Some elderly folk choose to live in hostel accommodation.  In return for an investment and a weekly fee, private rooms are provided plus all meals in a community dining area, laundry, recreation and limited support.  The investment is largly refundable on leaving and access and pricing are via government arrangments.

On another topic, old family recipes were delved into to find food suitable for a person who is very ill.  One idea was Lemon Sago, a bland non-fibrous yet tasty substance, perfect really, yet the appeal was limited!  Cream goes well over the lemon.
Tapioca and sago seem to be the same thing although the final texture had larger fuller 'blobs' than I recall. All guess work, as a number of recipes are found all with variations in the amounts.
As purchased, the tiny 'grains' of sago are made from processing the plant material to obtain a starchy substance, I suppose. So, the grains do not grow on trees and Wikipedia could tell the story.
Lemon Sago
Boil 2 cups water. Add three quarter cup of sago and stir till boiling and simmer 15-20 minutes.  Add half cup lemon juice and grated rind and a tablespoon of honey or golden syrup.  Cook another 2 minutes.

So, tapioca is an ingredient in those truly amazing Asian drinks, for example those based on green tea and found at cafe style shops in the Sydney suburbs. And tapioca does have fibre afterall.
  

Getting cut down to size.  Rainfall goes with serious lawn mowing.

What if a politican is unstable or disturbed? 
Hyper-self-importance, hints of paranoia, highs and lows, talks non-stop, works non-stop -  remind you of someone in the spotlight?
What do we make of this personality overall?
Is it just what the country needs.

Unoriginal words from a perfidious voter that's been got in by politics on the media. 

A certain MP has swanned around the globe for several years attending talk fests.  Fly in fly out style with relative freedom and with the luxury of dallying and trifling with us and the media.
Next he exercises his enormous ego by making statement from the US.  In the spotlight, tugging at our heartstrings at little.  Poor little vegemite!  Fullfilling the ambitions of some faction or other. Therese makes heartfelt statements about hard work and the like.  Well, join the club.
Well, things have been moving forward all the while. Real work in Canberra has progressed during his absences. Who does he think he is to turn up now making a kerfuffle just like his naughty cats in his story book? 
Initially I was 4 krudd, was pleased he was PM, but that was yesterday.

Imagine the glee at the 'big end of town' over tactics that downplay recent leglislation that taxes those with the 'mostest' and taxes the hugh mineral sector and, not only that, kicks off emissions trading.  
Everything, well, almost everything, that this person in the street dreams of.  And it is not due to Kevin Rudd.

To our north, Ramadan is akin to Lent.

Lenten Carbon Fast 2012.....February 23...Day 2
Make one of your journeys more environmentally friendly today.  Could you combine two trips?  Carpool rather than driving solo?  Bike or walk?  Have you tried taking the bus or train instead of driving? http://www.131500.com.au

Blackened tree stump, escaped turning into ash but didn't escape the axeman.  The board hole or notch is where the axeman stood.

If I could verbalise I might articulate similar ideas to Alain de Bottom's, visiting atheist philosopher. Does he say that the lives of all of us are enmeshed in tradition arising from faith and beliefs? And this has pragmatic spin-offs.

Lenten Carbon Fast 2012 provides an action for each day of Lent, which will help you cut down on CO2 emissions. (Whether this use of Lent is a trifle odd and way off the mark is difficult to say not that the world's religions need not concern themselves with environmental issues because all aspects of life are 'right up there'. The calendar has been locally adapted from foreign origins.)

Ash Wednesday February 22. 

Begin your Lenten journey with a quiet prayer.  As both a symbolic and practical act, remove one light bulb from your home and live without its light for the next 40 days.  This will decrease your energy use, and act as a reminder of your Lenten Carbon Fast.  

Don't choose to live in the temperate latitudes.  An hypothesis links the distance from the equator with the outbreak of food intolerances.
Products with evocative names like 'Healtheries' Kidscare come to the rescue.  Apart from carbohydrate they are very scarce on nurtrients, are like buying a whole 20g of hot air, which makes them highly priced. They are made in China from a long list of odds and ends.
Wholesome food is rejected and substituted with strange concoctions, more bizarre than Potato stix, costing twice as much, and accepted as healthy alternatives. Good plain food can't be all bad or can it?
I'd be the first to admit that some aspects of children remain a very curious mystery beyond me, and surely they can be demanding and active in a way that doesn't fit in with our chosen lifestyle.  It takes parenting and more allowances made for their behaviour along with acceptance that they can't all be a genius without labelling them with an abnormality and drugged-up en masse.  But, I'm still in the 18th century.

