Monet's garden, mint, here to help

After we finished doing all the boring stuff we had to do yesterday, Luke and I walked up to the National Gallery of Victoria to see the Monet's Garden exhibition. The air was brisk, but the sun was warm. The path was lined with autumn leaves. The trees have been really holding onto their leaves, but it's finally looking more like autumn now. 

There was a quite mesmerising art installation in the foyer of the NGV consisting of a pool of gently moving water and a flotilla of shallow ceramic bowls of all sizes. The bowls tinkled and chimed as they drifted into each other. So simple, but quite captivating. I made a short video of it so you can hear it.  

I enjoyed the Monet exhibition. Like many people, I was most familiar with his water lily paintings, but didn't know much of his other works, or of his life. We were amused by his description of his labours in a letter to his first wife Alice in 1894:

Think of me getting up before 6; I’m at work by 7 and I continue until 6.30 in the evening standing up all the time, nine canvases. It’s murderous and to think I drop everything, you, my garden, all for this …

I suspect there would have been many late 19th century workers who would have been delighted to swap places. 

Apart from the water lily paintings, Vetheuil in the Fog, was my favourite, which is probably not surprising since I'm very partial to a foggy landscape photo.

My Impressionist-style photo of a deer made of 

glass orbs (taken through the NGV's water wall) 

On our way home we ventured into the Queen Victoria Gardens and King's Domain.

Raindrops

Unexpected duck discovery (ducks on right)

This pond is near the Sidney Myer music bowl

The city, also from near the music bowl

The Tan track in the foreground

It was very chilly by this stage. I was very happy to get home to our warm flat (the heat is back on).

Baby mint

A few weeks ago I cut a long shoot off our mint plant and put it in a glass of water on the kitchen window sill. It's grown roots. I'd better plant it. 

Here to help

When I was buying my lunch today I overhead a man ask the sandwich shop people if they had gluten-free bread. They didn't, but before I could tell him that the shop next door did, he was off. While I was waiting for my toastie to toast, he walked past again, still sans lunch, so I walked over and told him where to get the gluten-free bread. I threw in a bonus tip on where to get a gluten-free muffin nearby.

Cool, coincidental sign find, cheezlova

Ghost city 

After a record-breaking number of days over 30 degrees and uncomfortably warm nights, this weekend has been cool. Cool enough to snuggle under the doona at night and cool enough to wear tights and boots (not to bed). And it rained again. It was fabulous.

This afternoon

Hardy hydrangea survived the heatwave

I spotted a ghost sign on Malvern Road in Hawksburn yesterday which has been revealed by the demolition of the neighbouring building. I climbed up on a retaining wall to try to  get a photo of the full sign, but no luck. 

Perdriau Master Cord Tyres

Coincidentally, it's just across the road from Beaurepairs, where we were headed when I saw it. 

We went for a wander while the tyres were being seen to. We hesitated in front of My Bookshop because we each have a pile of unread books, but we couldn't resist. I bought another word book with a very wordy title: Let's Bring Back...The Lost Language Edition: A collection of forgotten-yet-delightful words, phrases, praises, insults, idioms, and literary flourishes from eras past.   While flicking through it in the store, I found a funny word for canoodling (funnier even than 'canoodling'), but now I can't find it. I'll be sure to bring it to your attention when I locate it again.  

It's a cute little book with a hard, embossed cover and a ribbon to keep your place. I do like a book with a ribbon bookmark.

We went to The Astor last night to see Hitchcock's North by Northwest with Cary Grant, which I hadn't seen before. I enjoyed it, especially the meldodramatic music. It's always nice to visit the old art deco cinema, and fitting to take in an old flick. I had a choctop and Luke had a beer.

I invented a dessert today. I call it cheezlova - meringue nests with vanilla cheesecake filling, served with fresh raspberries. I made the filling, but not the nests. It was tasty, but not really an improvement on pavlova or cheesecake. At least I won't die wondering...

