down to earth

I clearly remember that split second I became a mother. Lying in a labour ward in Germany, in a hospital far, far away from my home, this tiny baby came into my life and changed me forever. It is true to say that I was reborn on that day. So now here we all are, with an ocean of water having flowed under a hundred bridges, celebrating Shane's thirtieth birthday. I don't think I looked ahead much when I was younger but now as I look back I see a young woman who didn't have much of a clue, who stumbled along and learned from her mistakes and who hoped that everything would work out fine. It did. I can say now with razor sharp conviction, that I couldn't be prouder of my sons. I look at them and wonder, with the potential for so much to go wrong, how did they come to be so right. Of course, that is a mothers love and pride talking but I'm sure all the parents here understand.

We will gather in Brisbane to celebrate with Shane and Sarndra on Sunday. A simple lunch of homemade fresh food, with most people bringing something to contribute, lots of it gathered from backyard gardens, including Shane and Sarndra's, with all of us siting together around that symbol of hospitality and family, the kitchen table. It's such an age old scene - a family gathered to celebrate an important milestone - sitting together, eating, drinking, talking, reconnecting and strengthening family ties.

Rituals such as this make families stronger. They take time and thought but they are worth every ounce of effort you put into them. Just as having a family sitting around a table for evening meals leads to a closeness that facilitates family love and communication, when children are older, the ties that bind are upheld and preserved by celebrating family rituals like birthdays, weddings, new babies and anniversaries. Everyone can become as involved as they want to be. They either come along and enjoy the get-together or they bring food or wine, or help set up and clean up. All of it brings a family together for a common purpose.

Never let yourself be convinced that family celebrations don't matter. It's easy to say we'll do something next year or we're too busy but when you do that you miss the chance to express love and caring and to show that of all the things you could be doing, this is THE most important. That expression of love has real meaning - the face to face contact, the hugs and kisses, the helping, listening to family stories as the washing up is done and all the small things you can do in person, they are remembered and each year are built upon.

Our celebrations are even more special now that we have two amazing women who have come into our family as our sons' partners. We are learning their stories too, getting to know their families and are carefully piecing our families together. This is important work, it is building a secure framework in which children will be born and will grow to continue these family traditions. Strong family ties don't always happen naturally. They need to be helped along and nurtured because without them we just become a group of people who happen to share the same name. That's not good enough for me. I want all the Mrs Hetzels and all the Mr Hetzels, and everyone we care for and love, to be seated around that big kitchen table celebrating all the good times together, because if we do that, we will be strong enough to withstand the bad times together.

I was quite overwhelmed by the response to my last post, both here in the comments and in emails. Thank you all for your concern, love and support. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I am now of the belief that the death of my friends is revealing to me that life must be really lived in each waking moment and to do anything less would be the greatest deprivation. It is a valuable reminder as I move into my mid-60s and I am determined to make sure I don't waste too much time and to do my best and be my best as much as I can.

It is not the custom in Australia to speak of our religious beliefs - it is generally a personal and private thing, and although I know there is a lot of interest in whether or not I'm a Christian, that is known to only my family and those closest to me. As always, I honour the differing beliefs of those I know, including the many Christians here, but I will remain with my custom of not speaking of such things in public.

Please keep Sharon and her family in your thoughts and prayers. Sharon is still in intensive care, she now has a collapsed lung as well, so it's important that we send her our love and support.

While all this is going on, Hanno, the constant in my life, continues to work towards our combined well being by producing delicious organic food for our table. He dug up another bucket full of potatoes and I got a few photos for you of how he prepares the garden bed for the next crop.

After the crops have been dug up and all weeds and debris removed, Hanno digs over the soil and makes a trench. He then fills the trench with homemade compost.

When the trench is full of compost, he covers the compost with soil, and moves to the next trench. He moves along the garden bed until it's full of compost trenches. Then he waters them in and lets it all settle for a week or so before planting the next crop.

