Firewood Days

Last winter we had a tornado go through our area: this tree was ripped in half. It's pine nut tree, and it was the first year it had cones on it. Being a type of pine, the fallen part will presumably be good for burning, and we got a good trailer load from it.

A few days later we cleaned the driveway up  bit. Mac used the tractor to pull some of the big gorse out by the roots, and chainsawed up some of the bigger stuff. It's fantastic wood as it burns really hot.

The tornado also ripped a large kahikatea out of the ground, but when we went to look at it, found it was going to be just too hard to cut it up, and to get the wood out of the bush would need a lot more people and effort than Mac and I have.

 So, under the supervision of the flock of cockatoos, we sawed up a fallen gum tree instead.

 It's incredibly satisfying to cut your own firewood, and to clean up gorse and fallen trees at the same time. Sure beats doing housework! And best of all, my health has improved sufficiently for me to do some of the chainsawing again, for the first time in 3 years.

  We parked the trailer of wood under the pohutukawa tree for a couple of days before transfering it to the wood shed.

  Such glorious trees.

 They even make the old trailer beautiful!

Weed Walk

I try to go for a walk most days, if only down the drive and to the short end of the road - which is just 1 km each way. I love how I see different flowers aka weeds each time.

I know these are noxious weeds, but the only way to get rid of them would be lots of poison, which would also poison the stream, so I just have to breathe and enjoy their glorious orange flowers.

There's the daisies, and then there's even more daisies: those tiny white dots are some sort of daisy-like flower but so small you can't tell until get right up close.

Dandelions are not really weeds: apart from their sunny smiles, they can be used for food and drink.

These were my favourite as a child: I picked large bunches of them on the way home from school to put in vases when I got home. Hint - they don't last long once picked.

 This is one I hate - it strangles trees, and I don't even like the flowers.

 But these, these are the very best!

Draw Every Day

Art has always been something for other people: I have never felt it was for me. I could always write, and I could work on my writing and get better at it, but art - I judged myself by my inability to draw or paint anything that looked like anything. However, colour, texture, shape all attracted my attention, and I loved doing art with my homeschooled sons and friends, and with my kids I never felt embarrassed by my inadequacies. I felt joyful when they did better than me, and learned so much, particularly from Simon, who taught me how to look at the world afresh.

My desire to create has increased over the years, and has found expression in craft work: sewing, knitting, fabric art, book binding, flag making. My book making has been evolving, very slowly, in a less formal, more expressive way, and involving the use of dyes, inks, stamps, stencils, stitching, collage and more.

Still, I'm not an artist. I still operate from a mindset that, as my school reports said, I lack talent and ability. I can't draw. Over the years I've bought and borrowed and read 'how to' art books, and been to classes, and given up.

The desire has never gone away, and a month ago I bought a book:

 I decided that the only way I'd ever learn to draw / paint was to actually practice - imagine that! This book has you draw every day. It has a page, or part of a page for you to use each day for a year. Each month has a theme (the first is 'nature',) and gives a brief tutorial, and tells you what art supplies to use (the first uses markers and a black pen.) Each day has a prompt. I have taken a deep breath and started yesterday - yes, on 1 January. Not a New Year Resolution so much as a determination.

I have been a procrastinator and a perfectionist most of my life - I put everything off because if I can't be sure I can do something perfectly, I won't even try. Not least because my mother and my teachers were of that generation who believed that the way to inspire children to do better was to point out all the things they did wrong, and to not praise anything in case the child stopped trying. No more. I have spent years trying to work out who I am. I'm still not perfectly clear on that, but I've come to the conclusion that I am too old to procrastinate any longer. I need to do as well as be - otherwise 'being' is pointless: if I am a creative person, I need to create, however badly. And I need to do it without shame or embarrassment - but that's going to take a bit of work!

My instinct is to hide what I do, but even though I know these aren't great, I also know that if I stick at it, the practice will not make perfect, but better, and there is pride, not shame, in trying. I must also say thank you to my wonderfully artistic son, Simon, for his encouragement. These are my first two days efforts.

Weeds and Wood

Today we chopped out some big gorse from beside the driveway. As I walked down, I enjoyed plants that others would have pulled out as soon as they saw them. I leave them: there is so much joy in them, some 'weeds', some 'plants' gone to seed.

 Wild carrot - I love the little speck of red on some of the flowers.

 Silverbeet - isn't it gorgeous?

 Parsley.

 Parsley and dandelion.

 These were my favourites when I was a child.

 A little bit of loveliness between the garage and my bee shed.

And though gorse is indeed a weed, it has its uses: a nursery plant for natives; a food source for bees, and eventually, firewood. The gorse, combined with pine from a pinenut tree destroyed by the winter tornado, filled a trailer with plenty more to come. A good afternoon's work.

The Sun Sets on 2016

After dinner, when I ate more than I should have, we went for a walk to burn off calories, and to see the sun set on 2016. The clouds made it so much more beautiful than a completely clear sky would have been. But I've always been a cloud lover.

 

It's been a hard year for me. There are ups and downs in any year, but starting the year with a tooth infection, followed by waking up one morning to find I had gone near blind overnight, and thus discovering I had Type 2 diabetes, systemic candida and an extremely persistent urinary tract infection, all added up to a difficult and pretty traumatic year. On the plus side, without my awareness of my blood sugar levels, I would have stayed home with my feet up, instead of going for a walk on the best beach in the world.