Gotta love spring

Life continues to surprise me.  I had no idea that high blood pressure made you feel like not doing anything.  I just thought I was a slack bastard. 

Anyway, these days I have loads more energy.  I've decided to make Fridays my giving back day.  I'm volunteering with a local arts organisation and really enjoying it.  Thought I'd make the next step and become a blood donor.  Ah well, it appears that my various health 'issues' need to be sorted out and approved before I give blood.    It's still possible, but I need to get the doctors approval before I do so.

In the mean time, the garden is f*n wonderful.  Mowed the lawn this afternoon and the place looks like a park.  One of the lovely things about gardening here is that we have bumblebees.  I'd never seen them before I moved here.  They are are pretty impressive.  Here's one fertilising my broad beans (which are just setting pods, whoopee).

Sorry about the quality of the photo, but it was moving too fast.

Spring is utterly sprung

I used to think that spring was a bit too garish and overblown.  That came from living in Canberra where a lot of the year is brown.  Spring was just too much of a contrast.  Now I'm in Tas and there's lots of green around all the time, I'm really enjoying spring as it means blossoms and blossoms and blossoms and life.

Here's a little shot out of the lounge room window:

Don't look too closely as there are many cobwebs and weeds in the view.  Mind you, one of the things that sold me on this house is that window.  I love it.  And I can see most of Mount Roland out of it sometimes.  If only the house across the road wasn't there, I'd have a fantastic view.... 

I'm pretty lucky.  I can see the ocean from the kitchen window and can see the Spirit of Tasmania as she arrives and leaves.  There's something incredibly calming about that.

Best thing today is that I have my sewing machine back ($400 later!).  This means I can get going on the machine embroidery again.  I'm itching to get back to it.  I love doing work about windows and what can be seen in and out of them.  The above might be an inspiration.  In the interim,  here's an old one:

My new work arrangement of only doing four days a week is working out fabulously (although financially it's a bit of a disaster).  I have so much more energy.  Today I got heaps of stuff done and also volunteered for work with Tasmanian Regional Arts.  It's about time I made some connections.

Speaking of connections, last weekend I went out.  This is unusual for me as I can be a bit of a hermit. I was sitting in a pub waiting for people to arrive and feeling a bit strange sitting on my own, so I crashed a table.  It was fantastic.  Met a bunch of really interesting people - all Kiwis choosing to live in NW Tas.  I love that people from all over the world end up living on this little island and can understand why they choose to do so.