As always, assistant gardener Alice, awaits instructions (or food).

And finally, but by no means least, today is my beautiful son Shane's 30th birthday. I'll talk to him on the phone later today but we'll see him and his wife Sarndra at their home on Sunday where we'll celebrate this milestone with his brothers and the rest of the family. Shane has requested that I bring his favourites - lemon meringue pie and chocolate cake, so I'll be baking them on Saturday for Sunday's party. Happy birthday Shane! ♥ ♥ ♥

Please be warned that this is a dark and reflective post. If you're feeling a bit sad yourself, you might want to skip this one.

Life has not been all that good lately. While I have so much to be thankful for there have been things that have made me very sad and I have been questioning my mortality and how I fit into the overall scheme. Bernadette's death was devastating and while it was expected, it shocked me and has made me go over the many conversations we had just prior to her death. Tomorrow I will go to the funeral of another good friend. Jack died in an horrific accident last week, the last person you would expect to died so suddenly, he was like a rock and a friend to many of the homeless people I deal with at my voluntary job. In fact, that is how we met. He was leading the St Vincent de Paul charity and we met because we had the same clients and could help each other. Jack will have a police honour guard at his funeral. He was a police inspector before his retirement. I was talking to Jack last week, teasing him about how he didn't need a holiday, then two days later he died.

It's so sudden. We really don't know. I know that's a cliché and I have thought about this before, but this time, it's really hit home, that me or anyone I love might not be here next week. And what really amazes me is that life goes on just as before like nothing has happened! I tell you it's been a real wake up for me. I'm generally laid back but I have this feeling now that stays with me, I guess it's insecurity or uncertainty. Whatever it is I don't like it, it wakes me in the middle of the night and in the silence of my bedroom, my mind races through a million scenarios; I sleep in stages and wake up exhausted.

The one thing that seems to help is to feel the permanence of my home. With Hanno here working beside me, I feel steady, secure and safe but outside, well, when I'm out I feel that maybe I won't get home again. Don't get me wrong, I'm not having panic attacks and I'm not fearful of dying, I feel uncertain and I'm questioning everything. Nothing is predictable, in fact it's the opposite. I think I'm sailing on smooth seas, but I know now that's untrue.

I guess the transitory nature of life has been revealed to me close up and personal. I want to get back to a feeling of security. I don't want to deny the nature of life - I do know the only certainty we have is that we'll die, but I want to be comfortable with that knowledge again. Like I was before. Maybe this has hit me because I am getting older. I can see things I never saw before, I no longer feel like that bullet-proof larrikin I was when I was 30 years younger. I knew then, with unfailing certainty, that I could tempt fate, be reckless and walk on a razor's edge and that I would come out on the other side just as sure as sunrise. Yep, I knew that then, but now I know different things. Now I am lost in uncertainty. Time has caught up with me.

Tick tock.

Okay, so what do I know for sure. I know Hanno, he is a constant. Tick. I am sure of the love of my family and friends. Tick. I know I love my home, it nurtures me and makes me strong enough for all that I do. Tick. I love the work of my home, it validates who I am. Tick. I know that when I knit it connects me to all my ancestors, washing up does that too; gardening reconnects me to all that is natural in this world. That warms my heart and helps me know that those activities, while seeming simple have power and significance. I know my home, and all the work we do here, while helping us live the life we have chosen, also make us the people we are. We are guided by daily activities but we are shaped by them too. Tick.

Writing this has made me realise this is a stage of life. Just as feeling immortal when you're 20 and thinking you can do anything in your 30, this is a stage I am going through to prepare me for what will come later. It's preparing me for death. Now, I don't think I will die soon (but I could), I'm very healthy, and I certainly want to live until I'm 90 or so. We have longevity in our family so I hope that is my destiny. But what this is doing is preparing me. Life would not prepare us all in certain stages and desert us in others. So just as we are given that bravado when we're 30 so we develop the confidence to be our true selves and really live every day, this fear is sent to indicate mortality, to slow us down and make us think of probabilities. Eureka! I love being the age I am. I still feel young and only know my age when I see myself in a mirror or I cannot walk up stairs like I used to. But maybe the loss of physical strength is replaced by something like wisdom.

