a punnet of possibilities

Hello honey bunches,

How's your week been?

Let's do a run through of some of what's been going on here, in the last little bit of summer.

Picking - Jersey Mac and Abbas varieties of apple from the orchard.

The Jersey Macs have been a bit spotty to sell, so I've been cooking them and dehydrating them for later. The Abbas's look, smell and taste pretty perfect. Hopefully we'll open the farm gate stall in the next few days and sell them to the passers by.

I'm so excited that we're here again. After a whole season of hoping for the right weather conditions, after netting and irrigating and fertilising and mowing them, after months and months of watching the blossom, the fruit buds, the fruit set and the fruit growth, after weeks of slicing and squeezing and taste testinging, apple season is here!!

I'll be posting the details of what we have for sale and when on my Foxs Lane Facebook page, on the Daylesford Organics Facebook page, on instagram and here. So watch these spaces and please come and try them for yourselves.

My dried apple ring recipe is here.
My fruit leather recipe is here.

Knitting - the back of my Mirehouse sweater.

Ravelry details here.

Reading - my mum's library copy of My Absolute Darling. Woah! It's been a while since I've read a book that I cannot put down. This book is dark and intriguing and incredibly painful. At 80 pages in I still have no idea where it's heading but I'm in for the ride and I'm hoping there's a glimmer of hope somewhere along the way.

 

Listening - to the This American Life podcast. With so many brilliant podcasts available these days, I found I left TAL behind a few years ago when many episodes were repeated and then others seemed overly political or irrelevant to me. For some reason the other day on the way home from school I decided to have a look at what some of their current shows are about and I was pleasantly surprised.

I loved the first piece in Words You Can't Say.

And I really enjoyed Rom-Com.

Arranging - brightly coloured bunches of summer flowers to sell, to give away and to dot around our house.

Pulling - the biggest onions I have ever grown out of the ground.

Meditating - !!!! I've always had this belief that there are those who can and those who cannot. I unfortunately fall into the latter category. I'm too fidgety to sit still, my mind speeds up whenever I try to slow it down, I feel jittery and anxious whenever I attempt to, and so I don't.

I also don't sleep. I've been suffering from such a severe bout of insomnia lately that I don't even know what to do with myself anymore.

I eat well, I exercise, I try to deal with stressful situations, I garden, I don't drink caffeine after the early afternoon...but still I don't sleep and it feels I'm running on empty.

So a few days ago, I agreed to my farmer boy's suggestion to give meditation another go. And because I'm pretty good at following along with apps (that couch to 5km one, the drinking water one, the period tracker one...), he suggested 1 Giant Mind.

We've done one a night for the past four nights. I'm interested in the fact that this style of meditation allows my mind to wander, it allows me to be a bit fidgety and it doesn't make me feel bad if I forget the mantra, as long as I effortlessly come back to it.

Over the past few nights I've still lain awake for hours at a time, but I feel like I've turned a corner. Like things are slowly improving. Like I'm not a complete crazy zombie (still a bit crazy zombie though). I'm going to persevere with the meditation and hope that my sleeping continues to improve. I'll let you know how I go.

Appreciating - the past lives of things we have inherited.

This trestle table belonged to my grandparents and lived in their garage. Every time there was a festival or an occasion to seat more than their dining table accommodated, a few family members would bring the wooden table up, lay it on its metal legs, cover it with a crisp white tablecloth and then set it with heavy silverware, white china, vases of flowers and then course after course of delicious meals. Now that those times have ended, sometimes I miss them so much that it hurts to think about them. Often the memories make me smile too though. What I would give now to take my place with my sisters and cousins and parents and friends, to tell stories and laugh, to eat, and to look up to the head of the table at my grandfather gazing lovingly at my grandmother. To have his big hands delicately roll me up a pancake or peel me an orange. I miss them.

Now that trestle sits in the centre of our new sun-room. Even though we bought a big slab of wood with a history all of it's own to build a table for that space, I can't seem to let this one go. I don't want to put it away for special occasions. I want to be reminded in our everyday. I want to bring them with me.

Emptying - my overall pockets and noticing the things I've collected along the way.

Watching - the eucalypts burst into a blaze of red flowers, listening to the bees in a frenzy drinking nectar from those fuzzy little cups, wondering what my farmer boy has planned as he snips bunches of the red blossoms and carries them into the garden, loving him and his concentrating posy making face, feeling happy every time I see that vase full of summer loveliness sitting on the coffee table for all to see and admire.

Listening - to these two writing a song together.

Planting - broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, cabbage, leek, kale...

Discovering - new flowers in the garden.

Last year in very early spring I got addicted to buying those $2 punnets of flowers from the nursery. I had decided that I wanted to grow lot of blooms this season, but being so new to it I didn't really know where to start. So I grew most things from seed or bulb, but then I discovered the punnets.

Each tiny tray had six or eight little bunches of greenery with a colourful label on the front. They felt like a bit of a head start and weirdly a bit like buying lollies. Each time I passed, I chose a punnet with a pretty looking flower on the front and brought it home. I had no idea which of the colours would grow or if they would grow at all. Eventually I ended up with quite a selection and planted them at the front of many of our garden beds. Watching them pop open their colourful faces over the past few months has been such a treat.

These Asters have been the latest. Just last week they were all still tightly closed buds in a sea of green foliage. And look at them now! I'm not actually mad on their smell, or that PINK!!!!! But I have loved watching and guessing and discussing, every single flowering plant that I bought back when it was freezing cold last year, often as a reward to myself for doing the school run in the rain or wind. I hope there'll be different ones for me to choose from next season.

As well as all that I'm eating the summer sandwich my farmer boy just brought me - feta, tomato, pickled cucumber and basil, I'm listening to Jazzy playing Stand By Me on her ukulele in the other room, I'm reading a little story I wrote about seasonal eating for a magazine about the Daylesford Macedon region in today's The Age newspaper, I'm wondering where Pepper is and what she's up to, I'm missing Miss Indi who I haven't seen since last Tuesday and I'm getting interrupted every few minutes by text messages from Bren with quotes from Barbara Kingsolver about writing.

What are you up to? What are you eating, reading, planting, thinking, watching, hoping....
Are you meditating? Sleeping?

I hope you have a gorgeous weekend my friends.
I hope the sun shines on your smiley face.

See you next week.

Love Kate x