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

when it rains

Some weeks trickle along. Little moments propel us forward: packing lunch-boxes, weeding the garden, listening to podcasts, mowing the orchard, going to gym, driving the girls around...until all those little meetings and moments and musings gather together to form the week that was.

And then other weeks feel like a gush. If you're not careful they'll knock your legs out from under you and carry you down the flooded stream, feet first.

This past week feels like the latter. Each day felt full of change and development and motion and emotion. Some days I found myself grinning like a clown and on others hiding in an overgrown patch of the garden pulling up fistfuls of weeds trying to remember to breathe.

On Wednesday our Indigo turned 17. SEVENTEEN!!! That little baby who turned us into parents all those years ago. What a gift it is to be her mother. To watch her, to listen to her, to guide her and to be guided by her. We celebrated her with chocolate bullets, with cards and presents, with mangos and chocolate covered strawberries. What a gift you are to us Indigo Apple, our wishes for you are filled with music and passion, with love and learning and indoor plants. It's so exciting to watch the world open up to you and your sparkly eyes. xxxx

This week I was offered a great new writing job. Funny how these things happen. Ever since Slow Living magazine closed earlier this year, I've been wanting to write something more than just my blog. Not being quite ready to close myself off to the world and start work on a book, I thought that some articles and stories would be perfect. And then one day last week I got a message, had a meeting, and now I have a new job. Yay! I'll fill you in on the details when it's all official.

And then, not long after the first job was offered, I got a phone call about a one off speaking/teaching job. Again I'll fill you in on the details when I'm allowed to, but let's just say I'm very excited about this one.

I wrote a blog a few months ago about being okay with my simple life and not wanting to always be looking for and hunting something bigger and newer and more exciting. A few days ago I was driving home from school and had to pull over several times to talk to different people about the details of my new jobs when it occurred to me that I hadn't hunted it but here I was moving forward and although it is scary and new, I think I'm ready for this new stage. I think my self confidence needed it. I'm excited.

Also this week we had to pull out the first of our garlic, even though the cloves haven't separated yet. On Wednesday an earth mover came to do some work at the front of our house and the garden beds they were in were in the way. It's been wonderful to have the garlic flavour back in our meals this week. And it'll be amazing to landscape what's now a mud pit, with grass and garden and a deck.

The next thing was the rain. On Thursday morning on my drive out to school it rained so hard and there was so much water that I hurt my wrist gripping the steering wheel so tight. I had to drive so slowly but still it was scary. And it was LOUD! When I finally got home I was completely rattled and it took me ages to calm down enough to focus on the jobs I had to do. But ever since then I've noticed that the garden has exploded; colourful flowers have popped, plants have germinated, thickened up, grown tall, started climbing. And the roses!! Wow!! What a show they're giving us this year.

And then of course the green-house build continued. It took a while to convince my farmer boy that we should pull up the perfectly good (but oh so ugly) concrete that was there already and use old red bricks to pave it instead, but gosh it's going to be worth it. Even though we're not allowed to walk on them yet and have to play hop-scotch every time we leave the house, I'm head over heels in love already.

And I'm ever so grateful to Frobden, (Francis, Jobbo, Bren), for making my dreams come true and not whinging too much about your sore hands and backs. xxxx

After a long discussion recently about the fact that craft in our family and on our farm is a seasonal thing, I feel okay with the fact that I've only knitted a couple of inches this past week. When you're working outside from morning to last light, when your hands are so dirty you can't wash them clean anymore, and when your arms and legs ache from the weight of the day, knitting often gets left by the way-side. But when I do have a crazy week like the one that's just been, all action and full of decisions and brick dust, then a few rows of sock knitting feels just like home and is exactly what I need.

For those who have asked about sock knitting recently, please forgive my lack of personal response.

I swear by Wendy D Johnson's book - Socks From The Toe Up. I use her basic sock pattern for every single pair of socks I knit. I use everything in it from the cast on, to the slip stitch heel, to the cast off. I love it and highly recommend it to everyone from beginner to advanced.

Ravelry details here.

And lastly is the cat. She's not particularly great at snuggling on the couch but whenever I'm in the garden she's always with me. Creeping up and then jumping out on me making me scream, rubbing against my legs or back, making me laugh with her antics and then plopping herself down for a bath and a nap exactly where I need to be working. Love that funny kitten.

Love that first red strawberry of the season picked and eaten this morning before school, love the way the big seeds pop out of the soil with their seed hats on, love finishing great books (Bella and Chaim) that stay in my thoughts for days afterwards, love picking armfuls of flowers from the garden, love flexing my biceps and seeing actual muscles for the first time in my life, love binge listening a great podcast series, love thinking about the approaching summer school holidays, love getting a text message from a friend asking me for a beer, love hearing the sound of the tractor coming up the hill and knowing that my farmer boy is coming in for lunch, love you guys and the beautiful and insightful messages you send me, love that Australia voted YES for same sex marriage and that love is love is love is love.

Hope the view outside your window is a pretty one this afternoon.

Did you have a good week? Did anything exciting happen?

Are you reading a good book? Planning a feast? Stopping to smell the roses?

I hope something unexpected and quite wonderful is right around the corner.

Lots of love,

Kate xx

in the darkness

I probably shouldn't be writing my blog this week. I woke up first thing this morning and declared that I wouldn't. It was icy cold, just past dark, and we were all huddled around the fire nursing hot drinks, and everyone agreed. Even though the world about me seems to be spinning around merrily, even though I can't seem to pin point a single action or happening that's made me feel like this, I feel like I've been living inside a dark cloud for the past few days. I feel grumpy and irritable and sensitive and sad. And I feel cold and tired and uninspired. And before you ask, it's not that time in my cycle, but I am suspicious of the solstice and the moon.

