Happy (belated) Halloween

Saturday night was Halloween, bringing back fond memories of traipsing around our neighbourhood streets with the kids, urging them on to "Just one more street" long after they were tired and wanting to go home. Then we would return home to Jeff and the cosy woodstove. The kids would tip all their candy out on the floor of the family room and inspect the goodies. The Butterfingers went to me, a tariff for their night of gathering booty. Besides, I don't think any of them really liked Butterfingers. We usually watched Garfield's Halloween Adventure, which ran annually on CBS from 1985 till 2000. You can watch it in three parts here, here, and here, if you have missed it. It's full of quotable lines...
I'll have you know Halloween is my middle name...Gar-Halloween-field.
Arrrgh, it do be a landlubber who be shoving lasagna in his face.
Come along matey, we've got a village to pillage.
...and was the first time Binky the Clown showed up on Garfield. It also has memorable songs by Lou Rawls and Lorenzo Music.
I was going to find some old photos and scan and post them here, but it has proved to be beyond me today, so maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here are way too many photos from my evening with the next generation.
Jenny is a real party girl.
She decorates for Halloween in September.
I kid you not.
Early September.
She painstakingly sewed all of the dots on Thomy's costume this year.
I was impressed.
Jeff is Bob the Builder, of course.


We went downtown Newberg, where hordes of children and their doting relatives descend on 1st Street every year and hold the shopowners for ransom.
Here is the most impressive pumpkin of the evening, made by my best friend's sister.


It curdled MY blood, for sure.

Tinkerbells abounded.


One of the many civic volunteers who controlled traffic for the little ghosts and goblins.


We got lucky in that the weather dried up.
There's nothing worse than a wet and bedraggled Halloween, although over the years we have had surprisingly few.


A delicious treat at the pet store.
Giant mealworms amidst the mints.


On our travels, we drove past this magnificent haunted house.


This fellow scared the dickens out of the boys when Jenny took candy from his bowl.


Jenny was excited to have her photo taken with Mr. Spock.
Jeff, not so much.


We went back to the apartment to pick up Jon, who had been sleeping off his shift, and drove up to the best Halloween street in Newberg.
Jenny had many photo opportunities!
I was torn between using the flash for detail and not using it for better ambience.


I got home and the house was dark and locked up tight.
Not the homecoming I fondly remember.

Musical discoveries

I went with my friend Kathy to see Lisa Hannigan in concert tonight. Her voice blew me away. Again. It is unlike any other voice. Expressive, hauntingly beautiful in its upper range, quirky in the rest of it. Lisa can draw a word out into more syllables than anyone I have ever heard, so that the words themselves become almost irrelevant and all that remains is the melody.
Here is a rather fun version of "I Don't Know."
Thanks Kathy, for the idea.



My accidental discovery of Lisa at a Jason Miraz concert reminds of the time I first heard Jamie Cullum. We were at a Tunes on Tuesday concert a few summers ago in downtown Newberg. The group that was to perform that night was playing a CD of a guy with an amazing voice. I rather nervily went up and asked them who it was, and for some reason the name stuck with me. A year or so later, Jamie came to Portland, so we went to the concert. Jeff and I both agreed that it was one of the best we have ever attended.
Jamie is a cocky little Englishman.
With a wicked sense of humour.




And now, I think, I might go to bed.

The many faces of Natalie

I haven't shown you much of Natalie yet. She is Bethany's youngest, who turned two a couple of weeks ago. Bethany dotes on her, and Natalie returns the adoration, which means that the rest of us haven't had much of a chance. I love babies, but I love toddlers better. They are so ornery and cute and full of personality and you can send them home to their parents when they wear you out.

We spent a few hours together today, while everyone else went to Chuck E. Cheese to play games. Natalie is a happy little soul who sings and jiggles and wiggles her way through the day. She is quite self-sufficient in her play, just needing to know that I am in the same room or she will come looking for me. She loves animals and her "babies" and food and music. Her little bottom starts wiggling as soon as she hears a good beat.
Natalie has an immensely expressive face and I captured some of her "looks" as she was playing with my koala that sings "Waltzing Matilda." Yes, her bottom was wiggling, I should have taken a video.


Natalie's Mom was born 29 years ago today.
Happy Birthday, Bethany.

