Veronika Wild

What a difference a little sunshine makes! It's been grey and rainy for  a week. Now golden light flows in Stonehenge -like through the triangular window and makes me want to leap out of bed. The city streets are ablaze with blossom trumpeting the arrival of spring, everyone smiles and I want to hug everyone.   Nice Touch! I'll swear this pig smiled at me when I went past. Hope it brings me luck!

The top four are some we have bagged on the run, but I owe all the rest to my darling sister who has kindly forwarded all her Spam. Thanks Sis, they do rather brighten up a dreary day. At an undisclosed location in Canberra They are a bit weird those Queenslanders. This car was parked two metres from the kerb and also carries a "Little Dude on Board" T -shirt in its rear window.   'Bye for now, Cheers Roni

  Postbox. Sigh!  This is  for all you young ones out there. I bet you always wondered what this quaint piece of street furniture was. No, it's not a brightly coloured rubbish bin.   More Mail. I got another letter this week which didn't demand money with menaces. Well actually it wasn't for me. It was for the second last resident of this place and I accidently tore it open before I realised. It said. "Dear xxxx, Thank you for advising us of your new address at such and such." Oh well, at least now I know where to send it.

Winter Daze Ah Spam, friend of the friendless. It has the same role in life as late night shopping channels. When I don’t blog that’s all I get and it’s not all bad. On some days it’s the only contact with the outside world that I have.  I wouldn’t call it human contact. Usually it’s an automatic do –not-reply mailing that goes to thousands of others who might also once have had a momentary lapse of vigilance and signed on, accidently responded to a quiz or a customer survey  or forgot to untick the subscribe box.    Today there’s a loyalty voucher from a clothing shop, another lot of specials from a bee keeping place whom I once asked about keeping bees – Need a cheap veil and smoker anyone?, Friends Reunited telling me about exciting new developments and Jetstar offering amazingly cheap flights to places you may never have heard of. I notice these do not include return flights. I get it – its $150 to get there, plus $500 in airport fees and fuel surcha...

This brochure could become historic Could it really be true? I went along to a forest rally on Saturday. Since then Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a deal that will protect most of the most vulnerable areas but still allow a new Malaysian veneer mill and guarantee it supply until 2027. It will also provide compensation packages for people displaced from the forest industry.   Large sections of Tasmania’s population have literally been at loggerheads since industrial -scale clear -felling of native forests began in 1972 and we began supplying woodchips to Japan. Before that, every small town had a saw mill or two that employed a few people and provided timber for building and furniture factories. These timber mills had leases for ninety – nine years, something which they lost as soon as wood -chipping started.  I won’t say traditional logging practices were pretty, but overall, the forest canopy wasn’t disturbed. Though the wildlife may have been locally di...

OK. It doesn't look much now. Progress reports will follow It's still raining. It must be three or four days now, but it's not quite as cold. I've just bought some fruit trees and put them in pots. I must be mad. I especially bought a place that didn’t need any work. No lawns to mow, no weeding, no pruning- only concrete and gravel - in case I had to go away. Now I have gone out and bought plants. It seems I’m just not happy unless I’m wallowing in dirt and breaking my nails and really they didn't cost much more than a kilo of bananas. I’ve just heard that there’s a community orchard here. It sounds like a lovely idea, but since Neighbourhood Watch has been warning people about locking away their firewood and marking their wood so that it can be identified by police, I’m not very confident about leaving my babies alone in some open paddock unless they have armed guards. The one consolation if anyone tries to steal them from here is that unless they are built li...

This is just a little Hello. It's not quite spring yet, but the daffodils are out and so is the first spring blossom so I've ventured out of the cave. There isn't much to see yet, but the scent of spring is everywhere. . Remembering about waiting too long and putting things off, I called in on a lady I had asked years ago about some of the quaint street names around here - Salvator Place, Poets Road... etc. because she had written a little book about West Hobart. Though in her nineties now, she was still going strong and has since published another book, her fifth so far - a historical novel about early Tasmania. I meant to ask her about some of the shops and old cottages but we were so busy talking about other things, I forgot all about it. Living Treasure Joan Goodrick, Historian and Novelist Joan's 2003 Novel -  That's her own artwork on the cover too This little cottage dates from 1835. That's old by Australian standards! Same cottage...