harvesting

It must be Harvest time. 

Pickles, relish, pasta sauce and pesto to freeze, apple pie, bottled fruit and herbs drying on the rack.

Produce from our garden, and fruit from friends, our neighbours and the Plenty to Share stall across the road from the local store. 

It's easy to give thanks right now - the table is abundant, the cupboards full and the warm weather is still holding. 

And yet, even in the fullness of the Harvest, there seems to be the onset of decay - the first leaves turning, the bean vines drying, the flowers spent on the compost piles.

The ever-present paradox of this sweet life.

Right now, I'm feeling full of all this goodness and am hoping this gratefulness can hold me through the darkest times of the winter to come because she sure is coming.

marking the turn

Grab baby and baby carrier, a basket and a pair of secateurs.

Go outside.

Look around and notice the colours, textures and shapes of your local flowers and foliage.

Pick and choose.

Cut and gather.

Wreaths from last year, looping into another round this year

We make wreaths throughout the year, Autumn, in Winter, in the Spring, and the Summer as a way of marking the turning of the year and bringing the beauty of the natural world inside.
Beauty brings peace and joy and connects me up.
To lay my eye on beauty in the midst of the creative chaos our home can reflect during the day, can help me avoid a mini-meltdown ;)

Spread out, place and bind and mark the beginning of the Christmas season and the lead up to Summer Solstice in nature, at home with your family.

The best way to begin.

elderflower time

Right now when we go anywhere in the car or by foot the girls call out each time they see an elder tree laden with flowers.
They know November is elderflower season here and that means a few batches of elderflower cordial to see us through to next year.
The recipe I use is here ( as well as a recipe for elderflower fritters).
Right now I am especially grateful that these annual rituals help me (and the girls) stay rooted in the concrete tasks of daily life while my internal world remains buffeted by ebb and flow of grief.

spring equinox

Friday night we celebrated Spring Equinox.

Right on the balance of light and dark, halfway between Summer and Winter Solstice.

I have been impatient for my rise in energy since the first signs of Spring appeared - my own (lack of) energy became magnified as the flamboyance of Spring appeared all around me, particularly in my garden.
I expected to burst forward like bulbs pushing through the earth.
Instead I have been more tired than I have been all Winter. After two months of predawn rising for a joint session of yoga with Gunter, we both went for a slide in energy and perseverance; Gunter with a cold and I with an injured shoulder.
This slide coincided with the entrance of Spring and so I have felt out of kilter with the seasonal shift.

And then I recognised around the fire on Friday night that this feeling just might be an annual reoccurance.

Although there is a shift early in Spring, it is more subtle in me than it is in the world around me.

There are a few little projects germinating in my life right now, but there's really still not much to see for them. 

Seeds for our garden have been sown but are not in full swing yet.

It is really not until the equinox that I feel the noticeable rise in energy in myself.

It's always reassuring.

saturday night

A winter celebration shared with friends makes it that much sweeter.
Tissue lanterns; glowing orbs floating in the darkness.
Walking down to the water and back again.
Carrot cake at the wharf.
Perfect.

blue sky and a tree

Blue sky and a tree. 

Bark to be precise, to make bark boats. Yes, in winter.

Blue sky because I have missed it so.

Miserable weather pushes patience up the queue of life lessons to work on.

A blue sky day brings relief from such things.

A morning stirring up solutions and hoping for crystals (inspired by the inspiring youngest of the chaos team) and lantern making in preparation for Saturday night's solstice celebrations with friends including the annual lantern walk.

An afternoon of Winter wreath making and sunshine absorption.

May happiness and freedom be yours.

Happy Winter Solstice

fit for the fairy queen

Thank you dear leaf.
You saved the morning; in fact you set the whole tone for the day.
I had had a restless night, the wind in particular was relentless and in our wee bach, full of drafty gaps, we get the full brunt.
We needed milk; I agreed with the girls, it was a hot chocolate kind of day.
To get to the local store we needed to head out into the weather. I knew it had potential either to be invigorating or just hard work with attitude to match.
As we stood in the porch putting on our hats and gloves and scarves and coats the weather got decidedly worse. The hail was horizontal.
I was feeling challenged, trying to keep my grumpiness in check.
We headed out, hoods down against the hail.

And then, well, we found you.

Actually Ruby discovered you, scooting along the guttering, in such a hurry to somewhere.  She saved you from the great dark pit; she wanted to catch you before you disappeared down the drain.

A boat fit for the Fairy Queen.

Perhaps you were late for an engagement with the Queen herself.

We guarded your voyage the rest of the way down the hill, clearing the path and assisting with detours around insurmountable barriers.

 

You were ragged by the end of the voyage; your prow had a irrepairable tear and the hull was taking in a lot of water.
We carried you home to calmer waters, no Queen in sight.
Sky will remember you and tells me she will tell her babies the story of you in bed tonight.
Ruby will too; the day she rescued the boat fit for the Fairy Queen..

snow

Yesterday brought us winter making an utterly dramatic and stunning entrance into our lives.
Snow enough to play in all day along with Gunter getting to stay at home. Added to this was a
birthday cake made solely by Ruby for me.
What a perfect  beginning of another cycle around the sun.

