the Wise Robin

july billows

 

 

 

 

Oh July! Month of birthdays & snowfalls, lengthening days & ripening goodness, you are good to us in all your big, billowing, brightness. The days are noticeably lighter & longer already, only one month on from midwinter. When we wake the sun is already peeping through the fog & the trees & the day feels long begun before Niamh is calling " Mama, Mamaaaa, Mama, Eeeyam, Eeeyam." We lift the blinds and stand looking out into the day, the treetops. "Good morning my sweet, good morning sparrows. William's not here, he's at work. What shall we do today?" Our big girl has been back from her adventures a week already, with so much to tell us of where she's been & what she's been up to. I finished her room in time & didn't let on. Just let her rediscover it. I think her little nook turned out really well. After I'd painted the bookshelf I got to thinking that I should have left it bare, but once the shelves were filled with all her books & precious treasures my mind was more satisfied. She was over the moon. At times I didn't know where she was, calling outside for her & there she would be, quietly snuggled in her nook reading the next Silver Brumby book or cutting & sewing another fairy quilt or playing with her horses. I think all it needs now is something on the wall. We've been looking at these and these. So lovely. We've had a busy week, bustling to & from ballet rehearsals for the big show on the weekend. It was full of crazy goodness, lots of fun & excitement, butterflies flying around our tummies, ballet ribbons on shoes at the last minute, hair pins & chiffon, lemon yellow, too small dressing rooms & too loud stage music. We came away utterly exhausted & famished. We had take out sushi and sank into a hot bath. I'm so proud of her. The house has that fullness again that feels just right. It's so good having her home.

Even though the days are warming we're still having soups every other night & fingers crossed, we'll be up in the snow this weekend! There are supposed to be more snowfalls this week. I've finally finished all the pruning & our yard is now full of apple branches & rose clippings. The lawn is on the move again & soon we'll have homegrown broccoli in our bellies. I think I'll try and put in another round of caulies & broccoli before the season ends. Then there's the chook run which I'm still brainstorming over & the flannelette lap quilt which is waiting to be be sandwiched. I can feel the energies of the season shifting ever so slightly & I don't feel ready. I feel like I have just sunk deliciously into the cold days & rosy lamplight & now, now I can feel the clambering beginning. All my winter projects which need their loose ends tied before the snow melts. At least the cardi that was finished, then wasn't finished because the sleeves dangled past her fingertips is now finished after being frogged and reknitted. Welcome home baby girl. We'll miss you July!

 

 

 

 

three six five

 

193/365

  

 

192/365

 

 

191/365

 

 

190/365

 

 

189/365

 

 

 

188/365

 

 

 

187/365

  

 

186/365

 

 

 

185/365

 

 

184/365

 

 

183/365

 

 

 

182/365

 

 

 

 

181/365

 

 

180/365

 

 

179/365

 

 

178/365

 

 

 

177/365

 

 

 

176/365

 

there & back

 

 

 

Awgh, what a week it's been. Saying goodbye to my big girl as she headed off on her own adventures & getting to spend some quiet time with my little sweetpea Niamh. With William at work all week it was just the two of us girls. Slidng into a lovely routine filled with baking & stories, window watching & knitting, mama's catch up list & nap time. We walked & ate good food, chatted to the birds in the garden & really just had a wonderful slow week together.  Looking back at my list of to do's I can say that just about every one of them is crossed off. I didn't get a start on Miss Juniper Kitty but I did cast off Zahra's cardi. It's blocking as we speak. I'm really happy with it. As I was knitting along with Le Tour every evening I would stop occassionally and just look at it, hardly believing that I had knit it. If you had shown me this pattern three years ago, when I seriously decided to give knitting a go, I would have laughed out loud. I would never have thought I'd be able to knit something like that & here I am, still gobsmacked that I was able to follow a lace chart, albeit in complete silence, in a room by myself. It was one of those things I thought was going to be really hard & painful & long, so I put it off & put it off & then it turns out not at all difficult or painful & even...fun. So that's that & now I feel like I can conquer any knitting challenge. 

As we drove north we listened to The Silver Brumby audiobook. I loved reading this series as a kid. It fuelled my insatiable appetite for anything remotely horsey. High country, snow, mountains, the bush, wilderness & brumbies all rolled into one. I remember driving over Charlotte's Pass on a family holiday & being completely mesmerised by the mountains and the patchy summer snow, hoping with all my heart that I'd get to see a brumby. There was no brumby that day but years later when I was working up at Thredbo one summer, as we passed over Dead Horse Gap, there in a small clearing just off the road, was a wild horse. Small & dark, long tangled mane & tail, watching us quietly as we drove by. That was a special day.

It rained for most of the drive home, big puffy clouds filling the sky. I've travelled this road north & south more times than I can count over the past fifteen years & every time I come to the same bend in the road or the same hill or the same paddock, where the landscape just opens up before me & I can see the mountains & the last of the southwest slopes, I'm blown away, left quiet by how beautiful it all is. Just sliding over the land completely captivated.

