Hands in the dirt

My back is very sore but my heart is pretty happy. We’ve been working very hard on the garden and it looks so different from even just six months ago. Gene is so bloody good at wood working and has built some beautiful things. We have a whole lot of late blooming sunflowers which are very joyful.

I’ve also been potting and re potting the patio and indoor plants. It’s only been a couple of years now that I have really tried to garden and I think I have gotten a lot better at it.
There are many seedlings sprouting – they are just little colourful flowers as I know Kidlet will love them. I’ve also planted a bunch of Australian native plants but they will take a little longer to establish and grow.

And this guy ^ ^ – he’s good cpmpany while we are out there, digging away. He likes to know what is going on but also likes to lay down on my seedlings O_O

It’s a wonderful thing to garden with the Kid, she’s very caring about the natural world and how things grow and come to be. It’s truly special to be growing this garden together.

To Grow Things

It’s a cold morning and the rejection comes in on my phone – I had a feeling this was the answer.
I’m at the back of a friend’s house, sitting on their back porch waiting for help; I’ve put too many pellets in the chicken feeder and the thing has fallen apart. My hands are covered in chicken shit and I cannot work out how to put the few pieces together – the green bit, the white bit, a wing nut, a screw and a spring. It’s the last day of looking after these chickens, the last day of the long weekend that was in no way relaxing but a hell of a lot of fun. Especially the chickens. Oh, and the little boy who looked at my elephant ears plant and said “Wow, you are really good at growing plants.” ( I’m not, but I’ll take that complement little guy! )

I’ve spilt pellets everywhere and I am truly questioning if I should be commiting myself to chicken care and then I look up at the chooks and the sparrows fluttering about and help comes and my doubt is distracted.
It’s so bloody easy to fix, I should feel embarressed, but I don’t. He’s better at this stuff than I, and that’s OK. I say I didn’t get in ( to the prize ) and he hugs me and says that he is sorry and I shrug and say that I’ll do better next time. If I were to say I am upset, it would be a lie, this time. Sure, it’d be nice to be in it and I so want to be in these things. But I also think that it isn’t my time just yet. Just yet. But soon. Like, really soon.

I cast it out of my mind and clean what I can. Feel proud that I got the chickens through the weekend and even managed some yummy food scraps for them. I’ve been reading about types of chickens and plants and growing things and feel I am past most of that crippling doubt that usually sends me to bed when I am starting something new. I am so not good at new things, but you know I just got to get better at it – we are forever learning.

Sometimes I look back on my earlier days and feel sad I didn’t allow myself to get into gardening earlier in my life. I used renting as an excuse – but I could’ve joined a community garden. I know that they were a huge thing in Berlin. I think I just didn’t want things to get in the way of my sads. Because that is what gardening has done for me – taken me out of me. There is something about putting your hands into the earth and caring for tiny seeds, sprouts, harvesting, digging and turning and starting it all over again. Accidently killing things and learning from that. Seeing what actually is a hardy plant, what can take on full sun, transplanting other plants when the small parsely bunch grew into a big bush ( har har ) and I can’t eat enough of the stuff to keep it under control!

Part of me hates winter a lot, but now that I am growing things it’s really given me the chance to learn more and plan more for what I want to do for the garden. I mean, cold is still not my favourite thing but hell I’d rather be contrucitve with my time than complain all the time. I hope I get better at this, and can grow my own vegetables and fruits – or at least more than I do now. It’s humbling, it’s yummier, it’s a little good I can do for the world and teach my little one as I go. Hopefully set her up with skills to learn how to feed herself!

Higgledy Piggledy

The weekend is almost over and it has been so lovely and full of heart. We’ve shared a few meals in company and there’s been baby giggles and puppy pats.
Tomorrow it is back to the ( soul crushing ) work and I look forward to it but I also wish time would slow the f**k down.

Our house is still so higgledy piggledy but life is happening and we’ve just got to go with it. Renovations take forever ( unless you have heaps of cash .. ) but that’s ok, we will get there and there’s a lot of fun in the making. However there are some walls that we just have to paint soon because the colour of them is just doing my head in, more than a year in it and I’m fed up. The plants help though. The make the light pretty and the place feel so .. magical? Homely? Something good.

I’m not even going to open up that Artprize email that came into my inbox this morning.

Road trips, gardening, exhibitions

oak Oak! These things are EVERYWHERE in our garden.

butterfly A beautiful visitor.

lmmlc Two small drawings by me, hanging next to a painting by Luke Sciberras at Scott Livesey Galleries in Armadale, on view until December 21st

picbykidlet By Kidlet
“I tried to draw you mummy, but it didn’t work”
“Am I angry?”
“No, it just didn’t work”
“I love it, can I keep it?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t work out how I wanted it to”
“That doesn’t matter, because it is AMAZING”

npp Nadia Toukhsati’s paint palette.

dt Truck stop views.

ey

ss1 Drawing together – “You never draw anything cool mummy” haha. Bless.

ntogs A house near the old gas station.

hotkitty Kitty sums up how we all feel.