And the Fires Keep Burning

It is hard to imagine that bushfires have been burning in various parts of Australia since September and still continue to put many communities at risk, including the communities so badly affected by the fires around New Years.  Today the smoke haze has returned and though where I live there has been no fires close by ,at times the smoke haze has been so thick I could barely make out the houses across the road. There has been an incredible outpouring of donations, stories of hardship, but also stories of amazing survival, and yet our government refuses to accept that  climate change has had an impact on the dreadful drought being experienced by  much of Eastern Australia, or the ferocity and sheer magnitude of these fires . And still the government  sells off water to mining conglomerates  despite the fact  that it is much needed by the people here. I sometimes feel like there are two parallel universes- half of the people want to do things for the good of their fellow man and the other half who obviously don't give a damn. How did we get to this? I am pretty certain the media and the ownership thereof has not helped one little bit.

I have finally got around to finishing working on the third bedroom and hallway in my house. After mum was resettled  at her home it has still taken a lot of my time going back and forth and attending appointments with her- and making sure she has what she needs as she is not driving- though she wants to. We will have to speak to her GP about that next time we visit him. The hallway and third bedroom in this house were covered by ugly wallpaper- which I think might have been there for 50 years, so it took a good deal of elbow grease to get it off the walls and to get residual glue of the walls as well. But finally the work is done. My painting job is not as good as that done by my friends who helped me last year, but it's a great improvement on what was there. So I am getting to the stage where a lot of the cosmetic renovation has now been done ( just a few things to still do, and still thinking about the woodwork doorways in the hallway), but I feel better knowing my house sitter will have a nice fresh room to sleep in whilst she is here.

 The bedrooms and hallway as they were and the transformation.

And after

My vegie garden has been chugging along (  I am afraid there is a lot of weeds in the rest of the garden as the  prepping for painting took way longer than expected) and I can say that I have had several meals out of the garden. The plan is to make the food production side of the garden much much bigger, and I have been trying to find like minded local people who have permaculture ideas, or at least food growing ideas ( but  that has not been as easy as one might have thought) In any case tonights meal will be mostly from my garden and my herb patch is doing really well especially the thyme and vietnamese mint and the lemon verbena. But I need to get in there and do some work, apparently no one lived in this house for 8 years which means a number of things have gotten out of control in the garden and explains why stove and heater were not working  at all.

I have printed up more bush maddonnas and slightly different colours. Some people were interested in the colour of trial print I had done on craft paper so I have dyed fabric to as close to the colour of the craft paper as I was able to and in the process also made an avocado green. I also made a sort of powder blue colour and grey ( bottom left- it looks blue in the photo but is a bluish grey). they are for sale for $25 AUS inclusive of postage and measure 18 cm x 45 cm. I will be donating $5AUS for every panel sold to Wildlife Victoria ( I will be making a donation tomorrow in relation to the panels I have already sold and I will continue to do so on the first of each month)

And on a really lovely note. The Berry Quilting Retreat is celebrating it's tenth year this year and Elizabeth Dubbelde the organiser for all those years has offered to put on a display of the Bush Sentinelles as her community , though spared fires is right in the middle of the worst of the fires of the NSW south coast. So if you embroider a Bush Sentinelle panel we would love to display it in Berry on August 15-16 2020. I will add a page to my blog in the next few weeks with details ( there will be a small administration fee to pay which also covers return postage to the maker) But lets see if we can make this a  wonderful moving display, full of whimsy, heart and community for that is what makes us strong! This is always a great weekend with inspiring tutors and great displays!

I have also been working on my own Bush Sentinelle. I found a piece of fabric I dyed many moons ago and it seemed to perfectly suit the current state of things in Australia. She is just in the beginning stages ( I actually got a blister on my middle finger from the painting brush so it's been a bit difficult doing any hand stitching these last couple of days)