That beautiful man

I'm falling in love with Sidney Poitier all over again while watching To Sir, with Love.

My 10 year old niece, The Princess Pea, calls him 'that beautiful man'.

Any of you agree?

Swoon.

We are Australian

The Australian National Mourning Service for the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires included this special rendition of I Am Australian. Twenty two years after first writing this much loved song, Bruce Woodley wrote two extra verses to reflect on the tragic events of those terrible fires.

As the members of our Peaceful Town gathered together this morning to celebrate Australia Day, we too joined voices to sing. Our version of Bruce's song had also been altered to reflect the feelings of our community.

I'd like to share our modified verses here:

There are no words of comfort that can hope to ease the pain
Of losing homes and loved ones, the memories will remain.
We weep our silent tears and find the strength to carry on
You're not alone. We are with you. We are Australian.

There are so many heroes whose stories must be told
The fought the raging fires and floods, and saved so many souls.
From the depths of deep despair our towns will rise again
We mourn your loss, we will rebuild. We are Australian.

As our townsfolk all sang, tears coursing down our cheeks, I couldn't help but feel that I really was so very glad to be an Australian.

We live in a great country.

Happy Australia Day, friends.

Checking in

Hello, my friends,

It is nice to have a little bit of time to be able to check in with you all. So much as happened since I last wrote, and yet I struggle now to know what to say. I do know though that I want to thank each and every one of you for your caring words and prayers through the past week. I so appreciate your friendship.

Things are really hard here. I know that there are some Christians who display incredible strength by their up-beat and positive witness during times of calamity. I'm afraid I am not among their number. Don't get me wrong - my faith, and that of my husband - is strong and secure, but we are really hurting, and I am sure that that shows. It is hard for us to comprehend the utter decimation of our home and business, and one of the great calamities of this natural disaster is the lack of flood insurance that affects many of its victims - us amongst their number.

More than 400 homes - 80% of our Peaceful Town - were inundated by the flood waters that broke the banks of the Avoca River last Friday night. The destruction has to be experienced to be believed. We have all seen the television images of flood affected streets, but the smell and the feel of the river mud cannot really be appreciated until you have actually been through it yourself.

The massive clean-up began when the river waters receeded last Tuesday. We have been overwhelmed by the help we have received from members of our RPCA Church family. More than 35 people have made the 3 1/2 hour journey from Geelong, Frankston and McKinnon to help, and many, many, more have helped with meals, and with washing and ironing mountains of clothing and household linens. Together they have helped us remove carpets and floor boards, wash mud from walls and furniture and unpack miles of books from shelves. They've gurneyed paths, set up computers, replaced electrical sockets, washed out cupboards, pulled out dead plants and more. They've been incredible.

My husband and I have, as yet, no idea what the future holds for our family. In the short term we are working towards having Jemimah return to be with us next weekend. As for other plans, you, like us, will need to wait and see. We would appreciate your prayers.

Thanks for caring.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

Psalm 18: 16-19 NIV

Guest Post - Flood Update

Most of you won't know me, so let me introduce myself. My name is Nathan and like Jeanne I have a blog. I've travelled several hours today, along with two other teams from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Australia, to offer help with the big clean-up.

Jeanne asked me to give an update. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's several thousand words to give you a glimpse into Jeanne's world at the moment.

The Army has now declared their property "uninhabitable".





Thankfully, many of their books were saved. They lost approx. one foot of books.

It broke my heart driving through the town and seeing all the carpets, furniture, and various belongings of this community piled on the nature strips ready for collection. However, I have also been encouraged seeing the resiliance and community spirit clearly visible in this town.

The trial for the town, and for Jeanne and her family is far from over. I'm confident, with your continued prayers and support, that they will return soon to "living a peaceful life in the country."

No words

Image from the Herald Sun

No words; no news...

Flood update

No good news to report here, I'm afraid.

The entire population of our Central Victorian town was evacuated to the local school last night. When that flooded early this morning, they were further evacuated to a neighbouring town 30 kilometres away.