Returning a week later all I could think about was giving my girl a big hug & that vanilla almond cake. It was everything I'd dreamed of & the two cakes that I'd baked were way off the mark. This one I do believe had coconut in it, giving it that denseness that I was craving & making it all chewy & so good. I'm gonna try again & see what I come up with. We had a wonderful birthday lunch for my Mum & me, thirty six! Then it was off again in opposite directions, The Silver Brumby starting up from where we left off. There & back home again.

 

 

 

vanilla snow

 

 

We had our first clear view of the snow this week! It's been flurrying up in the those mountains for the past three weeks, dusting them in powdery white much like the icing sugar on the vanilla almond cake I've been trying to make. We're excited about the snow & think we'll head up the mountain very soon.  Zahra is spending the week up north with her Meme. We did a halfway stop & swap last Sunday at Jugiong's Long Track Pantry. I was too full up after my lunch to have any, but their vanilla almond cake caught my eye. It looked dense & moist & delicious. All this week I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. So I googled and found a tonne of recipes. I looked at the pictures mainly to find something that looked like the Jugiong cake. I need to see a picture of a recipe to entice me to make it.  Just the recipe doesn't really work for me. I'm a bit the same with novels. I get sucked in by the cover. I only have one cookbook on my shelf that doesn't have pictures & I do make things out of it, but that book sat on my wishlist for a loooong time before it made it to my shelf. I ended up trying two vanilla almond recipes. The first was delicious but very light and fluffy. I was really wanting something with weight, like an orange & almond cake or like those almond finger biscuit things you buy in the tiny, tiny continental section of the supermarket. The sort of cake that gets more moist the second day. So I tried another and although it was more dense & had the flavour I was craving it was too dry. Think I'll make the same one again & take it out sooner.  I've been super organised, except for today, with meals. Getting everything ready while Niamh naps in the afternoon. We've been doing a two course thing {sometimes three, when there's dessert}, ever since soup season started. Lately it's been cauilflower, or leek & potato or broccoli. I make a big, big pot. Enough for dinner, lunch the next day and some for the freezer.  Having a variety of soups in the freezer makes a huge difference to the busy end of the day.

So I've got a list of things I want to get done this week. One of which was to paint some shelves and do a little make-over on Zahra's room before she comes home Sunday. Two coats down, one to go.  I've crossed a lot of other jobs off already but I kind of ran out of steam today and just flopped. Niamh & I cosied on the couch & read & watched the crazy weather outside while the second cake baked. Sunshine, hail, dark grey clouds, heavy rain, sunshine, sun shower, gusty wind, more hail, more sunshine. We've had some beautiful days but mainly the lamps are turned on first thing & stay on most of the day. After William goes to work and Niamh wakes I lift the blinds & we lie in bed listenig to the birds, looking out into the dark, watching as the shapes of the trees become defined & the day begins. She runs off & brings me my uggies when she's ready to get up & eat. " Mama ooos, ooos " she says as she pushes them up on the bed. Oh my sweetpea chickadee. We have toast & oatmeal, eggs, always eggs. This girl loves her eggs. She potters while I get the laundry on or tidy up a little, then it's naptime & I hit my list like a willy-willy. One thing going on over here then I change direction & there's another thing going on over there. Paint, wool, homeschool prep, cooking. Tick, tick, almost tick. Onto the next thing. No time to stop until I hear her chirping from the bedroom. "Hello again my love, you've had a wonderful rest". We go to the window & say hello to all the birds, the passers-by & the digger over the way through the trees.  We eat & play & read some more & if the weather's all sunshine we rug up & head outdoors. Then it's back inside, hands & noses chilled, back into the warm for some more window watching. Then it's naptime again & off I go whirling crazily through the house. Oh how I've loved this quiet week. One on one time with Niamh, talking to my big girl every day, missing her, looking forward to that cake on Sunday, dreaming of snow days. 

 

 

 

three six five

 

178/365

 

 

 

177/365

 

 

 

176/365

 

 

175/365

 

 

 

174/365

 

 

 

173/365

 

cloudburst ramblings

 

 

 

 

With a backdrop of six degrees & misty rain, we turned up the heat, stitched & tried out new cake recipes this week. William turned forty two! I've been trying a few wheat free dairy free recipes, just substituting normal flour with gluten free & butter with various oils, but nothing tastes quite like real wheat flour & creamy butter. So I went back to my tried & true flourless chocolate cake with almond meal for Zahra. I've tweaked it here and there & now think I've got it to a point that works well for our tastes. We use 150g of almond meal (instead of 80g) & 50 g gluten free flour (instead of 120g) then just add 150ml of almond milk (instead of 100ml milk and 50ml oil). I think this makes for a better texture and less oily cake. For the birthday boy I made the Moosewood vegan chocolate cake  with Cloudburst Frosting. The frosting was more yellow than white because I used raw sugar to make the icing sugar. We bought a thermomix last year when we were really vulnerable because of sleep deprivation & I've spent a good portion of the time we've owned it with shopper's remorse, not really sure about actually needing it. But I have to say after using it for some time now, I really think it's a blast. I love that it makes actual meals, healthy meals in such little time, which, when we're running late on the dinnertime/bedtime routine, makes such a difference. It's cooking dinner now as I write. So next time I make this frosting I think I'll use store bought icing sugar or grind up some castor sugar to get really white, fluffy icing. It will look much prettier. 

