that I wanted to go too, and he was too young to look after himself at home in the dark.

It was dark when we got up and left around 4:30 am, all rugged up. We passed special Anzac Day busses and little streams of people on foot joining up and thickening into rivers and then a crowd, an ocean.

We were quiet through the Last Post and patiently worked our way up the steps to lay poppies. I was the only one who got told off for bad behaviour, scandalising a nice old feller by forgetting to take off my beanie when I stepped into the Shrine.

We had bacon-and-eggs for breakfast at exorbitant Anzac Day prices which sent the CFO into conniptions. Then we climbed trees along Domain Rd, sending a busybody old trout into conniptions. Such larks.

Dragonfly

Walking for my afternoon coffee today I passed a big dragonfly resting on a low fence. The street is busy and people seem determined to crush small things; I have even seen a poor flattened gecko. I doubled back and the dragonfly came easily onto my finger. It wiped its eyes and was still. To my embarassment the lovely barrista at my favourite cafe saw I was trying to hide something under the takeaway counter. She thought I had done my finger again. Its wings started to hum. As I lifted my hand up to show her - she cooed, it was a lovely little creature - it started to take off. I caught it and sprinted outside and away it sailed. Here it is as its wings flickered while it decided whether a cafe was a good place to fly.

Autumn & spongecake

Yesterday we dropped by a local church's market-day and although tempted by butterfly wreaths we bought only a sponge cake.



Today Princess Pea decorated it for afternoon tea, with intermittent help from Cheekus Weekus. The five of us have eaten the whole thing. It was a real CWA-style light-as-a-feather beauty.



Later Princess cooked on the stove for almost the first time, roo steaks. Yum (but no photos - she got a bit cranky over the for-the-blog cake photos so I'd stopped).

Silkworms

RIP Fred, some time ago. S/he made several unsuccessful attempts to spin a cocoon, went into metamorphosis as a sort of insect mummy-thing and quietly passed away without ever emerging as a moth.

Fred was the only survivor of our final batch of eggs.

When Princess Pea was very little, we were given five silkworms from the class batch by her lovely, very kind pre-prep teacher. Toddler Running Boy wrapped them in a tissue and raced about the house whizzing the bundle up and down in his little hand. "I am taking them for a rocket ride" he said indignantly when asked. "They like it." They did not. After several more, forbidden, rocket rides, the traumatised caterpillars refused to eat and wasted away gruesomely.

We tried again with some Grade 1 silkworms and did too well. (I asked the relief teacher to have one or two at the end of the year and got the whole damned lot, to Princess' ecstatic joy.) Within a few generations there were multitudes. The CFO and I took to releasing as many as we could "back into the wild", being the Peter Pan and Wendy AIDS Memorial Garden on Commercial Rd Prahran. This was mostly mulberry trees and where we got most of the silkworms' meals. The kids agreed, eventually, to keep only a few eggs. Unfortunately the batch we chose from this generation was dud. Few hatched and fewer survived.

I should have known when to stop but we'd planted a young mulberry tree. After we moved it had been too hard monitoring each footpatch-accessible mulberry tree between work & home and covertly harvesting leaves. We couldn't stomach any repeat of the Great Lettuce Disaster. (We tried feeding them lettuce and it must have been sprayed with insecticide - the silkworms went into convulsions and died, some like hard rubber and pink, some liquefied. We explained to the kids that vets generally did not treat silkworms. Of course some lived but the Princess believes genetic damage must have caused the end of their line.)

The petshop where we get crickets for the frogs had "seasonal" boxes of silkworms for sale. Snakes or large frogs must like them. They were exorbitantly expensive,

but here we go again: these are their offspring, next year's silkworms.

Chestnuts mean Autumn

When I was a child my Mum, my sister and I would go to Emerald Lake around Easter to look for chestnuts.

The trees next to the lake were always picked bare so we would head over the little hill at the back, past the stream (where once we found tadpoles) into the groves. We always managed to come home with a few. Your fingers stung from wriggling the glossy brown nuts out of their prickly cases. Often there was nothing there, or a tiddler rejected by prior fossickers, needled fingers for no return. Sometimes you would find a big fat nut...after the possums had. But we always got a few worth eating.

We'd take our booty home and put them on the coals and wait. When they exploded we would pick them out with the tongs and peel off the casing and eat them with salt, the nuts hot and slightly charred.

Now, sometimes up in the hills I've convinced the CFO to pull over so I can buy cooked or raw chestnuts by the roadside, but it's not the same. I have also bought them roasted in the CBD from footpath braziers, but again it is not the same. A proper chestnut is too hot to handle, burst, floury and delicious. I tried roasting some in the oven but this was an utter waste of effort. The children (and the CFO) have been less than captivated.

Today at the Prahran Market several stalls had big, fat, tight shiny nuts and I couldn't resist. While Princess Pea finished her school project on Debussy far too late tonight I roasted some. They were fabulous and she and I and the CFO ate the whole bowl. Chestnuts mean autumn! And I told her the story behind Smetana's Trio in G, as autumn also means reflection.