The Avoca River finally peaked at 8.05 metres - 75cm higher than the levels in September.

80% of the town, including our home, is under up to about 1.5 metres of water. The town is isolated, and there is no power, no potable water and no telephone access.

We are all together in Melbourne - hubby left town after the first evacuation notice yesterday morning. I feel better having him with us.

It feel rather strange not knowing exactly what, if anything, we will be able to salvage. We are not even sure if the things that we moved to higher levels will be high enough. It is all in God's hands now.

Thank you all for your ongoing prayers and messages of support. They are much appreciated.

Tonight we will be drinking champagne.

The weather

Suzzy thinks I should talk about the weather. Funny really, that's all we're talking about in real life over here, and yet I've been struggling to find the words to write about it on my blog. Not that I haven't tried, but I just don't know what to say. Sorry Suzzy - it's not that I don't care - it's that I care too much.

Right now, there are flood warnings in four Australian States.

75% of the State of Queensland is under water. That's an area twice the size of Texas, four times the size of Japan, and six times the size of the UK. 15 people are dead and another 61 are missing. 100,000 homes in the State Capital, Brisbane, are without power. 26,000 homes are affected by the water and another 5000 businesses.12, 000 homes are completely flooded - up to their roofs. Whole towns are being evacuated. My friend, Ruby's city of Rockhampton has been flooded for more than a week.

Closer to home down here in Victoria, the Avoca River that runs through our Peaceful Town has broken its banks for the third time since last September's floods. It is currently at 7 metres and is expected to peak sometime tomorrow morning. I feel somewhat despondent as I consider the damage another inundation will do to our beautiful garden and to the structure of our Peaceful Home, and yet the are so many people so much worse off than we are.

Our God is an awesome God, isn't he? The floods and the rains are completely out of the control of man, but Luke 8 tells us that even the winds and water obey him. As we pray that people will be kept safe (and, selfishly, that our home might be spared) we need to also pray that people might recognise the mighty power of our great God.

Behind all the loss and heartbreak the all Australians are feeling right now is his merciful hand. We may not understand why, but it is all part of his wonderful plan.

And that is where I gain my comfort.

In him.

What is a Red Shift?

Well - it's amazing what I'm learning in Grade Three!! This morning I thought a Red Shift was a terrific fantasy novel by Alan Garner.

Now I know better. So does Jemimah, and she's only eight.

Gotta love Ambleside Online.

Day one is done

Don't those books look yummy all lined up like that? There's Black Beauty, Bambi, Mates at Billabong, The Chronicles of Narnia, Robinson Crusoe, The Secret Garden, Kidnapped, By the Shores of Silver Lake (the one where Mary goes blind), The Railway Children, The Borrowers, Lassie, Sophie's Misfortunes, The Midnight Folk, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiller, Thimble Summer and more, more, more - and that's only the literature! Be still my beating heart!!!!

AO4 is the most deliciously rich year of delights for both mummy and daughter, and it was with a great deal of excited anticipation that we commenced our first day of the new school year this morning.

Oh my! There is such an awful lot of tradition surrounding our first day of school. There's the donuts we eat for breakfast; the first-day-of-school photographs; the intensive swimming program in the morning; the Vietnamese pork rolls for lunch, and the gift wrapped stationery to open. There's new coloured pencils, new paints and brushes, new exercise books and new folders to keep everything neat. Some things always stay the same.

And some things are different: new composer: Schumann; new artist: Caravaggio; new subjects: Latin; Plutarch; Grammar; Apologetics; Shakespeare. There's new Memory Verses, new folk songs (French and English) and new Psalms (French and English). We begin Bible notebooks for the first time and Jemimah starts to read some books herself.

And all those beautiful books are sitting there waiting for her.

