Spring

I've been crook with a revolting head cold, which was much improved by taking this past long weekend away with David and friends down at the bay.

We played lots of cards, with the occasional pause for food, or a run to the shops, or a walk in the bush, or to light a huge bonfire and get rid of a big pile of dead wood on the house block before summer starts.

Thierry noticed a dugite, about 60cm long, warming itself up in a sunny spot on the concrete verandah downstairs, so he hustled it off into the bush. The warm weather's brining out the newly-hatched youngsters and the older ones from hibernation, and this is when they are usually their groggiest and grumpiest and in need of warmth and a feed.

The bush was absolutely bursting with flowers — I don't remember ever seeing it look so beautiful.

There was colour everywhere, from lusty swathes of golden wattle to the tiniest little blue stars all across the ground, with blooms just millimetres across. Spectacular.

I am unable to name almost all of them, apart from the obvious orchids, like those in this post.

:: I've taken the doonas off the bed and put on blankets and sheets — our hibernation's over too; we're in for the long, long warm, I think.

Worshipping at the shrine
Our trip east last week was all about the pictures And a bit of sculpture..
I studied art history for three years in the '90s and I just can't tell you what it was like to see many of the works I'd only been able to study in books, or online, right there in front of me.
I couldn't get enough, so it was lucky that we only really scratched the surface of all that these two great cities have to offer. We'll have to go back and see more!
In Washington, we spent most of one day at the National Gallery, especially in the East Wing, which is full of the Modern stuff, an amazing building full of light and spaces like this (click on the pics to see them b-i-g!) ...... the red blades are part of a massive kinetic sculpture by Alexander Calder, and despite its size and weight, you could see it slowly and silently moving if you looked long enough.
There was a room of smaller Calders in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (below), and I just loved the calm of the monochrome setting:
The two cities each had a casting of an Alberto Giacometti sculpture, Hands Holding the Void, and while the Washington one stood alone against a wall ...the NY one had a lovely Picasso glowing behind her to keep her back warm!There were plenty of yummy treats on the top floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, where they keep all the contemporary art:
The stripy painting is a three-dimensional Sean Scully, of whom I've long been a great admirer. I can't tell you about the neon/video installation map of the US states, because I actually ignored it to look at other stuff. Though looking at it in this pic, it looks pretty amazing, don't you think?
This is another view of the same fantastic room: And this is all quite apart from the wonders of the National Portrait Gallery, which shares this magnificent building.
In New York, MoMA was also full of mind-blowing spaces ...
... the views through the building, the scope of its walls and windows themselves as awesome as the artworks.
The black object (below), suspended by electric cable over this void in MoMA is an ordinary domestic fan. Free from a stand or a frame and left to swing by its long cord, it whirls over the heads of the people below, flying in random arcs and curves through the space.
Of course, after all the Big Names ...
my brain felt a lot like this:But oh! What a glorious way to spend a few days!
And our worshipping was in no way confined to the big galleries. there was plenty of great stuff all around us.
In SoHo, for example, I stumbled across this amazing work by a very talented and enigmatic Brooklyn street artist who signs himself Elbowtoe. I think this is his blog. He paints these (to me) Egon Schiele-style figures on stiff paper, cuts them out and pastes them about the city. Fantastic!
In midtown, we walked past the Lever Building almost every day, and the first time we did we saw this:
A man in a striped bobble hat wrapping an enormous sculpture of a pregnant woman. The sculpture, The Virgin Mother, is by Damien Hirst, no less! It had been standing here for six months and now it was time to move it out and bring in some new wonder.
Here the removal team has just started wrapping her head and feet in preparation for shifting her out of this spot and bringing in a new work. By the evening of that day she looked as though she'd been attacked by giant spiders:We were told the new work would be installed at midnight last Friday, but when we returned to check it out, the removal team was still building the enormous crane that was needed to lift this hefty Virgin Mother out of her plaza setting. The next morning, she was gone, but nothing had yet been installed in her place, so I can't tell you what masterpiece occupies this space now.
Oh, but these weirdly distorted sculptures of his own body, by Richard Dupont, are in the lobby gallery of the same building:Being in New York also provided the chance to visit Pace Gallery, which represents my very fave artist, Jim Dine. I had visited this gallery's website for years, checking out JD's prints, so it was a thrill and a half to actually visit it.
When I boldly asked to see some of Jim Dine's work, a very pleasant young woman came to talk to me. I told her that though I did not have the means to buy any of his work, I intended merely to worship at the shrine, so she smilingly pulled out some of the great man's prints to show me.
In truth, it is his more energetic, gestural plant drawings that are my absolute favourites, but just seeing his prints was an unforgettable moment.

Washington awash
We kept hearing about the cherry blossoms at Washington. Friends here in San Diego, flight attendants on the way there, taxi-drivers - they all mentioned the cherry blossoms.
We got in late at night, and it wasn't until we ventured out into the sunny morning, and walked from our hotel to the Mall (below), that we realised what all the fuss was about.The city centre is gobsmackingly, divinely beautiful to start with, with a magnificent view seemingly around every corner.
But I wasn't expecting the flowers.
These are all blooming along the sides of The Mall, which is a massive expanse of grassy parkland that starts at the Capitol and goes all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, a stretch of just over three kilometres long.
This is where The Mall cuts through the buildings of the Smithsonian Institution, any one of which could have occupied us for a day at least.
The first cherry trees were a gift to Washington and the US from Japan, and this is celebrated every year with a Cherry Blossom Festival. It was festival time while we were there, with fireworks set off at night over the Tidal Pool, which is like a billabong off the Potomac River.
Just the tiniest breeze sent petals fluttering to the ground like snow. Breathtaking.
And while I don't want or intend to bore you with an endless travelogue, I must just tell you about this very beautiful lady:She is Lady Elizabeth Linley, who became Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan. This Gainsborough portrait of her hangs in Washington's National Gallery of Art, directly opposite Napoleon and just round the corner from George Washington. So I bet they all have a lot to talk about when the lights are off and the tourists are gone!And she's my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother!

Window shopping
Wherever we went in New York, I chose places I'd like to live.
It wasn't hard, I can tell you.
This top-floor corner apartment (below) in SoHo, for instance, looks as though it has a roof garden, and I swear I can see canvases propped up against the window of the apartment below - so you'd reckon the neighbours would at least be interesting ...
And I quite fancy the Art Nouveau-style wrought-iron work on these fire escapes. Plus, the view over the trees would be pretty okay ...
Just off Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side (don't you just love the way that sounds?), there are some very tasteful buildings with lots of grand architectural details ...... while on Fifth Avenue itself, I could imagine living very comfortably. And it wouldn't have to be an apartment — I could just as easily go for a whole house like this, if I had to.But then, there's always Park Avenue, which is definitely an address with cachet ...And I reckon I could be very happy living in any one of these flats on Central Park South ... ... especially looking out over all this:This (below) is another gorgeous SoHo block, with big windows, and a greengrocer on the ground floor who sells flowers by the bucket-load:
After all the cool off-white stucco and the stately redbrick of uptown, there's something to be said for the in-your-face colours of SoHo ...
Some apartments don't look like much from the outside, like these (below), whose shabby (without much chic) windows I could see from inside the Museum of Modern Art.
However, this is what they look over ...... MoMA's exquisite sculpture garden, with water and trees and some of the world's most exciting artworks, all laid out before you. Sigh!
This morning, I found another perfect place. It's in SoHo again, just a little house and such a smart green, and it's on the market and unoccupied ...Of course, there is just one small problem with all this daydreaming:

Hot and beefy ...


:: I bought a pair of shoes today - that's them, above! They cost $1.99 in Ralphs. A bargain and perfect for me - though I think they're probably meant for a nine-year-old (with big feet). As I tried them on, I could hear a little voice on my shoulder saying, 'Not MORE shoes!' It was the voice of eight-year-old Simon, who would always castigate me for the number of pairs of shoes I owned - particularly when I'd refused to buy him a $50 pair of trendy sneakers when his feet were still growing so fast. One time, he was so incensed he even went to my wardrobe and, out loud, counted 37 pairs (I was a full-time working career girl then - and shoes have always been a weakness!). Perhaps that's why he's still absolutely obsessed with sneakers. Just like his kid brother ... look at the pair of them!


