almost hourly

Hello sweet peas!

Well here we are on the second last day of the year, on my 56th blog post of the year, which also happens to be my very last of the year. 

Truth be told I'm a bit astounded that I made it. I posted on every single Friday of 2017 plus a few extra. There were a couple of times when Friday wasn't possible so I wrote it on Thursday and published on Friday, there were more than a couple of times when I questioned the validity of the exercise, and there were plenty of times when I sat down with not much to say and ended up saying plenty, but sitting here almost 56 posts later, I'm so very glad I persevered.

My 2018 blog posts are a wonderful record of the year that was, they're filled with stories and insights from you guys, they've been great therapy, they've been good photography and writing practise, they've gotten me two jobs, and they'll be such a great gift for my girls in the years to come.

And each Friday as I've sat down to write my blog I've had a few tricks up my sleeves to fall back on in case the words didn't come; I could list 10 things happening in my life right now, I could do Pip's Taking Stock, I could talk about books and podcasts and TV series, or I could take photos and write descriptions...I did all of those over and over. 

But the one that I never used and always thought about was taking a photo each hour for a whole day. And it's funny that I've never used that one because people often ask me about a normal day in my life and this would show just how varied and abnormal my days can be. It would also be such a great snap shot of a season.

So yesterday I woke up and decided that the last Friday of the year was the day.

One photo every hour on the hour...

I took the top photo of the market garden filled with zinnias at 8am. 

I took the next three photos of the cat's new sleeping place at 9am, after I'd drunk coffee, eaten muesli with berries and yogurt and hung some washing out.

Bren's made me a washing line in that new bit in-between the sun room and the new deck. I have to stand on my tippie-toes to reach it but it's right outside the laundry, it's under cover and everything dries so quickly on it rain or shine. Imagine how much of a game changer it'll be come winter when I don't have any laundry hanging inside. So good.

At 10am I took the flowering bean tee-pee while waiting for the girls to get ready to go down to the orchard.

At 11am we were all ready for apple tree netting day to begin!

We had Indi in the tractor, Bren and Francis pulling out the nets, my parents, Jazzy and I were on cable tie duty, and Pepper and Neve were on crafts.

By 12 we were a well oiled netting machine. Everyone knew their job and was doing it well. My phone alarm was going off on the hour and I'd snap a few pics and continue tying.

But by 1pm we were feeling the heat and the damp and were losing steam. Time for lunch.

Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of my Mum's freshly baked sour dough but trust me when I say it was beautiful. We gobbled it up with scrambled eggs, sautéed silver beet and chats about pregnant Kardashians (!).

I forgot to bring my phone down to the orchard with me after lunch so I had to guess at the times. Later when I saw the time-stamps on each photo I laughed at how wrong I gotten it.

At 2.44pm I took these photos of the girls crafting up a storm in the orchard next to where we were working. They made bracelets, rafts and apple dolls, they played with worms and grass-hoppers, and for some reason they called each other Margaret.

At 4.28pm we were heading towards the finish line. The conversation had slowed down and it was getting harder and harder to stand up in between trees.

At 4.55pm farmer Bren sliced a granny in half!

And at 5pm, on the very last row, I thought I'd better take a photo of everyone doing their job before we finished and it was too late. Francis pulling the nets out and my parents tying each bit of net to a tree to stop the birds getting in.

For some reason I didn't take any of pictures of the orchard all finished. I will soon.

At 6.18pm Jazzy and I walked down to pick some currants and gooseberries even though the birds had eaten most of them.

At 7.12pm I put the finishing touches on yesterday's blog post while Bren put together a survival kit for Jazzy's camping trip.

And just after that we picked and podded broad beans for dinner.

I love those days that are filled with family and friends and farm jobs and food. I certainly found myself laying in bed last night exhausted but with a big smile on my face.

Hopefully I'll get a chance in the next few days to do a bit of a run down on the year that was and my hopes and dreams for the year that will be, but in the meantime this feels like a wonderful place to finish. Full of love for where we've come from and optimism for the upcoming season.

