Monthly Archives: July 2012

The incidental gardener

Being fifty-something, I love the joy of exploring a well-loved garden even though my own little piece of the great outdoors is much-neglected.

You see, I’m an incidental gardener.

I wish it wasn’t so. But it is.

Most of the year my garden fends for itself, passing from season to season with very little attention. I like to think of my patch as Darwinian, where only the fittest survive. My plants know the drill – adapt to the neglect … or die. Many of them do keel over. Hardier types like the silver birch trees thrive under my laxity, growing tall and strong, and marking each turn of the season with precision.

I know many avid green thumbers who have a solid routine, gardening weekly (even daily) to ensure everything is dead-headed, weeded, watered and nourished. And I can see the results are worth the effort … lush, verdant lawns and flowers in bloom year-round in a coordinated (and perfectly colour-matched) display.

Green Elephants Garden Sculpture Photo by epsos.de on http://www.flickr.com

My parents were great gardeners. The Yates Garden Guide was pretty much their bible and they managed to balance fruit and vegie production with a fine (and varied) display of bush roses and some of the neighbourhood’s most spectacular hydrangeas.

My lack of gardening prowess was (I’m certain) a disappointment to them. I remember once, when we were leaving on a holiday, Mum asked who was going to water our garden. I just looked blankly at her … no one ever watered our garden when we were home, so no one would need to fuss over it when we were away. (I suspect she snuck by from time-to-time to secretly prolong the life of our shrubbery with a shower from the hand-held hose.)

Hose Pipe Photo by 3rsphoto on http://www.flickr.com

My garden is more patchy than Mum and Dad’s ever was – straggly, unpruned roses and overgrown clumps of daisies. There are ferns growing feral in dark corners and clutches of unidentified creepers creeping from paver crevices and sneaking up brick walls.

My garden suffers from a lack of planning … and good timing. I have never managed to get the sweet peas sewn on St Patrick’s Day or the daffodil bulbs in by Mother’s day.

I tend to just wake up one day and decide it’s a gardening day. It’s an incidental urge that happens without reference to moon-based gardening calendars or, indeed, the Yates Garden Guide. Such “incidental” days occur every few months and usually involve a trip to the nursery before wheeling the giant green wheelie-bin-of-no-return to a nominated spot in the yard, ripping out something-that-once-lived and replacing it with something fresh and alive with the promise of blooms and foliage.

Today was one such day. All it took was a sniff of sunshine on a midwinter morning to have me outside seeking out the patch-of-most-neglect.

I didn’t have to search too far. The lavender hedge that lines our front verandah has grown woody, weedy and rangy. It always needs replacing every three or four years (and could well be a season or two behind that already). In fact, the whole verandah needs a makeover … but more about that later.

Today was incidental gardening day, and nothing would get in my way.

Off to the nursery.

Fill the trolley with healthy lavender plants.

Dig out that sad old excuse for a hedge and replant it anew.

At the nursery, we picked up a couple of additions to the herb garden. And some of this (for which I have a dastardly plan *insert evil laugh* ):

My day of incidental gardening is done. All but the lavender hedge will have to fend for itself until the incidental urge to garden kicks in again (in another month or two).

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Moi-made hummus … a three-way affair

 

Being fifty-something, I love an excuse to wrestle an ageing kitchen appliance from the depths of the darkest corner cupboard in my kitchen.

No. Really. I do. I wrote about my enlightenment on this topic over on this post: If it Ain’t Broke.

Ever since, I’ve been treating my Breville Kitchen Wizz with fondness and care (and praying that the karma gods acknowledge random acts of appliance kindness when they’re totting up the numbers).

Yesterday, I shared a first with my Breville Kitchen Wizz.

I know … astonishing that, after all these years, we can still find something fresh in our relationship.

In this case, we rekindled our closeness by sharing the challenge of whipping up some home-made hummus.

I’m a hummus fan, but have never made my own (until now). I put that down to not keeping tahini paste as a staple in my pantry.

But I do have chickpeas. In fact, I have a veritable feast of chickpeas since Mr P found them on sale at one of his secret retail haunts and made a bulk purchase.

I figured it was time to invest in some tahini paste … until I got intimate with Chef Google and discovered there are as many hummus recipes without tahini paste as there are with.