But regular writing becomes a habit and now here I am even though I decided not to be.

Although it just occurred to me that maybe I am here writing my blog because the alternative is house-work, and I just can't.

It's funny this feeling bad thing while everything around me is so good. Bren is building and creating, the big girls have had some great results at school and are happily social and Miss Pepper is officially on school holidays and the play she's in starts next week. We've been taking advantage of the mild winter and checking off so many more jobs than we thought we ever would, and we have a little mini break coming up to look forward to. But still I feel blue. I ache with it.

It makes me constantly question and doubt myself, it makes me feel incapable and uncreative, it makes me feel dull and boring, and it feels unending.

So I'll keep it very short and try to be sweet. I'll fill you in on the goings on here and if by chance I feel sunnier during the next week I'll write an extra post on some of the things I've been thinking about: Things like the danger of expectations, like keeping honest relationships, and the power of positivity. Nothing ground breaking, just stuff that I've observed lately and am learning about.

I said short and sweet so I'd better get on with it eh?

Back in May of 2013 I wrote a story on this blog about the building of our patch-work cubby. Many years in the dreaming, an afternoon in the planning, a few Thursdays in the building. And that was, I declared at the end of that post, The End of our cubby house story and hopefully the beginning of years of make believe, tea parties, games and secret kid stuff.

But as it happened, none of that was meant to be. Not long after it was built, the girls found a poisonous red back spider inside the cubby and forever after they needed more than a little encouragement to play inside. Which meant that fake cakes went mouldy in the fake fridge, spiders spun thick webs across the ceiling, autumn leaves collected and began to rot in the corners and it felt scary and dark in there, rather than the secret and exciting we had hoped for.

While the cubby has been so very loved for its patch-work look and so often used as a backdrop for my photos, including the cover of Slow Living magazine May 2015, it has been sadly neglected as a play space.

So the other day when my farmer boy suggested that he renovate it a bit and use it as a woodworking studio over winter, we all thought it was a great idea.

First Jobbo and Bren pulled the tin off the back wall and replaced it with old school windows.

Then I came out just in time to see farmer Bren making a big design decision regarding the door and stopped him  just in time for a discussion.

 

He thought the slats should go horizontally like the tin, I thought the opposite.

In the end we compromised.

I'm hoping it will age nicely and blend in with the rest of it.

Next is filling in all the gaps, putting glass in the windows and then plumbing in the pot-belly stove.

I can hardly wait for that dark, foggy, winter's day in the near future when I look out at the garden from the lounge room windows and see smoke coming from the cubby chimney and know that something beautiful is being crafted inside.

I wonder if this now, second time around, is actually The End of the cubby house story.

Other than that, I'm reading my sister Abby's advance copy of Once In Lourdes which is exquisitely written and haunting me day and night. A suicide pact between four teenagers and then their stories as they live out the two weeks between when the pact was taken and when they plan to enact it.

During the week Bren reminded me to step back from an issue with one of our girls and not to get too attached and involved in it. Instead of moving away somehow that made me travel back into the intensity of my own life and mind as a teenager. The angst, the anguish, the love and the dreams. I was flooded with memories and feelings of 30 years ago. I was overcome by thoughts of times I hadn't visited in years. And I felt overwhelmed with the fact that now I am parenting my own girls through that. What a responsibility.

Reading this book at this time is only serving to heighten these feelings. I am desperate to read more and I'm frightened to at the same time.

I'm listening to the Invisibilia podcast, which I LOVE!

I'm crocheting a ripple blanket with 12 stitches in-between zigs and zags and a chunky 6.5mm hook. After all this time crochet feels like home.

I'm spending time in the green-house planting and watering and admiring.

I'm loving my little spotty pot that my friend Tania made me and gave me (first photo) as a green-house warming present.

I'm looking forward to next Friday when the big girls finish school for the term - sososososososo tired and Miss Pepper has her opening night.

And I'm hoping and wishing that you sweet friend, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, are feeling as calm and as happy and as inspired and driven as I hope to be when I open my eyes tomorrow.

Thank you for sticking with me through the dark as well as the light.

Big love,

Kate  xx

Two days

Hooray for the weekend!!

I'm so excited. It's no secret that I had a bit of a crappy few days at the end of last week. I really did. Overemotional, sad, lost, empty...

This weekend feels a bit like a reward for getting through it. My light at the end of the back-to-school tunnel.

And I have big plans for this weekend.

I plan to clock up some hours on the crochet hook. My book deadline is in sight and that means so is the end of the book blanket. I bought a knitting magazine today, I think I'm getting ready to sew in the ends and move on.

I plan to watch these guys and their millions of green buddies and hope that the past few freeeeeeezing cold days have panicked them into thinking it's almost autumn and that they had better ripen their seeds quickly.

I plan to do a spot of treasure hunting. My farmer boy is threatening to send me to garage sale rehab, but  I think that a little bit of thrifting here and there keeps me sane.

 I plan to make pesto. And eat pesto. On everything. Mmmmmm summer.

I plan to enjoy the fruits of my past few days of baking frenzy. Farmer Bren called it nesting the other day, but the sad thing is that it was really empty nesting. They went to school and I baked. Sob!

I plan to admire these gorgeous avos we got in the mail from here. They're so fresh that they're not even ripe yet, but they sure are gorgeous.

And lastly, but firstly, I plan to spend so much time with my girlies. We've got two whole days with them and I don't plan to let them out of my sight.

There you go, that's my weekend all planned out.
I hope it goes oh so slowly.
I really need it to.

So how are you?
What have you got planned for your end of week days?
Are you making or baking or growing or sewing?

Later lovelies.
Lotsa love.
xx