I have sorted out quite a few things by writing about them. I hope these thoughts are not too personal to share with you; it is not my intention to alarm anyone. I guess this is a very selfish post, one, maybe, that would have been better written in a more private space. But now it's here and I'm not moving it. Hopefully it will help others going through something similar who, like me, think they're losing it. I'm pretty sure that by tomorrow as I get ready for Jack's funeral, I'll have hidden these feelings again and deal with the remnants of them in my dark and silent bedroom, or I'll talk it out with Hanno over morning tea on the verandah. Or maybe I just need time - that general panacea of getting up in the morning and living through each day to reveal again the incredible beauty of it all. Could time be the answer? Is it that simple?

I'm happy to tell you that although Sharon is not out of the woods yet, she's showing some signs of improvement. She's still in ICU, with all the bits and pieces attached to her, but it looks like she turned the corner. Her family was overwhelmed at the outpouring of support and love for Sharon here on the blog. You might have noticed that Sarah, her daughter, left us a note of thanks in with the comments. Sharon's husband, Claude, sent a couple of emails yesterday to keep me up to date with her progress and to thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. Please keep Sharon and her family in your thoughts during this period of recovery.

Hanno and I kept ourselves busy during the past few days. I never understand when retirees say they're bored and there's nothing to do. We took a little trip in the car down to Ipswich, a city close to our State capital, last week. I have to tell you that road from Brisbane to Ipswich is very scary. It's narrow, curvy and has a lot of B double trucks speeding along. I was pleased we came home along the back road with little traffic and a lot of beautiful scenery. I sat there with my knitting as we ambled along, just gazing at the passing parade. Life moves slowly along the back roads, it's more to my pace. We passed through a little town called Toogoolawah on that backroad. It's typical of small Australian country towns now in that it had a pub, a grocery store, newsagent, garage and a few antique shops and not much else. But they did have an old movie theatre and in the great Australian style of Saturday night pictures, which we all used to call it, they showed The Prince of Persia and Marmaduke this Saturday night just gone. The Prince of Persia could easily have been an old film from the 1940s, starring Victor Mature or Van Johnson, but it was a new film, with people I'd never heard of. I'm sure everyone enjoyed it though - a treat for the whole family at the end of the week.

We always look for road side stalls to buy those vegetables and fruit that we don't grow ourselves. Hanno found a little stall with reasonable pumpkins, and although their sign advertised Granny Smith apples for $2.99, he said they weren't worth buying. That turned out to be good for us because when he went to the farmers market yesterday, he found a fairly local grower with superb Delicious, Pink Lady and Granny Smith apples and they were $1.99/kilo. And, all picked in the last week. We shared a very big Delicious apple, one bigger than any I have seen for years. Hanno said the farmer told him he grows for Woolworths (a big grocery chain here) and they were too big for them. They all have to be a regulation size, so these beauties were rejected. I shouldn't complain, because we benefited from their short sightedness, but it's insane to pick fruit for size and not for flavour and freshness.

When we came home, we closed the gate and settled back in together here, in our home, growing, sewing, making, relaxing, knitting and living the good life. I did some sweet baking to keep us going for our morning teas over the next week and last night I cooked curried prawns and rice for our dinner.

Yesterday afternoon I made a fleece coat for Alice. I had some old fleece given to me by my DIL Cathy. She had a throw-out a year or so ago and asked if I wanted to look through it. I found a number of pieces that I've used for fund-raising aprons and bits and pieces here, and now Alice has a coat. Now that she's old, she's not covered by hair as much as she was in the past and she's lost weight in the past year. I'm sure she'll like wearing her coat at night while she sleeps. I used a doubled over piece of fleece, cut the fabric after I drew the pattern with tailor's chalk, and used old cotton tapes to keep it on her. It's simple but it looks like it keeps her warm, and I think I heard her whisper that she likes the stars.

