Diabolical Clay

Happy Birthday to me. I am 44 today. I am an Aquarian Fire Horse hear me snort. heh.

This is the year of the tiger and I can almost see the creative electricity in the air. I feel like I am on the cusp of a great adventure and all I have to do is be brave enough to grab hold of the tiger’s tail and enjoy the ride.

Grief manifests itself in many ways. One of the ways that my grief really had hold of me was through my photography. I just could not be bothered picking up the camera at all.There was a complete absence of joy in any photo that I took. I had even stopped taking photos of my grand children that was how deep my despair was.

Then my friend Robin came all the way up here and took me for a drive specifically to take photos. A wedgetailed eagle on a ledge was all it took for me to feel something, a spark of my old self returning.

In the same week along came the bloggies and an echidna. I had forgotten how much I enjoy sharing photographs of my part of the world. And you my readers, old and new have no idea of the enormity of the gift that you have given me. My camera is talking to me again and I feel a touch lighter for it.

I return to my studies next week and I am excited. This year is my final year with my tutor Ben Richardson and I am determined to wring every bit out of this year in the studio that I possibly can.

As a potter I find that I use an awful lot of plastic. Plastic to store my clay, plastic wrap to keep my work damp, plastic plastic plastic. So I am going to see if I can be plastic free in my work by the end of the year. Which leads me on to these stones that I found down by the river I think they will make nice tools to use with my work and the clay has to respond better to them than to plastic. We will see.

Now I am off to buy myself some birthday chocolate. Happy birthday to me.

When something isn’t quite right my grand daughter Amy wails, “I cant like this!”

I have been on an emotional rollercoaster all week.The bloggies nomination has had me on such a high that I have been skipping around the house hugging myself with excitement.The counterpoint to that joy has been the pain of knowing that the new people would be moving into Mum’s house sometime this week as well.

It has been a big week.

Yesterday I was out on the balcony admiring the beauty of the morning and mentally composing a blog post when I noticed a glint of shiny metal in Mum’s driveway. It was a moving van, the new people were moving some of their stuff into Mum’s house.

All my words vanished with a pop and I wanted to wail like a three year old, “I cant like this!” I wanted to screech my displeasure at the injustice of it all.I wanted to tell them to go away, get out of my mum’s house. But most of all I just wanted my mum.

Today the real estate agent rang me asking if I had noticed the new people moving in and if  there was a trick to getting the hot water running as they were having some problems. I offered to go down and see if I could help.

I dont think I can adequately describe how it felt to see their furniture in Mum’s house. It wasn’t quite as horrible as I had imagined it would be and sitting here trying to analyze how I am feeling all I can think of is relief. I am feeling less stressed, my shoulders feel lighter and I now have a small measure of closure.

I couldn’t help with the hot water and after some small talk I came home. It isn’t Mum’s home any more it is the new peoples house.

So this afternoon I sat down to write a blog post about Tasmania in reply to some lovely emails from my new American readers. Just as I was about to start writing the pigs escaped from their yard. Blue, the larger of my two girls just went through the hot tape as if it wasn’t even electrified and they are having a fine old time wandering about the place wreck rending. After following the pigs around for about an hour or so, to make sure they didn’t wander off the property and become somebody else’s dinner. I snuck inside for a bit of a rest and to grab my camera because if I was going to follow them all over the place, I was at least going to photograph them for you as well.

Pigs are really friendly, intelligent animals. They are supposed to have the cognitive ability of a three year old child.  I can certainly vouch for the fact that they are able to get up to as much mischief as a couple of toddlers.

In my ‘about me’ page, I write that I live on a small island underneath Australia. I don’t know what sort of image that conjures up for those of you arriving here from the bloggies.

So here is a map of Australia. Tasmania my island home, is the green bit at the bottom.

I live on a 5 acre bush block high in the hills, about an hours drive north from the capital city Hobart. My husband built our home, room by room from bush poles, recycled timber and bricks. After twenty years of constant building and renovations we are nearly finished.

As I am sitting here writing this and trying to think what to say next, I can hear yellow tailed black cockatoos squawking in the trees. A pair of green rosellas have landed on the balcony rails, looking to see if there is any wheat left over from the chook’s breakfast and a pair of  fairy wrens are pecking at the insects trapped in the spiderwebs on the windows..

Of a nightime I can hear Tasmanian devils squabbling in the gully down the hill and brush tailed possums raid my fruit trees. I sometimes am lucky enough to catch glimpses of wallabies, in dawns early light. The tadpoles are just changing into froglets and as they emerge from the water my camera is always close to hand.

I am thrilled to bits to be a finalist for the best Australian and New Zealand weblog awards and I am very pleased that you are all here reading my words and looking at my photos.

Cheers Kim.

I clicked over to the bloggies and nearly fell off my chair when I saw ‘Frog Ponds Rock’ listed as a finalist for best Australian or New Zealand weblog. My teenage son David was looking at me strangely as I was squealing like a girl and pointing at the computer screen.