Thank you dear readers for coming along with me this year for the ride. For sharing my ups and downs. For your suggestions and encouragement and wisdom. And really, just for being there. In a world filled with so many opportunities, it means the world to me that you spend some of your precious time each week visiting me.

Until we meet again next year, I hope you and yours have the most fabulous 2018! I hope it's filled with love and passion and fun opportunities and flowers. I hope you find something you love to do and get to do it often. I hope you have lots of fun!

I can't wait to get started!

Happy 2018.

Lots of love,

Kate x

simple

It's the first of December and the first day of summer and I have a head ache. I went to bed with it last night and woke up with it this morning. I'm not somebody who usually suffers from headaches and I'm unsure if this one is due to pmt, to the stress of the past few days getting prepared for the crazy amounts of rain forecast to fall this weekend, to some sort of barometric pressure (?), or if it's just here in my head telling me to slow down and have a quiet day on the couch. In any case it's really making it impossible for me to think straight, let alone type coherent sentences.

So it's another post that's heavy on photos - light on words from me today.

This week we pulled out a bunch of old tea pots that we inherited when we bought our farm. We filled them up with herbs and flowers and popped them outside the front door.

I spent a lot of time this week shuffling plants around the new green-house space. I made big colourful groups of pots, then I thinned them out a bit, then I stuck to the same colour scheme, and then I changed my mind and started all over again. I'm definitely a 'the more the merrier' type of plant lover, but I also want it to be easy on the eye. I guess I'll keep on moving them until they feel right and then I'll move on to a different corner of the room.

This week we found out that due to the impending heavy rains, our big girls were coming home from school camp a day early. Because I'd been busy in the garden, I'd left all the usual jobs I do for the girls when they come home from camp to the last minute, and so they wouldn't be returning to fresh bed-sheets and their favourite meals. Instead I made a mad dash around and picked them some posies for their bedrooms. Luckily they loved them. 

This week we finally made a start on the tomatoes. I forgot to take a photo but you can just see the patch between the bean tee-pee and the cubby. So far we've planted over a hundred plants with more to go in next week.

This week we tied up all the tall, gangly plants so they don't fall over in the rains.

This week our over-wintered carrots went to seed. I offered them to a local wedding florist who might use them for her functions this weekend, how gorgeous would that be.

This week we started eating peas from the garden.

This week I spent a lot of time looking out of these windows into the garden, and in these windows to the green-house. I still can't believe how much I love it every time I see it.

And this week we watched a few more episodes of Ozark, I started reading my sister Abby's review copy of Fen Stories, I finished turning the heels and began knitting up the legs of my tree socks, I was humbled and excited and slightly terrified when The Soul Craft Program came out and my talk and class are included, I picked and ate loads of strawberries, I didn't listen to any podcasts because I've lost my head-phones, I sat by the lake and watched the Daylesford kids swim, I hilled the potatoes and weeded the onions, I pulled some of the garlic and left the rest, I listened to Bren's tractor working in the apples until late every night, I loved Pepper's class play, I missed our big girls and I felt exhausted but oh so happy with the choices we have made that have bought us this life we live.

I hope you've had a lovely week.
Tell me a couple of things you've been up to. I'd love to read them.

Until next Friday...(can you believe there are only four more left for this year??!)

Love Kate x

growing

Last weekend while we were visiting our Jazzy at a festival she was performing at, an older woman I didn't know verbally abused me. She began with sarcasm, which I mistook as kindness, so I thanked her and turned to walk away. But when she realised that I had misread her she let loose with a barrage of insults: I made my daughter push in the queue in front of her, I was a disgusting person, I encouraged my girls to be rude and disrespectful, I was entitled and I ruined the world for people like her. Someone needed to put me in my place. And of course I was a terrible, terrible mother.

By the time I realised what was going on I was so surprised that I didn't know how to act. I wasn't aware that I had even committed any of the crimes she was accusing me of. I looked around me but the crowds of people seemed all of a sudden to be engaged elsewhere. Indi had pulled my girls right out of the way, and the only other person there was the woman's male companion who looked on with interest and what could have been a slight smirk. But he didn't step in and neither did anyone else.

