So happy it’s springtime‼️

Another week is gone and I can’t quite get over how fast this year is going. Here we are in September!

Bookish News-

I was scrolling around on Tik Tok one rainy afternoon this week. I mainly follow Book review sites and a few travel tales of people walking or bicycling around the world. I have learned how to wean out the junk on this site and find some gems. One of the pages I follow is Ann Patchett’s book store in Nashville Tennessee. She posts a book introduction every Friday. I really enjoy her and her little dog. She introduced a very interesting memoir of a book called Little Heathens:  Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. 

Debut author Mildred Armstrong Kalish, a retired English professor, records her childhood recollections in clear, concise prose. Voted one of the 10 Best Books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review, Kalish’s Little Heathens is a compelling memoir of her hardscrabble life on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression. As foreclosure fragments her family, five-year-old Mildred and her three siblings find refuge with her grandparents – God-fearing farmers, enjoying a modest retirement. When the “little heathens” flush the seniors and their child-rearing skills out of retirement, the grandparents deploy tough but loving bedtime schedules, Bible and prayer routines, and plenty of character-building chores. Having no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.

I really enjoyed this book very much. It has the same tone about it as Grapes of Wrath or any other Steinbeck type voice. The children had such a disruptive life yet they worked and played and the closeness and antics of family members during such a harsh time really lifted the story. If you enjoy American depression history I would recommend this book. One of the best things about this book is there is not a lot of emotion. Each chapter focuses on a different way of life. One chapter is about the farm animals, one about their garden and harvesting food. One about life in the kitchen and one about their school or their clothes. It is very matter of fact but has good character development.

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The rest of the week went by in a bit of a blur. Not much happened on Monday. Tuesday I had to take Ollie to the vet for cyst removal from the top of his head. He’s had it awhile and as it kept changing size I decided to get it removed. He needed his ears checked as well as being springtime his allergies are flaring up.

Then I went for a haircut and colour which always lifts the mood. In the evening I had my seniors group meeting. They are such a funny group. No one can hear and half can’t see and we all talk at once while enjoying a lovely meal on the yacht club premises on the outskirts of Hobart, with views of the big bridge and the river.

Ollie came home before I went to the dinner and he had a big bandage on his head. 

During the week I had a delivery of a rock tumbler and I also won at auction a small box of petrified wood. I’m going to tumble it. I have always been interested in rocks and geology and I remember my “rocks and stones” class at university I took. Geology. We also took an ornithology class in our basics at university in Michigan. Our final exam was a room set up with tape recordings of quite a lot of bird calls and we had to identify the calls. I did really well on them then ended up living in Tasmania where all the birds are different!

I didn’t have any Fullers book launch events this past week but will have one coming up.

On Thursday I had to go to the hospital to the cardiac centre and get fitted up with an ambulatory blood pressure set up. You wear it for 24 hours and it takes your blood pressure every 30 minutes during the day and hourly during the night. It was quite funny doing a pilates class when the cuff would tighten on the old arm in the middle of training and the long cord wrapped around my neck. On Friday I went back to the centre to get it removed. I struggle with blood pressure. It really does have a mind of its own so hopefully we get it sorted and see what’s going on. But not to linger on the old boring health stuff. We aren’t meant to have body parts in our conversation as we age or people will become bored with us. (quote by Germaine Greer).

Pickles has the run of the house now and is trying hard to take everything over. We are so happy she has finally settled in with our exisiting cats and dogs. But when life gets too chaotic she retreats to her cubby house. She is such a friendly lovely cat. We just love her.

On that note I am looking forward to the coming week where we have book group to discuss The Season by Helen Garner. I also have a photo club meeting where we critique photos we have recently taken and it is a very social group.

On Wednesday three of my women photographer friends are meeting up with me in the city and we’re all doing street photography. That should be a lot of fun. Four female photographers on the streets of Hobart. Rain showers are predicted which always give off good light so looking forward to seeing what we capture. Stay tuned for a few photos.

I had time to edit a few of the Bruny Island photos I took with professional photographer LukeI O’Brien in June. I’ll share a few here. It is a beautiful island about 45 minutes south east of Hobart. I was there for three days.

Enjoy the photos.

Good morning shot.

Just after sunset.

Bruny Island lighthouse. It first lit up in 1836.

Bruny has many albino wallabies. We also saw an albino possum. It was pure white but too fast to photograph.

This was taken from the Pennicott boat tour in the Tasman sea. Australian fur seals and a Pacific gull.

What are you looking forward to this coming week?