It has taken a bit of time to get our Australian History together for the year, believe you me, and I'll tell you more about it shortly if you like, but in a nutshell we'll be reading Children of the Dark People; James Cook, Royal Navy; Bennelong; John of the Sirius; and Matthew Flinders by George Finkel. We'll learn about Aborigines and Discovery in Term 1; Captain Cook in Term 2 and The First Fleet and Matthew Flinders in Term 3. In the rest of the world we'll look at Prussia, the American Revolution and the one in France as well. I have no doubt that there is as much for me to learn here as there is for Jemimah, and personally I can't wait!!

For devotions we're reading Grandpa's Box: Retelling the Biblical Story of Redemption by Starr Meade, and Jemimah's reading her way through the Gospel of Luke. We'll be covering the Westminster Shorter Catechism questions on Obedience, Faith and Salvation. They Live in Australia by Eve Pownall is our geography book, and The Story of Australia for Boys and Girls by Joseph Bryant is our history spine. We've chosen Madam How and Lady Why for Natural History instead of Explore His Creation, but we'll make a final decision on this in a few weeks as recommended by Ellen, whose opinion I respect. I just can't get excited by Explore His Creation, somehow, although many homeschoolers rave about it.

Poplicola's our first Plutarch life. We had a superb discussion today about the first section of this, following Anne White's study guide very closely all the way. We each have a copy of the text to look at, and I have bound the discussion guide and text together in mine to make it easy to navigate. I don't think I could have attempted this difficult book without Anne's help. You're a wonder!! For what it's worth, Jemimah's narration was pretty impressive as well!!

Our first Shakespeare play is The Comedy of Errors. The Australian Shakespeare Company are presenting this play at the Royal Botanic Garden this summer, and we're just waiting for a fine night to get along to see it. I do hope it is not too absurd...

We're using MEP 4b for maths, Minimus for Latin and L'Art de Lire for French.

And now I'm going to stop. It is already 11.30 pm, and I need to go to bed. I'll try and link all the books tomorrow afternoon.

I go into this year with an incredible amount of optimism that this course is a good match for Jemimah - and for me as her teacher. All of our years of homeschooling so far have been terrific, but with the amazing lineup of books sitting on my desk, I have a feeling that AO4 might just be the best one yet!

Hurrah!

Prayer for Sudan

Please pray for Sudan today as the people of Southern Sudan vote on whether or not to become a separate country.



For more about the Reformed Presbyterian Church mission in Sudan: Cush4Christ:

Figs

Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the LORD Almighty has spoken.

Micah 4:4 NIV

I dare say it was Melbourne's immigrant Italian and Greek population that was responsible for the proliferation of fig trees in the gardens of our city's northern suburbs. We have two in our Melbourne garden, and a large one here in the country. They bear huge amounts of fruit, and seem to thrive on benign neglect, although I must say that a little extra water does result in bigger juicier figs.

Our biggest challenge is beating the musk parrots to the figs. The Italians cover each cluster of fruit in a paper bag, and their lovingly tended trees are a reminder to me of just how beautiful these trees can be if you do care for them. Still, even sharing with the birds, our three trees provide enough in their two crops each summer to keep our entire extended family in figs, and since that number includes a couple of real fig aficionados, that is saying something.

My favourite way to eat figs is warm from the tree. We eat them with soft goats cheese, and they are sublimely delicious.

Jemimah loves them grilled on the barbeque with brown sugar and butter. Oh, how wicked are these - especially with a piece of milk chocolate melted onto each half! We devour them with vanilla icecream or thick King Island vanilla yoghurt. Life doesn't get much better than this, sitting outside on a warm summer evening feasting on warm grilled figs and sipping on a chilled glass or two of Rutherglen muscat.

For friends who don't like the somewhat strange texture of raw figs, I always recommend they try them poached in syrup. We add a couple of tablespoons of Cointreau to ours to make them extra yummy, but vanilla works as well. These, topped with a dollop of sweetened yoghurt, are a family fave as well.

In case you've started thinking that A Peaceful Day is now a gardening blog, never fear. We start back with school on Monday. Jemimah and I will be heading to Melbourne for three weeks of intensive swimming lessons, and I won't be posting about my peaceful garden at all.

