Summer Days

It's been a very busy summer. As always, there is masses to do around the place with gardens (caring for them and dealing with the produce), building things, fixing things, making things.

With Mac no longer working, I have to find an alternate way of selling surplus eggs: I thought I found one, but that has proved unreliable, so I'm going to have to look for other local customers - except the chooks have decided the weather's too hot, and they are starting to moult and go off the lay.

I made lots of books, a few Valentine's Day cards and water bottle holders and had a stall for three successive monthly Raglan Creative Markets: I broke even at far as costs go, but I need to make more than costs, and discovered that I really don't like sitting being friendly to people all day. Especially not to the one who wouldn't let his wife buy a water bottle carrier, but waited until I left my table for a minute and rushed back in and snapped a couple of quick photos and rushed out again! I was gob-smacked! I feel sorry for his wife who just wanted something pretty and who was no doubt going to be told to make it herself.

We haven't had a holiday but did have Greg, Maggie and the kids here for most of a week, which was lovely, and then we had Ti'ana and Ethan for a few days the following week. It was great having Mac here as well, as there was always someone to do things with them. We gorged on Lord of the Rings, watching all three movies together.

We went bush.

 The newly revived Rabbit motor scooter was ridden.

I went to the library and came home with a book and about 20 tadpoles. As you do.

 

 

 The play house was restored.

 A ladder was made for the tree hut in the bush.

 

Ethan supervised Mac as he started to convert the old concrete water tank into a wood shed. And now we have the hard job of chopping down, and cutting up (what a strange language!) trees to fill it.

 

 We went for a play on the beach at Ruapuke.

At the end of the day, life is pretty good.

Hugelkultur 2 and Chooks

Today I went and got four new pullets to add to my flock. Last year I tried raising chicks from eggs, but it proved to be an expensive and heartbreaking business, so this year I went back to letting someone else do the hard stuff.

When we got home with them, I let the old ladies out of their run, which I've been doing a bit lately, and shut the four new chooks in the run to get to know their new home unmolested. It must have worked because two of them promptly laid eggs!

 The old ladies suddenly realised that their gate was shut, and that there were strangers in their run and kicked up quite a fuss. For the first time they were keen to get back into the run where they proceeded to argue among themselves for sometime, but nothing as vicious as past introductions, so I'm thinking that having the old hens return to the run after the new ones had made themselves at home may have made the difference.

Meanwhile, Mac got to play with the tractor and dug out a bit of a trench for the hugelkultur bed. We also found some suitable rotting logs to put into the bottom of the trench next. But mostly, Mac had fun.

Hugelkultur

After we accumulated a pile of tree prunings from around our place, and from a section clean-out that Mac helped his brother with, we thought about having a bonfire but really, these days there's no family around most of the time, and anyway, there's a total fire ban on at the moment.

So what to do? I mentioned an idea I had gathered a while back from an issue of  Permaculture Magazine and to my surprise Mac grabbed the idea and ran with it. Of course - ever since we got the new old tractor, he's been looking for an excuse to use the digger bucket.

We are going to build a hugelkultur raised bed. Hugelkultur means hill culture or hill mound. It is built up from a base of rotting wood placed in a trench, followed by branches and twigs. The logs and branches are then covered with the dug out turf and earth, and then - whatever!  Grass clippings, seaweed, compost, aged manure, straw, green leaves, mulch, etc... There's more about it here.


So today we went for a wander to chose a spot for our first hugelkultur bed. I got a little distracted admiring and picking some agapanthus.

 Then I admired the elders and looked forward to making some elderflower cordial next year.

With our spot chosen, we dumped the piles of branches.

The next job will be for Mac to play with his tractor to dig the trench. I'm looking forward to seeing how well this system works.

At The Beach

  Lily Allen sang:

 "Sun is in the sky oh why oh why ?
Would I wanna be anywhere else?"

But I reckon I have it better, Lily. A swim at Ngarunui Beach beats a bike ride through London any time!

I love this song by Linn Lorkin about being At The Beach in New Zealand.

2014: A New Year

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

Neil Gaiman

This season has been a particularly wonderful season for wild carrot which became 'my' flower back in 2011 and so seems appropriate to accompany the quote from Gaiman, which expresses beautifully what I hope for this year. 2014 is going to be extremely challenging as Mac and I rearrange and restructure our lives.