An old/new trend

My latest passion is composting.
Did I hear you groan?
It's part of my resolution to live lightly on the land. If you missed my old posts on related subjects, you can read them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Crikey, that was a lot. Some of my blogger friends have also been posting thoughts on related topics. Go see Lisa or Jon.
Back to composting. I bought a black compost bin several years ago when the city of Portland was beginning to encourage the habit. To be honest, I haven't used the compost very much yet, because it seems to degrade down so far that I just keep piling the food scraps and yard debris on top. I figure there has to be some killer compost at the bottom of the bin, if I just dared to shovel it out. Maybe next spring.
There was an article in the Oregonian a few weeks ago that raised some points concerning composting that I hadn't thought about.
I was raised on the philosophy that you don't waste food. Very little gets thrown out in my house. Ask my kids! Turns out that this is an environmentally sound ethic. So often, we think about how far food has to be transported, as in "eat local." But throwing food away actually has more impact on the environment than the distance it traveled. The amount of energy that it takes to grow, transport, and cook a chicken, for example, is exacerbated if it then creates methane as waste in a landfill or is put down the garbage disposal. The bottom line: composting is good, but careful planning so as to not waste food is even better. We need to plan our shopping, storage methods, cooking quantities, and be innovative with leftovers. In our society that touts excess in everything, it is a sombre thought that we might have to return to our grandparents' mindset of "Waste not, want not."
Commercial compost bins are quite expensive, but this video tells how to make your own out of an old garbage can. I have one waiting in my vegetable garden for this very purpose. This blogger and this one also give good instructions and tips on the whole process.
Now go.
Compost.
You'll feel so good about yourself.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

The ubiquitous gum trees.


We caught the ferry on Thursday afternoon, after a quick trip to Emu Ridge Eucalyptus Distillery, where several treats awaited.
>Severely expensive creamed honey, one for me and one for my neighbour who babysat my plants.
>Eucalyptus oil for Bethany, who likes such things.
>A dead cat skin for Jeff.


No, we didn't buy it, but he liked it.
Feral cats are a major problem for the wildlife in Australia (as they are in the US) and the Aussies tend to be a little more pragmatic in their solution. As in, kill the cat, skin it, sell the skin to get funds for more "solutions."

>Two joeys, who had been rescued from dead mothers. Over $1,000 had been spent on veterinarian bills for the little dears. I threw a few coins in the collection jar. It's an interesting juxtaposition of values. On the one hand, farmers kill kangaroos by the hundreds. On the other, people rescue the joeys who are left orphaned by the same farmers.


After disembarking the ferry, we made a beeline for Sydney. It took us two days. The first day, we spent a couple of hours driving through verdant farmland.
Then this....


...for hours and hours.


It was more like how we had imagined driving in Australia to be and IT WAS NOT FUN. The towns were few and far between and we had a long way to go before we reached our motel in Tooleybuc. The last three hours were in the dark. Picture me driving, Jeff "navigating," both pairs of our eyes glued to the road, scanning both sides to the full extent of the headlight beams. We were paranoid about hitting a kangaroo, because there is some strange clause in Australia about rental car insurance not covering kangaroo dents. We made it, gratefully, to our bed without injury to car or kangaroo.

The next night we arrived in the Blue Mountains to stay our last weekend with my old friends, Ron and Wendy. Ron was my favourite teacher in high school and the closest thing I ever had to a mentor. He encouraged me to think for myself rather than just parrot back my book learning. He also spent many hours trying to guide me through my teenage dilemmas. I was, in my opinion, in my least like-able time of life, but he liked me anyway. I can't say that I listened or heeded his words very well. It took many years for me to hone my thought processes, but I have finally learned to think for myself! In the harsh school of life, I've also refined my morals and scruples. But he tried, and I have always been grateful for that.
Any time Ron and I have ever spent together has always been a battle of wits and words.
Time has not changed things.
Except for, maybe, Wendy holds her own with gusto!


Wendy is a grandma extraordinaire.
And she makes a delectable steamed pudding. With custard.
I've been thinking about it ever since we got home.

Must be time to buy a steamer bowl.

