the Wise Robin

it's beginning to look a lot like...

 

 

 When the hills are clothed in honeyed straw, the gum trees hang loose in the midday heat and sticky mango juice drips from our chins. When bare foot in the garden is not an option because of bindis & the compost heap is high with another round of lawn clippings. When the jacarandas bloom and evening storms break the day's humidity. When Bing, Nat, Frank and Michael come to stay for a month, crooning us through this month of December. When the tree goes up and the smell of fresh pine fills the house. When the Christmas books are brought out and pored over. When I'm elbow deep in felt and thread and needles and notions, when late nights become later the closer we get to summer solstice. When the windows sit tight during the day and are thrown open at night, the slightest inkling of air breezing over skin, bringing sleep. When the last of the year's school work is packed away and Mama lets out a big sigh. When the berries ripen and we head to the orchards. When the days speed up and we hurtle toward another year, then it begins to look a lot like Christmas. 

Well hello there! It feels like it's been a while since I've really been here in this space. Thankyou so very much for all your lovely words about my Nanna. We're all winding down now. William has two weeks of holidays starting this weekend and we're finishing up school this Thursday. How wonderful it feels. It has been a challenging year for me in so many ways, becoming more creative with our homeschooling routine to fit in with a certain busy toddler, broken arms and all the physio, fracture clinic, osteopath appointments that came along with it, dealing with sleep deprivation like I've never felt before, feeling isolated & craving more time to stretch my own wings, my nanna & pop passing. But I'm not going to lament any of this because we're all busy, we've all got stuff going on & now it's my favourite time of year (as opposed to my favourite season) & William will be home for two whole wonderful weeks & then it will be solstice & Christmas. It's a time of endings and beginnings. The heat is only just beginning to wind up, the garden is flourishing, we have more time for crafting and being together. The days are long but will soon begin to shorten, we'll spend more time swimming. I'll start thinking about what to knit with the wool I've been spinning, evenings will be spent down at the river. My mind will be free of school and classes and early nights and being super organised just for a while. Oh how I love this time of year, giving and sharing, traditions and lists and friends and family. It's just started raining again after another humid morning & Zahra's cello lesson has been cancelled for this afternoon, so a cup of tea and some more Christmas stitching it is! 

 

 

 

 

 

and just like that...

 

 

 

 

 

...flannelette is swapped for linen, feathers for cotton & wool for bare skin. The swollen days of spring have deflated in a frazzle with the heat. French onion soup was the last for the season, we've moved onto salads. I always forget how short spring is here, the heat taking me by surprise every year. The shell pool has been dragged out & dusted off, the girls spending the long evenings playing while I get the washing in or water the garden. The dog lies spawled on the floor panting, panting, always panting. Shhhh, just for a few moments Kaya girl. The flies buzz at the back door waiting to be let in while I prep the evening meal. "Be quick with the door girls" I have to remind constantly. Heat makes me cranky. More to the point anything over 31 degrees leaves me like a floppy fish. The doors and windows are shut tight again until next March & we fidget while waiting for the biting sun to lower his gaze so we can head to the pool. Our movements become restricted to the few hours before nine o'clock & after four, which become between the hours of eight & seven during the hottest heat of January, February. I see tradies & people jogging & wonder what they're doing, don't they know they could evaporate just like that? William heads out on his road bike with his Italian skin. Some days I feel that this land & I were never meant for each other. My complexion is much more of the Scottish Highland or windswept moors type. Summer here is sort of a thief, she steals time & energy, but gives it back as an appetite for good weather & woolens. The garden is humming along though. Carrots, celery, spring onions, snow peas, parsley, cornflowers & calendulas. Capsicums & more salad greens have gone in. My next move... pumpkins, tomatoes & a forage garden for the chooks. I've started researching honeybees & bantam chook breeds. We'd love to have bees by next spring & need to boost our feathered flock. We lost Anouk not long after Stella a few weeks back & now we have just three girls, with only one layer. Not really enough for a family of four that eat eggs every day. They've settled into their new run, Annabelle, our man hen, quite content to crow from the top of the compost heap every morning.  I've been spinning, albeit with sweaty hands, & wrapping up a few photography jobs. The last one at a local gallery where I was humbled & fortunate to be using studio gear again. With that etheric mantle free from the girls for a few hours I walked away feeling like I haven't in so long. Enlivenend & energetic & inspired. I'm asking the universe to deliver more of that. ...and just like that, dare I mention it, Christmas is around the corner. I have Miss Dandelion Doe and Miss Phylis Mouse queued up for the girls but other than that my thoughts on Christmas have been fairly few and far between. How are your ideas on Christmas shaping up? Do you manage the seasonal transition with grace or like me end up like a floppy fish?

