• Daily Life

    Breaking The Banksia

    It’s becoming increasingly obvious that we’re finally going to get a banksia flower in the garden. We’ve had a banksia in the garden from the outset, but yet to get a flower some three years down the track. And we’ve had plenty of troubles along the way. In addition to the coastal banksia we started with, we also bought a hairpin banksia last year. It was a ripper and we grew it in a pot. It withstood the blistering heat of the summer of 2023, but I planted it too early into the autumn and it withered and died. We…

  • Daily Life

    Brush Aside

    It’s a sodden May morning, so rather than risk my luck and hoping I’ll be able to brake properly, I’ve spent the morning enjoying the blooming bottlebrush flowers in our garden and being played with by my dinosaur. It used to be my habit to wake and immediately set off on a bicycle ride pretty much every morning of every day unless it was snowing or the roads were icy. Weather barely came into play, but over the past year, rheumatoid arthritis has played an increasingly dominating role in deciding when I can or can’t go out. Because it has…