The scattering of ashes

I've just been asked to photograph a funeral this  friday.  The scattering of ashes, a celebration of life. I said yes straight away.  The "guest of honour" was a damn fine man who loved a joke and a story and brought up two good, hard working, honest lads and made his wife proud everyday. A tight knit family with grandkids that adored their pop.
  
When asked if I could record the event I was never going to say no, but I was really happy when the "service" was outlined to me.   He was not a god fearing, church going, man. But a man who held the beach close to his heart so when told it was a beachside affair I was really pleased the family had chosen to avoid the trappings of the sad "funeral home" type service in favour of a community celebration of a life well lived.   The order of service is finalised......and it will be casual and comfortable.  Informal is a good term.   I have my role in the day organised, planned in a single phone call, set in stone.  From the shot list I know what gear I will need and where I need to be at what part of the celebration.  Planning makes it all very easy and, for me, it will be good to keep busy.

I have photographed a few funerals in the past.  Some family, some work related and some just because the haze of grief is often so strong a physical reminder is needed.   I am usually asked to record the event when distance is a factor or aged relatives, too unwell to undertake the journey,  want to be a part of it.  The final images are a way for those people to see the crowd and give them, even in absentia, some closure.    I have also photographed the casket topper flowers to be made into thank you cards. There are printers here in Australia that will do a short quick print run and the card can have specific names and dates on the reverse.   I know a few other photographers who also have been asked to record such events, but I hope it never becomes a commercialised trend.

So if you see me pointing a camera at you on friday arvo don't hide.  Stand and be proud and know that  the family will be glad to see your face.

Failure

I have signed up for an ABC workshop on creative writing and given the task of writing a 500 word piece about failure.  When I read
the email about the workshop my first thought was ... oh dear god I'm going to fail at this!!!  I was very ordinary at writing at school and haven't done any study since that half baked attempt at a Combined Arts/Law Degree in the 90's. I knew it would be a struggle.   My mind began to wander back thru the last half century to see what failures I have endured and what was I prepared to admit to.  My first failure must have been as a seven year old when I pulled out of the ballet recital because they wanted me to pop around the curtain and tip my top hat at the end of the show.  I was way to shy to do anything like that so ...  FAIL!  Then there were similar fails in the Marching Girls display and my Flute exams.  Fail Fail Fail!  So before I hit my teens failure seemed to be a regular and accepted occurrence in my world.

My teen years were similarly smattered with more failures ...  High School Maths, the Year 10 production of Jesus Christ Superstar and mini bike races all delivered varying levels of failure.

As my working life commenced I can but assume there have been failures in my 30 odd years of daily grind. Strangely NONE  immediately sprang to mind.  That made me wonder WHY I didn't recall those important working life failures.  I'm sure there were failures, especially after such a opulent  and glorious start to a life rich in failure.   It was then I began to examine the concept of failure as it relates to me.

Having never really given my long and diverse list of failures much thought before, the more I rewound my life's failures, the more I began to consider failure to be a positive force in my existance.  Maybe better said I don't really consider failure to be a negative experience.  I began to see failure as more like a building block for success.  Foundation. Yes, foundation is a good word.  Without the failure there would have been no desire to improve, push forward, strive, continue.  Failure is a filter of my level of interest in a given subject.   If I fail at something, but continue to try, that must mean I find it interesting and worth having another go at!  Unlike Ballet, where I chucked my ballet flats in my white and pink "beauty case" and never went back!

So I guess this post on the ABC Workshop writing about failure is, in fact,  a failure in its own right.
I haven't failed in that I have written it, but it is more about the positive aspects of failure than the sad and negative connotations the word failure usually evokes.  Whether that makes me a "glass half full" rather than a "glass half empty" person, I do not know, but I do know I will continue to fail through my remaining days.  I also know I will continue to grow and learn from my abject failures.  As  should we all.   Anyone who says they have never failed has done so with those words alone!

The whiff of a garage sale...

Well as you might have previously read I am in serious de-hoarding mode.  Much of the loungeroom and nearly all of the kitchen has been "culled".  All that stuff I do not need, never needed and will never use is now boxed and downstairs in the screened room.  So the place still looks like a bomb has hit, but I can see the difference and that's all that matters.  Time now to start planning the next garage sale.  Thankfully there is an organisation who help in this process.   18 months ago they held the second National Garage Sale trail and I was a part of it.    It was so good, I'm doing it again!

The Garage Sale Trail has a website where you list your address and your goodies and they do the rest.  I registered last night and this year I get a web page to show my wares and encourage people to come on along. I kicked it off last night and will edit my page as I go along.  Last night I kept remembering things and I must have update my page about 15 times.  It is nowhere near complete, but at least I got it started.   I can upload pictures too, to show you my "junque" before the big day.

So when is the big day I imagine you are asking?   26th October it is and if you think that is too far off then you are either supremely organised or simply don't have as much "stuff" as I do.  Oh, and it's not just me.  Our last garage sale and this one is a 3 generation effort!!  As a result we also have 3 times as much "stuff" as most.

There will be the usual books, magazines, DVD's and Cd's but this year we are also jettisoning 2 dining suites, 3 Edwardian pine chests of drawers, some french doors with beautiful old float glass panels, a bedroom chair or two, some spare dining chairs, pine toy box,   an old rocking highchair, and box after box of china, glass and kitchen stuff.  Oh and clothes, shoes, bags, fabrics, curtains, rugs....the list is ridiculous and there is more to come!!!   So hopefully we will have less "junque"  on October 27!!!!

What about you?  Thinking you might like to do the same?   Try the garage sale trail if you want some help!

Of holidays and hoarding!

The opportunity arose for me to use the absolute last of my annual leave to have a few days off.  When leave was combined with RDO's and weekends I managed to accumulate 17 consecutive days off.  BLISS!!  Since being sick in 2012 I have not been able to settle back into work very well.  So many things had changed.  While I was off work sick I watched my workmate Jenny die after an horrendous battle with cancer and I guess 7 admissions to hospital, 3 surgeries and being made radioactive caused a shift in my priorities.  The work place changed too. New broom sweeping clean, my office was moved and all my pictures came down.  I am no longer proud of the work I produce.  In the past, a name or a circumstance would have me recall a matter with ease, but this too has gone.  Whether it be as a result of the radioactive ablation burning holes in my brain or whether is it because of a shift in priorities I simply do not know.   The people are still the absolute best thing about that place, but they too seem different.  I guess it is most likely just that I am different now.

So with 17 days to fill I embarked on a task I had been attempting for some time, but constantly failing at.  That task is ridding myself of the hoarding gene I inherited from my mother and making my home "easy".  Easy to live in, easy to clean and all round better than it has been for years.  Late in 2012 I bought a new bed and my DIVINE 1880's porcelain and nickel plated number moved to the garage.  With it to the garage was sent two Edwardian pine chests and a matching duchess and all the "antiquey" pieces in my bedroom.    I kept the bronze statue and a couple of good pieces of art and the curtains, but the rest was banished to the shed!   Replacements were minimal, two bedsides and a single tall chest in painted timber and a brand spanking new ensemble that cost me an arm and a leg!!!  Choice!  6 months on, the bedroom is still pristine. A place for everything and everything in its place!  I have added only minimal stuff.  A brolly and hat stand and a canvas on the wall.

It seemed prudent to use these 17 days to work the same magic on the lounge and kitchen areas.  They have looked like a bomb hit for some time now.  I have taken to sorting stuff into boxes.  Garage Sale, Keep, Dump and "Things I want to photograph" are the working titles.   So far I have worked my way around about 2/3rd of the loungeroom with reasonable success.   The curtains went to the charity bin and were replaced by 10 new blockout drops in "Mocha". A standard lamp was added as was a footstool to match the  super comfy armchair I bought earlier this year and it all looks good thusfar.  I still need to address the dining table.  Depending on what day of the week it is the dining table is either a dining table that no-one ever eats at or a macro desktop studio surrounded by lighting gear and a portable backdrop stand!  This is the area I am up to now.  I could not have made it this far with the assistance of my sister Nola.  She drove me forward when I was stalled and did the jobs I couldn't do while injured.

