I'm loving the dizzy giddiness of clothes-lines on a sunny morning. Watching my kids spin faster and faster and making little fairy circles on our lawn is so much fun. It makes me just want to join in before one of them goes spinning off in a different direction.

I'm one of those people who listens out for the lyrics.

Much of the 80's was spent rewinding and replaying songs I had taped off the radio in order to scribble down and unfathom their meanings. Granted, Tiffany didn't have much of gravity to say, but I helped when we came to sing along in the car.

Sometimes there were lyrics that would just pop into my head and it would take me days or months to work out where they were from. A vague recollection of Bono muttering "I'm not sleeping" or wondering exactly what "she sees a hat and easy for the top shelf" means. That would later turn out to be "Bad" (brilliant song) and "She seams to have an invisible touch, yeah". So I don't always hear the right lyrics, but untold years on I an still listening and still surprised.

Today I was listening to Avalanche City sing You and Me and was certain I must have misheard the words, imagining in their place what I would like to hear. I flicked it back a bit and pulled out the liner notes. Have a listen for yourself..




Can you believe it? He really did sing

"If you were addicted to fabric,
you could fill a whole room in our house"

Brilliance!!

Have you found any surprising lyrics lately?

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We've spent our Sunday afternoon digging. Spring is a long time away, but in the hopes of being prepared we are getting the garden beds ready.

There were little hands and little helpers, all of which needed essential marshmallow and fizzy juice type fuels to keep going*. You can see the cast aside spade in the background.

The beds were in a sorry state. When we built them, I was concerned about stale water sitting in the base, so the beds were lined with newspaper . I thought I was being incredibly sustainable and respectful of the soil as a living organism. I forgot to consider that plants grow both up and down. The surrounding trees discovered the cornucopia we had built for them, sending up masses of roots, and stripping the soil. Three years later, after wrestling with root bound beds, our afternoon was spent digging out a bed, laying down some weed mat and then filling it up again.

Our compost heap has been decimated and carefully layered into the refilled bed. Next on the list is to gather together some luscious organic sheep cr*p and dags to give the soil a bit of a help along. At the rate of one bed a weekend, we might just get there in time for September planting.

*I was having doubts about sharing our adventures as it's not a typically wholesome adventure and probably wouldn't get into the pages of a high class parenting magazine anytime soon. Little E even ran off with the camera in order to capture the wonder of her purple and pink toes nails. I might be tempted to say that we drank home made lemonade and ate oatmeal cookies, but I finished the lemonade myself the night before and prefer my oatmeal served as porridge.

It's funny that I should be second guessing the sharing of our adventures on the basis that they are not fashionably eco enough. Yes, I paint my daughter's toes (fantastic sugar free coaxing) yes, we drink fizzy on special occasions and yes, the kids had a great time, outside in the ever so brief winter sun. All round it was a great time and quite honestly, next sunny weekend, we'll be lining up to do it again.