So I asked her why, instead of getting so angry and waiting until it was too late, she hadn't spoken directly to my supposedly pushing-in child and used it as a positive lesson instead of one filled with hate.

And she let loose on me again. All the same and more. On and on and on.

She didn't leave me much room to say anything myself, which is probably a good thing because I was so stunned I don't know what I would have said anyway. Right until the end I expected her to stop and apologise and say that she confused me with someone else. Right until the end I expected her to become self aware and feel a bit embarrassed. But she didn't.

And then she and that male with her stormed off. And as they did I called after them that she must have had a very sad and disappointing life to feel the need to behave like that, and that I forgave her.

I didn't though.

She yelled at me six whole days ago and I'm still finding myself shaking as I write this.

After it was over I found Bren and the girls and burst out crying and I don't think I stopped for the next two days. I felt like I'd been punched in the guts.

And then after the crying wore off I felt like she'd scratched a scab off and underneath felt raw and ugly.  I felt sad and anxious and distressed. The world felt scary and nasty.

As the days have worn on and I've spent time in my normal life, with my hands in the dirt, with the people that I love, doing the things that I love, I've slowly gathered strength and been able to get some perspective. But I still feel a bit vulnerable and protective.

And in truth, although this story has consumed my past week I really didn't want to write about it here. I don't want that woman on my blog. I want to leave her in the past and move on. And I have a feeling that she is mentally unwell and although she behaved terribly, I want to get to a place where I have compassion for her.

But as I loaded the photos this morning and started typing words, I realised the story wants to be told. As a blogger that's how I process my world, that's what I do.

So although it's a less detailed version than the story I told to anyone who I saw this week, here it is.

And the photos are my way of showing myself that I'm okay. Better than okay really. My best revenge on that situation is the beautiful world we're making here.

first
The apples are doing well. Each of the lumps under the flowers in that top photo is a possible apple. The fruit set looks good, the black spot looks minimal, and the mildew is only visible in a few spots.

second
I bought that cute sexy legs pot off my clever ceramicist friend Tania the other day and now I'm auditioning plants to sit in it. The girls think it should be a plant with long straggly hair that we could almost plait, but I'm kinda liking the pretty purple flowered fluffy do.

third
The other day we planted beans in the tee-pee again. This cyclic seasonal way we live our lives never ceases to comfort, reassure and ground me.

fourth
The purple broad bean flowers are exciting me no end. It feels so fancy to grow another version of the same thing we've been growing for years.

fifth
I'm growing lentils!! How cute are they!!

sixth
I visited a gorgeous local flower farmer the other day to buy some dahlia tubers and on the way out  she picked me a bunch of ranunculus. It's difficult to explain the joy that one bunch of colourful flowers bring, but they do, trust me. I hope I can grow my own next year.

seventh
I'm reading Sara Vidals' Bella and Chaim. A story of the holocaust in so many time frames. It's such an important story and it's breaking my heart.

eighth
I've only got the sleeves of Miss Pepper's cardigan to go, the buttons to sew on, and then it's done.

ninth
I think I might knit something with these skeins next.

tenth

I finished my first macrame and I love it!! It's exactly what I hoped it would be. Of course I want to make hundreds now and fill the space with dangly plants. 

And that's me. It's my birthday tomorrow and this afternoon we're going to pick the girls up from school and head away for a couple of days. A couple of days in a new-to-us place with only one thing planned and the rest of the time to explore and adventure and relax.

I'm so excited to get there but I'm actually the world's worst packer and it's going to take me most of today to get sorted, which is never fun. So I'm going to love you and leave you and hope that everyone you meet is kind and considerate of you.

See you next week when I'll be older and wiser.

Love Kate x

the second week

sixth

When I decided to do a photo a day in May project last week one of the rules I imposed on myself was to not always capture the prettiest moments, but to challenge myself to look for the interesting and the gritty too. The two photos I took last Saturday are heading in that direction.