It's getting easier.  The decision making.  What stays, what goes and which box they go in.   The garage sale boxes are filling and the rubbish bin goes out each sunday with the proceeds of the "Dump" box.  The local charity bin is copping a flogging too!  So a date has been set for the next garage sale and hopefully on October 26 the excesses of my life will be taken to new homes!  Until then I need to keep sorting "stuff".  It's not really that hard.  Will I use it?  Have I recently used it?  Have I EVER used it?!?!?!  I need to keep some things like the nun's habit (ideal for fancy dress parties) and the angels wings (ideal for photo opportunities), but so much other stuff can go.  I simply do not need it, will not use it and want it out of my world.

The kitchen is next to be stripped bare.  You know that second drawer down in the kitchen.  Come on....  we all have one.  The one with the olive stoner  and the parmesan grater in it.  Well that is my next big task.  Sadly I do use both my olive stoner and parmesan grater on a regular basis, but I bet there is stuff I can dispose of!!!

I didn't just spend my holidays in cleaning mode. I also took a couple of photos, did some bushwalking and spent a fair bit of time in the veggie patch.  I spent part time seeding dried chillies I grew last season and I am thankful I thought to wear latex gloves for the process.  I also had some work done on both cars and found a happy coincidence in both cars have the exact same 3 disc cd boxed set in them and both cars have disc 1 in the player! Yes, it is Faithless.  I managed to meet up with a few friends for coffee and cakie, but nowhere near enough of them. Did some family history research and debunked a few myths. Found that the marriage listed in the family bible from 1853 is a farce.   I also endured a heap of medical appointments (and they are wearing thin let me assure you).   In fact today at one appointment my phone rang, to confirm another tomorrow. I feel like I am on a treadmill and I can't work out how to get off!  Tonight I will cook up a storm and maybe even make some more choc mint fudge and chilli chocolate.  Going back to work tomorrow is going to be very hard.  Roll on retirement!

I'm no Costa Georgiadis or even Jerry Coleby-Williams

I'm no Costa Georgiadis or even Jerry Coleby-Williams.  I'm not even close to being a Jane Edmanson or a Sophie Thomson. Nor even a Pip Courtney,  but I do love to tinker in the veggie patch.  What started a few years ago with one 1200x900x300mm raised bed has become a bit of an obsession with 6 beds full to bursting with the freshest of veggies imaginable!   In the height of summer I have so much produce I give it away to family, neighbours and friends.  Now in the thick of winter I struggle to get enough out of it at all.  But that's not a bad thing. Winter is when I replenish the soil and build up the worm population.

I am trialling a 6 bed rotation system this year.  No two crops from the same family in a row.  Alternating root crops with leaf crops season by season yet still attempting to adhere to the principals of companion planting.  I don't use any insecticides or pestacides. I do make my own compost and I do use a mix of crushed up fish guts and seaweed as a deterrent to the white cabbage moth, but otherwise I hand pick pests off leaves and hope for good rainfall, sunny days and strong growth.  Season dependant I use chillies and marigolds to discourage bugs.  Fortunately the local possum population is not fond of broccoli or radish, so they leave me alone.

I've done a little experimenting too this season.  I planted spring onion seeds into a mini greenhouse and let them establish.  I transferred  them into a bed after a few weeks.   That same day they were planted I directly sewed seeds from the same packet into another bed and 10 weeks on the direct sewn spring onions are thriving.  The greenhouse crop, whilst older, is far less advanced.  Whooda thunkit!  So for spring onions at least I will buy seeds now, not punnets. Seeds are HEAPS cheaper and are always on hand so  I can zip out and plant a few rows instead of driving to the nursery and grabbing a punnet THEN planting!  Over time I will test that theory further with other veggies too.  

