The books are not yet in order......

........but sometimes I just look at them, and sigh a sigh of contentment because they are home again.

Aaaahhhhhh.......

Not much of anything has been done at all lately.  For the past couple of weeks I have felt slightly ailing....but not ill.  Possibly coming down with a cold......but no, it seems not.  There has been a lot of lack of energy though; fortunately that seems to be going and some stitches were sewn in the sewing room today on the lime green purse. More will be sewn when I get off the computer.  The knitting has been continuing in the evenings as it's a great in-front-of-TV pastime, the front is nearly up to the armhole decrease.

Consequently no photos have been taken lately, either!  However, I've been trawling through the Great Photo File and found a few.

This callistemon - Aussies call them 'bottle brush' - was in our garden in the Big Smoke.

 These spring daffodils were in the garden of a very old house in a small town, an hour south of where we lived at the time.

The jacaranda tree in our Big Smoke back yard with a neighbour's huge house extension in the background, one of the reasons we moved.  I'm not sure why this photo has attached itself to the previous one; I can't be this beautiful and have a technical brain as well, you know.

Jacaranda trees are beautiful.  They originally come from South America but grow well in many other countries including much of Australia, and the view across our town in spring with those blue trees in bloom against the green hills is a glorious sight.  Ours was a self-sewn seedling a few years after we moved to the house, and twenty years later when we moved out it was a big spreading tree which took up a lot of the small yard but gave wonderful summer shade.

Lovely as that tree was, we don't miss living in the Big Smoke.  We have settled in here now.

The local historical museum is having its biennial (bi-annual? something that happens every two years, at any rate) open day next month and I have offered to demonstrate treadle machine sewing.  First, though, the machine needs to be cleaned and oiled.....and much practice needs to be done, I haven't treadled for a long time......I have two mid-1920s Singer 66 model treadle machines, one bought by my grandmother in about 1926 to make baby clothes for my mother and her little brother, the other given to me by my brother about 16 years ago because his neighbour was going to take it to the rubbish dump although there was nothing wrong with it.  They are wonderful machines.

"In every class of life, in all professions and occupations, good manners are necessary to success.  The business man has no stock-in-trade that pays him better than a good address.  If the retail dealer wears his hat on his head in the presence of ladies who come to buy of him, if he does not see that the heavy door of his shop is opened and closed for them, if he seats himself in their presence, if he smokes a pipe or cigar, or has a chew of tobacco in his mouth, while talking with them, or is guilty of any of the small incivilities of life, they will not be apt to make his shop a rendezvous, no matter how attractive the goods he displays."

Fortunately it has been a long time since a retail dealer was chewing tobacco in my presence.

Enjoy your days!