There are so many flowers blooming in the garden & the bush right now. The pink milk camellia's are opening, heavy with rain. They remind me of Alice in Wonderland, the part where Alice is in the Queen's garden and the cards are painting the roses. Not sure why, but such a delicate colour. Up in the bush all the grevillea's & peas are starting to flower. Soon the understorey will be a carpet of purple lillies & yellow daisies. I've been trying to work out how I can replicate a wildmeadow in our garden. One that will just pop up every spring and self seed so little maintenance is needed. Oh and bulbs under the apple tree. I imagine a full circle skirt of jonquils & daffodils, bluebells & snowdrops. I have such dreams for this little garden. Corners here and there that I have ideas for. We're hoping to get the chooks in a run before we plant out our spring summer vegie garden, then there's the herb & medicinal plant garden as well as the deck garden. All the pots, the blueberry, kangaroo paw, box & bowls of bulbs were moved next to the small, raised, vegie beds to make a barrier, a kind of deterrent for Niamh, to stop her from falling off the retaining wall in the backyard. So now the deck is looking sparse and unloved. If you feel like leaving a recommendation, would you? Thankyou! It needs plants that don't mind direct, morning sun & shade for the rest of the day, but hot shade because in summer it's scorching under that tin roof. We've had flocks and flocks of silvereyes in the garden each morning. They are the sweetest little birds with their green hoods and white eye masks. Can you see him in amongst the privet berries? 

 All in all Will's birthday was quiet as he had to work. We delivered him a vanilla bean eclair at work and celebrated with a candlelit dinner. Happy Birthday, my love. You are the greatest.

 

 

 

three six five

172/365

 

 

 

171/365

 

 

 

170/365

three six five

169/365

 

168/365

 

167/365

 

 

166/365

 

165/365

 

164/365

 

 

 

 

 

 

odd bod days & cauliflower soup

There's a pumpkin roasting in the oven, one baby girl is asleep & my big girl is at the theatre. The house is all quiet & warm. Patchy blue is starting to peek through the thick fog that we've been having for the past few days. It shrowds the town, our street, the house by five o'clock in the evening, making everything quietly slow, thick like butter, & delciously warm inside. I remembered I'd left the pram outside just as I was drifting off to sleep last night. Out of a warm bed & into my wellies I hopped, down the side of the house. The sky all aglow like a big softbox with the streetlights & low cloud. The pram, my scarf & mitts all damp. Back inside & into a warm bed. Felt so good. Niamh & I walked up the hill & into the bush this morning. We could hear the town noises below. Traffic, lawnmowers, all the neighbourhood renovations going on & we were up in this floaty whiteness, worlds away. Everything  drips with the damp air.  Birds sing but we can't see them. Ibis fly low over our heads with a whooshing of wings, hugging the treeline for navigation. The pea soup clears by lunchtime & then we have the most glorious few hours of sunshine. Such a mix of odd bod days. Winter & lingering autumn & then the feeling of almost spring. There are jonquils flowering already & small, sweet apples on our tree. That's never happened before. The birds & coddling moth usually get them. We've been slowly pruning our big, old tree back so it's a manageable size to net. Then there'll be apple pie & crumble. I always feel sad for some reason after pruning big trees, unless it's a privet. It's like their personality changes & they become unbalanced for a time until they've grown into their new look. The altered skyline takes a while for me to settle into. It was funny watching the girls settle up there to roost for the night, looking around for familiar branches, working out a new roosting routine. Who perches next to who, who sits the highest. Matilda was all settled, then Clothilde kinda moved on in, slowly shoving & pecking her way to where she wanted to be. 

We've been walking around the neighbourhood in the mornings admiring all the gardens and the seasonal changes. I love how the nakedness of winter lets you peek into nooks and crannies, see views that are otherwise obscured by the green of spring and summer. Mushrooms and moss, withering seed heads and plump buds ready to burst when spring arrives. There's a currawong sittng outside the window scoffing the purple privet berries. His beady yellow eyes see me as I move to get my camera and he's gone. The currawongs call all day in their dipping voices. There seem to be more of them this year, have you noticed that too?  Now, cauliflower soup. Doesn't sound that appealing but oh my stars. It is so simple & crazy good. All creamy & more-ish. I know there's a pic up there of leeks because we made leek and potato soup too, but the cauliflower is much, much better. 

 

800g cauliflower florets

600ml water, more or less deending on how thick you like it

100-200g speck or smoked bacon

1 tbsp butter

salt & pepper to taste

 

Place water, cauliflower and seasoning into a pot. Bring to a boil then simmer gently until the cauliflower is cooked. While the cauliflower is simmering fry up the bacon. When cauliflower is soft add the butter and bacon. Blend until smooth. Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan.