grandparent alert

My advice to any grandparent out there is to make sure you stand at the bottom of the slippery slide and WATCH your grandchild slide down!

For some reason I took it upon myself to break all the slippery slide rules last Saturday - and have ended up with a broken arm. I did a very good job of it - which meant I required a bit of surgery too - to have it pinned (on Monday)!

I'm still learning about life with only one useful arm (luckily only a short term prospect for me) but so far Rob has had to take the brunt of opening lids, cooking meals, doing up watches, driving the car, cutting up fruit etc etc etc.

It's coming up to November, a busy time of the year ....garden plans, summer fun plans, Christmas plans, some textile plans with Maxie, finishing off the work year plans...I just have to let a lot of it go now - that will be good learning for me...

But I find I can still take a picture with my little compact camera.................

The garden is looking Springtime pretty at the moment so I can take some time to smell the roses (although there aren't too many of them blooming yet). And I was pleased with a couple of my orchids this year, flowering so well...

...and my African violets have excelled themselves.

I brought this little guy back from Borobudur - a pretty tacky souvenir of an amazing temple I know. However, he's looking pretty comfortable in my "Judy" pot in the front courtyard now - though I'm not impressed with his ability to keep bad things at bay with that raised hand.....(come to think of it that left arm of his looks a bit like mine did after copping that fall off the slippery slide!)

Like many other Australians of my generation I have been reflecting on the incredible legacy of the venerable EG Whitlam (Prime Minister 1972-1975) who died Tuesday morning this week. Rob and I voted for the first time in December 1972 (voting age was 21 in those days) and I will never forget the excitement we felt that we had played a (small) part in the election of the new Whitlam Labor government after 23 years of "Menzies turbidity" (marvellous quote from Paul Keating this week).

We will also never forget our dismay upon returning to Australia House in London (from France) in November 1975 and learning about "the dismissal".  We could not believe it!  Three tumultuous years in government - but so much achieved - and Australia at last dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

Thank you Edward Gough Whitlam, for those three years - and everything else since!