Chef Google surrendered his soul with a hummus recipe for which I had every ingredient on hand. I only fiddled with it a little. I promise. No shopping required. No fuss. No expense.

I reckon that’s too good not to share (even though I’ve said before that this is not [and never will be] a recipe blog … my family would mock me mercilessly given my lack of cooking expertise).

Let’s call this sharing a kitchen breakthrough moment (rather than a recipe).

Do with it what you will.

 

Moi-made hummus

I can chickpeas (drained)

Juice of one small lemon

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves crushed garlic

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon organic cayenne pepper

Wizz it all together (in your Breville Kitchen Wizz, of course) until smooth. Garnish with fresh parsley from the herb garden and serve with sour dough toasts (bread slices brushed with olive oil and lightly oven-baked until golden brown).

There it is … a three-way rendezvous on the kitchen counter: me, my Breville Kitchen Wizz and Chef Google.

The tahini paste didn’t get a look-in.

 

When will I ever grow up?

Being fifty-something, I’ve got a lot photographs.

Not the digital kind (though I’ve got my fair share of those, too). I mean the real shebang, The dusty old printed kind.

I’m shite at cataloguing them into albums (or frames) so they float around in boxes and tubs and tins. They have a life of their own in drawers and manila folders and assorted envelopes.

This one emerged a few days ago from a box of old treasures I was sorting. It got me thinking. It got me thinking a lot.

It was taken on a day we had invited a photographer to capture a portrait of Mr P’s broader family as a gift for his mum.

While the photographer was handy, we organised a quick sitting of our little family unit.

For me, it’s a real depiction of us at a time when we had really just developed into our own family identity.

We’d been married more than a decade. I’d learned to love (really love) beyond the confines of my own family. We’d built a home in the suburbs. I’d known the joy of bringing My Girl into the world, followed by the frustration of secondary infertility. There was a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, drug regimes, tests and more tests before Wonder Boy arrived to complete our family. To say I was grateful just doesn’t cut it. Our wider family had been touched by the sorrow of stillbirth and I appreciated this gift of new life more than ever.

In the two years before this photo was taken, we had lost both our dads to cancer. I had learned to grieve and to start growing up. I don’t think you ever really start to grow up until you lose a parent.

I had learned about hospital routines, medical interventions, surgery recoveries, survival rates and palliative care.

We had sold our new-build in the suburbs and moved to a 1970s doer-upperer on the edge of a town with a strong rural base. We were chasing space to be ourselves and a good community in which to raise our little family.

I was learning to parent, to renovate, to make a relationship work and to make decisions that were right for OUR family.

Mr P and I were doing things no one in either of our families had done before. We didn’t move far away, but it felt like new territory. We were pioneering a place just for us.

Twenty years on and we’re still thinking and doing for ourselves. We’ve swapped the almost-rural-town for a 100-year old home in the city. It’s a doer-upperer, too. We’ve already been doing it up for more than a decade!

I’ve done a lot more learning about grieving, renovating, relationship-making and decision-making. I’m still stumbling through the parenting gig (even though they’re both adults).

But in my head, I’m still the thirty-something in that photo.

When it was taken, I thought I knew it all. I thought I was all grown up.

I had no idea how far I had to go.

Or how much fun growing up would be.

Twenty years on … I still don’t.

Nothing like … a candle in the wind

Being fifty-something, I grew up in a house where bottling with your Fowlers Preserving Kit was de rigueur. The backyard was full of fruit trees and mum made sure they lasted all year long.

I’m not a bottler myself, but I still can’t go past a Fowlers bottle (or jar). I found this one a couple of months back in a thrift store. For the princessly investment of $1 it was mine.

I love the slight greenish tinge to the glass, the sleek utilitarian lines and the chubby rim at the top. It has an almost industrial feel.

I’ve been trying to work out since, what to do with it. I toyed with upturning it over a special knick-knack (been loving all those glass domes I see in the décor style shots) – but it’s very tall and the thickness and quality of the glass make it highly refractive so it’s hard to focus on what’s inside.

I’ve had tiny porcelain birds nesting on top and inside of it.

I’ve had it filled with garlic cloves and stuffed with lanky blooms.

Then I had a light bulb moment.

Given the materials left over from this project, I imagined the Fowlers jar could make a great candle … an outdoor candle where the glass would protect the flame from the breeze. A candle in the wind.

