Hope in Endings

I'm feeling a bit sad. We are off to WOMAD this weekend but our usual group of friends who attend is depleted this year. My northern hemisphere friends are posting pictures of first leaves, returning birds, and other signs of the approach of spring. I have been feeling very aware of endings.

This morning I decided to go for a little walk and look at the signs of summer coming to an end, to try to find some beauty in endings. What I found was not just beautiful, but surprising.

 Pumpkins. Food, and seeds for next spring and summer growing - hope for the future.

One last egg. Not really going to come to anything, given we have no rooster, but certainly a symbol of hope.

Feathers. The chooks are moulting and egg laying is becoming rare. But they are losing their old, tatty feathers, and ceasing to lay, in preparation for growing fresh new feathers. They will start laying again some time after the shortest day - one of the first hopeful signs that spring will return.

The fruit is coming to an end but as well as the tasty flesh, fruit contains the seed of future trees.

These peaches are delicious, and came off a tree that grew from a peach stone discarded under a friend's plum tree. The plums were yummy, but we aren't disappointed with the surprise fruit.

The beans are still producing, but at a reduced rate. I find big, fat, tough, overgrown beans hiding among the leaves - seed for next spring. Hope.

These tomatoes were grown from seed from last year's plants grown from cherry tomatoes given by a friend the year before. They are so sweet and flavoursome. We will save seed again. Sweet hope.

 The lemon tree's hopeful promise is fast becoming reality.

 As is that of these sweet fruit on a shrub I bought as 'Chilean guava', but have seen under various other names.

 Among  the die-off of the silver beet and parsley, new silver beet plants have emerged for winter eating.

The pine nut tree is offering false hope with this small cone - but it is still a promise of years to come - maybe next year we will have a few full-sized cones containing nuts.

These trees have almost doubled in size this year, despite the crazy weather, so next year I hope to make twice as many bottles of delicious elder-flower cordial.

Two of the bamboo roots we planted in spring, and which lost their leaves, have rallied and grown. One day I'll have our own big fat bamboo to make structures of varying kinds.

Bob the Dog gives a wonderful and constant example of a life lived in hope.

Spike just lives in hope that Bob won't notice him, so he can leap out and scratch the poor fellow on the nose.

I hope that my friend Violet will come back from America to visit me one day. This year the artichokes she gave me are very late, and are just now about to open their beautiful sunflower buds to smile at me.

And though the remaining wild carrot flowers are small, and most have died, they aren't really dead, but rather, turned to stunning seed heads, so I can already imagine next year's fields of my favourite wild flower.

The Beekeeper's Shed

Over a year ago, Greg and Maggie gave us a garden shed - except it was in a flat pack, and got put away to be stored safely under the VW Kombi until Mac had time to erect it. I despaired of that ever happening, but didn't like to nag. However, after well over a decade since it's front was smashed, it is, according to the brother-in-law, time to do up the kombi. Which involves moving the flat pack and moving all my beekeeping gear out of the garage. So building the shed was killing two birds with one stone. Mac being Mac, it had to be done properly. No dirt floor with pallets - A concrete slab was required. A good thing, admittedly, given the winds we get here.

The walls and roof panels were all assembled in the garage over a period of time with Steven's help. Heidi, Greg and I all pitched in at various times to peel the protective layer of plastic off, which was harder than it sounds, and a job Mac hated.

We then needed lots of us to hold things steadily together while it was assembled. Steven and Heidi, and Pat and Colin all helped. It's very handy having Steve and Heidi living here at the moment, and Pat and Colin living just 800 metres down the road! (Though if you count our driveways, it's 1800 metres.)

The doors were the last things to be added - this one is waiting by the clean honey extractor, which seems appropriate.

Pat, Colin and Mac.

That's the peening stool for my scythe on the right, and beside it, space waiting for my garden spade, fork etc. The small end of the shed.

And all my bee gear, tidy and organised at the other end!

I've been making bee magnets with magnetic strips and nail varnish.

 I'd really like a painting of a beehive on the end of the shed, but have no faith in my ability to do that, so gradually I'll make a whole bunch of bees to stick on the wall.

With my new bee shed and my new bee shoes, I feel like a real (hobbyist) beekeeper!

The Documented Life Project: Week 5

Art Challenge: Under Paper (paper on your work table that gets all inky while you work)
Journal Prompt: What Lies Beneath?

This one panicked me when I first read it, as I have never kept under paper. In fact I've never had much. I usually work on a plastic table cloth and wash it afterwards. Never mind - I have now learned to use it and to keep it. I bought a gelli plate a few weeks ago, and have played with it a little, with resulting under paper.

 I used both my two pieces of under paper. I cut one into strips to make a frame, using the other in the middle. I added pressed wild carrot flowers, two 'right' way up, the other down side up. I added more wild carrot flowers by way of stamping.

The writing is the text of the blog I wrote when I got my tattoo for my 60th birthday, which seemed to fit this journal challenge just right. I printed out the words, then splashed and blotted dye over it. 

I'm really happy with this page, but, sadly, it doesn't look nearly as good in the photos as it does in the 'flesh' - the 'blue' table that it's sitting on tells you that the colours aren't right - it's really a greyish cream.

