One of the things I love about living alone is that I can do whatever I want to do. I've always been independent and a loner but this puts a new sparkle on the edge of it. This is REAL freedom. But hand-in-hand with that freedom is the importance of maintaining relationships with family, friends and neighbours.  My family continues to support me with phone calls, messages and visits which I know will carry on until I die. Thankfully, we are that kind of family. I have a couple of online friends who I speak with online or on the phone and two other friends I see every few months - it works well for me, keeping me in touch with the people I love while enjoying my independence and time alone. My neighbours seem to have adopted me since Hanno's death and I can rely on them for almost anything ... except getting rid of snakes. LOL I am reluctant to ask for help but sensible enough to know when I need to. 

Yesterday, I did my grocery shopping, came home having bought a new moth orchid, repotted it and two other orchids and then had a tea and toast breakfast at 10am. I worked on the cookbook for three hours. At 2pm, I cut up tomato, onion, cucumber, lettuce, avocado and chilli, made guacamole, and had lunch of corn chips, salad and guacamole, then I finished off the fresh pineapple I cut up the day before.  From 3 - 5pm I was mending and sewing, then took Gracie outside again until it was almost dark. Inside again, I showered, read for a while, made some notes about ideas I'd had through the day, read The Guardian online and went to bed. It was a good day.

Spending time with Gracie is very important to me and seeing as she likes to be WITH me, I have to juggle time working on the computer and being outside with her watching her chase March flies and lizards or watching what's happening in the neighborhood - which usually is not much. There's virtually no traffic, but a lot of birds and after 3pm, neighbourhood kids playing in the street. Every couple of weeks I wash Gracie, or groom her, she hates having all that done but being a Scotch Terrier in a warm climate, she tolerates it and me fussing over her.

I think a lot about my life and my good fortune to have met Hanno all those years ago and how grateful I am to have this life. I have a wonderful family, I have nothing to complain about, I have more than enough, I'm happy to live on less than I earn and feel fortunate to own my home and have no debt. I've met many interesting people, made a living being a writer since I was about 30 years old and have an abundance of optimism and general good health. I wonder too about the state of the world, how wars break out and how it is usually the innocents who pay the ultimate price for that. Hatred, aggression, greed, jealousy, sexism and racism are reported on the news everyday - it never goes away.  And yet here I am, a dog at my feet, reading this blog post I just wrote and wondering how I got so lucky.

Addition: I've just restored the comments. I hope they aren't swamped with spam like there were before, if so, I'll deal with it then. Please comment here rather than Instagram.

Sunny, Kerry and Jamie flew back from Korea on Tuesday after Sun Ja's funeral. Thanks to everyone who send kind and loving messages to our family on her passing.

🐝🍓🐝

If you've been wondering what I've been doing during the silence here on the blog, here's a clue - it's the end of winter, todays temp is supposed to be 29C and my seasonal dormancy is coming to a close. I've been taking cuttings, sowing seeds and generally getting ready for spring. 

In the foreground above are some almost ready to plant fuchsias that were sent as cuttings by Kristiina a couple of months ago. I can also see a passionfruit vine slowly growing leaves, and many salvia cuttings. I love salvias.

I wrote the first part of this post in 2013 to celebrate my 65th birthday and thought I'd add to it today, on my 71st.

As I said in my last post, I'd be back if I had anything important to share. I'm not saying anything about this on instagram because I feel a bit exposed over there.  A few months ago, I was diagnosed with a non-malignant brain tumour. It's a meningioma - it's not cancer and it's not life threatening. The specialist has suggested that we should watch it for 12 months to see if it's growing, and if it is, how fast. When they know that there will either be treatment in the form of surgery and/or radiotherapy, or no treatment at all. My doctor's wife has had the same tumour for the past 10 years and hers has remained the same size and is stable.  We're hoping mine will be the same.

Every so often I receive an email from a reader asking for ideas about something they're struggling with.  Here we have one such query which I present below and hopefully, between all of us, we can give Amy a range of possible solutions.

I'm sorry to hear you're burnt out. I remember that feeling and it's not nice. I hope you're spending time doing nothing but the basics so that when you're rested and ready you can take the next step in your new life with optimism and confidence. What you need is a plan.

Sit down with a coffee, paper and pencil and work out what changes you need and want.  Remember, this is about a new life for you and your family so the only ones you have to please are yourselves.  The priorities are to keep a clean and tidy house, feed everyone, work to a budget so you live the life you choose without running up debt, maintain the house and garden and possibly to make a few things you currently buy. I'm thinking mainly of laundry liquid, cleaners, dishcloths, napkins, aprons, bread, cakes, preserves etc. But keep in mind that you make the items that will make a difference in your home.  We're all different.

I would start by dividing your day into three sections: 

• Morning, which will be from when you get up till around 9am - remember, all this is adjustable.
• Daytime, 9am - 4pm. This is the bulk of your time when you'll do your shopping, ironing, cleaning, sewing and whatever you choose to do for your own pleasure. That might be reading, gardening, talking to friends and neighbours, sewing etc but it includes what YOU love doing.
• Evening, 4pm - bedtime. Evening meal, cleaning up, thinking about tomorrow's meals.

In the morning and evening you'll usually do the same thing most days. In the morning it will be cooking, breakfast, getting other family members off to work or school, laundry, cleaning up, making the bed, feeding animals, watering plants, general tidy up.  In the evening it will be preparing the evening meal, washing up, packing the dishwasher, thinking about tomorrows lunches and possibly preparing them, or deciding on what you'll cook the next day so you can defrost what you need.  The more you can get done at night the less you'll have to do the following day but you don't have to push yourself because you'll be at home and you can do extras during the day.


The rest fits into the main part of your day.  It might help you to list all the large tasks you have to do in your home that aren't covered in your morning and evening routines. Tasks such as cleaning bathrooms, doing the washing and ironing, food shopping, vacuuming and mopping floors, dusting, cleaning the fridge and oven, washing windows etc. If you can make a list of these tasks and assign them to a certain day, that will help you cover your housework by doing your morning routine, your daily routine, which will include one of those larger tasks, and your evening routine. The main thing I urge you to do is to take it slow. You have many tomorrows ahead of you and as long as you're making yourself happy by the changes you're making, you'll be on the right track.


When you have these life essentials sorted out, or at least on their way, you can fine tune the other things that need it and add what you enjoy doing.  I found when I started my new life that when I started changing things, one thing lead to another and I just followed along.  If might not be that way for you so just see what happens and do what you think is right.

Other things you can look into include:

• make a list of your priorities, values and how you would like your life to change. When you have that in place, it will show you what you need to do, change and learn to make the life you want; 
• create a budget; 
• work out a shopping strategy, including reasearching where you'll get the best value for money;
• look at the rooms in your home and working out if you're making the best use of the space, 
• menu plan; 
• start a stockpile cupboard; 
• make up a rag bag; 
• if you don't know how, teach yourself to sew, mend, knit and garden;
• work out how you can remove cleaning chemicals from your home.

Life will be slower now. What you're about to do is to make a new life and to redefine what a normal day is for you. It's different for everyone so start by getting the essentials of food and shelter sorted out and then concentrate on the rest. Once you settle on a way to organise your days that suits you, you'll probably find that housework is less of a burden and more about making your home a place that supports and comforts you and your family.  There is no need to fret about moving all this along fast. It will take it's own time and it will change as the years pass by. Homelife is never static, there's always something to do as well as time to sit quietly and appreciate what you have.


Don't be pressured into having a rubber stamp of a life. One of the benefits of living this way is that you no longer have to live to a rigid timetable or one where recreational shopping has any importance.  Good luck!  I'm sure our readers will have more suggestions for you. Now, my friends, it's over to you.

Most of the time I potter away here doing things that make life easier for us.  Hanno does the same, although he usually works outside. My daily tasks include cleaning, organising, mending and looking after the vegetable garden. I gather herbs for cooking, I peel vegetables and fruit, I make stock and sauces and place a home-cooked meal on the table every day at 12 midday.  I don't watch the clock to do that, it just happens that way.

Every day I make our bed and instead of thinking about getting through it fast and what I'll do next, I think about the bed and how to make it comfortable. We all spend a lot of time in bed and it helps us relax and sleep so we have the energy to do the work we need to do each day.  All those thoughts help me to not just pull up the doona/quilt, they make me slow down, fluff up pillows, adjust crooked sheets, make sure the side tables are dust-free and that when I walk away, job done, I've done the best I can do and we have a clean and comfortable bed waiting for us every night. I wonder if there are other mindful bed makers out there.

I set a task for myself two weeks ago to change my work room. I want to move all my ironing gear in there so it's out of the bedroom and in a space where I work already. I moved the ironing to the bedroom two years ago as a temporary measure and it's stayed there, reminding me of work when I'm trying to relax. If I just ploughed through it I would have had it moved in one day, but as I'm sure you know housework is rarely a linear activity, it is often interrupted, so the move is only partly done.  Back in the day I would have been disappointed in myself for being so slow but now I accept it. I'm in a season of slowness, I'm not the fast and efficient workhorse I used to be and I'm fine with that. Self-acceptance, it's a fine thing and something we have to learn, and sometimes relearn. None of us will stay in our prime, if you live long enough you'll lose some of your strength, you won't work at the same pace all your life. All of us who live that long need to adjust our thinking to know that is okay, and that a slower rhythm is part of life and part of the balance most of us accept as we age.

And now acceptance of another kind.  I'm very pleased that recently we Australians voted to accept same-sex marriage as part of our legal and social lives. I don't know why we had to vote to allow fellow citizens the right to marry the person they love. I don't know why it took us so long to do it but I do know that if I have the right to marry the person I love, everyone else should have that same right.  So thank you my fellow Australians for knowing that love is love and saying yes to it. ❤️