1950's four cylinder is rebuilt.
The fly wheel is heavy as and the wishbones are large.

Grassland in North West Queensland.

More of western Queensland.  Photo is not of current times.  Abundant rain has fallen recently in much of Queensland.

Western Queensland fence line. 9 kilometres. In drought, it seems.
Borrowed photo, just a ring-in. 

Still dreaming, visitors from outer spaces lie in romantic insulation in their home on wheels.  The city is stirring at sunrise. Google home page is flippant to the strains of 'cold cold heart'. Saint Valentines Day 2012.

'Have a heart' and refuse to use plastic shopping bags.  On sea and land the plastic breaks down into tiny pieces that are lethal to life forms which have a crucial role in our earth's homeostatis.
One city has just outlawed plastic bags altogether.
Take3.org.au is taking on this unseen sinister lurking menace with the message to take three pieces of litter away from the waterfront each time you visit. The sea is full of plastic bags and trash.

Lately, rain has hung around, humidity is high, the grass is greener and a stark sunny break got a few tennis players back onto the court. A large picnic group, shady fig trees and lawn bowlers are just out of range.
Must be time to get a wide angle camera.

Public forum on Wednesday.

 Regulatory photos from Civic park towards Laman Street.

 Surely this is the architectural style that is enjoying a reappearance.  This type of entrance with the rectangular structure to the fore is seen everywhere.

Towards Laman Street post fig trees, today.  Seems ok without trees planted as an avenue  The division of Laman street from the park below, by a line of trees, may be undesirable, when the area could be continuous using wide, broad, cleared steppes sweeping up to Laman street.  Would that mean more use of perpendicular lines?
  

Real Japanese recipe from an exchange student

Ichiban Boshi. Sydney.  Japanese dining with a dash of modern simplicity. Believe this brand name may be found around Asia and in Russia.
Soba noodles had been heard of in Japanese recipes and only recently it was realized they are buckwheat noodles with a distinctive appearance but the name soba can apply to a range of noodles. Determined to make a certian Asian salad it was unclear whether genuine soba noodles would be to our liking and supplies were not plentiful, so thin rice noodles were used instead and were aok and buckwheat noodles remain to be sampled another day.

Manpower and the broad axe and train sleeper hewers.  From that to this. Hey, Coles supermarket shelves of fresh produce are very diminished today (in one store at least) which could be because half the state is in flood or for some other reasons.
Who wants to see pairs of giant new supermarkets duplicated everywhere at the expense of local farmers unable to get good returns for their produce?
The obligatory trolley full to overflowing with gratuitous foodstuffs and crap is the status quo and supermarkets everywhere enjoy their captive consumers and grind and drive local producers to extinction. Repeating well worn phrases in this rant.
No worries with frozen, canned and some fresh supplies of food from China or from where ever, so many food lines sourced from countries far and wide at the cost of local expertise and jobs, all to make sure the duopoly is profitable. While it may not be confined to overseas producers, who knows if unhealthy products are used? Are spot checks done?
Well, that's how it seems. Could be that local producers need to become all super professional growers, no mucking around anymore, conform or go broke, out with diversity. Production is dictated.

Coffee shop. A kooky coffee shop in St Kilda complete with an early kooka(burra) gas stove as a prop. Vocab: Kitchen stove or cooker.

Mighty trees line one side of Maitland Road, Islington, while on the other side much younger trees grow in a shape that nicely suits the situation.  With leaves that fall in summer along the edge of the park the trees make an impressive line up although all that litter is probably a bit of a problem for some people nearby.

Apart from this, the giant mature red cedar tree is buttressed like these when seen in the few specimens that remain and is one of the few indigenous trees that are deciduous. Aparently cedars can be grown easily enough.

See the Bogey Hole swimming pool full of caffe latte. Sea spray high as the top of the cliffs, taken on two different days.

Coffee. Could be Charlestown square.