blossom

And wouldn't you know it, while last week I felt sick in my heart and couldn't stop crying, this week I was struck down and felt sick in my body and sick in my head. A winter cold snuck in just when I was feeling my most vulnerable, I was an easy target. So instead of following my days of tears and heartache with walks through the forest, gardening, and other activities that are good for my soul, I went to bed and barely got out for a few days. 

This morning though the sun is bright and shiny and the skies are brilliant and blue. I sat in the sunroom before to drink my morning coffee and had to go and find my sunglasses and strip off some woolly layers. This little glimpse of spring feels precious and has somehow reminded me of some of the good bits of who I am and what I love to do. My head and heart feel better than they have for weeks. 

But I'm still not there yet so I'm going to make this another short one. My head feels so full of muck that it's making it hard to think clearly. It's taken me so long to write these few short paragraphs and I'm not even sure they make any sense.

So a few catch up photos, a few words to explain and then hopefully I'll be back to regular programming next week. Fingers crossed anyway.

Bren has been turning out the most beautiful wooden bowls on his lathe. I love how he incorporates and makes a feature of the wood's natural patterns and markings. Such a gift.

There was one day this week, I can't remember if it was yesterday or the day before, where I had a few hours of feeling slightly better so I rushed out to the greenhouse and started planting seeds into soil. It almost didn't matter what I was planting or if it was even too early in the season, I just had to get my hands dirty and I needed to feel like I was moving forward.

Next autumn I hope I remember to plant more bulbs in pots in the sun room. Just having these little bursts of colour popping up has made such a difference to our late winter states of mind. Call it colour plant therapy if you like.

I could barely do anything while I was so sick this past week but thankfully I could read this 480 page book. May We Be Forgiven is one of the best books I think I've ever read. I absolutely loved this crazy roller coaster ride, it starts with a bang and I was fully engrossed until it came full circle at the end.

I'm so grateful that my speed-reader mum passes her favourite library books over to me.

This week I received a copy of Japanese Knitting - patterns for sweaters, scarves and more from the kind people at Tuttle Publishing and New South Books.

Japanese Knitting includes 23 of the sweetest knitting and crochet patterns you ever did see. Colour work sweaters, cute cardigans that can be worn front-to-back and back-to-front, shawls, hats, slippers, gloves...flicking through its pages makes me hungry to cast on in the same way a cook book makes your tummy rumble. The design and styling is beautiful, the photos make the patterns look fun and easy to wear, hopefully I'll cast one on soon and let you know what they're like to knit...I just can't decide where to start.

In the meantime I'm comfort-knitting socks.

And I'm thrilled to report that we found our first blossom this morning on the ornamental almond outside my studio. One week until calendar spring. Thank goodness. I might just make it after all.

Thank you all for the incredible messages of kindness and empathy and support and love you left on my last post. I'm never sure about posting the difficult stuff. Especially last week when I felt so distraught and defeated. But you guys never fail to say the stuff I need to hear. You are my community and reading through your messages was so heart warming and soul nourishing. I'm so very grateful.

And with that I'm going to sign off for another week. I'm going to have lunch with my boy in the sun, I'm going to hang some washing out to dry and then I'm going to sort through our seeds. I've seen people online pricking out their tomatoes and I haven't even planted mine yet.


Be kind to yourselves and each other my friends.

Lots of love,

Kate x

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

these summer days

Mostly these days I'm in the garden. I'm hammering in stakes and tying up the straggly plants. I'm weeding out the fat hen, the milkweed, the dandelion and something else that looks like it could be potted up as a succulent. Sometimes I'm listening to podcasts but most often I'm just sitting with my thoughts, listening to the bees and the birds and trying not to get stung by the march flies. I'm marvelling at the fully blossoming flower heads, admiring the different shapes and colours, encouraging the opening buds and wondering at those yet to come out, what will they become?

I am in love.

Even when I discover thrip, or bird, or slug, or Japanese beetle damage. Even when I find my fingers stained with squished cabbage moth caterpillar insides. Even when I lose my third tray of planted straw flower seeds to something unknown and unwanted.

Over the blossoming weeks we've given bunches of blooms tied up with bailing twine to all those who've visited. The feeling of watching people's faces light up as they turn their handfuls around, admiring each flower, is indescribable. The precious gift is mine.

One day I got up early and picked a bucketful. When the girls woke up I told them to make posies in jars for their bedrooms. Their delight kept me smiling for the rest of the day.

