Well today is garden day.  A couple of hours are anyway.
I did a few hours yesterday preparing for changes I want to make to our set up.  I have decided I would like all plants to the side at the back and make it as open as possible.  I saw about a week ago how crowding lends itself to weeds and lack of access.
I must admit I am over weeds.  I actually have been for ages, but I have not known what to do about them.  Out the front I had really thick mulch put down and low and behold the weeds grew on top. I have another clever plan.  Maybe this one will work.  Maybe it won’t.  Maybe on my death bed I will be ruing the lack of a victory over the weeds.  Who knows?
Anyway I thought I would start on an area just outside our house.  My aim is to make the stone area one that will not support weeds, and put all plants in pots.  I want to make it a more open area.  I can see in my minds eye what I want, and we will see how close it goes.
I spent a while yesterday afternoon sorting out what I want where and determining empty pots I have.  I also collected any bases Pot plants really seem to do better with bases.
We are also getting plants together for a “plant market” we are having on the 20th of this month.  I will advertise it and gratefully receive any donations of plants for sale with all proceeds going to our food market.
There was a big spider on one of the items for donations.  It reminded me of the weekend just past.  I found a spider in out N3C kitchen.  I thought that will freak the attendees out.  It did not freak out one lady though.  She told me she is not scared of spiders.  It proceeded to run up her arm and into her dress.  It emerged around her neck.  We got it to the floor and she threw a towel over it, and took it outside.  Anway the spider I saw yesterday has disappeared who knows where.
So I am hoping to spend a few hours in the yard today before it gets too hot.  That is the plan anyway. Planning has been done in consultation with Merril, and we are both looking forward to the result.  I know we will not be disappointed.

I will look at a topic I have covered a number of times before from different angles.
It is love and I have come across a number of quotes concerning it.  I admit I am liking what I am reading even though, as is the nature of quotes, it jumps from one thing to another.
“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return” said Antoine De Saint-Exupery.  I personally think that one encapsulates so much concerning love.
It’s funny, we were mentioning in passing last night the value of giving rather than getting.  The consensus was that so often to get one must give. It is what I have found so often.  When love is given without the expectation of return or even the possibility of return, it tends to do heaps for me.  I find myself on the receiving end by being on the giving end.  So often I am helped by helping another.
I have found this to be the case in moments of crisis and personal need.  Of course my own need is not forgotten and sometimes it is front and centre.  Yet often, when I forget my need in the pursuit of meeting another’s, mine is met. 
No wonder a Creole proverb says, “tell me whom you love, and I’ll tell you who you are.”   There is definitely in my mind a self-love that is healthy.  After all I do not think I can love you without loving myself.  Yet I really think there is an unhealthy self-love that is centred on meeting the needs of the “lover” without thought or consideration for others.  No wonder Hector Blancotti said, “so many catastrophes in love are only accidents of egotism.”
To me putting myself first can be a recipe for disaster.  It is only when I deem the needs of another to be something for us concentually to work on together, that I find the release I may be seeking.
Love can have many faces, but without fail, I know it when I see it.

Waldo Emerson said “every artist was first an amateur “ In my case I was first an amateur and remain one.  Oh I can do good whales at a very long distance.  As long as they are just dots in a sea of blue.  I reckon I can do that and keep the colours inside the lines.  That’s about the extent of it really.
Not Merril though.  She is a good artist.  She is so talented it makes me sick….I mean I am happy for her.  She has some art work hanging on my brothers wall.  When we were on holidays she did a small painting. I was just in awe.  It is really one of those things she does not get around to but when she puts her hand to it she is good.
A Joshua Renolds said, “a room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.”  I do like that.  I look around the room I am in and the walls are hung with pictures.  Some we had and some we were given.  A mate was downsizing and had a mile of pictures he was giving to the salvo’s or the like. Merril and I went through them and grabbed some.  One apparently was insured for $1,000.  Go figure.  It was a Darcy Doyle print.
But the though that the art is thought is right I reckon.  I just need to look at the pictures on the wall to be transported to a different time and place.  We have a number of rural scences on the wall.  Most are of scenes from more than 100 years ago.
But the one I particularly like in the room is a scene with a couple of boats moored to a pier on a glassy sea or river. 
Its weird.  I cannot explain the effects some art has.  I can just leave the final word to a quote by an Amedee Ozenfant. “Art is the demonstration that the ordinary is extraordinary.”