I cut a long wick, attached it to a wick holder, centred it in the jar with a couple of taped-together bamboo sticks and poured in melted wax to half-full.

Easy-peasy.

But plain.

Very plain.

It was trés boring (even for my tastes).

Then I saw this blogpost about jazzing up a jar by Alex over at Hello from Tassie.

Have you noticed I get a lot of inspiration from Alex? I wish she was still my neighbour … then I could pick her über-crafty brain any old time.

Alex used string and a clay shape to embellish a (Fowlers!) jar as a gift. I didn’t have any clay shapes but … another light bulb moment … I did have some old leather. Really old leather. I mean really, really old leather from a vintage railway worker’s bag that was not repairable, but with which I couldn’t part.

The leather inside the bag was pale and unweathered compared to that on the outside.

I hand-drew a couple of motifs and cut – just using scissors – a bird and a heart shape, one from each of the leather types, then strung them from the chubby rim on some furry, jute string (that looked a little nest-like by the time I finished).

With my princessly investment still at just $1, and using a few materials I already had at hand, this is that simple, inexpensive craft “holy grail” I’m relentlessly searching out.

I could be a tad biased, but I think it’s a bottler. (For my overseas readers, that’s Aussie vernacular for “it’s a beauty”.)

Can’t wait for spring evenings on the deck and giving this bottler a trial.

The peculiar language of families

Being fifty-something, I’m keenly aware that every family has its own lexicon, its customised style of verbalisation that connects with no one in the outside world.

It’s our secret code … and we’re getting better at it with age.

Photo by Dean Terry http://www.flickr.com

When we get gabbling in our family-speak, we might as well be conversing in Vulcan.

No one in our family gets dark circles under their eyes when they’re tired. No, we get dirk sarkles, and have done for as long as I can remember. (One of mum’s spoonerisms that stuck.)

When someone in our family gestures to you (mid-sentence) with a “C” shape formed by their thumb and forefinger, you know you’re probably chanelling Mum (her name was Clare) by discussing the weather or the dangers of travel.

“Beware the Ford traffic” is a general warning /reminder about the peak hour rush and “snow on the You Yangs” hints at a snippet of family folklore (or is it?) that gives an instant green light to giggles and guffaws.

There is “Tom’s wooden leg” and the “flames at the crematorium” … neither of which actually happened but either of which instantly communicates (in our family) that you might have your memories muddled.

A simple one-word email or text of the word “ning” means it’s time to start organising the Christmas celebrations. At a family gathering, just uttering the word “ning” can activate a lyrical yule-tide sing-song that’s goes on (and off) for several (annoying) hours.

The only way to short-circuit the “ning song” is to start a game of “Harvey Germs” by miming an injection into your upper arm. This is the one game we can still beat the younger generation at (and they love it).

The language of families is bound up in shared experiences. It’s the “inside joke” that lets you know you belong, that this is your tribe.

Sharing our family vernacular here on the blogosphere is not a betrayal … it means nothing unless you’re a part of the inner circle, part of the action. You don’t “get it” until you’re fluent in the doublespeak, and that can only happen with years of full immersion in our dialect.

Over the years, we’ve welcomed partners and children into the fold via our vernacular … it’s a rite of passage that signifies acceptance. I liken it to the acceptance our boyfriends achieved when they survived a session with Dad and his home-brew. It means zip to the outside world, but ensconced in that pergola-with-walls-that-became-a-man-cave, downing a few home-brews carefully decanted by Dad from amber long-necks into the single-purpose clear glass jug, meant that Dad thought you might be good enough for one of his daughters.

Then, and only then, were you apprenticed into learning the language of OUR family.

Does your family have its own dialect, gibberish or jargon that means you belong?

The Flower Dispensary – my faith restored in retail

Being fifty-something, I can get a bit cranky (at times).

Like when I had a good old whinge in this blogpost about the current state of bricks and mortar retail. As I hinted, I was looking in all the wrong places.

Yesterday I had reason to look in the right place … and my faith was restored.

I visited The Flower Dispensary to collect a beautiful Edenborough Evans necklace I’d won in a social media competition. (Thank you!)

