Knitting, flowers, and some heavy tunes

We've sweltered through a hideous couple of weeks and then a couple of days ago, blessedly, it started to rain. Right now there's a break in the weather and I should really be out there pulling the spent corn.  I should be planting leek and onion seedlings.

I should be weeding while the ground is soft.  I should be mucking out the chook house, and definitely should be properly storing the spring bulbs I pulled out months ago and which are still sitting in buckets in the wood shed.  I should be getting rid of the apples infected with coddling moth (sigh).

I should be vacuuming.  I should be peeling (uninfected, supermarket bought) apples for stewing.  I should be folding washing, putting other washing away, and putting yet more washing in the machine.

I have instead, for reasons I cannot explain, cast on another knitting project.  And ordered yarn for another.  And started a crochet project.  Although the crochet project is just adding a border to an existing blanket so it hardly counts.  Right?

What I have also been doing, is taking photos of flowers.  If you're anti-flower - as I once was, can you believe it - click away now!

I've been appreciating my chooks.  They don't have twee old lady names, or hilarious ironic bogan names.  I can't even really tell them apart.  They're just my chooks.  That said, I've been surprised by how much I love them.  I love their little purring sounds of happiness when they see me coming to let them out in the morning.  I love watching them run towards me when they know I have treats for them.  And of course I love the eggs they so unfailingly provide.

I love their presence in the garden, usually to be found bum-up hunting for grubs.

I don't especially like it when they hang about on the doorstep and poop, or when they try to come inside and make the baby scream in alarm.  But I find them a very rewarding animal to keep and I'd love to have more.  But, considering that we give away the majority of their eggs, that's probably unlikely unless we decide to turn commercial.  Hmmm...

Is it weird that I like the mottled spotty look of the half-dead hydrangea flower better than when it's at its peak?

I haven't staked the dahlias, even though I should.  I like looking at them falling all over the place, for some reason.  It's messy and imperfect, and I should have coiled that hose before taking the photo.  Should have got B to mow the lawn.

As mentioned earlier, I've been pulling out corn and J has been enjoying the spoils.  Most of the time the cobs don't even make it inside before being demolished, but occasionally I can smuggle one in for dinner.

In case there was any remaining doubt, I got incontrovertible proof the other day that we have a little empath on our hands.  Walking past the lemon tree, J commented that a lemon had fallen from the tree.  "Poor little thing," she said.  OH boy.  I quickly told her than the lemon was happy to fall from the tree, it wanted to fall from the tree.  But my heart ached a little bit for the girl whose heart aches for everyone and everything around her.  How will we toughen her up I wonder?

A is now 16 months.  Sixteen months and cannot stand.  Finally we have had confirmation (and may I just say here, I kneeew it) that no, something is not right.

We have been looking at the way she stands from the very first time she put her feet down, and discussed the fact that it doesn't look right.  And the other day the doctor confirmed within moments of examining her that it's not right at all.

This all sounds a bit dramatic and gloomy but I feel quite matter of fact about it.  I think we have known for a while that something is not as it should be, so having confirmation from the doctor is more a relief than a shock.  I am pretty annoyed that it hasn't been picked up before now considering that I have faithfully taken her to every child nurse check up.  I've been lectured by various nurses both here and in Australia about this and that, but when there was a real problem no one noticed.  That part of it is very upsetting.

But when it comes to the actual problem, whatever it is, I don't feel worried.  Not yet, I guess.  If it turns out that there is some terrible deformity, or she has to have major surgery, or she may never walk, then yes I will almost certainly be very bloody upset.  But for now my main feeling is impatience.  Let's get this show on the road.

Not much else to add at this juncture but we are booked to see a specialist and I for one am relieved to think that finally we will get some answers and, more importantly, a plan.  Just a few (long) weeks until her appointment.

I can't wait to get started on helping my poor frustrated girl get on her feet.  Literally.

Life lately

On New Year's Day this year I made pie.  Begin as you mean to go on, don't they say?

My first ever attempt at making the dough from scratch and while there is certainly room for improvement, I'm calling this one a success.  B for one was cutting the most obscene wedges when he thought I wasn't looking.  I used this recipe, if you're interested.

No I didn't manage a true lattice.  My dough was too short and breakable for any attempts at fanciness.

I used jam from the berry farm just down the road from us and it made for the most scrumptious (truly the most over-used word these days) tangy and sweet filling.

Due to excess pie and excess everything else, I have got to get back into my fasting routine again.  My clothes are telling me the unvarnished truth about all that indulgence.  Sigh.

Luckily we have veg coming out of our ears, including the most enormous broccoli you ever saw.

We don't use any chemicals on our edible garden, but I have to confess that I find the search and destroy grubs mission before each meal a bit tiresome.