:: It got up to 35 degrees today (that's 95 F) and it was beaut! The pool is sparkly and the water is warm, there are flowers everywhere (poor Will is sneezy and snotty with rheumy eyes), birds are singing, flutes are trilling (we have a flute player living near us and she/he practises a lot), and everything seems to be screaming 'Summer!' But, of course, let us not forget that first we must experience what the San Diegans call May Grey, and June Gloom - the almost daily occurrences of the 'marine layer', when warm, moist air blows in from the sea, hits the hills and mountains, rises, cools and forms a dense rolling mist that blocks out the sun. Sure, it's grey and gloomy, but it keeps the temperatures down until it dissipates in the sunshine.

:: So that explains the 'hot' of this post's title. The 'beefy' is a reference to a massive hunk of beef I've just prepared for the oven. Dave and I will have it for dinner - or a few slices of it anyway - later as we watch A-merrrrrican Idol (Yay! Can't wait!). Will has gone off with two friends to see Wolfmother in concert, so he's eating on the road.

:: Cate has sent me a manuscript to work on, and I'm all excited about making a start on that tomorrow. Fifty thousand words - looking good!
In the meantime I'm knitting a summer jumper out of linen - a very fiddly yarn, I'm finding.
The pattern calls for two strands to be knitted together, and each strand is made up of three threads, so there's a lot of splitting. And it's a bit like knitting with string - no stretch. But I love the colour and the texture, so I think it will be okay. It's a sleeveless, shapeless sort of top, with a straight-across boat neck. I think the front may look boring and sack-like, so I'm thinking of putting in a pattern of holes just to relieve things a little. We shall see.
I have also to finish Dad's socks, and I have a fabulous stash of wool to knit for all the Bondi babies on the way - three so far, with the first (our chef, Chris, and his wife, Amanda) due in September. Exciting times!

Getting warmer ...

:: Spring begins officially here on March 21 and the weather is just perfect. It was about 32 (C) yesterday, and today it's a beautiful 28. Yummy. Every day the sun gets a little higher and reaches more of the pool. With its dark surfaces, it starts to warm up very quickly - so every day I stick a toe in to check whether it's ready for a plunge! (Not quite - but it sure feels good.)

:: I like setting things against the pool, so here's a bowl of avocados and passionfruit that were a gift from a wonderful couple we met yesterday, Kevin and Betsy. Kevin is a former Quairading lad, and Betsy his San Diego-born wife.

They live in a beautiful region to the south-east, in the hills at Ramona, where they have started an Australian plant nursery and wholesale business. Dave and I went to check it out with a view to getting them to provide wildflowers and plants for the Bondi.
This (below) is a view of their property. They have about 5 hectares, with about a third of it under cultivation and the rest being prepared. Kevin has even built himself a corrugated iron shed-cum-shelter-cum-shop, just for a laugh.
It was really beaut to see all their hakea, banksia, kunzea, dryandra (sp?), eucalypts, grevillea and so on in the Californian sunshine, looking very healthy and happy. Kevin says his only problem with growing them is the gophers, which take a fancy to tender young plants just like rabbits do back home. Otherwise, they take off really well.
There are also avocados on the property, which he sells to Mexican restaurants, and a passionfruit vine - yay! Passionfruit are pricey here - about $3 each.

:: Which reminds me - how's the price of bananas in Perth now? Here they are 2 lbs (about a kilo) for $1.

:: This banksia is a bit frostbitten on the very top from a really cold night recently:


On the beach ...

:: On Saturday, Dave and I walked on the beach at Del Mar (about 3 km from where we live) with the dogs. You can walk on the sand with the dogs on leads until you get to the very end (where you can see the sandy cliff), where there is a very popular and well-used dog beach.
There was pretty good surf on Saturday - this is the break where Will used to have school surfing lessons three mornings a week.

:: This (below) is a view of part of Del Mar looking east, from the beach. It's just gorgeous, but very expensive. San Diego and Los Angeles have the most expensive real estate on the planet.


:: The homes right on the beach are the most expensive of all. Last year, Jenny Craig - of the weight-loss fortune - bought the three houses on the very left of this picture for a cool $25 million.
Will heard that the white one on the extreme left - you can just see part of it - was at one time owned by Brad and Angelina!

:: Lily's coming home next Sunday, for her spring break. So I'm sorting and cleaning and getting ready!