As is my wont (as a mostly window shopper), I had been lurking afterhours admiring the window displays at The Flower Dispensary for quite some time. When I stepped inside, I found the beauty was not skin deep. This fabulously styled retail space abounds in awesome – elegant wares, fun stuff, quirky items, fragrant smellies, shiny jewellery, paper-y paperie … oh, and flowers. The flowers!

Owner Lyndal Gubbins has invested her heart and her soul in gathering this collection. Her love of vintage (she’ll tell you it’s a family failing!) is reflected in the shop fittings and the styling – it all blends so well, it’s hard to decipher where the vintage ends and the contemporary begins. And why would you want to?

Truly, I think I could live in this shop.

With her team Michelle and Alice (who take turns on the 3am flower market gig), Lyndal offers a friendly, warm retail environment where you’re welcome to touch and smell and hold … things aren’t bound up in layers of plastic here; they’re real and genuine, like the people behind the jump.

I’ll let the pictures tell the story (mostly … I’ve been experimenting with adding text over images, so stick with me here while I figure out this newest digital frontier).

How’s this for a counter of goodies:

I’ve been searching high and low for one of these stamp sets in lower case (if anyone can track one down for me, Lyndal can):

Nestle up to this nook of nice things:

Brilliant (and great value) Erst Wilder brooches:

A wall of glass:

The latest window display:

Even a vintage typewriter for that genuine old typography on card messages (this photo by The Flower Dispensary):

Photo by The Flower Dispensary

Oh … and those flowers!

The Flower Dispensary is at 333 Pakington St, Newtown. If you’re in the Geelong region, call in and get yourself some REAL retail love. Yes, it’s alive and well. You just need to go looking for it.

Procrasti-glossary … the midlife guide to putting off until tomorrow

Being fifty-something (and a writer), what I don’t know about procrastinating might not be worth knowing.

Photo by CLIPH

My mindful midlife perspective has put the spotlight on a plethora of putting-off practices that can sometimes fly under the radar (unless you’re looking for them).

Here’s a little nomenclature to go with it … a glossary of modern-day procrastination derivations, which you might (or might not) find helpful.

Procrasti-noting

Carefully preparing a list of what needs doing appears (to the uninitiated) to signal an organised mind, a person who gets things done. In fact, the making of the list and the doing of the deeds thereon are entirely different beasts. These two animals rarely occupy the same timezone. (Refer also to: procrasti-planning and procrasti-collating)

Procrasti-baking

Many a batch of banana muffins hides a dark secret. That inexplicable urge to get your Betty Crocker on in the kitchen could be a poorly veiled ploy to avoid another task (for example, tax compilation or ironing).  Not sure where to start (or stall) with procrasti-baking? Check out this no-fail muffin recipe on my friend Alex’s Hello From Tassie blog and imagine the horrors you can delay until tomorrow, by baking today.

Midlife procrastinating fifty-plus fifty-something

Procrasti-mating

(No, not what you think). This one is most common mid-week, or mid-afternoon (on a Saturday). You’ll recognise it by the sudden sense that a friend needs your company. You drop everything (anything!) to rush over and check on your pal, stay for coffee, wine, a meal, possibly overnight … whatever it takes to get your mate through. She (or he) always returns the favour in what is now recognised as a chronic condition: “reciprocal procrasti-mating”.

Procrasti-bating

Not just for wankers. A sharp rise in the appetite for this delaying time-devourer correlates directly with the popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey series. Enough said.

Procrasti-planning

This one is easy to diagnose by the excessive ratio of strategising to action. You can often spot the male of the species in the midst of a procrasti-planning episode at Bunnings. Look out for female procrasti-planners in fabric stores, furniture departments or endlessly browsing decorator sites online (some have been known never to return from Ikea). Joint procrasti-planning is a craft practised only by elite practitioners. It requires rhythm, precision and exceptional teamwork not to follow-through with the task. Look for husband and wife teams lazing on sunny decks surveying domestic plots for spots to develop no-dig veggie gardens, imagining rose arbours rising to impress the neighbours or sketching (sketchy) plans for formal parterre gardens. Procrasti-noting is now regarded as an early symptom of full-blown procrasti-planning.