While we're confessing to things, I also must admit that those fabric present bags I made won't get another run.  I love the concept and all but in the end it is so dull pulling a present out of a bag in comparison to the tearing of the wrapping paper.  Especially for the little girls.  So gift wrap will darken my doorstep once again and I'm ok with that.  At least it's not more bloody plastic which is basically impossible to eradicate from our lives.

Onto happier tales.  Look at Spotty Ram, who's living with us at the moment.  I love him.  He tolerates me because he knows I control the supply of pellets which he loves.  Soon I will have him eating out of my hand and hopefully giving him scratches on that beautiful forehead.

Look at his regal profile.

The dahlias are in full swing and it's been fun seeing the different varieties we have.  This deep red one is too challenging a colour for my camera.  Try as I did to play with the settings, and to edit the photo afterwards, I can't get it anywhere near the deep almost blue-red that it is in real life.

Kindy starts back next week which we're all looking forward to.  Poor little J has been asking pretty much since they broke up in December when it's time to go back.  Either that or she puts on her backpack and tells me she's going to kindy.

It's definitely a juggle having the two of them home every day and J is usually the one who misses out, or who has to be patient, or share, or help.

Now to wrap things up, and because this post has somehow come across a bit blue and pensive, here's some photos from golden hour the other night.

2017: finding my way home

Brace yourselves!  Here comes the pensive pondering of the year that was...

In January the purchase of our ten acres went through and it all became official.  We were really and truly going to move to New Zealand.  I remember when B sent me this photo of our new front gate and I just about couldn't breathe from excitement.  Was this really happening??

Those first few months of 2017 passed in a blur of stress, excitement, fear, apprehension, and joy.  Oh and sleep deprivation.  Always with a side of sleep deprivation.

Suddenly it was April and we packed up our house in Perth that had so many happy memories attached.  Splashing in the pool, scootering up and down the driveway, many beers and laughs shared with friends on the back verandah.  J's first steps, A's arrival, it all happened here.



We farewelled that sun-drenched suburban garden...

...for a slightly damper but much bigger one.

With the added bonus of our country lifestyle dream.  Acres for our girls to roam, animals for them to raise and care for, warm eggs collected from under soft feathers, fluffy calves waiting at the gate, wood smoke and muddy puddles and apples hanging in the orchard.

Yes, it rained this winter.  It rained a lot.

There were so many peaceful misty mornings that I stopped rushing out in my pyjamas to photograph them.

It rained some more.  The paddocks literally streamed with water from all the rain.

And in between times it was very cold.  Biting frosts, layers upon layers of woolies, the fire roaring all day.

We got sick.  Over and over, the revolving door of coughs and colds that everyone had warned us about when moving to a new country.  The girls coughed and coughed and coughed, they had permanently runny noses, we consumed (what felt like...) litres of children's paracetamol and ibuprofen.  We were up with them, worrying, in the cold tiny hours of the night, or lying awake listening to one - or both - cough in their beds, and worrying.

We were stuck inside due to the rain for days on end.  J's gumboots all sprung leaks.  The cows huddled in the sodden paddocks.  The trees were bare and cold, and the wood basket was filled and emptied, filled and emptied.

Then someone threw the switch and the sun came out.

A learned to crawl, and her sleep improved (for a time anyway).  A sunny little toddler personality, with a side of fiery temper, emerged from that forlorn difficult little baby.

The trees and the garden beds all sprang to life with blossoms popping open and bulbs poking through the soil.

The paddocks exploded with buttercups.

My baby A turned one.

We added chooks and sheep to the menagerie, and had homegrown produce that we could barely keep up with.

The girls fought and cuddled and made each other shriek with laughter, then fought again and made each other cry, and then cuddled and read books together.

The feijoas, hydrangeas and the pohutukawas flowered.  The sun beat down, the ground dried and cracked, the grass grew tall, went to seed and died.

The joy and excitement of Christmas filled little J to bursting, we ate and drank and the girls opened mountains of gifts.  A day on the beach, shells in little plastic buckets, sunburn, hats, sandy toes.  Little girls fast asleep in the back of the car winding our way back home, hot chips for dinner, early to bed for us all.

It's been a busy twelve months.  So much has happened since this time last year!  It's been hard at times, feeling lonely and exhausted and sometimes plain fed up.

Over and above all, though, it's been the year we finally got to start living the life we've dreamed of since we first met.  It's been watching J pick a sprig of thyme to smell as she passes by.  It's seeing A laugh properly and joyfully for the first time.  Watching B tend to his animals.  Sunshine, rain, frost, and steaming humidity.

And for me, it's that feeling of being a long way from where I started, but also home at last.