One of the advantages of working from home is that you gain a new insight into what goes on during the day, when normally one would have been at the office.
 
This morning, while working in the study, I overheard the activity of the husband in the next room. Our library is situated in the sitting room, with a desk and comfy chair positioned in front of it. The perfect spot for ‘zooms’.
 
So that gives you the setting – here is some context…
 
As you know my heritage is Italian. My name gives it away, if nothing else does.  Over the years, especially during my time with the husband, we have shared many wonderful times in Italy and closer to home, seeking out Italian food and cultural influence, where possible.
 
The husband was born and bred in Carlton. An inner Melbourne suburb that in the halcyon days of Italian migration to Australia, supported a significant Italian community. I have always maintained that Tezza Ed is a “wanna be” Italian and that is really why he courted me as his life partner.
 
Motivated by a variety of reasons, in recent years he has been learning the Italian language.  He is modest about his skills, but I can proudly state – he is GOOD.  Not a week goes past that he doesn’t share with me his knowledge of conjugated verbs ….. over and over and over again !!
 
This morning, for no particular reason, I seemed to zone in on his class, being held on zoom in the sitting room. Suddenly, at a very loud volume, I heard Dean Martin belting out “that’s Amore”.  Thinking, “oh, how sweet, he is sending me a message to say he loves me”.  I left my desk and came to the sitting room to return the sentiment – oh no, it was not for me he was playing the song, he was playing it for his classmates.  He tells me it was the song he chose for last week’s homework activity.
 
In true Italian “moglie” style, I reacted with jealousy …… Wouldn’t you if you realised he is the only bloke in the class ? 

in case you have never heard the song, here are some of the lyrics.  If you have heard it before - now try and get the tune out of your head .  Or have a listen by linking in above.

Enjoy & stay well
DC x

In September 2001 we moved into the first (and only) home purchased as a married couple. Plough Creek Homestead has been a chameleon that has continuously and at times, breathtakingly, enriched 4/5 of our married life, in more ways than were imaginable.
 
Not least is the love affair between Mother Nature and PCH garden. 3 acres of unsophisticated and informal Aussie backyard has been the architecture of the PCH garden. The husband and I have very different ideas on how the garden should look. It is fair to say that Mother Nature has been the true master designer of what has evolved over the last 20 years. Season after season, she has nurtured, endured, and reacted as the dirt is exposed and lays bare in Winter, so that all that is hidden underneath the surface can hibernate. The growth from the previous year is pruned and the dirt is toiled. In Spring she allows buds, blossoms, and blooms to sparkle like confetti everywhere one looks. Summer can be harsh with hot days that make all the growth go limp until the evening watering or look stressed if there is threat of fires.  Then Autumn dances with breezes and colours that heralds the resting season of Winter. So, the cycle continues.
 
Over the years, there have probably been many moments where I have bored people (especially on my social pages) with the pics of the PCH garden and my comments of being awestruck by what Mother Nature creates and nurtures in the garden. The fruit and veggies, the herbs, the flowers, the leaves, the birds, and the continued changing landscape that is just repetitively joyous.
 
My master plan was always a garden with many ‘rooms’. His idea was a rather formal neat, structured landscape that had even edges. Somehow, we managed to not quite have exactly what either of us visualised, but have loved the textures, perfumes, colours, vistas, and beauty of what has evolved, not quite by design, but by luck and with Mother Natures supervision and oversight. 
 
Plough Creek runs through the gully and the supposed ‘dry creek bed’ is meant to be a cricket pitch in summer, however the continuous water flow allows the majestic swaying gum trees and willow trees to provide an environment that invites and entertains so many varieties of birdlife, that it creates a private sanctuary.  Max (our dear old Labrador) believes that the creek is his personal hydrotherapy and nearly every day, enjoys a dip. He and the birdlife seem to live in harmony, with a mutual love of the water.
 
The succulent garden, succulent pot plant garden and the alfresco dining room under the grape vine create the most zen place to sit and not think. This ‘room’ is possibly my most favourite spot in the garden, especially in autumn when the colours of the falling leaves are truly breathtaking.
 
The various rose gardens, the hellebores free and random, bushes, shrubs and bulbs, together with creepers and vines that find their own trellises, provide so many blooms that I am able to have fresh flowers and share bunches of flowers nearly the whole year round.  The black lily garden bed, the hippeastrums and the bearded irises scattered in unexpected spots. Camellia and rhododendron trees that are old, cranky and weird shapes, but always bloom with magnificent flower and colour. All amongst the many varieties of trees that hide critters and fungus beneath them, the orchid pots that were from my grandfather’s hothouse in the 1960s and often other surprise plants are found, that are quite unexpected. Across the front fence are the Australian natives that frame the entry driveway.
 
There is the veggie garden, the herb garden, the citrus grove with more than 20 different varieties of fruit and then the other fruit and stone fruit trees, interspersed with olive trees that all provide bounty, that means that Plough Creek kitchen can bubble and brew to make homemade fare to share with others.
 
And then, on other days the garden provides the serenity, safety and glorious back drop for parties, wedding, celebrations of life (funerals), family living and festive occasions.
 
Mother Nature and Plough Creek Garden, I want to say thank you for a love affair that has quite simply filled my soul with pure joy and wonder.
 
Take a moment and go enjoy some time with Mother Nature, wherever you are.

Stay well, go easy and #allyouneedislove

​DC

Mother Nature is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of the mother.Wikipedia