School summer vacation in Australia falls December through January, and seems to be getting longer every year — Mitchell won’t actually be back in school til Feb 6th. Not that we mind. All three of us had had enough travel so we elected to stay home in Sydney for this vacation. This is a great time to be in this part of Australia, with lots of entertainment and activities and mostly good weather.

Entertainment

In the last few weeks we’ve seen multiple shows at the Sydney Opera House. All three of us saw Penn & Teller, which I had somehow never got around to in all my trips to Vegas. Very entertaining and confounding.

Mitchell and I went to “Twenty-Sided Tavern”, a heavily and cleverly audience-interactive and improvised show built around Dungeons & Dragons, which I used to play in college and Mitchell has taken up recently. That was a lot of fun for both.

Last week we attended an actual opera at the Opera House, “The Barber of Seville” — I deliberately chose something light and funny for Mitchell and Brendan’s first exposure to opera (not that mine has been much), and we all enjoyed it. My Italian is still very fluent, but it’s hard sometimes to understand the slightly old-fashioned language of opera, as sung by opera singers. On the other hand, most of the lines are repeated multiple times so I have many chances to pick them up.

The Sydney Festival also offers many events and activities, I only made it to Dark Noon, an intriguing take on American history from a South African theater company.

Brendan has attended multiple cricket matches, sometimes accompanied by me, sometimes by Mitchell (neither of us has quite as much appetite for cricket as Brendan does). Next week Brendan and I will head to Melbourne to see a day of the Women’s Ashes test match at the MCG, as well as to catch up with Melbourne friends.

Gardening

I do at least an hour of gardening most days, which is also my main form of exercise — lots of digging, weeding, lifting, carrying, and it’s two stories’ worth of stairs from the top to the bottom of our property.

I’m slowly building my experience of our micro-local conditions while also dealing with the effects of climate change: Sydney has an increasingly humid climate, and we get rains in short, very intense bursts that can overwhelm or wash away plants, particularly as our back yard is on a slope. I realize now how spoiled I was by the very fertile land of San Jose: the soil here is not great. I’m working to improve it with composting and green mulch, and using raised beds to get some of the plants out of the path of flowing water.

The plants also seem confused by the weather, tending to bolt (go to seed) quickly, often getting away from me before I can harvest anything edible. As those seeds go back into the ground, I’m getting subsequent generations of plants that grow better in our local conditions, with variable impact on flavor/texture. Our current generation of arugula plants are the largest I’ve ever seen, but the leaves are mostly tough and not much fun to eat.

Following permaculture principles, I’m experimenting with growing edible perennials like sorrel and asparagus, and eating “exotics” that are easy to grow. Purslane shows up all over our yard this time of year, and we’ve started eating it in salads. Tasty enough and full of nutrients. A pain to wash, however, because it grows so close to the ground.

Part of my motivation for growing our own food is to save on all the plastic and other environmental costs of supermarket food. I have not bought packaged salad in several years now, and all the herbs I need for cooking are usually available in my front yard (basil and coriander are seasonal, so sadly we don’t have them year round).

The variety of plants that were already growing here or spontaneously pop up from time to time points to the mix of cultures that characterizes Sydney — for example, we have a thriving curry leaf tree. It’s not the variety most popular in India, but works just fine for cooking.

A Chinese couple owned this property before us, which may explain some of the plants, like this Chinese tallow tree (also known by other names). The leaves are pretty and have medicinal uses (treatment for boils) in Chinese medicine. But it’s toxic to other plants so I removed it.

I’m able to grow plenty of salad leaves, green beans, tiny tomatoes (but not the big heirlooms I crave), and various squashes, most successfully cucumbers and butternut. Last year we had a lot of okra, this year I’ll be lucky to get enough to make one dish. No idea why the variance.

Eventually, after we build the pool and then properly landscape the backyard, I’d like to plant some fruit trees/shrubs. I’ll have to figure out how to protect them from the birds, which are numerous, hungry, and smart.

I do have several papaya trees coming along, grown from seeds from a papaya I bought at the supermarket. This one is getting close to the point where I’ll need to put netting on it against the birds.

And I grow many flowers, just because I like them. This was a particularly charming phlox grown from seed last year, so far no luck getting it to grow again.

Lego

Another major pastime for me is Lego, both the sets from the Lego company and builds of my own design. My latest is modeled after a typical Sydney Victorian terrace house.

In Lego’s current building style, each floor of a building can be removed so you can access the interiors, which are rich in furnishings and other details — all very cute. My builds so far tend to be bigger, and I’ve experimented several times with making them hinged for interior access. This Victorian terrace is an example, here it is open: