Time changes everything

I've been spending time in the backyard lately creating a contained herb and vegetable garden. My aim is to develop a comfortable place to spend time, relax, increase biodiversity and encourage more animals, birds and insects to live here or visit. Of course I'd prefer my old garden which was put together by Hanno with ease and German precision. Together, we created a space bursting at the seams with herbs, vegetables and fruity goodness ready to eat and share throughout the year. But time changes everything. What I'm planning on doing now, is a brilliant opportunity for an almost 80 year old with balance issues. In my new garden I'll be able to do a wide range of challenging or easy work, depending on how I feel each day. It’s a daily opportunity to push myself or sit back, watch what's happening around me and be captivated by memories or the scope of what's yet to come.

Garden photos taken yesterday.

Work progressed in the garden almost every day. I've come to the end of the development phase and the garden is now ready to be enjoyed. It will always have new elements in the form of changing seasons, new plants, making sure wildlife is included and sheltered and my hope is we all co-exist to the benefit of us all. I have a lot more time to work on projects or just relax now. I think something has changed within me in the last couple of weeks, I feel more optimistic and capable. At this stage of life, my time will be spent on productive and creative projects that are guided by the steadiness of daily housework and routines.

The Kin Kin Hotel in the Noosa hinterland.  If you come to Noosa for holidays, this hotel is close by and is well worth a visit.

Sitting just behind the hotel is their heirloom garden. Vegetables and salad are picked every day.

One of the bars in the hotel.

During this past week, I worked in the garden till Saturday's solstice and on Sunday, went to a family lunch at the Kin Kin Hotel where Shane is working now. It’s been restored to what it looked like when it opened in 1914 and what a beautiful building it is. The food was delicious and the staff were friendly and helpful. Jens and Cathy are returning to Tasmania and will live there permanently in their new home. The lunch was a final catch up before they head south again. So the weekend was a big silent leap into a new era for me, although no one else knew it. The garden has moved from stage one to a garden I'll work in most days. I'm really glad I can say I'm a gardener again.

Mother kookaburra watching me and the young males in the backyard.

They were playing and catching big grasshoppers under the lemon tree.

I love watching wildlife in the backyard. There is a family of kookaburras (the world's largest kingfisher) living close by. The families are usually made up of a breeding, monogamous pair with several helpers from previous broods staying to help defend their territory. In the past month, I've watched the mother bird as she teaches two young males to catch lizards and insects.  Yesterday afternoon the mother bird sat on the washing line while I sat on the back verandah.  She was watching me while keeping an eye on the two males hunt under the lemon tree where they caught a few large grasshoppers.  The female birds are more slender and smaller than the males which tend to be round and bulkier.

My meals are still from scratch. I was shocked when I saw an advertisement for a report on fast food in Australia. The stats tell us many families spend $2000 a year on fast food!!!  I haven't bought fast food for years and it amazes me, that with the higher cost of living, people still see fast food as an option. Apparently, foreign fast food companies love coming here to line their pockets with our hard-earned money and take it off back to their own countries.  What a shame and what a bunch of dumb clucks we are to let them do it.

The world is a dark place at the moment. I hope your'e staying safe and sheltering in your home when you can. Things WILL get better but in the meantime, stay close to your family and friends and make sure you do things that make you happy.  xx

It's the old ways I love the most

I'm a practical woman who lives in a 1980’s brick slab house. There are verandahs front and back so I have places to sit outside when it's hot or cold. Those verandahs tend to make the house darker than it would be but they're been a great investment over time because they made the house more liveable. My home is not a romantic cottage, nor a minimalist modern home, it's a 1980’s brick slab house. And yet when people visit me here they tell me how warm and cosy my home is and that they feel comforted by being here. I've thought about that over the years and I'm convinced now that the style of a home isn't what appeals to people. What they love is the feeling within that home and whether it's nurturing the people who live there.

 

I’ve been busy with oranges lately - harvesting and juicing. On the weekend I made a 10 litre batch of laundry liquid, sowed some seeds and planted three native trees. I’ll put up some photos soon of the completed garden - but when I say completed, it’s the first stage of a winter garden so growth is slow. This week I cleaned a cupboards, and got through several loads of washing. Tomorrow? Probably more of the same and honestly, I love it. That rhythm of ordinary work, done over and over again, connects me to something bigger—the past and the future, and it allows me to live the way I do. It's the work that makes it possible.

Yesterday I found myself thinking: it’s the old ways I love the most. Harvesting from the garden, slow-cooked meals, baking, homemade jams, fermenting, sewing and mending. I don’t do these things because I have to - I do them because they mean something. I’ve never once been excited about using a teabag, but I love brewing tea in a pot and pouring it into cups sitting on saucers. I don’t enjoy paying top dollar for supermarket laundry liquid, but I do love opening my own bucket of the homemade stuff. Frozen microwave meals? No thanks. But food made from scratch? That’s something people want to eat. Homemade soap feels like a luxury, sleeping under a handmade quilt is unmatched and being lucky enough to wear home-knitted jumpers and cardigans gives you warmth and comfort without your skin touching synthetic fibres.

Almost all my meals now are based on what I used to eat when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s. This is my version of a pork roast - it's a pork belly cut in half then roasted in the normal way with vegetables. I use the rest of it for cold cuts.

Recently, I’ve been working in the back garden every day but I had to slow myself down because the rebuilding stage will soon come to an end and the maintenance phase will begin. So I do some work out there, then sit and decide if everything’s in the right place, for me, Gracie and the wildlife. Usually, if I look up, there’s a line of kookaburras or cockatoos in the trees watching. LOL

I made beef bone broth last week. I like drinking it during the day instead of tea.

There’s something really motivating about seeing other people working in their homes. I do that on YouTube - I search for people like me who make their lives better by the work they do in their homes. It makes me feel like we’re all part of one big working bee—even if we’re scattered across the map. We might not all be part of a traditional village, but the spirit is there. We’re doing the work, we’re sharing it while we’re keeping old skills alive. And I think that’s something worth celebrating.