The Documented Life Project: Week 4

Art Challenge:  Writing
Journal Prompt:  Words with Friends

This has been a challenge indeed: I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately. About the meaning of friendship, what it is, what makes a person a friend. I had a difficult time as a child as I had an unpleasantly fiery temper, a desperate need to be loved, and was filled with anxiety about how to behave and react - my fuse was short, and other kids were quick to learn what triggered my temper and would then get much amusement in seeing me flare up, and subsequently get into trouble with the teachers. My mother's way of teaching me not to get in a temper was to whack me with the wooden spoon or her hairbrush and send me to my room until I got over it. Which wasn't very helpful for learning strategies to deal with other kids! As I got older, my self-esteem plummeted, my anxiety and depression increased, and I had a desperate need for love and approval. My idea of a friend was someone who didn't hate me. Someone who would talk to me, at least some of the time - there were many who didn't. I thought my best friends were books, but now I realise they just fueled my unrealistic dreams of a 'bff'. 

I'm still trying to sort out my ideas of friendship, but since my mental health has improved, I am far less desperate, and willing to leave behind the 'friends' who I now realise were just using me, who didn't really care about me at all.

I'm also becoming more tolerant, accepting and forgiving of my friends' shortcomings. Last year a friend said something that I found very hurtful and nearly ended the relationship. I told her I didn't want to talk to her - indefinitely. But after a while I got to thinking that just because she didn't understand something about me, didn't mean she was mean - it just meant she didn't understand. And I got to thinking about all the fun times we'd had, and all the kind, loving things she had done, and realised that I couldn't lose this lovely woman from my life over just one single sentence.

I've come to accept that their are many kinds of friends: friends to do things with, with whom I share interests and activities; friends I can talk to about our philosophies of life, our problems and worries; friends to go swimming or walking with; womad friends. Friends who are friends through a particular phase of life, friends who share the fun, joyous times; friends who share the bad times; and those precious very few who are there for me through both good and bad.

I've come to realise that I too have let friendships slide as I no longer find myself comfortable - and that's okay, just as it's okay when others find me no longer important in their lives. It's sad - and sometimes even though I know I can't sufficiently relate to them any more, I still feel sad, missing the bond that we previously had. There are some who have let go of me, who I miss dreadfully, but I don't hold resentment, nor even a sense of betrayal, as I once did.

Getting older does bring changes: my acceptance of what is is a change for the better. An increasing acceptance of who I am has also made me less needy and less fearful about friendship.

(And I'm loving playing with my gelli plate)

The Documented Life Project: Week 3

Art Challenge:  The Color Wheel
Journal Prompt:  "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way . . . “    - Georgia O’Keeffe

I was determined not to use any words this time, other than the quote.

The Documented Life Project: Week 2

The busyness continues, but I am not giving up! I intend to keep going, and to eventually catch up, but it may not be until winter and the stay-inside weather arrives. So some weeks I have done nothing, one week I did one, another week I did two - but I'm going to keep the 'week 1' style description.

The 'January' theme was The Blank Page and How to Face It. The art challenge for the second week was: gesso. I have gesso. I have had it for longer than I can remember - I bought it for something and never used it. Well, I have now - very useful stuff.

The journal prompt was: "The beginning is always today," a quote from Mary Shelley.

I have quickly discovered that in this project, as with my writing group, and my book club, I don't follow instructions. I find the idea of the beginning being today a bit silly - we all carry our past with us, so I find the idea of building new from old both more valid and more interesting. I started with a poem I wrote a while ago:

On Building New from Old

I give to you a cracker box,

some left-over dye,

an exercise book

with words written

in indecipherable symbols,

off-cuts from another project,

ribbons from past gifts,

tail ends of threads

and the skeletal remains

of a long dead sea creature.

Even the new born babe

brings baggage

entering the world naked

but with several pairs

of well worn genes

and nine months of

private living.

As life slips by

we gather and collect

we discard and hoard

we let chances slip

through our fingers

like soft salty sand

on a hot beach day

Of those gatherings,

some are treasured -

boldly displayed or

 tucked away in red tissue.

Others seem debris

needing spring cleaning

out of existence.

But consider the bits

and pieces of your life

before you throw them

out with the rubbish

on Monday morning:

they may yet be used

for building new treasures.

 I added other quotes.

I think this is very appropriate - I am more a word person, and a book craft person, not an artist, so this page is very messy. But I am going to keep going, and eventually I hope that my pages will become more artisty. I didn't want to show these early pages to the world, but decided that doing so is part of my challenge to "expand the comfort zone."

Honey

Having lost two of my bee hives in autumn last year due to a nasty combination of varroa mites and wasps, and the third at the end of winter due to the disappearance of the queen, I managed to collect a swarm in November, and then bought two nucs. Unfortunately the cold wet November / early December meant they survived but did not thrive - a terrible beginning, and the first time I have ever fed my bees. Anyway, they have eventually come right, and should go into winter strong, provided nothing bad happens.

I didn't expect to get any honey this year, and really just wanted to get them healthy. However the swarm hive suddenly took off and we were able to harvest 10 full depth frames, and 5 3/4 depth frames - 30.522kgs!

Uncapping the honey. Note my beautiful glass bee hanging in the window - a gift from my friend, Chantal, all the way from England.

Mac spinning the honey out.

 Pale, runny honey - delicious.

 My sister-in-law, Pat, came up the road to see what it was all about, so got roped in for a while.

Mac discovering that uncapping isn't easier than I made it look!