... on 'Thing #1'.

The prospect of moving house shortly has me thinking about 'things', and why we have them, and how they help to make the place where you live into your home. I've had space of my own for most of my adult life, and although I don't normally pay much heed to astrological notions (I once had a colleague who had worked at a regional newspaper and in the absence of a proper astrologer she would write the horoscopes herself based on the weekly relationship dynamics of her bosses - a husband and wife team!) but I am a Cancerian, and apparently we tend to be people for whom the idea of 'home' is of great importance. True, for me. No doubt about it!

Yesterday I was gazing idly at my bookcase, wondering if I'm going to have the will to do a cull of books before I move, when my eye came to rest on a little Thing that I recently rediscovered. It had been sitting in the back of an old wardrobe in the shed for many years, but I was so delighted to see it again - I blew off the dust and put it on my bookshelf.

I remember making this little house. I don't know if I was 7 or 9 or 11 years old, but I do remember making it. We had a dam, and every now and then an excavator would be hired to dig it a bit bigger. The resulting mounds of earth became a place to build cubbies and mudslides, and a source of clay in a variety of colours. Pale clay like this was highly prized, as most of it was brown, but it was all full of bits of gravel and organic matter.

It's quite odd to see the fingerprints of my 7 or 9 or 11 year old self, left on something that I made. I remember that this house was 'the house I want to live in when I grow up'. I think it was modelled on the house of my dear friends The Joneses, as I was very envious of the steeply pitched roof of their home, Casuarina Cottage, and it had a room in the attic. All the Famous Five books I was reading at the time seemed to have adventures in an attic, and I so wanted one too! But I remember that I wanted this house to be surrounded by trees and for it to have a front garden with a fence.

Here's the curious thing. Our new house has a steeply pitched roof. It's under two big trees. It has a front garden with a fence. It's lacking an attic room but hell! What a coincidence!
I think there will have to be a place for this, don't you?

...on being at home.

Aaah, how lovely is it to return to a beloved home after a long while away! The first opening of the door... the familiar smell of my house... the remembering of all the little possessions that make my home 'mine'. Seedpods on a bookshelf, a postcard tucked into the edge of a frame, a pebble found on a previous holiday sitting on top of the piano.

What I like most, though, is how I've just stepped from a darkening blustery European autumn into a fragrant pre-summer Brisbane blissfulness! The breeze feels like the sea, and it makes Christmas seems to be just around the corner. The jacarandas in my street are going all kinds of crazy and the jasmine just outside my doors is outdoing itself. The nights (through which I am finally sleeping after picking up a dreadful airport cold!) are scented and only-just-cool, and in the mornings I'm amazed by how many birds start singing so early. My feet are getting used to being bare. It's so good to be home!

What's more, the garden is absolutely full of self-seeded cherry tomatoes, perfect for roasting up with some garlic and onion to have on hand for spaghetti.

Yum yum yum! HOORAY ALL ROUND!