Introducing...cheezlova

Ghost sign hunting, decluttering, muddling and sipping

There was a story in The Age yesterday about the Ghost Sign Hunters seminar I'm going to tomorrow. I've never really thought too much about why I'm a ghost sign fanatic, but Stefan Schutt's comments in the story resonated with me, particularly the bit about it being a response to rapid urban renewal.  

As you probably know, I love the aesthetics of urban decay. I get excited about rusting roofs, weathered wood, crumbling houses, peeling paint and old brickwork. They have so much more character than modern gleaming glass towers and boxy buildings. My obsession with ghost signs sprang from that, but I also like that old signs are a link to the past. They're survivors!  It's almost a minor miracle so many old signs are still around.  

And of course there's the thrill of the discovery, which is probably akin to a collector finding a fantastic new addition to their collection while poking about in a second hand shop - only you can't take old signs home with you.  

On the hunt

I went to the Camberwell Market yesterday, but it was too hot and too crowded so I spent the rest of the day wandering about hunting for ghost signs.  Burke Road in Camberwell was quite a disappointment, but I found a few gems along Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn. I also spotted this one: 

This isn't a great example of an old sign - the building isn't a health food shop anymore, but the sign isn't that old and it's still in pretty good nick. I'm only mentioning it because the Staff of Life was owned by Julie Stafford, who was my art teacher in my first years of primary school. She also published a book of the same name. I think she was one of the pioneers of the health food movement in Australia. (Stay tuned for my next post with photos of all my recent sign finds.)

Look! Up in the sky! 

I saw another circumhorizontal arc (rainbow clouds) on Saturday, only a few hundred metres from where I first saw one two years ago. I was sitting outside at my friend Lauren's engagement party at a Docklands bar when I looked up and saw it. "Oh, look! A circumhorizontal arc!" What a nerd.

Declutter

I spent this afternoon cleaning out my wardrobes. Yep, I know how to make the most of a public holiday. I do love a good declutter though. It's not that long since I last did it, but there were lots of clothes I hadn't worn since my last declutter (or the one before that or the one before that etc), so I decided it was time to get brutal. In the end I wasn't quite brutal - I couldn't bear to part with a couple of things - but I was certainly harsh. My underwear and socks/hosiery drawers are so neat and organised! I'm particularly pleased with my efforts at categorising my socks, tights and stock--- yeah, I should probably stop there. Moving right along...

Homegrown

We're in the midst of a heatwave (Autumn? What autumn?). I've been coping by sipping on tonic with fresh muddled* lime juice and mint leaves, picked fresh from our little herb garden. Deliciously refreshing.  * smooshed with the pestle from my mortar and pestle.  

I made yummy pizzas for dinner topped with tomato, bocconcini and basil also from our garden. Apart from the coriander, our herbs are thriving. 

We had raspberries, strawberries and whipped cream for dessert. Nothing homegrown in that, but also delicious.

Another long weekend, kinda fun, home grown

Look how leggy I am! 

And how tiny my head is!

I have another four-day weekend coming up. I was going to arrange to leave early next Tuesday for the Ghost Sign Hunter event, but then I realised Monday is a public holiday for Labour Day so I'm taking the whole day off. A four-day weekend and a three-day week. Wooh. 

I started a new program at the gym tonight. It wasn't quite as hard as I expected and it's even sort of fun. There's one exercise where I throw a ball at a wall and another one that's like climbing a rope, only I'm sitting down and the rope's on a loop.  I climbed 100 metres. 

I used some basil from our herb garden in my lunchtime salad today. 

Ghost sign hunting, White Night, welcome rain

I got a comment on an old Girl in Melbourne post yesterday that has me a little excited. It was left by a fellow fan of old signs, and alerted me to an upcoming event in Melbourne called Ghost Sign Hunting ('ghost signs' is a much more evocative name for fading old signs. I shall steal it). The commenter, Stefan Schutt is one of the presenters and maintains a blog on ghost signs, which I'm keen to explore (along with the blog Ghost Signs Melbourne, which I found via Stefan's). 

The seminar will explore "what ghost signs can tell us about how we live with and experience diverse cultures and histories of place and image".   