One evening we stayed up very late to drink champagne and do our flower farming course homework and make a vision board. As I started pulling out all the magazines that we have it occurred to me that the last time I bought magazines was way back in 2011 and they were all filled with craft. As we started flipping through them it became obvious that as the years have passed, so have our interests and inspirations. I found a few pictures of earthy toned knitting, a couple of botanical paintings and then had to wait for the next chance to visit the op shop for some gardening mags. Thank you to the dear gardener who donated my pile. Although I initially resisted the vision board concept, I now find myself stopping in front of it often to admire the garden cut-outs, the beauty and the bounty.

One afternoon we went to a local botanical gardens to watch and listen to my sister Emily play. On the way out I stopped to look at the plant stall and my family laughed at my flowering plant addiction while encouraging me to buy more and more. Later on when I discovered the girls reading the labels and asking me about perennials and annuals and biannuals, I wondered if the love affair might be catchy.

One morning as we were sitting in the shade in the garden and farmer Bren was making a vegetable seed order on his phone, he turned to me and asked if we wanted some flowering sweet pea seeds. I love that he's on this flower farming adventure with me. That our mixed family farm just got a bit more diverse.

Another day as the skies rumbled and threatened a summer storm, we all got out into the garden together and picked big bunches for tables, desks, mantels and bedsides. They asked me how to cut them, they exclaimed at each new discovery, they watched their father show them how to arrange them, then they thanked us for growing them and I swelled with pride.

We've planted a range of flowering plants through out our garden but so far the zinnias are the most prolific. In one of the flower farming course videos we watched during the week she called them the beginner flower. They're simple to grow, their blooms are bright and cheery and the more you pick the more they grow. I keep thinking how grateful I am that we stumbled on the page with their picture in a seed catalogue last winter. It was luck and I feel lucky and I know that they'll always have a place in my garden each season.

In other news, the poppy seeds our dear friends Mika and Jobbo gave us early last year have finally popped in the middle of the kitchen garden. Unfortunately their flowering days are definitely shortened because they are overhead watered each morning with the rest of that garden. But still, I love them and they make me smile.

I also love taking photos in the house direction these days. How pretty the green house and the sun room look as a backdrop.

We picked our first apple for the season. A Jersey Mac still warm from the sun and a bit too sweet for my taste, but still, apple season has begun and I'm excited.

We're still waiting for the tomatoes to ripen. Each lunch time someone remarks on how much better their salad or sandwich would be with a tom. Come on babies!

We are picking cucumbers, plums, potatoes, leafy greens, spring onions, cabbages, lots of herbs, and the last of the broad beans.

I'm reading March, which one of you suggested to me when I read Little Women last year. I found this copy in an op shop the other day and bought it without even opening it up to look at what it was. Thank you if that was you.

I knitted farmer Bren a new beanie (in a heatwave). I needed something mindless to knit while I watched the flower farm course videos and this pattern was perfect.

Ravelry details here.

We started harvesting our onions.

I swatched and then cast on the sweater I'm going to knit with the yarn my family bought me for my birthday last year. That there is the rib that goes at the bottom of the front piece. The yarn is delicious and I'm so excited to knit this and watch it grow.

And we cleaned out the green house ready for the autumn and winter seed raising. It hurts me a bit to think about the cold weather eating and gardening, but I imagine this year's cold months will be different than those that came before because of the new greenhouse and sun room. Hopefully.

Which brings us to now. The last Friday blog post of these summer holidays. While I've been writing this we've discussed the end of Indi's book, we've dealt with a friendship issue, we've admired Jazzy's new hairdo and her diary, Bren's sent me countless texts from town about visual diaries, I had to stop altogether to snuggle an overheated Pepper (she's sitting on the arm of my chair reading as I type now), I've okayed the girls' social arrangements and Bren raised his eyebrows when I told him I'd barely written anything after he came in after leaving me alone.

It's impossible to get in the zone and write words I'm proud of with all of these interruptions. And yet next week I know without a doubt that I'll miss them. The house will be quiet and there'll be no one coming in to play me a quick song, or show me a photo or ask me what I think. Oh my girlies.

I hope you've had a lovely week.

Are you more of a sweet or sour apple lover?

What's your favourite flower?

Are you watching/reading/cooking/growing/knitting anything wonderful lately?

I must hurry up and finish this, Miss Pepper is desperately wanting to go and have a swim in the windmill dam.

Until next week!

Love, Kate x

ps. Thank you Bren for the pics of me! xx
pps. Surely it's good luck to find a double headed zinnia in your patch (first photo)?!

a story of socks, spring and other sunshiny things

Hello honey bunches!