It's not all bad in Melbourne though - the figs and the nectarines will be ripe. Mmmmmmmm

Summer tomatoes

This would have to be the most intensely rewarding time to have a kitchen garden. Every morning we pick bowls full of perfectly ripe tomatoes and their perfect companion, basil.

Jemimah, the Tomato Queen, prefers eating her tomatoes warm, and straight from the bush, biting into them like most people crunch an apple. For me there is nothing better than bruscetta. Think toasted sour dough, chopped tomato, garlic, a little basil, salt and pepper, drizzled with best olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sublime.

Home-grow tomatoes taste nothing like their store bought relatives. Heavy and fleshy, they contain less seeds and juice and far more pulp. Intensely sweet, we eat bucket loads right through summer, turning any excess into delicious tomato passata and spicy tomato sauce, ready for the long months of tomato-less winter.

We grow a variety of plants in our kitchen garden, from the tiny truss "Tommy Toe" and cherry 'Sweet Bite" up to the giant "Ox Heart" and "Beefsteak" varieties. Twelve plants in all, two of each variety.

If I had to choose only one food plant to grow in my garden, the tomato would win every time. I can't imagine summer without them.

Which food means summer to you?

AO4 Term 1 Folksongs

Snowy River Roll

Snowy River Roll

Bill Lovelock

Give me a man who's a man among men,
Who'll stow his white collar and put down his pen.
We'll blow down a mountain and build you a dam,
Bigger and better than old Uncle Sam!

Roll! Roll! Roll on your way!
Snowy River roll on your way!
Roll on your way until Judgement Day!
Snowy River roll.

Sometimes it's raining and sometimes it's hail,
And sometimes it blows up a blizzardly gale.
Sometimes there's fire and sometimes there's flood,
And sometimes you're up to your eyeballs in mud!

Give me bulldozers and tractors 'n' hoses,
'N' diesels to ease all my troubles away.
With the help of the Lord and good Henry Ford
The Snowy will roll on her way.

Don't bring your sweetheart unless she's your wife,
For here you must follow a bachelor life!
When woman is woman, a man is a fool!
Y' get much more work from a bow-legged mule.

AO4 Term 1 French folk songs

And for revision:

To Catch a Thief

Cary Grant.

Swoon.

Putting away Christmas

Why is it that Trimming the Tree is so much fun, and putting Christmas away again is so, well, meh?

Why is it that baubles that fitted so nicely into boxes a month ago, now...don't?

Why have the contents of the Basket of Delights grown exponentially? On second thoughts, don't answer this one. I am so weak when it comes to Christmas books. So weak.

Oh well. Better an addiction to Children's books than...

For those of you that don't celebrate Christmas, A Peaceful Day is now safe until at least November. Only the way I'm feeling right now, I'm inclined to think we might cancel the Trimming the Tree bit and move straight to the putting it away bit next season. Think that would work?

Bah Humbug.

Perhaps I should play some Christmas music and drink some glögg.

Macaroons - gooey and fresh!

"You're here again!" she said, in pleasure. "Mum's made some macaroons this morning, see - all gooey and fresh!"
"Now how did you guess that we are all very partial to macaroons?" said Dick, sitting down at one of the two little tables there. "We'll have a plateful, please."
"What, a whole plateful?" exclaimed Janie. "But there's about twenty on a plate!"
"Just about right," said Dick. "And an ice-cream each, please. Large. And don't forget our dog, will you?" ...

...Soon they had a plateful of delicious macaroons in front of them - and they were indeed nice, and very gooey inside, as Janie had so rightly said. George gave Timmy one, but it was really wasted on him, because he gave one crunch, and then swallowed it! He also chased his ice-cream all over the floor again, much to Janie s delight.

