Gardening on the roof

This afternoon Tomsy, Nomes, Ray, Stella and I did some gardening on the roof.
We planted mostly small, coastal plants along one edge of the roof. Hopefully when they grow they'll form a windbreak to shelter other plants.



We planted some herbs as well, to use in Credo:

We're hoping to grow vegetables to cook in Credo as well, and to get people who come to lunch involved in the gardening.
The chilli plants we have on the fire escape are starting to grow fruit...

...and the kangaroo apple (or poroporo if you are New Zealish) is flowering:

What's been going on

Haven't blogged for a while (but have been updating on how Dad is) because I've been very busy and pretty exhausted.
Dad's been recovering really quickly, so he's going to be discharged tomorrow morning, only four days after his operation.
We've been doing orientation stuff with the new residents (Dave and Stella), which is mostly training and workshops and stuff to help prepare them for the year. On Thursday we did training for responding to heroin overdoses, and the next day (Australia Day) we responded to the first overdose of the year, and people started turning up for a barbeque I'd organised, while the paramedics were trying to get this guy to take narcan!
We had my 'travelling Nana' (last year she went to Borneo, this year she's going to Vietnam and Cambodia) over for dinner.
Last night I went with Bevan to see this band Maverick play at The Stork, in Elizabeth Street. Then this afternoon I was walking through Chinatown to The Den, with Nomes and Stella, and someone yelled out something like, 'Hey, man in the orange t-shirt!' and I expected that I probably had imagined it, but then someone grabbed my arm and said, 'Hey you came and saw us last night!' I had no idea who she was for a sec (I think she had sunglasses on) and had to try and remember what I'd been doing the night before, then realised she was from the band.
Just been skating on the roof of the carpark down the street, and someone was leaning out the window of one of the buildings across the street, yelling out, 'Hi! Hi!' and waving, so I waved back.

My dad's in hospital

Some oof yous will already know this, but my dad had a heart attack on Sunday so he's been in hospital since then, having tests and stuff. Me and my mum have been in to visit him a bit and he seems fairly well, but pretty annoyed that he's not going to be able to go home for a while. This morning we found out that he's going to have to have open heart surgery so that they can do a triple bypass (so his blood can get around a big clot in his heart). We don't know yet when that'll be, but he'll be moved to another hospital near where I live (close for me, but a long way for Mum), and he'll have to stay there for about a week, and then have another six weeks off work.

Moving downstairs

Last week me and Ray sawpped rooms. I did this a few nights before I moved downstairs, with the paints Justin gave me for my birthday:

This is what level 8 looked like when me and Ray were moving all our stuff:

Took these during various stages of setting up my new room:

Have been rearranging the living area a bit as well, because there wasn't really any space for a decent-sized dining table or anything. Also, Marcus' Leviathan painting's been brought back. (It was in his shed.)

Brian Houston on poverty

I got a text message on Friday from John, saying that he'd been channel surfing, and come across Brian Houston (the main pastor at Hillsong in Sydney) talking about poverty. I thought it might be interesting, seeing as they've gotten a lot of criticism regarding their emphasis on individual prosperity. So this afternoon I checked out their podcast - you can find it here, if you have iTunes. I managed to find a sermon that Brian gave at the Hillsong conference in London last year about the Make Poverty History campaign and about why Moses and Jesus both said that there will always be poverty (Deuteronomy 15:11, Matthew 26:11). Although he seems to say at one point that you need to be rich to help the poor (I may be misinterpreting him), he does say a lot of good stuff about the church's responsibility to help the poor.

Visiting Warrnambool

Thursday night I went down to Warrnambool to visit the Scripture Union teams that are down there at the moment. (I cam back yesterday morning for work.)
At the primary school where they're having Champion City (the kids program) they have really interesting gardens:

I spent most of my time there with the Ignite (the youth program) team. Friday afternoon/evening we were at the beach playing volleyball and cricket and getting sand in our eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

Dr Pompo/TV cake

Very late last night, when everyone was home, we had drinks on the roof, and Ray brought out a birthday cake she'd made for me. It was shaped like Dr Pompo, on TV:

You can also see the other Dr Pompos that Ray made, one from a real pumpkin (it's all shrivelled up now) and the other from a pumpkin pot. (Ray likes Dr Pompo a lot.)

Birthday tea

After work today Dad came over and had a look at our garden. Then Mum and Adam and Justin came in on the train, and Nomes got back from the beach and we had Chinese food for tea. Adam gave me a bootleg of the U2 show we went to. Justin gave me some spray paint. Mum and Dad gave me some money to get some shoes. Nomes gave me two more souvienir teaspoons, one of which is from Avocado Land, which I actually went to as a toddler. (It's called Tropical Fruit World now though.) So now my teaspoon rack is full. (Paul and Amber brought me back one when they went to Canberra last year.)

My birthday

Today's my birthday. (I've actually had quite a lot of unexpected birthdays in the last year, but this is the day that I was actually born on.)
Nathan gave me this:

(Explanation: Tomsy wanted me to get a mullet for his wedding, and so a heap of people were trying to get me to get a mullet, before I got it cut for the G20.)

Confest

On Friday afternoon me and Boonie caught the 5:30 bus to Deniliquin. We stopped in Heathcote, where I was pleased to find there were shoes on the powerlines:

Took these between Heathcote and Echuca-Moama:

We met Ray and Ben in Deniliquin at about 10pm, and they gave us a lift to the Confest site, which was at a river near Moulamein. Our camp was on the other side of the river from the car park, so we had to use a barge to get across.
I ended up sleeping on the ground, because Ben had been going to bring a tent for Boonie or something, but he hadn't, so Boonie used the tent I'd brought.

This time there were a lot less workshops going on, and I wasn't really interested in any of them, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the river and and just hanging out at the camp, enjoying being out of the city.
On New Years Eve, after we had tea, Stella (she's moving in with us in a couple of weeks) was using these glow poi:


At midnight I was watching the fire-twirlers, and I went to bed not long after. I didn't sleep very much though, because it rained all night.
On the way back to Melbourne yesterday I got some avocado-free guacamole-flavoured chips in Deniliquin ...

... we had to stop because there were goats on the road ...

... me and Ben had breadcrust earrings ...

... and in Elmore Baby Jesus was in a cage.

We got home at about 10:30pm or something.
And my tomatoes are ripening.