About Me

What, you want to know more about me? Don't
get me started or you will be wading through my website for
hours. But then, you have plenty of time don't you! The
theme of my site should immediately tell you a lot. Instead of
Barbie dolls and teddy bears, I love horses and zebras, and
cats are also very important in my life.
Where do I start? All I can say to begin
with, is thank goodness my mother never dressed me in
hideous, frilly, pale pink, girly clothes. It wasn't very
practical any way living on one acre of land which was
absolutely HUGE to me as a child. I could not understand how my
cousins could bear living with such small backyards in the
suburbs. I would have died being so cramped up and having
to spend so much time inside.
My cultural heritage is European and in the
early days, our one acre of land was well utilised. It was full
of animals - a cat, a dog, chickens, ducks, domestic rabbits at
one stage, a goat, a lamb; large vegetable garden and plenty of
fruit trees, namely apples, plums, quinces, figs and a
lemon tree. What my parents could not grow or make themselves,
they bought, and that was not much in the food department.
I grew up on fresh fruit and vegetables, freshly slaughtered
meat which was purchased directly from a farmer (beef, pork
or lamb). My maternal grandmother did not waste ANYTHING
from the carcass which she, together with my grandfather, would
spend the whole day carving up and packing into manageable
portions into their freezer, often with the help of my
parents. In fact, my grandmother even made her
own noodles - you can imagine the delicious full flavour
of my grandmother's (and my mother's) chicken noodle
soup made from home grown chooks, home grown
vegetables and home made noodles. A restaurant would do
anything to have such a meal on their menu. Don't forget that
my parents and my grandparents survived the second world
war in Europe and nothing was ever discarded until every usable
part was finished with. Another example is how my mother
provided us with feather pillows amd feather doonas for all our
beds and my grandmother made exquisite crocheted lace
borders for the pillow slips for our duck feather
pillows. Having such resourceful parents (and grandparents) was
definitely an advantage in many ways.
Instead of writing screeds here, I will
recall memories from my childhood, teenage years and adult life
in separate pages. Bear with me as I add to those pages over
time.
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