"How do you like it at Mrs Philpot's?" she asked. "Kind, isn't she?"
"Very!" said everyone together.
"We love being at the farm," said Anne. "We've been all over it this morning, in the Land-Rover."
"Did Bill take you?" asked Janie. "He's my uncle. But he don't usually say much to strangers."
"Well, he said plenty to us," said Julian. "He was most interesting. Does he like macaroons?"
"Oooh yes," said Janie, rather astonished. "Everyone likes mum's macaroons."
"Could he eat six, do you think?" asked Julian.
"Ooooh yes," said Janie, still astonished, her blue eyes opened wide.
"Right. Put six in a bag for me," said Julian. "I'll give them to him in return for a jolly fine ride."
"That's right down nice of you," said Janie, pleased. ...

...her mother began to arrange the goods on the counter. "Let's see now - what did you have?" she said."Good gracious, where are all those macaroons gone? There were at least two dozen there!"
"Er - well - we had almost twenty - and the dog helped, of course - and Janie put six in a bag for us - let's see now...
"There were twenty-four on that plate," said Janie s mother, still amazed. "Twenty-four! I counted them!"
"And five ice-creams," said Julian. "How much is that altogether? Most delicious macaroons they were!"

Enid Blyton Five On Finniston Farm

Jemimah and her bestie, the Princess Pea, decided this morning to spend the day in bed. They had Abba on their iPods, a big pile of books and a bigger bowl of lollies. At first it was an adult free zone, but they soon discovered that visits by Auntie Jeanne bearing gifts of food were acceptable, and I was allowed to deliver breakfast on trays - provided I didn't stay too long and remembered to close the door as I left.

They lasted until 11.30am. Apparently it was then time to do some cooking, they thought.

We settled on macaroons. Yummy fresh, gooey macaroons. Not too many ingredients, and no icing afterwards. Not so much potential for mess. Only they dropped the eggs. Ever tried cleaning up broken eggs from the floor? Icky Sticky. Especially under the fridge.

Anyhow, the macaroons were a triumph. Ooey gooey in just the right way. Unlike the eggs.

Despite Janie's mum's amazement, it is actually quite easy to eat two dozen macaroons between four. We managed 15 between the three of us with no trouble at all. And we didn't even have the help of the dog.

Gardenias

The problem with having a blog where you record the day-to-day rhythms of life is that eventually you are going to repeat yourself.

Every year summer arrives, and every year I am excited anew at the prospect of long sultry evenings outside by the swimming pool; glorious days filled with good friends, fine food and drinks and delicious harvests from the Kitchen Garden. I adore summer. The garden is bursting with delicious red tomatoes, fragrant basil, crisp lettuces, blow-your-brains-out-chillis, strawberries and pears. The quinces are ripening.

And the gardenias are in bloom.

I adore the glorious fragrance of the gardenia. I would, in past years, have declared that it just wouldn't be Christmas without it, but this year the seasons are all out of kilter, and it was only yesterday on my return from holiday that the first blooms were to be found. We still had Christmas, and it was still wonderful, so I guess gardenias aren't so critically vital to the Festive Season after all. I still love them though.

I love to pick little posies of two or three blooms. Even a single flower will scent a whole room with its warm sweet, lemony fragrance, and I selfishly place the first little bunches on my bedside to enjoy whenever I awake throughout the night.

We grow three different varieties in our Peaceful Garden - all in pots. The most prolific bloomer is G. augusta. It is supposed to have glossy dark green leaves, but ours are always yellowy, no matter how much of the Epsom salts and iron chelates we add. Whatever the problem, it has never affected the blooms, and so we just ignore it most of the time.

G. radicans is a tiny leaved variety with neat little blooms. It sits on a table in the courtyard, and I rarely pick its flowers, leaving them rather to scent the lazy breakfast meals that we invariably consume outside during these warm summer mornings. The third variety, G. augusta 'Florida' is about 1.5m tall, and grows alongside the shower where we freshen up after our dips in the pool. This one doesn't seem to stop flowering until the cool days of autumn set in - an idea that is all but unimaginable right now.

I wonder why it is that so many creamy white flowers have such lovely fragrance. There is even a category of perfumes names after them - the white florals. Gardenias, magnolias, frangipani, jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, champaka, lily of the valley, white freesias - aren't they the epitome of love and romance?

I would grow them all if I could.