Endings and Beginnings

I don't usually do Christmas letters, and on the rare occasions that I have, it's been more of a New Year letter, or even a February letter. But the past twelve months have been a strange time, so I decided to write about it. I won't call it a Christmas letter / blog because I decided a few years ago not to do Christmas - instead I invite people to come if they wish to our place for Not-Christmas. The last couple of years were fun for me because we had lots of people at our place on 25 December, just hanging out and socialising: family, family of family, and friends who, for a variety of reasons decided to be with us. This year, after a complaint from one member of the family, I haven't invited anyone, but just asked family what they are doing, and told them we'll be at home as usual. Hopefully, they'll all come out to spend some time with us and with each other. If anyone else turns up, I will make them welcome too.

Last year at this time, Mac's boss at work (and others) were made redundant. It was all rather unpleasant, and in addition, we knew that Mac's level would be the next to be re-structured. We expected to hear in March, but time dragged out and I pushed it to the back of my mind. It's been very stressful, especially as Mac decided right back then, that if they offered redundancy, he would take it. He said he didn't want to work any more, at least not in that sort of full-time, employee way.

Anyway, now, a whole year after the first layer of re-structuring it has happened. He finishes work tomorrow. It's scary.

At the beginning of April I went and saw a doctor in Hamilton. He's alternative, but is a registered doctor who gave up his place in a medical centre to devote his time to private practice in which he addresses problems through diet and supplements. I went in the vague hope that he would do something to make me feel healthier than the gradually wearing away feeling I'd had for a long time. As a result I have a greatly improved digestive system, almost no joint pain (very occasional, and so negligible as to not qualify as 'pain'), and, best of all, no depression. No depression despite the fear and uncertainty of not knowing how we are going to live from now on. It has been a lot of work holding myself together, but I know that without the change in my body's health, I would have struggled in vain to remain semi-stable and depression-free.

There has been sadness in the year with the death of my brother-in-law and friend after a long battle with cancer. I had known him for 43 years. I saw him two days before he died and said goodbye. It's hard. It's hard to see some one you've known and cared about for that long die, and, in addition, it brings awareness of one's own mortality into sharp focus. Other friends have also had hard times: injury, illness, marriage and children problems. I should count myself lucky, and I do, but it all adds to the scariness of the future. I don't want to get ill or die yet: I have thrown so much time, throughout my life, into the deep chasm that is depression, and now that I have finally climbed out I have so much I want to do and enjoy before I die.

Friendships seem to have changed a lot this year too: partly because I have changed, and my day to day life has changed; and partly because they have changed. I found the same thing happened at various times in my life, such as when I first had children, and when my last child went to university and then left home. I have stopped going to some activities, and I have started new activities. Some of my friends have gone to work, gone travelling, got into new relationships, have new family circumstances. Sometimes it feels like 'everyone else' is expanding their horizons, while mine are shrinking. Some have moved on to such an extent that I have had to accept that they no longer want me to be a part of their lives. That's hard, but I also know that there are people that I too have left behind.

So, apart from improved health, what else is good? I have enjoyed Wednesday nights going with Steven to listen to jazz in Auckland. I have enjoyed a couple of book making workshops - and making books again after a bit of a hiatus. I enjoyed a great year in the vegetable garden last year, though this season is not looking so great. My bees didn't do too well last year, but so far things are looking better this year. I've enjoyed my beekeeping friends and my permaculture friends, old and new, and hope to see more of them over the next year. Womad was again one of the highlights of my year, and I bought tickets for womad 2014 before we knew the details of Mac's redundancy. I am determined to enjoy it as best I can as it will probably be the last we attend. We also spent last New Year's Eve at Papamoa at a reggae concert, which was great - as well as good music, it was one of the best atmospheres I have experienced at such an event. From now on, I will probably have to restrict my live music happenings to Raglan, but fortunately there is some good music to be enjoyed here.

From now on I'm going to have to limit activities, especially those which require petrol. Visits to Hamilton will be mainly for shopping, looking after grandchildren and visiting family in the time between those. But I am going to enjoy spending more time with Mac, getting more done around home, with a helper to do stuff that I can't do on my own. I had my first market stall the other day, selling books, and have booked in for two more. One of the things that my years of depression have done to me, is whittle away the small amount of self-confidence that made it through my childhood and teenage years, and that first stall was very hard to do. Without Mac's encouragement, and that of a few friends and family, I couldn't have done it. I was so scared of a whole bunch of really unlikely possibilities (like, of some random person coming up and telling me my books are shit) that I ate almost nothing but chocolate for days before hand! (Don't tell my doctor, please!) Mind you, I didn't drink even one glass of the two bottles of whisky I've been given, so that was good. So I'm looking forward to giving it a go a couple more times before, and also to starting up my Felt store again.

I'm looking forward to more swimming and walking with Mac, more creativity, and just finding joy in the simple miracles of life. I'm trying to think of it as a new start to a new adventure with new opportunities.