A New Year 2017

Happy New Year!  I do pray this year has started favourably for you as it has for me.  I’m not into making New Year resolutions but I do believe in living each day as it comes and asking the Lord to lead us through them with His wisdom and strength.  Not that I feel I’m very successful all the time to hear His voice saying ‘this is the way, walk ye in it’.

As previously mentioned this summer the weather has been very mild at times which I have certainly enjoyed.  Unlike many here in the west I’ve not taken advantage of living by the sea and have mostly enjoyed the bush instead.  Mum on the other hand tries to get down the beach for a quick dip every morning at 6 am.  She drives down to her ‘reserved’ ACROD car park above Mettems Pool where she takes the dog down and ties her beside the ramp leading to the beach.  She joins her usual 6 am swimmers who assist her in and out of the water.  When the weather is a bit cool she doesn’t stay long before hurrying home where she has a hot shower to warm up before breakfast.

Much of the day she spends either in the garden or tidying up the house (which means I can’t find things).  We have a bit of a weekly routine which we are slowly putting into place for the new year, with Wednesdays now occupied with a trip to the Bethanie Community Centre in Mount Clermont.  A bus from the centre picks her up around 10am and brings her back at 3pm.  Thursdays a cleaner comes to do the basic cleaning and washing and Fridays will be mum’s painting morning at the church which starts on February 10^th.  Emma from church has offered to pick mum up on the first two Fridays as I will still be in Sydney.  I will also be starting my new mosaic classes on my return.  Since deciding to do mosaics I have been trying to decide what to start on.  Eventually I would like to do the section of the outside wall where I have the laundry sink and shower.  This will help to hide the miss matched wall where the laundry wall and window were filled in.

I thought I might start with a small mosaic just to get the hand of it.  A tile for the kitchen maybe.  Then I thought it might be nice to have a tiled section beside the hotplates where I could rest the hot pots while cooking.   That particular section turned out to be 60 cm x 36 cm!  The pattern was the next time to consider.  It should match in with things I already had in the kitchen but what to do?

I eventually decided I wanted to replicate the two bright serving plates I’d found in a second hand shop.  I took photos of the plates, printed them out then copied the pattern onto a large piece of paper the size of the area I needed.  To this I added a dragon fly then painted it the colours I wanted the tiles to be.  During this time I was invited by my neighbour to visit her back yard.  She wanted me to see the plants she had.  While I was there I admired some mosaics on her wall.  She told me she used to be an obsessive compulsive mosaic tiler but has since given it up.  I told her about the project I had just started and asked if she still had her tools.  She did.  I’m now fully prepared for my class.  I also gleaned a few ideas from her including adding glass buttons for the centre of the flowers.  I’m now looking out for tiles and yellow glass buttons to finish off the design.

Instead of being a simple design to start off with it’s ended up being quite complicated, still I can’t wait to get started.

This is not the only project I have started.  I have been thinking of what to plant on the north boarder beside the house which receives full winter sun but is places no summer sun.  I had planted some carrots and shallots here but because of lack of sun they were very spindly.  The west side of this narrow strip received both summer and winter sun but on the eastern end no summer sun.  Also along this wall are the power and telephone cables for all the units.  This restricts what I plant below them.  It also means they both need to be accessible from the path for those how need to read the meters.  Also I’ve been trying to think where I could put a meandering path.  There’s not much room for meandering around my garden as its two levels divided by a meter high sandstone wall.  Then I wondered if I could make the straight wide path around the house into a meandering one.  This might also help with this difficult part of the garden.  I could make the path narrower on the west end widening the garden area which receives all year sunshine and then taking the path to the wall so that a part of the garden which receives no summer sun is paved and the far end a small piece of garden where I can plant something that doesn’t mind no summer sun but can survive winter sun.

I would then have a meandering path and less challenging garden area.  Narrowing the path will also widen my vegetable garden which is on the north of the path.   With this solution in mind I needed to see it to know if it would be possible.  I took some rope and ran it where I thought it should go.  I then pulled up the inner edge of the west end of the planned path, positioning it with the curve needed to widen this end.  I couldn’t layout all the path edge as I still have carrots to be harvested but once they are then work will begin.

The path looked and sounded a good idea but then there was another challenge.  I needed a paving cutter.  Putting the word out amongst friends I was offered one for when I get back from Sydney.  Ian, who helped me out in the past offered me his.  This project was now set to go on my return.

One Sunday after church I was invited to join some friends for lunch.  I didn’t get home till after 4pm and as I was dropped off an ambulance cruised down our drive looking for a number. When I heard it was number 2 I raced in to see how Ann was.  She had split open her scalp when she slipped over hitting her head on a corner of the back fence while taking in her washing.  There was blood everywhere!  After cleaning and wrapping the wound the medics too her off for a night of observation at the hospital. I cleaned the blood off the back tiles before picking her up at the hospital the next day.  That was a bit of a problem too.  I had forgotten Ann used her middle name so when I asked where she was waiting she was not on their books.  Finally with her surname we located her under her first name which I had forgotten she had told me when we first met.

The weather had just turned from high thirties to cool, overcast and a few showers.  Mum called in to let me know she had had no power since 6am that morning and because her phones where run on power was unable to call me.  This was not a very good situation for someone of her age so I rummaged through my things till I found an old phone which was powered from the phone lines.  After setting it up I took some things from the refrigerator and suggested we had dinner at my place that night.  I was a lovely change to have mum over for dinner and the first dinner I had cooked at my place.  Mind you I had to take all the ingredients and some of the pots and pans from her place.

