Cactus Salvage Inc.

Things have been pretty interesting around here for the last couple of weeks because the Great Six Monthly Council Verge Collection has just wound up. Fondly referred to by locals as 'bring out yer dead', it's a great time of year to meet your neighbours and rummage through their junk. It's also a good time to get rid of stuff you've been too lazy to give to charity because you can be sure anything you leave out that's not complete rubbish will be picked up by somebody who can use it. I think it's a great tradition.

I found old cases and bags, vintage fabric, antique scales and pressed wildflowers and i'm still trying to find places to put everything. As much as i get a thrill out of this treasure hunting sometimes i wonder what's going to happen to all this crap i collect when i'm gorn. I suppose it'll all end up in one massive pile on the verge and hopefully give someone else a thrill.

time out

on saturday night Mr M and I were invited to a couple of parties so we arranged for the girls to have a sleepover at the grandies. A perfect opportunity to drink too much, stay out 'til all hours and sleep in as long as we wanted, i thought. Mr M had a different idea though, he thought it was the perfect opportunity to get up early on Sunday, drive north for two hours to Lancelin - the land of the long white dune - and spend several hours in the surf trying to stand up on a plank (or in his case, effortlessly standing up on a plank).

and these pictures tell the story really. What a great morning, perfect surf rolling in in three tiers - beginners waves up the front for the likes of me, another line behind and big waves right out the back for the real surfers. Sand dunes like snow fields, kangaroos and a crazy half hour drive on a pure white corrugated twisted sand track to reach the beach - not something you do every day.

This time i stood up at least a dozen times and once i even managed to stay on my feet for a whole 2 seconds! whoohoo get me back there.

on the beach

on sunday we headed down to the beach to check out the sculpture exhibition. In some ways i think art on the beach is a redundant concept, especially in Perth where the beaches are dazzling and enough stimulation for body and soul on their own, but on the other hand you couldn't have a more stunning backdrop for some of these things. And sometimes the work becomes art because it's placed on the beach. A few years ago there was a huge stack of old suitcases that wouldn't have looked out of place in a warehouse or airport but looked spectacular half buried in the sand at the beach (but then, i am an old suitcase nut).

My only beef about the exhibition was with the over application of do not touch signs. I'm sorry but if you're going to take over such a public space then you can't expect people not to touch - surely that's the nature of sculpture. And the beach is not the place for anything too precious or fragile for kids to explore so lay off with the grumpy signage.

After the beach we made banana muffins and banana fritters and hardly made a dent in the banana bunch.

bananarama

the verdict is in on our home grown bananas. We've waited 5 and a half months since the first enormous purple bract peeled up and revealed a row of tiny fruit and we thought they'd never ripen. We cut one hand off while it was still green and ripened them in a bag with an already ripe banana and i can happily report that they're riquisimas!

Not knowing what type of banana it was i thought they could have been the tasteless cooking variety but no, they're sweet with a nice tang. We had six or seven hands of 10 bananas each in the bunch and now they're starting to yellow up on the plant.

the lime tree is also burgeoning so it could be banana splits and cuban cocktails this weekend. (but probably not)

charity case

A few years ago a mum at school i'd never actually spoken to asked me out of the blue if i had a sewing machine and if so would i like a bunch of fabric she was clearing out of her recently departed grandmother's house. Of course i said yep and yep and when she gave it to me it was an amazing collection of 50s and 60s vintage (and that awesome bag that you can see in this picture). This sort of thing happens to me a lot and i like to think it's because people realise that i'm going to appreciate their old stuff more than anybody else. Mr M reckons it's just because people feel sorry for me.

Anyway this is what i made this week, my favourite style skirt and a matching stuff.