Books and trees and other things

These two pictures are the front and back covers of a little book I have made out of shrink plastic, coloured with a coloured pencil before heating, then decorated with frozen opals embossing powder. I was very pleased with myself for making thi,s, I have had the plastic for a number of years and have never managed anything very successfully before.

These Buckinghamia Celissima trees growing on our footpath are flowering profusely at present. The parrots don't like them very much but the little tiny honeyeaters love them. Also very large hornets, which I am not so keen on - they look magnificent, but also look very threatening if you get too close to them. The other name for Buckinghamia is Ivory Curl, you can see why if you click on the bottom picture to enlarge it. In the wild in North Queensland these trees grow to about 80 or 90 feet tall, but they have been hybradised to minimise their hight for footpath plantings in cities.

You can also see the lovely new fence which Bill erected just before Christmas. He finally decided that we needed a lower maintenance than the timber picket fence which we had between the brick pillars - I think he is beginning to admit that perhaps we are getting on just a little bit.........but not too much, he still has to do everything himself, not get tradesmen in!

I have had a lovely day today and I am feeling very full - we have had a dinner of mudcrab and wine - it is my 70th birthday today! For those of you overseas, mudcrab is a real Queensland delicacy in Australia, only found in northern waters as far as I know, in fact I am not sure if they have them in Western Australia or not. My grandson Christopher shares my birthday, but I was very mean and said we were not going to visit them for dinner tonight, we would keep our crab for ourselves. We have had dinner with them twice already this week so they were not very worried! Hamish has made a full recovery from his tonsils operation and is sparking on all cylinders now.

I now own some brusho powders, which I have wanted for simply ages - they were part of the box of goodies I bought from Dale for my birthday present. I also got Maggie Grey's book From Image to Textile, which is well up to her usual very high standard. I shall have lots of challenges to go for in the next few months. Dale's Ratty Tatty Papers class started today. I have downloaded the paperwork and bill has bound it for me, and I have found a few more napkins, but that is as far as I have gone today. I am going out to lunch tomorrow with friends for my birthday so perhaps later I may be able to start working on that.................then I need to do some more on the Fibreinform course, and of course more on Maggie's, then I need to make some more souvenirs..................not much time for any housework in there is there?