Formal garden, Waterperry Gardens, Oxfordshire photo by carlotype46

Procrasti-updating

This incremental approach to procrastinating is an easy entry point for novices to dip their toes into the waters of wait-‘til-tomorrow without diving into the oceans of never-going-to-happen.  The step-by-step approach works through a series of assertions from “I’m thinking about it” and “I’ve got it on my list” through to “I’m half done” and “I should have that to you tomorrow”. It’s about shifting mindset from “can-do” to “could-do” and “why-do?” and finally on to the supreme procrasti-negating style of “not my department”.

Procrasti-creating

This is the free-form of procrastinating, the interpretive dance of delay. Here, you can improvise your very own, personal expression of adjournment using the traditional steps of dally, dawdle, linger and loiter intermingled with more contemporary moves such as schlep along, scrounge around or chill out. Transforming prolong and protract into an art form puts you one step closer to making the world your stage.

Dance 2 photo by Amanda Slater

Procrasti-blogging

This one is not for the feint of heart. It requires forsaking the mountain of paid copywriting projects in your in-tray for the sake of providing your blog readers with a vitally important (possibly world-changing) article that simply has to be written. This one is my personal favourite.

Now, armed with your procrasti-glossary, go forth and shilly-shally with the best of us.

Tardy teacup candles (and the crappy end of crafting)

Being fifty-something, I’m seeking to extend my craft repertoire as fast as possible. (While I’ve got time, right?)

I’m looking for easy, quick, inexpensive craft projects … least-effort-for-maximum-impact.

Yes, I’m lazy.

I’d been thinking about teacup candles for a couple of months, browsing through the odd online tutorial, mostly coveting all that vintage china and moody lighting potential.

Teacup Candles

A few weeks ago an invitation arrived for my niece S’s 25th birthday celebration – a tea party, a leisurely afternoon of sipping tea and nibbling ribbon sandwiches.

Perfect!

S had stipulated no presents but a hand-crafted-from-recycled-materials-Auntie-type-gift would surely get me around that?

I picked up these two gold-toned vintage china duos at the Ballarat Trash and Trivia Market.

I had already decided to upcycle the remnants of this HUGE triple-wicked candle that Mr P had souvenired from the props department on one of his TV commercial shoots. It’s seen us through several late-night soirees on the deck but its time has come.

I needed wicks and little metal wick holders. There were plenty available online but time wasn’t on my side so after a morning at the farmers market I braved the BIG scary shopping plaza where I knew there was a BIG craft store. (For a mostly window-shopper like me, “braved” is the correct verb here.)

I searched and sought up and down the aisles, eventually finding what seemed like the solo staffer – she was behind the jump, tapping away on a computer keyboard. I explained what I was after.

Still relentlessly tapping, she said: “We don’t stock those.”

“Are you sure? Candle-making is a very popular craft,” I ventured (resisting the urge to add “according to the blogosphere” or “are you sure you spelled candle correctly?”)

“If it’s not in the computer, we don’t have it,” she rebutted, eyeing my vegie-laden shopping trolley suspiciously.

There was no offer of where I might head to find what I needed. No alternative. No plan B.

So this is what they mean by bricks and mortar retailing … a brick wall.

No wonder it’s in its death throws.

Once again, I found myself at the crappy end of crafting … where I don’t really know what I’m doing, I don’t have what I need (don’t even really KNOW what I need) and am not sure what to do with what I need when I do eventually get it.

This is when I often throw crappy, half-baked craft projects into the bottom of the spare room wardrobe, never to see the light of day again.

Not this time.

I phoned the OTHER BIG craft store (an even braver move, because this one is a MEGA-store) to check their stocks.

“Yes, we have a great range of wicks and wax sold separately or in kits. Why don’t you come out and have a look and we can take you through what we’ve got?”

Brilliant. I did.

Unfortunately, there was a gaping crevasse between the promise of the phone conversation and the reality of the instore experience.

Floor-to-ceiling racks of stock but few staff to help me explore it.

In time, I located a customer service desk and was directed four aisles down, where I found nothing wicky or waxy.

I returned and another staffer directed me to another aisle: “We don’t have much but what we do have is in aisle six beside the googly eyes.”

I found the googly eyes alongside curly polyester hair extensions for dollies and tiny wire spectacles (presumably for those googly eyes).

But nothing waxy or wicky.

I braved (yes, braved) the counter and asked the staffer to show me. She was right … beside the googly eyes and hidden BEHIND the tiny wire spectacles was a single row of packaged wick and a solitary packet of wick holders.

