island time

It's our last afternoon on the island. I'm hoping that these photos will tell their own stories of our week away so I can go and spend the last precious moments outside rather than in the air-conditioning tapping away on my computer.

It's been magical.


See you next week with stories from back on the farm.

LoveLove

xx

PS. If you have any tips for easy reentry I'd love to hear them. I hear it's cold and wintry back home.

sixteenth

YOU GUYS!!!!! I just read through all of your ridiculously kind and thoughtful and generous comments and emails and I feel humbled and blessed beyond words. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and thank you once more.

Sometimes blogging feels like the strangest thing, writing a journal is one thing, but seriously, why post it out there in public for the world to see? You guys are the answer. Our community. And I just feel so very grateful to have you and this outlet in my life.

Kisses and cake for all!!


In the meantime, we took a spontaneous trip to the beach. On Tuesday night I was looking at the weather forecast and feeling claustrophobic about the oncoming summer holiday days that would have to be spent inside out of the cold and wet, when I decided we had to get away. Just like that.

We never get to leave our farm over the summer because of the bushfire threats and the irrigation issues, but after all the rains we'd had, we certainly could. So we did!

The very next morning we packed up and drove to the beach. It was exactly what we all needed. Exactly! We spent a few days with family, we played board games, we went to the movies, we looked in the shops, we read our books, and we played at the beach.

The beach!! We got sandy, almost blown away, wet and salty. We felt alive and exhilarated.

And wouldn't you know it, just when we drove onto the ferry to come home, the sun came out. It was time.

When was the last time you took a little break from your life?


Sending you a bit of that fresh summer holiday feeling, my friends.

Big love

xxxx

Five instagram Fridays

Five Fridays have passed since I first told you about The Centre of Contemporary Photography's instagram competition. Five weeks of wondering and exploring the one word prompt given to us, five weeks of taking lots of maybe shots, and five weeks of considering the way I use instagram, the way the other contestants use instagram and what that all means in the scheme of things.

And of course it means five Fridays of uploading the final photo, five Fridays of refreshing my feed constantly to see what the other participants have posted and five Fridays of second guessing myself, of feeling happy, of feeling unprofessional, cliche, inadequate, proud and pleased.

So let me take you on a journey back through those last five Fridays and tell you a bit about the story behind each of my photos.

WEEK 4 | STRANGER

I had spent the few days before the fourth Friday at The Slow Living Workshop and even though I'd had my phone out taking pics the entire time, and even though I had an idea that I'd like to submit something with flowers, I drove out of there thinking that I would have to post my entry a day after. That a Saturday photo would have to be better than no photo at all.

But late that night, sitting in my car waiting for Indi to finish her school production, I found this one amongst the millions I'd taken that week. It felt perfect. Like it represented the theme and my few days exactly. The stranger in black, the contrasting yellow of the wattle and the incredibly beautifully styled table.

I captioned it - I find these internet friendships we form so interesting. We are strangers yet we know intimate details about each other's lives.



WEEK 5 | TIME

My caption - These two and their sister. Their wobbly teeth, their birthdays, their new centimetres, their new tricks, their insights, their favourite songs, their squabbles, their seasons, their accomplishments, the books they finish, the year levels they complete, each day, each hour, each minute.

I woke them up at 5.30am that Friday. Jazzy wouldn't get up. Thankfully these two did. And thankfully the greys turned to blues, turned to golden orange and became awesome. Hand holding children and sunrises are totally cliche, but for a good reason I think. There are not many more humbling experiences than watching night become day, then watching it through their eyes, and then watching them become who they are to be.



WEEK 6 | UP CLOSE

No caption this week. No close up of beach washed up pebbles, no close ups of tropical flowers or leaves or fruit.

Our Indi. On the walk through the jungle from the beach back to the house. Sandy hair, holiday face, content.



WEEK 7 | MIRROR IMAGE

It took me a week to get this shot. Each morning for a week I'd run past the Port Douglas marina at 6.30 and hope for the best, but each day it was too windy and the ripples in the water disturbed the shot I hoped to take.

Until the seventh Friday. On that day I ran, I photographed just in case and not until I got home and flicked through my photo stream did I realise I'd gotten it. I flipped it for fun, didn't caption it and posted it before 8am, record!!



WEEK 8 | CONTRAST

Last Friday morning I walked through our forest with a bucket of watered down clay we had taken from our dam and a paint brush. I chose three blackened trees, loaded some podcasts on my phone and got to work painting stripes.

I borrowed this idea from our wonderful friend and local artist Petrus Spronk. A few months ago he came over to our house and shared a DVD of his own works using clay to paint the trees near his home. He is fascinated with the horizontal stripes in the vertical forest. And we all loved hearing the stories of his beautiful images as much as we loved looking at the photos of them.

Totally and completely inspired, I asked his permission to paint some of our own blackened forest and to my delight he agreed.

So on the eighth Friday I painted, and while it wasn't exactly easy to make even stripes on the charred bark, it was meditative. And when I finally stood back, I liked what I saw. And I photographed it and then I came down the hill to the house and posted it. I love that I can see the stripy trees from my kitchen window when I am doing the dishes.