It starts at 4.00pm on a week day (March 12th), but I think it will be worth arranging to finish work early to rub shoulders with a bunch of other people who are obsessed with ghost signs. It's pleasing to discover there are plenty of other people into something you like that you thought was a little bit obscure - like being part of a little community. 

If you're interested, click the 'upcoming event' link above for details.

That reminds me, I have photos of a bunch of old signs from the past few weeks, but I've been too lazy to post them. I'll get to it soon.

White Night

Luke and I went to White Night - an all-night festival of light shows, music and performance art  - last Saturday (no, we didn't stay until stumps at 7.00am). It's the first time Melbourne has held the event and it was a huge success, if the hordes of people who descended on the CBD are any indication. It was a perfect balmy summer's night for being out and about and the vibe was buzzy. 

Among other things, we visited the State Library, which a hosted a number of musical performances under the dome of the wonderful La Trobe reading room. To be honest, the performance we saw was a bit of a snooze, but I got a kick out of lining up at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night to go to the library, and the dome looked pretty. 

Sir Redmond remains impassive amid the light show 

out the front of the library

 Inside the dome

 The steps of Flinders Street Station became a concert stage, 

entertaining the masses

The Forum Theatre

Also Flinders Street

You can check out some good videos here and here, which show it off better than my photos. 

Rain, rain, glorious rain!

We've had a lengthy run of hot, dry weather in Melbourne the last few weeks - a record- breaking spell of 15 days over 30 degrees C in fact. Even the nights have been uncomfortably warm, with temperatures in the low 20s. But it's rained the last few days. Yay!  Some proper rain, too; not just that depressingly useless drizzle we often get. How wonderful it was to go to sleep listening to the rain and wake up to rain.  It wasn't raining when I walked  home last night, but everything was still damp and I could smell the eucalyptus trees beside the river when I passed. Aaah...lovely!

Other good stuff: 

Our herbs and lettuce are still alive! 

We got a new TV - a digital one. We've finally entered the 21st century! Our SBS reception is still poor, however, which is disappointing. We also bought a new entertainment unit to replace our rickety old one. It's nice having new stuff. Our new furniture - entertainment unit, dining table and bookcase  - all match too, even though we bought them at different places. 

I found a cool word Tumblr blog called Otherwordly via Pinterest. Continuing the theme of words ending in 'bund' (as in 'pudibund'), 'aspectabund' is an adjective meaning 'letting or being able to let expressive emotions show easily through one's face and eyes'. I think I'm going to need to take a day off work to churn through all these new blogs...

Garden, wonderful words, too magnificent

Sunset over Bridge Road, Richmond last Friday 

I've been slack again. I have been keeping a mental list of stuff to blog, but if I leave it any longer to write them down I'll forget them completely. 

Luke and I have a herb garden! We've been buying a lot of fresh herbs lately, but not always using them all before they're past their best (which doesn't take long). So we bought some pots and seedlings and made a wee garden on the fire escape outside our kitchen. There's basil, sage, coriander, mint and some baby lettuce. Some pesky creature has had a snack on the mint leaves, but apart from that, they're doing OK. (We did only plant them on Sunday, so that's not saying much.)

Pudibund. That's a word! It means bashful or modest. I learned this from the Inky Fool (the author, you might recall, of The Etymologicon).

Another wordy bit of glee - the Japanese term mono no aware. It refers to an awareness of the transience of things and wistfulness at their passing. Its literal translation is "the pathos of things" but, as aware is similar to our "ah" or "oh", it's also translated as the "ahh-ness of things". I'm not sure why, but I like this. Maybe because it's one of those foreign terms  that doesn't really have an English equivalent. 

I've been getting a few spam comments on my blogs lately and today's was amusing. Apparently I am "just too magnificent". Sorry. I'll try less hard from now on. 

The other day, I saw Mr and Mrs Plover standing right at the river's edge when a flock of seagulls flew in to land in the same area. One flew so close that Mr/Mrs Plover had to duck! 

Check out these amazing and disturbingly life-like octopus cakes.