Planted a little vegetable garden today. It’s not quite the one metre square veggie patch that Lolo Houbein recommends in her book One Magic Square: ours is arranged in old styrofoam boxes and buckets. We have coriander, mint, basil, bok choy, silverbeet, radishes, capsicums, heirloom tomatoes and cream-coloured nasturtiums.

I had an article published yesterday on a new blog called The Social Interface. The purpose of the blog is to examine the social implications of technology for professionals and academics from a range of fields. The article is called ‘Planet ebook: from virtual graveyard to literary lift-off’. It discusses ebook opportunities for self-published writers. If […]

Dear Julie, Thanks for your gorgeous video and photos…they are amazing, I love all the ice cream vans! It reminded me of walks in the park. I loved the ice-cream vans and the ice-cream with the sprinkles and the flake sticking out of the side… but it always looked so much better then how it […]

Dear Julie, hello! bonjour! hola! Europe really makes you realised how small the world really is when you can drive 30 mins and enter a new country, language and culture. Being in the Pyrenees for 4 days without internet, slowed down our little life… I remember an old lady who lived around the corner when […]

Dear Yumi, Just heard you’re without wi-fi at the moment in an old chateau in the Pyrenees. Tough life! 😀 Hope you’re having a great time! Since you won’t have an opportunity to reply to my Day 5 post until tomorrow, I’ve put together this quick post to mark Day 6. Here are some photos from […]

Dear Yumi, I loved your little texta plates, particularly because the people are all so happy and the birds line up in a sky that holds on for dear life at the very edge of the picture. Your Pablo Picasso quote inspired me to make a tiny film out of some old (and new) footage. […]

Dear Julie, You are too cute…so cute that I was desperate to find some of my kindy drawings, but all I could find were these plates that I posted on my blog last year: http://dearplastic.blogspot.com/2010/04/textalove.html I wish I could look over my kindy activity books now, but sadly I didn’t pack them in my suitcase. […]

Your photos of those beautiful chalk drawings reminded me of idyllic childhood days. Here are some of my earliest short stories. This is Brent the community-minded ice-cream truck. And here’s a story about a very, very nice transexual wizard with great self-esteem. I lived in some of my imaginary worlds. This is a map I drew up […]

We’ve arrived at Day 2 of my collaboration with Yumi Takahashi. If you missed the post from Day 1, you can read it here. Today’s post is from Yumi. *** Dear Julie, I love stumbling by these gorgeous chalk drawings…usually you can spot them in the afternoon and close to a playground. I think they […]

Yumi Takahashi is a visual artist living in Getxo, Spain. She and her partner, Taka, maintain the blog Dear Plastic. Yumi also has a blog here. Starting today, Yumi and I will be collaborating on an eight-day series of blog posts in which we will trade inspiration on the theme ‘Halcyon Days’. This is a […]