It's so lovely having you here again this week. Sunlight is streaming in through the (smudgy) windows, I can hear farmer Bren on the walk behind tractor spading into the green manure in the garden and I have that excited spring feeling in my tummy that anything is possible, probable even.

Having said that, I'm going to attempt to squeeze this in to a tiny little time slot today as I have meringues to bake for a family lunch tomorrow, I have washing to hang OUTSIDE on the line, I have pasta bake to cook for my big girls coming home from camp tonight, I have Miss Pepper's end of term school concert to attend and if there's any time left over after all of that then I'd love to spend it pulling winter vegetables out of the garden to make more room for spring flowers.

So let's do a bit of a 10 things about now blog.

Let's go!

one
The colour-work socks I just had to knit as a personal challenge and because I am slightly obsessed with colour-work knitting and am slowly working towards some bigger pieces.

After I cast these socks off my farmer boy promptly nailed them to the lounge room wall. True story! For me the beauty of knitting socks is that they are so utilitarian. They can be beautiful and creative but their main purpose is to be worn. But he thinks they are works of art and should be exhibited for all to see. Bless him.

The Ravelry details are here.

two
Is about how panicked I get at this stage in spring every single year. The sun comes out, I plant 1,000's of seeds in the greenhouse, I fill every empty garden bed I can find and then I freak out that I've run out of space and what will happen to all the rest of my plant babies? Where will they go? How will they grow?

So I'm slowly pulling the rows of over-wintered carrots, beets, spring onions, garlic and kale out of the garden and preserving them, so we can prepare the space for replanting.

three
Over the past two weeks and going ahead into the future, our builder friend Jobbo is spending three days a week working with farmer/builder Bren renovating our house. So far we've put some gorgeous shelves in the kitchen, replaced our ugly mantelpiece with a beautiful slab of wood, pulled the car-port down, rendered half the front of our house and pulled out all the bushes that were growing along it. We have big plans to extend the green-house, build a new space for our cars, include a wood-shed and then get going on my studio. Oh what fun! I'll get some photos and show you soon.

four
I'm reading my sister Abby's review copy of Peter Carey's new book A Long Way From Home.

I almost always finish the books I start. But generally I feel that you know if you should continue by page 60. I'm on page 56 of this book and am still undecided. I'm not all that interested in cars and the characters don't grab me yet, but I know there's some sort of race around Australia coming up and I do love that the bit I've read so far is set in Bacchus Marsh which is right up the road from us and feels local. One character even caught the train to Ballarat via Ballan, which is our train line, and hung out at Craig's hotel where my friend works, I do love that.

I think I'll give it a bit more of a chance.

five
We're watching episodes of UnREAL. I've never watched even one episode of The Bachelor, but I must say I am tempted now.

six
My elbows are sore and I don't know why. It could be from gym, it could be from gardening, it could be something that happens to me every year at this time because I vaguely remember it from last year, I don't know. I do know that I'm determined to not push too hard so that hopefully it'll disappear quickly and not linger.

seven
My latest favourite thing to eat is scrambled eggs with spring garlic and spring onion, spinach, kale, parsley and herbs, delicious!

eight
A few days ago I woke up filled with a sense of well being. I searched my life for the cause of this wonderful feeling. Was is the weather? Did I have something exciting going on? Eventually I realised that it was because all my girls were tucked up in their beds, in their rooms, in our house. So often these days they're out with friends or at school things, and it just felt warm and wonderful to have them here safe with me.

Another night I woke up and thought about the fact that all of our girls sleep through the night now and it would take something pretty big for one of them to wake us up. We're fully and completely in another stage of parenting now, wow. It's only a shame that after all those years of wishing they'd sleep through the night, when they finally do - I don't.

nine
I've recently discovered and listened to a couple of episodes of Wardrobe Crisis the podcast and I really like it. Clare Press the presenter covers issues on her podcast like slow fashion, mending, responsible buying, waste, and they're just the episodes I've looked at or listened to so far. Living in a house where conscious, sustainable shopping and dressing is such an issue, I'm loving what this podcast is teaching me and how it is making me feel like we're on the right track.

ten
We walked through the apple orchards this morning and I'm thrilled to report that things are looking good. The bees are flying, the trees look strong and healthy, some of the varieties are even at green tip and one had started blossoming! We're crossing our fingers tight and sending a little prayer up to Mother Nature for a still, sunshine filled October, so the blossom can come out, the bees can fly and pollinate and the fruit can set. That would make this farmer very happy indeed.

And that's me.

How about you?
Do you have somewhere to rush off to soon, or can you stay where you are for a while?
Do you finish every book you start?
Do you mend your clothes when they wear out?
Do you have something fun planned for the weekend?
I hope so.

