sun down

Our lease on the River House is up, and unfortunately we don't have an option to renew as the people who truly own this place are coming back to live here. We can't begrudge them that.

Hayden and Lily and I are moving just down the road to a smaller, simpler dwelling. We will still be near the river, but it will no longer be in daily sight. Will we miss it? Or make more of an effort to stay in touch?

sorting

sorting through some things in my study today, I came across this photo from the day of our wedding.

Extra nicely, I came across it in print form ... and there is something so poignant, I find, in coming across a slightly crinkled, slightly faded print photo that has fallen down the back of a drawer.

Holding it in my fingers didn't so much make me remember the day, or the kiss, or the vows or anything so much as that general glow of happiness and excitement for the future that surrounded us at the time. We had lost that, since then, during a tough couple of years. But I think we may just be beginning to feel it again.

There's nothing like that sensation, and I hope to remember to make more prints of photos, if only to lose them in the backs of drawers, and find them again, and feel them again.

dream lab

Dream Lab dared me to do something different today: to leave an anonymous gift or message of kindness for a stranger or a friend.

I actually had fun making this little sign to leave on the door of a friend's house. I loved not being a perfectionist about how it looked - I just whacked it together to get the message out there.

Strangely, it caused me to have a wonderful day to.

dewy

The roses responded beautifully to my autumn pruning, and they are blooming again. Is this normal in winter?? I love looking out at them from my study window, especially when they are damp and dewy on gloomy days like today.

rise

With winter, the sunrises have swept back around to the north again and we can see them from the front porch. In the morning when I wave Hayden off to work, I often think of photographing the glorious colour. This morning, though, I actually did it.

time for a new picture

To celebrate our second wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago, Hayden and I lunched at the glorious Voyager Estate Winery in Margaret River. As you can see in the picture, it was a glorious sunny day, even though the colours of the leaves are already turning.

It turned out to be a pretty wonderful day!

roses

I trimmed the roses recently. OK, that's a lie on two counts. One, I was temporarily crippled in the hands so I just pointed at what I wanted cut, and Hayden did the rest. Two, we didn't trim them, we hacked into them. Quite brutally.

Really I was just following the instructions I had received from the Gardening Australia TV show which suggested that if you cut the rose stems down low, they will grow better from that point in the next growing season. I was thinking that the roses would be next be growing in Spring, and that they'd stay quiet until then. This morning I noticed that there are little red shoots pointing out in all directions. Ooh.

I hope I haven't jinxed the roses. I was really looking forward to seeing how they would grow into their pruning after winter. Now it seems that we won't get to see that. Our lease is up at the end of July, and we haven't been offered another lease.

Hope that wasn't because of the roses..?