So with my 6 beds full or replenishing before a spring crop I needed to either buy more beds and get another truckload of soil delivered  OR acquire more space by other methods.  I'd like to increase the variety of plants I grow and so some extra beds are essential. The backyard here is massive, but massively overgrown.  It is just your classic quarter acre block, but I have left one area wild for native birds and animals.  Side beds are overgrown and have poor soil with neighbouring trees sucking the life blood out of them and being a mass of twisted tree roots.  The large lawn section is where I have placed the 6 beds I already have, but that still leaves me with masses of lawn to mow and realistically I could put another 6 beds in........  but then it wouldn't really look much like a backyard anymore!!  So in my quest for more space  I have acquired the use of a long narrow disused veggie bed that is divided into four smaller spaces at my sister home, just up the road.

That bed is in really poor condition!  Some worms, but a tangled mat of roots in the soil that will take me some time to clean out and build up.  I tackled one part of it yesterday and got it cleaned out and I planted spring onions to get something in!   Then I bought some blood and bone and lucern mulch.  Today I spent a couple of hours digging out what weeds and roots I could then treated the whole bed with blood and bone.  I covered two beds with lucern mulch and gave it all a good water.  I then planted garlic in the corner of the spring onion bed and tomatoes and capsicum in the far end of the bed.  The one remaining plant from last year is a rhubarb so it got a hit of blood and bone and a good water too.  It may well flourish again.

So what is a blog without images.  Heres some of the garden...... or should I say gardens!!!

Family History.... here we go again!

Australia Day 1988. The Bicentennial.   Sitting by the pool having a great celebratory lunch.   F111's flew overhead. Fireworks planned for later that night.  We were having a BBQ lunch in the great outdoors.   I asked the seemingly innocent question of "Who came to Australia first?".  Dad said it wasn't him.  He arrived here from England via the rest of the world in the 1940's.  Mum had no idea about her family.  She knew her mum was from Ireland, but knew nothing about her dad.  How hard could it be?  Stupidly I drew up what we knew...... one chart with about 8 names on it.  The search had begun.

Fast forward 20 years and I thought I knew enough.  I am a 7th generation born Aussie on my mums dads side.  They arrived as assisted immigrants in 1853. Hundreds of hours sifting thru births, deaths and marriage records.  Weeks lost searching thru microfilm and microfiche.  Untold trips to Sydney, Tamworth, Inverell, Maitland and Warialda.  Hours spent in cemeteries and the research even lead to me buying the licence for the family cemetery plot in Sydney that had gone unused for over 100 years.   I felt I was done.  Those initial 8 names on a piece of paper became nearly 1600 names on a laptop database.

25 years on from that first question something weird happened.  Cousin Gen contacted me on Facebook saying she was interested in family history and asked what did I know.  Gen is on my dad's side.  I admitted I knew very little.  Yes, I do have the family bible which had its first entry related too a marriage in 1853 in England, but nothing earlier than that.  I suggested we contact another cousin, Jeremy, who moved here from the UK about 25 years ago.  He surely would know more.   I said I'd ask my mum to ring Jeremy and organise a get together.

A couple of days later I spoke to my mum about my conversation with Gen and about contacting Jeremy for us.   Freakishly she told me Jeremy had just rung her wanting to know what I knew about the family history and suggesting we get together to find out what we know and where to look next.  I sent Gen a message and she was astounded at what had transpired.

So a date was set for us to all get together.  We are spread out over about 400kms up the east coast, each some 200kms away from the next.  We are all getting together next weekend.