My caption reads - Horizontal lines in an otherwise vertical forest. White dam clay against the 2009 bushfire burnt trees. With love and gratitude for the concept to my artist friend Petrus Spronk.

And that's it! Until this Friday of course. Better get my thinking cap on.

If you are following this on instagram I'm sorry for the repetition.
If you'd like to see my first three pics you can check them out here.
You can click on the #ccpsalonig hashtag on instagram to see what the other nine grammers are posting.
And if you feel like it you can even join in too by posting your own responses to the prompts using the #diyccpsalon hashtag.

Phew, did you get all that? I hope so.

I also hope you are well and happy.

Until next time, may your light be just right.

Big love! xx

tropical exhale

Each year we try to take a few weeks off between the cold, quiet months of winter and the start of the spring growing season. Each year we try to go somewhere far away from our farm. To have a proper break from the everyday chores, the ever growing to-do lists, the routines and the expectations.

The further we go, the more perspective we can get on things back home. The more the landscape changes, the more the flora and fauna and day to day life differ, the more we can really see our lives on the farm. And the longer we are away, the more decisions and changes and plans we can make and put in place.


It's amazing what early morning walks on the beach, tropical fruit breakfasts, sea breezes, slow uninterrupted chunks of time, clear blue skies, the sound of the waves, bare feet, afternoon siestas, and beach salty skin can do to refresh and revive our visions.


We've done our seed order, I've read Looking for Alaska and Crazy Rich Asians, Farmer Bren has been doing an online ukulele course and has spent hours perfecting his strum and accompanying Indi's singing.


I've cast off another pair of socks, I've walked/jogged 7,000 steps before breakfast, we've spent a good chunk of time with family and bumped into friends and we've hardly ever driven anywhere, which is always the best sign of a holiday for me.

(Jazzy's socks ravelled here).


We've eaten too much, we've thought more about next year's adventure, we've swum, we've been constantly amazed by the crazy beautiful tropical wild and bird life, and we've talked about life at home on our farm. We've felt alive and exhilarated and refreshed.

We've breathed in  enormous gulps of holiday air and we've felt grateful beyond measure.

And in the weeks and months to come when life builds up and speeds up and piles up, we'll have these few weeks away to remember and ground us. Hopefully we'll be able to hold on to and recall the pillowy feeling of the the warm wind as it swirls around us, the fizzy tingle of the waves that have just crashed over us and the sweetest tastes of pineapple and passion fruit and strawberries in our mouths.


I wonder if you have a warm and sweet place to go to in your heart when things get too crazy on the ground? I wonder if yours is tropical and laid back like mine, or in the middle of the hustle and bustle somewhere exotic? I wonder what bird songs you can hear, what the market food tastes like and how tall the mountains on the range are?

I hope you can go there.

Big love

xx

Last beach.

At the end of last week, with a forecast for some beautiful, sunny days, we headed to the beach to squeeze the last out of of our seven months of summer holidays.

It's hard to believe that in a few days time we will be back in the school, uniform, lunch, activities routine again. Its hard to imagine how we will cope with appointments, meetings and schedules. With bed times and meal times and homework times and wake ups times.

So before all that starts, we headed off to the beach for a few days.

We've been swimming and digging and playing ball and exploring. 

We've been walking through caravan parks and missing our road tripping life and talking about our next journey.

And we're loving hanging out with Miss Indi's friend Ethan, lent to us for five days. I know it's only short term, but things seem so much more balanced with a boy on board. Simpler. More active.

And despite the heat,  I've been crocheting....and playing with my crochet.

And of course I've been op-shopping.

What's a trip to a small coastal town without the hunt for my buddies the Johnson Brothers and The Meakins? Who knows how the six of us plus luggage and thrifty finds are going to fit in the car on the way back.

Home again, home again tomorrow morning.

School uniform sorting, hair cutting, life organising for a few days.

And then the school year begins.

Deep breath.

What have you been up to lately?

Found any treasures?

Made anything gorgeous?

Been anywhere exciting?

Eaten anything delicious?

Do tell.

xx

The Le Grand finale.

We spent yesterday at Cape Le Grand National Park just near Esperance.

Everything they say about the beaches in this area is true. The whitest sand. The bluest, blue water. Rocks. Greenery. Kangaroos. Birds. Magnificent.

It was too cold to swim but that only meant we had most of the beaches and roads to ourselves and that was totally fine by us.

We ran and climbed and tried unsuccessfully to fly the new parachute kite. We sang and yelled and screamed and laughed. We felt wild and windy.

The sad part is that those were our last West Australian beaches. The end of our five months on the coast of the West and South of the West. Wow! I really shouldn't be sad when its been so amazing though, should I.

As I type this my farmer boy is packing us up tight. Soon we'll hitch up, set off North and then later today we'll turn East and onto the Nullarbor. The next part of the adventure. Let's hope it's not Nullarboring.

Travel safe my friends.
See you on the other side, if not before.