A nocturnal delight

Later on Wednesday night, at 9pm, we had hired a guide for a nocturnal tour. We met him in Kingscote, where he took us to see the Little Penguins that nest in the rocks. They used to be called Fairy Penguins, but under the guise of political correctness have been re-named. Go figure. These cute little guys were all over the place, clambering over the rocks and grunting to each other. The parents go out to sea for the day and come back at nightfall with a mess of fish in their system that they regurgitate for the babies. Yum! Humans want to encourage the nesting so they have been experimenting with various designs of nesting boxes, with differing degrees of success. Those New Zealand fur seals that have been protected and encouraged to inhabit the island can wipe out a penguin colony in a few short years. Conflicting interests and a real dilemma for the wildlife management people. It was mighty cold out on the bay and I was happy to finally climb into the van.
We went for a drive, the guide searching for kangaroos , wallabies, and possums with his spotlight. I didn't realize that all of these animals are nocturnal, so night time is when you really have to watch out for them on the roads. Roos are very destructive to the farmers' crops, so when things get bad the farmers can get a permit to shoot them. They will bag a couple of hundred on a good night. Animal control is a big issue on KI. Koalas are also very destructive to the gum trees and will have to be shot on occasion. No predators = good for animals, bad for farmers.
Last stop was Duck Lagoon, where we had stopped earlier in the day on the way home. It was a different place at night. Possums were all over the place and the air was filled with varying pitches of croaking frogs. I would have loved to take a sound sampling of them and made a composition. It reminded me of this, from a Rupert Bear movie we used to have. I have loved Rupert Bear for almost 50 years. Scary.
Osborne kids, this is for you!


After a little feast of local KI cuisine, we went back to Kingscote at midnight. We had to drive back to Emu Bay from there.
We drove VERY SLOWLY.

Paul's Place

This is ALL ABOUT ME!

But first, this is Paul.
Or at least, we think it's Paul.
He never actually came up to us and said, "Hi, I'm Paul."
But he acted like he owned the place, so we assumed...


He was a bit of a character, kind of a cross between Ned Kelly and Paul Hogan.
This was to be the day I got to cuddle a koala. I was so excited, I didn't even mind the 15k of dirt road that we had to drive and the half an hour that we sat outside the gate till Paul came barreling up in his station wagon. Or the other half hour that we stood waiting for them to get the animals ready.

First on the agenda was kangaroo feeding, an act for which I was ill-prepared, having given up lifting weights a couple of years ago. The first time Paul handed the roo to me I almost dropped it.


Then into the next area for en masse animal feeding. This is where I got a little disillusioned. Emus, sheep, deer, kangaroos, chickens, ducks, peacocks, and turkeys were all kept in this enclosure and were apparently ravenous when we arrived. Add to the mix, one dog that was as crazy as its owner. As soon as the oats bucket came out, pandemonium ensued. The emus were the worst, thrusting their beaks into our oat-filled palms as soon as we withdrew them from the bucket. I had to get very snippy with them in order to save enough oats for the roos.


These kangaroos were not the placid creatures we had formerly encountered, but were aggressive in chasing down their fair share of the oats. At times, I had four or five of them holding onto my hands and blissfully munching down. My hands were actually scratched up by their little fingernails, or whatever they were, and covered in roo slime. Jeff was grossed out.


And onto the koala.
Paul called for all of the children to get in line.
I was right there.
Myself, in seventh heaven, with a sweet female koala.


Over to cuddle the brush-tailed possum, which was so cute it made me feel quite guilty over my possum socks.


When everyone was done cuddling the koala, Paul asked if anyone else wanted a turn.
Oooh, me, me.
So I got another turn.
A really long one.


Jeff wasn't so lucky.
He got used as a feed bowl by a couple of emus.


More echidnas. Note the freaky long pink tongue, which they use to scoop up the termites and other yummy things that constitute their diet.


Finally, an unanticipated interaction with parrots.
I didn't want them, but suddenly, they were there.


After Paul's Place, we stopped in at the Stokes Bay Bush Garden, where winding paths take you around gardens full of magnificently diverse native flora.



We had planned a stop at Parndana Wildlife Park after this, but it was almost dinnertime and we were tired, so we went home.
Baked beans, toasted crumpets, and fried eggs for dinner, with hot chocolate.
Yum.
It's an acquired taste.
Luckily, Jeff has acquired it!