What was especially exciting though was giving the girls their new babies.
I have been working on them for a while now.
Introducing Holly and....well, Ruby doesn't want to feel rushed with naming her wee one.
I am so happy with them and the girls adore them.
Especially the hair it seems.

I have wanted to make these for the girls for a long time (since they were wee themselves) and, well it just didn't happen. 

I'm generally not a "learn from the book" kind of girl. I was certainly inspired by this book many years ago but that didn't translate into actually making a start.  I'm fairly strongly kinaesthetic and so like to get started on new things alongside someone and with my hands engaged.  Without my friend A, I may never have made these girls and certainly not to the same standard. Thank you A for all your experience, materials, time and wisdom. 

Now I would like to make more - there is certainly something special about making these dear dolls.

As I was finishing on their wardrobe basics I wondered about when I could give them. We don't just give presents willy-nilly here, we save them for special occasions but all their special occasions felt too far away.  That is until I thought of my birthday.

My birthday seemed to be the perfect time to gift these to the girls.

In these dolls was stitched and stuffed threads of love for the girls and my family and in the giving of these dolls, I got it all back as the perfect present on my 43rd birthday.

Autumn

Today is community garden day - Harvest celebration day - I think we are making bulk sauerkraut. We also have piano. There will be a library visit and I'll try for a bit of horse manure collecting as well.

Hmm, we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday is one of our "out" days, in other words, our car day. We try and make the most of it.

Amongst all of that we will also acknowledge the Equinox - the balance of light and dark.

• Noticing the dark rushing into to fill the evening time and enjoying more space in the evening as the girls head into sleep earlier.
• Watching the kereru fatten up on the cabbage tree seeds.
• Savoring every warm day we get so as we can feel prepared for the coming season.
• Squeezing in more and more autumnal goodness onto the seasons' table - it always gets so full at this time of the year.
• Collecting herbs for to make strengthening tea and brewing honey syrup to strengthen the hive in time for Winter.
• Bringing in food from the garden every day and running out of preserving jars as I always do at this time of the year. Where do they go during the year?
• Clearing vegetable beds and building composts.
• Planning in my head garden extensions for next season.

Today we will forage a little, eat cake and share the gratefulness we feel for all that we have from this good earth.

We might plant something - I'm not sure what yet, perhaps some seedlings, perhaps a wee tree that has been waiting, whatever we have. We'll try to plant whatever it is with intention, as a gift back, in the spirit of reciprocity.

Our humble acts that we make through the year to acknowledge the shifting seasons have slowly evolved with our family and continue unfolding. Most importantly for me they nurture our relationship to the good earth.

Mostly we have made it up as we have gone along.

It's always a good reason to eat cake.

Happy Autumnal Equinox to you and your families.

at last

At last:

• The firewood shelter is built. Now to stack it.
• I've gathered enough wool to get knitting on a pair of my favourite slippers in time for the morning chill setting in. We employ creative tactics to get our hands on real wool around here. Unraveling takes place. The price of NZ wool is just too outrageous to buy for our family wallet even though I listen to the sound of the sheep bleeting from my front door.
• The bottled beetroot stores are full once again. Another micro-batch of sauerkraut brewing - with all the other action in the kitchen at this time of year, regular micro-batching is our solution to kitchen overload. More tomatoes are waiting in the laundry.
• The sun shone for two whole days. We made like solar panels and soaked in it, filling the stores just in time to greet the Autumn Equinox this week.
• We jumped. We swam. We squelled at the temperature of the water. The colour of the water was astounding.

This morning it's raining again. We imagine a quieter day: the fabric of our day unfolding to reflect the tone set by the weather outside.

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Late addition: I've just posted over at www.lyttel-town.blogspot.com; another post in the "local food" series on mushrooms.

late summer

Yesterday we remembered what late Summer days usually feel like: comfortably warm and settled.
We spent most of the day outside filling up on warmth knowing that the wheel of the season is turning and soon it will feel harder to get outside.
The horses were fed and taken out for a ride. I made these a while back but soon after construction, due to dodgy design Pinky's head fell off and there she sat in the corner of the room. Near the end of last year we managed to resurrect her head and maybe not surprisingly this made all the difference:) They have been well-loved ever since.

We spent some time at the beach down the road. I collected seaweed and the girls hauled water and scooped sand. There really seems to be nothing better than sand and water in childhood.

After dinner there was croquet up some old guttering. This guttering is on the way to the roof of the shed to keep our feathered friends a little more dry and to add a little more water to our rain collection system. It's on the long list of things to do. Yesterday the list had to wait.

the quickening

With a lot of time spent outside over the past few days I notice the turning towards Spring.

Winter has been kind to us here but still at times we have found ourselves inside more than we would really like.

The shift towards Spring brings shorter shadows creeping across our days and just enough warmth to stay outside longer.

It also brings a restlessness and impatience inside me.

So today we will dig our hands in the dirt, ground ourselves in a bit of physical work and try to remember the wisdom that says that all things happen just at their right time.