Frittering Time

I went into work on Friday, confidently expecting it to be my last visit before heading to Japan at the end of this week, followed by a stint of long service leave. I knew that the Garden Club was gathering in the garden at 3:30 to plant seedlings but didn't feel that I could leave early on my last shift just to go and plant seedlings. I had a good day and left, telling everyone that I would see them when I got back from Japan and reminding them that I was taking leave for a few weeks.

I came home across the stadium concourse, which I don't normally do. But the trams were terminating at Spencer Street and it seemed the easiest option. I was not expecting anyone still to be in the garden at 5:45 but in fact several people were, so I dropped in to chat to them.

This is the tomato plant that I bought in Bunnings about a month ago. It has more than doubled in size and is obviously very happy in my "winter garden". It even has a couple of tomatoes on it. I am thinking that I might actually use the space as an indoor garden next spring and put a few cherry tomato plants there and see what happens. I might expand my herb collection too, although the vegetable garden on level 4 has a wide variety of herbs I can use

I have been watching with some interest the number of postings on my social media feeds which quietly berate retirees for wasting time, not cleaning and tidying their homes, not doing useful things, in fact, frittering their time away, sitting about, reading social media feeds and not accomplishing anything remotely useful. I don't investigate these things in any detail because I am certain that they will want me to download apps, give them lots of my money and encourage them to nag me for ever. In fact, it doesn't take long to sort my place out, it is usually reasonably tidy and anyway, if I want to fritter my time away on the internet or gazing out the window, or watching tv or reading library books or sitting about in the sun - then I will do

Large yacht heading out of the harbour

Teeny, tiny sailing boat, pottering about on the harbour

Morning sky, turning the world pink

Sometimes, when I am coming back from the La Trobe Street tram stop, if the weather is nice and if I have nothing pressing to do, I stop and sit here for a while and just watch the water.

Sometimes, there are things to do. Such as Sunday, when I met Simon at the Alphington market, and the travelling cat was there:

And Monday, which was a public holiday, when I met Wendy for lunch and we had fish and chips round on the Newquay Promenade and then I met Lindsey in the evening at the Quarterhouse for dinner

Lunchtime view

Evening drinks

Sometimes, things crop up unexpectedly that do need me to engage with the world and actually do things. Such as yesterday, when I went back into work for a few hours because there were things that unexpectedly needed to be done and there wasn't really anyone else available to do them.  

And sometimes, I choose not to do things that are in my calendar, such as the Probus meeting this morning. I have decided that Probus is not right for me at this time. I won't actively resign at this stage. I may change my mind. But I don't feel the need to go to meetings for now. It is very tempting not to go to my Japanese class this evening. I have already done a Japanese class today, an online one at 8:00. But I probably will go to this evening's class. It's the last one for this term and a revision session of the things we have done over the last seven weeks.

Talk about worrying about people who let entire mornings, afternoons or days vanish without noticing. I think I should worry that eight whole weeks have disappeared so quickly!

Freyja and Simon came around yesterday after work and we went to Dokutoku for dinner. They are helping to look after the cats while I am away. Wendy is also helping and everyone needed to be shown where things are. I am not doing very well on the whole "Becoming a Hermit" front!

Some creatures don't care about any of this.
They think snoozing through the day
is what is supposed to happen 😀