It's a new look for a new year. The photo in the header was taken from our front garden at the bush across the road one misty morning. The black and white might bore us all senseless but at the moment I'm going with elegant and understated.
It's raining in our bush at the moment, a gentle, constant, truly soaking rain. I went out walking in it yesterday afternoon on my own and unplugged my ipod so I could listen to it fall softly on the leaves. The rain is a presence in the bush, everything shivers around you with the weight of water. A kangaroo slow-hopped through the rain. Butterflies flickered between drops and birds crashed about in the trees. There was a mood of celebration, of reprieve. We drank it in, me and the kangas and the birds.
Today we all went out in it, me and Mart and Una and Fred, down to the school grounds for a play, trying to be okay with Una sitting down in muddy puddles and got soaked through to her core and Fred filling her boots with water and sloshing around. On the way home two black cockatoos flew overhead. We have white ones all the time, heaps of them, raucous bogans that they are. But the black ones are special. The thing I love about cockatoos is that they really really dig the fact that they can fly. You can see them on windy days, playing with eddies in the air, hanging upside down, just mucking around, flying in a gang, making as much noise as possible...you'd swear they're doing blockies.
Unfortunately in the process of rejiggering my blog (that's a technical term) all my links have disappeared (oops). It seems awfully antisocial to have a blog with no blogroll but secretly I am quite liking the look of it being so clean and uncluttered and simple. Maybe I will be antisocial for a while longer (or am I secretly lazy?).
PENN - I LOVE THE NEW LOOK. I love, love, love the black and white. That picture is AMAZING!!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that's what you get to look at every day. Life in the bush sounds just perfect and it sounds like your really enjoying yourself too.
I have been meaning to e-mail you; I finally found a copy of Drift in the bookstore so I have been glued to the coach re-reading the first two. I'm loving every minute of it ::again:: and can't wait to read the last installment.
Beautiful photo!
ReplyDeletePity rain isn't so exciting on this side of the world. I'm hanging out for some snow.
Happy new year and all that. :)
Love the new look Penni, don't change it for a while hey?
ReplyDeleteI took a drive past your house a couple of weeks ago with Asha, we'd been at the market in 37 degree heat, dusty! Stinking!
We'll catch up soon.
Dani - Well, when you've read Drift you'll get the Silver Moon Cafe thing.
ReplyDeleteMeli - You're home from Aus already? I dreamed it snowed here last night, it was such a vivid dream. I hope you get your snow.
Jo - We should have told you where the spare key was! Though we left the house in chaos, so maybe not. Being pregnant in 37 degrees must have been a whole bunch of not fun.
That's my home in that there header.
ReplyDeleteI'd know it anywhere.
sorry, hang on, you go walking in the bush with your ipod on?
ReplyDeletepenni!
Is that evil?
ReplyDeleteOut walking is about the only time I get to really listen to music that doesn't come with any kind of actions. I can't listen to music when I write most of the time. Unless, I'm writing a scene that works for a particular song and then I just listen to one song over and over, like I did when I was 13 before you could look lyrics up on the world wide internet.
That new header is stunning! Made me want to update mine.
ReplyDeletenot evil, just strange to me, almost sacrilegious in a way, as the bush is it's own music, its own emptiness and fullness and i feel it strange to mask it. maybe the sign of dwelling in the bush in a different time. my bush life was pre-affordable portable music.
ReplyDeletebut then, i don't understand how people can walk along a busy street reading a novel.
i'm an observer. I like to listen and see and be a part of where i am very immediately, i suppose.
but my work goes better with music, and i spend enough time sewing and driving every day to get my fill.
my kids aren't really kids-music kids somehow. they seem to prefer our stuff (darren hanlon's the favourite!)
I spend plenty of time in it without the ipod too, I find I can't even 'thinkwrite' (which is how I begin all my novels) with music and thinkwriting is something I often do on foot because I use the rhythm of my footsteps. The ipod is the first portable music I've ever owned. I've never had a walkman or a discman or anything else, so it's still a novelty. The great thing about the ipod is that it gives me a genuine escape from work because it turns my brain off.
ReplyDeleteI can't walk and read either, mostly because I bump into things.