The following day my friend Jan, from church, rang to ask if she could use my oven.  She was in the same predicament as Mum.  No power!  I was pleased she rang as I had no idea that the power was still off.  I suggested Jan come around before I went to Mum’s to empty her fridge.  Together we set up the second hand fridge that had been given to me and was still sitting in my carport.  I had tried to plug it in from an extension cord taken through the house but this meant I couldn’t close the front door so we had to take the cords from the new outdoor power point in the back yard, right around the house to the carport.

Nezka, Michael and family went down south with the kids for a holiday and asked me to water their garden while they were away.  As an incentive I was offered Michaels old car.  There were a few tricks to getting it started but once I’d learnt that I had gained some wheels.  It was a bit tricky watering as there were five gates to manoeuvre which had locks that were difficult to reach but eventually I got into a bit of a routine and all was done before sunset.  On the last night they arrived just as I had got started so we had a lovely chat.  The Lord had also lined up another vehicle for me as Jan was looking after her daughters van and had offered that to me.  I truly have been blessed.

This last week both my younger sisters, Jenny and Kath were in town staying with Mum.  It’s great to have them around even if it’s only for a short time.  Mum and I picked Jenny up from her flight from the UK on Monday and then Kath flew in from work in the Kimberly’s on Thursday.  Jen took over the dinners which was a lovely break for me.  On Saturday we visited some old friends from Christmas Island days.  Jeanne and David’s son and youngest daughter were home visiting having flown in from the UK and Singapore.  It was quite a feat getting both our families together at the same time.

Then on Sunday afternoon Jenny arranged for a get together with my older sisters mob and the rest of the Hall family.  It was a gathering of the tribe for a picnic at Kings Park.  Lead by the old matriarch, Mum, there was my eldest sister Trish and her husband Trevor, her two sons and their families, myself, being the second eldest, and Jen and Kath the younger of mum’s four daughters. It was quite a gathering and most unusual to get us all in one place at the same time.

We all brought along food and drinks, a few portable chairs for the oldies, rugs, table cloth and a cricket bat and ball for the kids.  We were very blessed to find not only parking across from where we had planned to meet but also a lovely shady spot with table and benches under a tree.  Later when the sun shifted we sat a little further into the bush on a fallen tree log.  There was plenty of lovely fresh salads, chicken and fruit to eat.  It was a memorable day with a lovely cool breeze making it not too hot.

Monday, Jen and Kath both left us.  Kath heading over east for a visit and Jen meeting up with her friend Phil from Broome for a few days in Rottnest.  Mum and I were alone again. Still there was plenty to do.  After dropping Kath at the airport and picking up Phil then dropping both him and Jen in South Perth I headed home to mum who had been wondering where her car was.  Her memory is really deteriorating.   The next day I picked up her car at 8 am to take it into the mechanic for a service.  She forgot this too and rang me very upset that her car was not where she had parked it, telling me it had been there a few mins a go.  That was at 4 pm.  Thank God I was able to reassure her I was picking it up soon and would she come with to me drive it home.  When we got there she had a disagreement with me when trying to pay for the work done.  She had out all her cards except for the bank card.  She was so muddled.  Thank God she forgets very easily and by the time she got home she was in a much better mood.  I had explained to the mechanic before picking the car up that mum had dementia, he totally understood as his mother also has dementia.

That morning had started off with a bit of a shock too.  I was leaving my place at 8 am I noticed there was a swat team all dressed in black running up the side of the house across the road from me.  First I thought it might be a TV crew but then I saw all the police cars and detectives with their ID cards around their necks.  There must have been a raid on.  So much excitement happening around us as North Beach Road is also having some changes done to narrow the road hoping to slow down the traffic.  This of course has caused quite a bit of congestion and diversion over the January period.

Australia Day, 26 January, was the day Jen and friend Phil came back from her short holiday at Rottnest.  Mum and I met them at Hillarys Boat Harbour where we had fish and chips for lunch before Jen dropped Phil at the airport for his flight back to Broome.  She then joined me at the unit where I went through a few things like watering routine, and how to operate some of my gadgets just in case she wanted to spend some time here relaxing.

I have a habit before I leave the house for any length of time I do a thorough clean.  That meant I had to put away all the excess ‘projects’ which were laid out around the place, do a couple of loads of washing and generally set the house in order so that if I had to offer my home to anyone while I was away it was reasonably clean.  This also meant that hopefully I would return to a fairly clean house.  Friday 27^th was the big day.  My boarding pass obtained from the online booking I was then ready for my trip and looking forward to a good time catching up with friends in Sydney.

Photos:   1. Grevillia seed case    2. Plan for mosaic tiles   3. Jan from church    4. Powell and Hall girls   5. Wenham and Hall clan   6. Trish and daughter-in-law and Kath   7 Trish and Jen chatting   8. Kath, myself and Mum

Prayer & Praise Points:
Praise the Lord for His provision, leading and guidance.

Praise Him for new projects and ideas for this coming year.

Please pray that my sister Jenny finds work but is also able to stay in Perth while I’m in Sydney to be able to help Mum.

Praise the Lord for mum’s continual good health and His wisdom as I learn how best to support her.  Thank you for your continual prayers for both Mum and I as we journey along this path together.

Please pray with me that this year will be one of knowing His leading, strength and wisdom as we encounter the challenges ahead of us.

Please also continue to pray Mum stays safe on the road.

Thank you to all my supportive friends and prayer partners. I really do appreciate you.