Lots a love,

Kate
xx

from yesterday with love x

So here's something a bit weird. I'm actually writing this on Thursday and not Friday, even though I'm posting it on Friday and not Thursday, and you're probably reading it on Friday and definitely not on Thursday. But if I didn't tell you that you wouldn't know any different. The internet is funny like that isn't it? All this information and all these assumptions and in the end we just have to sort through it all and decide for ourselves what we believe in.

But you can trust me I promise. The reason I'm writing it a day early is because we're going to The Australian Sheep and Wool Show tomorrow (Friday) and on the way home we're going to pop in on our old friends in their new house, and I don't want to feel all rushed or like I've got something at the back of my mind that I feel like I should be doing instead.

So here I am. It's Thursday evening and it's dark and rainy and cold outside. I'm sitting about as close to the heater as I can get, Bren's in the other room practising guitar, the smalls are next to me programming a robot that Pepper and Bren just finished building, and Indi is on a bus home from Woodend. When she gets home we'll have spaghetti with lentils for dinner.

The top photo is of the kitty cat hot water bottle cover I knitted for Miss Pepper for her birthday last year. I was just looking through my Ravelry page before and noticed that I had never taken a photo of it, so now I have. The details are here.

This is the tractor hot water bottle cover that I'm just finishing off now. Did I mention it's cold? 

I feel like overalls are the only clothing option that makes any sense these wintry days. I pretend that I wear them for work, but really it's the handy hot water bottle sized pouch up front. So cozy.

Speaking of sheep and wool and knitting and stuff, here's a little shearing shed drawing my farmer boy found in a box of his primary school exercise books. This one's from grade three. There are more pages of sheep drawings but I forgot to photograph them and now it's dark. Oops, hopefully I'll remember and add them in tomorrow. So cute!!

I'm reading my daughter's copy of Once & Then by Morris Gleitzman, trying to stay ahead of her so we can discuss it as she goes. Once & Then are fictional books that follow the life of a 10 year old Jewish boy called Felix living in 1945 Nazi Poland. I've only read 50 pages so far but I'm already completely engaged in the story. I'm so interested to see how the book progresses and how Morris deals with the horrors of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child and for an audience of children.

I'm also interested to see how the conversation with my daughter evolves. She says that most of the kids in her class have already read the books and she's grown up in a house where many discussions about the Holocaust have taken place in front of her over the years. But still it's pretty tricky subject matter for a kid. I'm hoping that I can trust Morris Gleizman to be sensitive to his young audience and their naivety, but like I said, I'm reading ahead just to be sure.

I'm thrilled to report that my onion seedlings have finally decided to show their sweet green faces a month after I planted them. These were the first seeds that I planted in our new green house so it means so much to me that they have. We also eat a lot of onions so it'll be great to have a big stash.

When we were first talking about and designing the green house I just assumed we'd use old windows for the roof as well as the walls. But then I was quickly talked out of that because their weight and fragility would make the structure unsafe. If we wanted to use old glass, we'd have to build a proper roof structure to support them. 

So after much research and discussion we ordered some poly tunnel plastic and popped it on up. We thought it would be reasonably priced, easy to fit and that it would be UV sensitive come summer.

What ended up happening is that it looked flat and ugly, and when it rained huge pools of water collected in the low points. We tried shoving bits of wood and tubes of cardboard up to stop it, but nothing stopped the pools and we were worried that one day the weight of the water would burst through the plastic and flood the space. 

So this week the plastic came down and some good old, practical Laserlite went up in its place. It's strong and sturdy and safe and now that it's up there I don't mind that corrugated look as much as I thought I might. It does the trick in the rain anyway.

And look at that. Remember in my last post when I told you that we'd been having issues with our Esse stove since it was installed in 2012? Well, on Monday Bren's Dad's plumber came back and after another big day they lit it and ever since then it's been running like a dream. Our house is warm, tonight's dinner was cooked on the hot plate, and if you sit with your back to that radiator in the photo above to write your blog you'll feel as toasty as a marshmallow. So my farmer boy is happy and so say all of warm us!

And that's me all blogged up and no place to go. That is until the sheep and wool show tomorrow. Can't wait!

And just for fun, if you could have anything at all knitted into a hot water bottle cover what would it be? I think I'd like three little girls on mine, or maybe a sheep.

I hope you have a great Friday, honey bunches. I have no idea how to schedule a blog post so I think I'll just publish this early before we leave. And I haven't decided if I'll take my big camera along, but I'm certain I'll be posting to my instagram stories if you want to follow along over there.

Big love!

Kate
xx