It was a freezing cold, wet, windy day and we'd called off all of the girls' activities and were bunkering down inside instead. There was one point in the late afternoon where I looked around at the cozy scene wondering what to capture. If I didn't get my shot then, I'd lose the light and miss my day. The fire was roaring, the house was a mess of papers and computers and musical instruments and girls, but nothing called to me. Then I looked outside, onto the back deck and decided.

I slipped on my clogs, quickly slid open the back door, snapped two photos and dashed inside again.

Leaves from the grape-vine that cover our back deck and give us shade in summer, grapes at the height of autumn, and then a sludgy mess as they decompose into winter.

seventh

Miss Pepper helping me out by searching for scarlet runner bean pods inside the tee-pee.

eighth

Knitted with love for my kitty cat obsessed, youngest. She loves them but did not love me dragging her outside into the cold and pulling up her leggings, as proven by her goose bumps.  

It's a free pattern I found on ravelry, you can find the details here.

ninth

Last year we grew a paddock of pumpkins. This year we didn't get them in til so late that they didn't get a chance to really get going before the days started to cool off, so we gave up on them and eventually pulled them out. The compost it seems had ideas, and seeds, of its own and grew this load. It's probably more than enough for us for the season anyway.

tenth

One of the first things we built when we moved to our farm back in 2001 was this hot house onto the side of our house. Using bits of poly pipe and greenhouse plastic, but without the help of YouTube, farmer Bren and my dad constructed a place for me to raise seeds and shelter some sensitive plants.

It's hard for us to remember where the idea for the plans came from. It's hard to imagine if we thought it would be a temporary fix or a long term solution. It's crazy to think about who we were back then: a couple with one baby girl and no farming experience.

And here we are all these years later pulling it down. Cutting the pipe, slicing at the plastic and digging out all of the soil. It's served us well over the years. I'd guess it's grown hundreds of thousands of plants.

And now it's time for an upgrade. We've drawn up the plans, we've gathered some old windows, we're starting on Monday. Watch this space.

eleventh

Rushing outside last night to catch a photo of the flame tree glowing in the afternoon sun, it occurred to me that I could take the shot from what until the day before was inside the hot-house. Four steps to the right gave me another perspective. Makes me pleased to know that the new hot house will have opening windows. And how about that tree hey!

twelfth

My current knitting project is a Guernsey wrap for Miss Indi. Remember when I told you a few weeks ago that Pepper had a list up on the door where family members could place their knitting orders? Indi ordered a scarf.

The thought of that scarf and the meters of knit stitch or purl stitch that would be involved in the making made me shudder. A more tedious project I couldn't imagine. That is until we sat on Ravelry for a while and looked at the endless possibilities of stitch combinations.

We chose this pattern because it was a mixture of textured patterns found on traditional fisherman's sweaters which would keep it interesting for me and yet was a simple long, rectangular scarf for her. I know I've barely even started, but so far I'm loving knitting it, long may it continue and grow.

The ravelry details are here.


And there they are, my seven (plus a couple) photos of the week.

It's been a bit of a topsy-turvey week for me. One afternoon I cried three separate times on the drive home from school at the sheer magnificence of the show that mother nature was putting on for us, the next day I heard a friend's difficult news and felt so weighed down by the weight of the world. Nasty, short sighted comments on a friend's Facebook shocked me and hurt my heart, but then a brother and sister raised over two million dollars in five cent pieces to kick cancer where it hurts and smash a world record. One of our girls got a role in a local production of The Three Lost Children and we were all thrilled, but then she has this bit of eczema that makes her so uncomfortable it hurts. Some of the olives were hit by frost, but the carrots are sweeter than ever. Up, down, up down. I'm blaming PMS and the full moon. And I'm hoping for clear skies and calm waters ahead. And sunshine of course.


I hope you've had a gorgeous week.
I wonder if the leaves are growing or falling off where you are?
If the days are getting longer or shorter?
If you use circulars or DPN's to knit your socks and sleeves?

Happy Mother's day!

Love Kate xx