The news hadn’t even started to sink in when the phone rang, it was my daughter Veronica, she of the sleepless nights and the words so beautiful that they take your breath away.

Together we voiced our excitement and checked out the other finalists in all the categories.Congratulations to you all.

After Veronica had hung up I was sitting here quietly just saying, “Wow!” to myself over and over and I started to cry. My mother would have been so excited and the pain of missing mum came back doubly sharp on top of the excited butterflies.

It was a bittersweet joy yesterday made all the more precious because it is tinged with my loss and I know that all good things can be fleeting.

So hello to you all, you zillions of visitors from the bloggies. I am very pleased that you are here. This morning I am smiling away happily as I look at my stats and see visitors here from all over the world. Welcome.

I had a visitor of another sort in my front yard yesterday and watching her snuffling around busily eating ants, made me happy as well.

Karen Andrews from Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum is having a fundraiser on her blog to raise money for the earthquake victims in Haiti.

Karen writes

For the next twenty four hours I’ll be having a fundraiser: for every comment left here I will donate one dollar to the Australian Red Cross Haiti Appeal. This will run from 8.45am (time of posting) today until 8.45am tomorrow (Saturday, Eastern Australian Daylight Savings Time)

I have said that I will match what she raises up to $100.

So what are you waiting for? Go on over to Karen’s blog and leave a comment.

Yesterday my friend Robin drove up from the city. After a quick cup of tea we jumped in his car and I took him on a tour of the backroads around here. It was lovely to be the passenger for once. We just cruised around the dirt roads stopping whenever something interested us. We had a fine old time snapping away merrily.

The highlight of the trip for me was spotting a wedgetailed eagle perched on a ledge in a local quarry.

As the title says these photos were all taken here.

Yesterday was De-Lurker Day.  The day that bloggers like me ask the burning questions. Who are you? How did you find me? What is it that keeps you here? Where is my chocolate? Well maybe not where is my chocolate because I know that it should be in the fridge. David knows better than to eat my chocolate without nearly nagging me to death for it first.

I am intensely interested, some might even say a tad obsessed with you, my dear readers. I had someone from Queensland read here for a couple of hours with 59 page views. On the one hand it is rather nice to know that my babbling kept someone interested for that long but on the other hand it is also a bit spooky because they came via a relatives facebook page. What were they looking for?

Lots of my family read my blog and never ever comment which is also kind of weird? Why dont you ever comment?

Some of the google searches are interesting as well, I especially like the “frog on ceramic rock” searches that then stay for three or four page views. They make me happy.

I get lots of people looking for accidental UFO’s and photographs of Zombies. Then there are the slightly disturbing searches looking for sexy grandmothers and fun with pigs in the mud.

*updated someone just arrived here looking  for ‘peanut zombie pics’ hmmm.

Which brings me back to you, how did you find me? What was the first blog that you read? What are your favourite blogs? What do you enjoy about blogs, bloggers and blogging?

Come out and say hello or send me an email if you are too shy. frogpondsrock(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Cheers Kim

My grandmother is 87 today and Isaac will be one in a few days.

I successfully avoided getting together with my extended family at Christmas.Today we will all be together for the first time since Mum’s funeral. Combined with the fact that I handed the keys to Mum’s house over to the lawyers on Monday has made this past week very emotional.

Tears are never very far from the surface and my men are tiptoeing around me lest I rip their heads off.

Veronica has been busily disagreeing with a “hate blogger” which has provided me with a much needed distraction from myself. The comments section of that blog is a hoot. Accusations, sweeping assumptions,aspersions and arseholiness are the main themes.

It is all very amusing for about five minutes until you realise that it is real people they are ripping on. I am very proud of Vonnie for standing up for what she believes in and loudly saying that by our silence we are giving these stupid hate bloggers more power. Personally I believe in Karma and I cant be bothered with the small mindedness of chicken liver and her pathetic cronies but I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my daughter and say this crap shouldn’t be tolerated.

David is aghast at the ramming and subsequent sinking of the Ady Gil by the Japanese security ship the Shonnan Maru. The Japanese are killing whales in Australian territorial waters and our government is hoping that by ignoring the problem, it will just go away.

I have been very impressed by my son’s articulate and passionate response to the sinking of the Ady Gil. David would love to join the Sea Shepherd’s crew and be actively involved but the ships are vegan and my son is honest enough to admit that he isn’t quite that committed. Yet.

There is a rally to support  Sea Shepherd at the Abel Tasman Memorial fountain at Salamanca at 11 am on Saturday the 16th of January.David is keen to attend his first environmental/political rally.

I am very proud of both my children for passionately standing up for what they believe in.

Thankyou for the response to my video of Harry and the pigs. Jientje and Barbara have asked me to make some more videos and so I will. What sort of things would the rest of you lovely people like to see?

I have had the camera out a bit this past week and I think that I might have enough decent shots to post a couple of photos later on this week.

Lastly I want to thank you all my dear internets. I really don’t know how I would have gotten through the last six months without your support. Thankyou.