“Is that all you have?” I queried.

“We also have these,” she offered, in the next aisle. “These” were kits for making tealight candles. Do folk actually make tealight candles?

I knew right then, that I wasn’t going to get the advice I needed here. This wasn’t customer service. There was no generosity of spirit. No choice. No smile. No apology. No empathy. This was modern retailing at its worst. Without specialist advice from someone who knows his/her stuff, I might as well buy online. I should have left myself a wider window.

I grabbed what the MEGA-store thought I needed and headed for Google.

Google came through for me (doesn’t it always?) with a brilliant choice of bloggers and videographers sharing their tips and specialist advice on making teacup candles.

Next time, I’m going online-all-the-way, including buying my materials, so I sidestep that crappy end of crafting all together.

The end of the tale? I didn’t get my craft on in time for the tea party (that was entirely my own fault). I grabbed some gorgeous flowers for my niece and had a fun afternoon sipping tea and nibbling ribbon sandwiches.

But I have since done the teacup candle deed. And it wasn’t crappy at all (once I got organised). It went like this:

Chopped some wax off that BIG old candle and melted it in nested saucepans (I used old ones, including a fave vintage glass Pyrex one).

I used two bamboo skewers taped together to secure each wick in the centre of its cup.

Poured in the wax and … voila! … teacup candles. Inspired by leftover wax I got adventurous and grabbed a couple of small crystal jugs from my collection and gave them the candle treatment, too. (Getting candle-cocky by this stage.)

These will be keepers.

Next time I catch up with my niece S, I have a lovely present for her, achieved in the most part with the help of Google and the blogosphere. (I’m even guessing she might read about it here first, which would be quite fitting).

That’s the brilliant, non-crappy end of crafting that makes it all worthwhile … giving.

Can’t wait.

What would MacGyver do? Help or hike it?

Being fifty-something, I like to help out others where I can.

Even when it means smacking-down the inner cranky old woman shouting “someone else will do it” and “you’re too busy” and “don’t get involved”.

On Saturday evening I was faced with a “help or hike it?” dilemma … a situation where I had a choice … to walk away or get involved.

I asked myself “What would MacGyver do?” (as one does in such situations), and jumped right into the fray.

what would macgyver do?

I won’t go through the details. It’s a long and boring story. Let’s just say it involved me shouting (assertively not aggressively) at a stranger (someone who was in danger and who I was almost certain was in the midst of a mental health episode), running (fast) for some distance (very uncharacteristic), shadowing said stranger some distance on a dark road (including furtively ducking behind trees as necessary) and waving down a passing police car.

I felt pure relief when, after taking my very detailed description of the stranger, the police officer said, “Don’t worry. We’ll take it from here.”

For about twenty minutes, I had reluctantly accepted responsibility for the safety of someone I didn’t know. And I’m not sure why. I think it may have been out of fear … fear of what I’d have to live with if something happened to this stranger and I hadn’t tried to help her.

What is it that makes you step up and take control, not just see that something needs to be done, but actually jump in and DO what needs to be done?

I’d love to say it’s humanity or community. But I’m not convinced. Some people are just better at it than others. I’m way down the scale. I don’t deal with drama well and I’m surprised I opted to get involved this time.

I could just as easily have asked myself: “What would Gay do?”

I remember sitting gobsmacked with eyes like dinner plates one Friday night while my sister Gay debriefed her day’s adventure over a bottle of red. She’d been waiting for a train and witnessed a bag-snatching. She didn’t hesitate. I doubt she stopped to wonder what MacGyver would do. She just gave chase (in her business suit and heels) across the car park, through the municipal gardens and into the city streets, yelling as she went for bystanders to call the police and help her catch the guy. She got her man. The lady got her bag. I don’t think Gay got her train.

I was effusively proud. At the same time I was ashamed. I doubted I would have done the same thing. What galvanised Gay into action? Was it pity for the bag-snatching victim? Was it anger at the criminal? Or was it just a well-honed sense of community responsibility? I’ll never know.

Whatever it was, we should bottle it. And distribute it free to schools and workplaces and sporting events, so when you do resort to asking “What would MacGyver do?” there’s a support crew behind you, fuelled up on MacGyver Juice (in three exciting new flavours), ready to answer the question and step up with you.

Now that would be community.