In the interim I thought I would start looking to see what information I had and what I needed to move further backwards.  Unlike the records for New South Wales nothing seems easy with the British stuff.  To order a certificate you need an Index number.  But the Government Record Office doesn't help you find the index number. For that you need to go to a free search engine to find the index number.  Well EVERY name combination I have tried leads to precisely NOWHERE.  Even when I have the exact date and place of a marriage I simply can not find an index number.  You CAN order a certificate without an index number, but it is a long, slow, expensive process.  I have ordered ONE so far, but I don't believe it will be here for another fortnight or so, after our get together.

So I took myself to the local library one night last week.  They have a great family history unit and are open till 7 most nights during the week.  Three hours into my search I found our family.  On a census.  I found where they were living, who was in the house and the name of the brides mother.  I found a few names in her family and then what appears to be a previous marriage for my main line.  But nothing can be confirmed until I get hold of a certificate which will hopefully show who is a widow and the names of some parents.

I never wanted to follow this line.  My fascination has always been Australian History.  I always knew it would be hard, slow and expensive to follow the British line...... but I have been sucked right in.  Family History research is like heroin.  Addictive!   After just this week searching I have realised just how lucky we are in NSW.  The records here are freely searchable, easy to find and advanced search functions make finding families and cross referencing dates and places an easy task.  I can only see a struggle ahead for the Brit stuff!

I have managed to find a photo of every generation backwards in my mums lot to their arrival in Oz.   So in 2011 i tried to take nice family portrait to hang in the hall with the historical stuff.

Yeah well here's what my lot consider a great portrait.   See what I am up against!!!

Spice Girl

Well all the plans for the weekend have been scrapped.  These plans have been in the making for months.  We had to wait for niece to go to Europe for it all to happen.  And she has finally gone!  The plans were to get into Nephew no.2's bedroom and do a total reno.  But rain has stopped play.   The paint won't dry in time and he's still tucked up in bed after some horribly early starts this week.  So plans are delayed and we will attempt it next weekend IF the weather improves.

So what is a girl to do with when she is all geared up for painting and decorating???? Well take some photos I suppose.   My dining table can become a table top studio with the addition of a few flash heads, light stands, backing paper, modifiers and some rather expensive radio triggers called pocket wizards.  I learnt a long time ago and the hard way that me and cables don't work well together after dragging a brand new $4000 camera across a rough cement ledge, over the edge of the ledge and towards the ground because I had cables wrapped around my ankles.   It was only the super fast reaction of a naked woman who caught the camera by its neck strap mere millimetres before it connected with the rocky ground that saved the day.   Well that isn't exactly true, she wasn't totally naked, she was wearing a pair of angles wings at the time...... but that's a whole other story!  The event cause me to race out and buy some cheap shoddy ebay triggers to fire my flash heads, but they were never really reliable. They didn't have good range. OK for use inside, but outside it was a hit and miss affair.    So last year when a good mate was offloading some top of the range pocket wizards I stepped up and bought his goods.   And I have never looked back!  They are so easy to use, easy to store, reliable and work on three different channels and in three different groups and I can control each group individually from the camera.  I love it.

Of course it is super easy now...... but when I first got them it was a different story. Teachers will tell you we all learn differently.   I loved TAFE for its immediacy and face to face teaching and HATED uni because it lacked both.  I learn by watching, asking and doing, not by reading and therefore 3 years of uni  by correspondence was doomed to fail from the start.   So when the Pocket Wizards entered my life I was so lucky to have Josh to show me the intricacies of the world of wireless strobes.  Josh is a genius and I have mentioned before how he believes I am a dinosaur, technologically speaking!  T-Rex!

The dining table has become the table top studio many a time and this weekend the spices came out to play.  It started with chillies a few weeks ago, then star anise and cinnamon quills.  Yesterday the saffron.  Today was vanilla beans and cardamon pods.  My kitchen cupboards are filled with such photographically interesting ingredients.  So that's how I spent the day.  Not painting or pulling beds apart and building new ones. Not washing new bed linen for use and old bed linen for donation. The rain hasn't stopped all day, but I think I did ok all the same!!!