caught up

 

 

 

It's been a while but we're still here. We've been caught up in spring & the seasonal change sniffles. It comes, it goes, I make broth, we lay low, we walk in the bush & pick wild freesias, ooh & ahh at the paper daisies & chocolate lilies, marvel at the blossoms, here one day, gone the next, fluttering away on the spring breeze. We watch the garden grow & grow some more, we harvest our first carrots, celery & spring onions & contemplate the next round of salad greens to go in, I unravel cardigans that are too late & too small, I dust off the spinning wheel & learn how to card tightly crimped fleece into wispy, sausage clouds, we are grateful for two working, nine year old arms & the feel of sunshine & fresh air on bare skin, we admire the new chook run & fine tune the design as we discover that the ladies' old habits die hard, we find that holidaying at home with no plans to go anywhere or do anything is what we need right now, we launch ourselves into the last term of homeschooling for the year, grapple with daylight savings & circadian rhythms, spend afternoons in the sun sending messages & flowers via cable car, make crudite platters for the fairies & plastic bag kites because some days that is all I can manage & need in order to buy myself ten minutes of stillness, we blow our noses again for what seems the bobillionth time & throw open the windows & doors to this new season. 

And that's us, all caught up. What have you all been up too? I hope the seasonal change brings you lots of smiles.

 

 

 

rainy day small things

 

Our authenticity is found hidden in the small details of our daily round. We think that it is the big moments that define our lives. But really these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks. The narrative is written every day in the small and simple

Sarah Ban Breathnach

 

 

rhythmic, quenching rain

listening to it fall on the roof at night

feels like such a long time since it last fell

rainy day meringues

spinning on the porch

her cardmaking and flower gathering

walking in the garden

a perfect day

 

Hope you enjoyed the rain too

 

xoC

 

dreams

 

 

Under a patchwork sky of blue and grey we headed down the river and over the edge of the South West slopes. The floodplains stretched out before us as we made our way through fields of vineyards and paddocks of woolly sheep with new lambs. A wedgie perched atop last nights roadkill, feasting by the wayside, shaggy Yellow Box lining the snaking road as we passed through small town after small town. Zahra snuggling in the backseat and Kaya watching the passing landscape with the anticipation of a walk

As we crossed the river into the next state her crackly voice and  loose directions flicked through my mind...past the old motel, 'round a sweeping bend, a couple of new houses on the lake's shore. It seemed a strange place to me to set down roots ... the innumerable skeletons of drowned trees dotting the lake's surface.

Joy met us at the door with her wheelie. She had  everything neatly arranged in the hall.  As the radio softly filled the space surrounding us she told of Basil, her late husband, how the country womenfolk would meet in the community hall, of the farm at Saversnake long since sold, of sons living overseas and grandchildren coming to visit. I dug in my bag for that mornings flicked Corriedale fleece and nervously wondered if my hands would remember the draw and twist, the rhythm of the treadle with my hands. It had been two years. The blackwood wheel slowly kicked to life as it took its first breath in years. Joy was happy to find a new home for her well loved wheel, a new family for it to clothe.

As I loaded my new baby, bobbins, lazy kate and chair into the car Joy chatted to Zahra through the window. She asked if I wouldn't mind sending her a photo of my first handspun knit. It was late afternoon as we headed around the lake and back across the river,  my girl gazing sleepily out the window. Before she fell asleep she asked  me ..." do you think she was lonely Mama?"

 

I have been quietly looking for the right wheel for the past two years. This little, upright, Lewis 'Alinga' has quickly found its place  in a sunny corner of our home where I can sit and watch the world, dream and spin.

 

Cxo