It will be another busy and productive week for us here. Hanno found some good rye flour at the shop last week so I'll be making rye bread today. Hopefully I'll have photos for you tomorrow. We have a lemon tree full of fruit waiting to be picked and juiced and Hanno has some seedlings to plant out. I am hoping to do a couple of hours knitting today as I want to finish Hanno's jumper off before it's too late this year to wear it. I've almost finished the front and just have the two sleeves to go. I hope you have an interesting and productive week too. If you have time, let me know what you're up to.

Thank you all for the great advice and recipes for elder flowers and berries. I'll print them out soon and add them to my Homemakers Journal so I have them on hand when the time is right. Thanks also to Sue who suggested taking cuttings. Should they be tip cuttings or harder wood, do you know, Sue?

I've had a few emails lately about working to a routine so I thought I'd write about that today . If you get it right, a routine will help you enormously. BTW, I have many emails there that I haven't answered and never seem to have the time for. I try to stay off the computer as much as I can and if I did everything I should be doing here, at the forum and answering emails, I'd spend most of the day on the computer and none of it living. I apologise if you're waiting for a reply.

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I think of my routine as a free ranging routine, not a restrictive one. Of course there will be readers here who need a much tighter routine than what I'm about to suggest so maybe you can start off with this and modify it. As with everything I suggest to you, it's what works for me, I expect you to modify; it needs to fit YOU like a glove, so feel free to soften or harden every step of the way.

There are certain household tasks that are constant. For me, and possibly for many of us, they are making the bed, baking bread, cleaning the kitchen, washing up, sweeping the floors and cooking. I do most of, or all of, those tasks almost every day. There are other tasks that are done weekly, like the changing the bed linen, washing, vacuuming and deeper cleaning. Others still, like gardening, organising, sewing, knitting, soap, laundry powder and cleanser making, preserving and shopping are occasional past-times that I do either when I feel like doing them or when they're needed. Not everything you do is a constant chore, you'll need to think about your working priorities.

I want the work I do in my home to reward me and enrich my spirit. I don't expect to be drained and depleted by housework. I try to organise my day so I'm doing work I don't like along with the work I love doing. So if I have to clean the toilets or iron, I'll reward myself afterwards with morning tea on the front verandah or an hour's knitting. This works well for me. I'm like a mule with a carrot on a stick in front of me. ; - ) Give me a good enough reward and I'm there. I know many of you with small children and babies, won't have the time to take an hour out of your day for a reward, but here is where the modifying comes in. Work out a reward that will fit well within your framework - one that really rewards you and fits into your day. And don't be afraid to give the family something really easy for dinner any night when you've had a tough day. If you have something like a casserole of soup in the freezer, that would do just fine, but it could well be baked beans or eggs on toast. They will survive and it's better for them to have a sane and happy mum than a perfect house, everything put away and spic and span, and with the perfect meal on the table.

Perfection is overrated and unnecessary in most homes.

On a normal day I do my must do chores. I make the bed, get bread on to rise, clean the kitchen, wash up and sweep the floors. Usually that is done by 9am. Then I do any of my weekly or occasional chores - washing, organising or deep cleaning fit in here, it's whatever needs doing. After lunch I do gentler work - knitting or sewing, writing or reading, and late in the afternoon, I'll harvest vegetables or garden and then prepare the evening meal. After I wash up at night, I don't do any other work. That is my down time, but again, if you have a family still at home, you'll be organising baths and bags for the morning., checking on homework or what your children are doing and reading story books. Again, modify this time to suit your routine, not mine.

I want to say a little about crafts within the context of homemaking. I know many women feel slight guilt when they knit or sew because it gives them such joy and satisfaction. They shouldn't. The crafts of the average homemaker are part of your housework. Making curtains, napkins, tote bags, dresses, aprons, quilts etc., soap making and knitting for your family, if that is what you choose to do, are all part of your daily work. They're not separate. They're not done for your pleasure, although that is a wonderful and appreciated side affect, they're contributing to your family and home and they are helping you reduce your cost of living and your carbon footprint. When I grew up, all these craft-type tasks where part of the everyday life of the homemaker, they were not separate or seen as a hobby. They contributed to the home and were valued as such. Women were praised for their fine needlework, knitting and dressmaking skills, men were valued for their cobbler's abilities and keeping the families shoes in tip top order, or for their wood work. Most men could knock up a small chair or table with no problems. Those days are long gone but you can still work like that and give homemade quality goods to your family. The choice is yours.

So if you want to work to a routine, I suggest you work out what are your daily must do tasks, and organise them so that you do the heavy work in the morning and the lighter work in the afternoon and evening. Pepper tasks you don't like with those you do. And reward yourself. You're in charge of your home, give yourself a break and make it as easy and pleasurable as you can. Housework is dreaded by a lot of people, but if you have the right mindset it is its own reward. There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained from sitting down to dinner at night with everything done you wanted done. You feel proud of yourself for doing it, your family will love you for it, although don't wait for a thank you every day. Your thanks will be that you worked that day to the best of your ability and you made your home the way you wanted it. And that is a powerful motivator.

Tell me about your routine, or lack of, either here or leave a link to your blog and write at length there about your routine and how you organise your own work. This is a subject that interests many of us.

I planted an elder tree about six months ago and it's growing nicely. Elders are not native to Australia and I don't know anyone who is growing it. I bought my plant at our local organic co-op. If you're growing elders can you give me a few tips on what the plant likes and doesn't like? I planted the tree after I watched the delightful Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's Spring program where he made elderberry champagne. His recipe is here. I have thoughts of making champagne for Christmas every year but I have no idea how long it will take our tree to flower to the extent I need for an abundant harvest of flowers. Any thoughts?

Our cat Hettie sunning herself at the elder tree.

Making your own drinks at home is a wonderful extension to your from scratch meals. It cuts out preservatives and artificial flavourings and you control the amount of sugar you use. My favourite homemade drinks are lemon cordial and ginger beer and if you click on those links you will see the recipes I use to make them. However, there are a lot of other drinks you can make, either hot or cold, that will be more delicious than anything you can buy. They range from the wide variety of fruit cordials, to the fizzy ginger beer, milk drinks, including smoothies, to kefir, a yoghurt drink. All are easily made at home.

These black passionfruit will make a delicious drink.

To keep it really simple, make up a sugar syrup of half water to half sugar, to the amount you need. For example, to make one litre/quart of sugar syrup, combine 2 cups of water to 2 cups of sugar in a saucepan and stir over heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. It will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks in a sealed bottle. Then just juice whatever fruit you have and combine it with the sugar syrup. This will make a cordial concentrate that you would dilute with water when you drink it. Making something like this is a matter of following your own taste. You add more or less water, fruit or sugar according to how you like your drinks. Once you make up a bottle of cordial, store it in the fridge. It will last a month or so, depending on how such sugar is added to the liquids.

Just one way to use the information in the paragraph above is to grab yourself a seedless watermelon when the season comes around again - I'm guessing you're right in the middle of it in the northern hemisphere. Cut all the red centre out and place it in a blender, add sugar syrup to taste, a couple of sprigs of mint and blitz it. Dilute with a small amount of cold water or mineral water if you want a fizzy drink, according to how strong you like it, add ice cubes and enjoy. This bright pink drink is a real hit with kids but adults love it too. What are your favourite made-at-home drink recipes?