GO, JUST GO

Camping - what's it all about? Read this slowly, in a whisper.

Silence. The open sky above you that lets all the stresses and noise of life evaporate and blow away.

A camp fire. Finding all the bits to cook a simple meal takes a surprising amount of time. This means you can fossick around and look at the sticks, stones, plants, insects etc as you collect firewood. Lighting a fire is also a slow process and sometimes beginners fail. A flame starts and the sticks catch and everything then is focused on the simple act of preparing food and looking after the fire. So pure.....in the morning, being the first one up and getting the fire going again. In the morning chill, the breaking up of the sticks sends a crack through the air. Warming your hands near the flames. Heating water in a beaten old billy with a long camping history, for a hot drink. People emerging from sleeping bags. Getting breakfast and tidying up.

The early morning light rising up the hills or streaming down a valley, softly at first. Sometimes a river mist floating. Here, kangaroos hop nearby and often emus appear, doing what they do every morning. Sounds are all sharper and carry a long way. Birds call across the distance to each other. You are now in their world.

Maybe there is water - a creek, river, lake, the sea. Maybe it is still. Maybe there is the constant tinkle of its movement over the stones and between the reeds. Fish or frogs may jump. Reflections of all the life above the water can be seen, in full colour, on the surface of the water. Harmony. You can be a part of it if you let yourself. Simple harmony is very powerful and unforgettable.

Ordinary things from home become less important and even forgotten completely. Close your eyes and feel the air with your face. Time doesn't matter. Just be.

Pattie, go, just go. Don't worry. Get there fast and take it slow, really slow. And stay a while. No music, no electronics. Just you and a minimum of stuff. Maybe a book, maybe not.

SONGS

There are some songs that are ridiculously emotionally overpowering for me. And there are others that make me laugh or sing or whatever. Here I am going to make an ongoing list, complete with the video clip of the version I know best.

Eric Clapton
A very special song
Wonderful Tonight

Most of Neil Diamond's songs:
Be
If you know what I mean
I am, I said
etc
Most of Elton John's songs:
Blue eyes
Sad songs
Don't let the sun go down on me
Crocodile rock
Tiny dancer
I guess that's why they call it the blues
Don't go breaking my heart
etc
Beccy Cole
Poster Girl
and most of hers

Missy Higgins
Scar

Mambo #5

Always Trust Your cape

John Denver
Perhaps Love
Eagles and Horses
Seasons of the Heart
Ponies
In the chorus of this I always change 'ponies' to 'Katie' (that's me) ; you work out why...
"And he says ponies, now ponies, don't you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day"
Annie's Song
All this Joy
There are so many more of his..it's hard to find good clips.....and I can't find "Home-grown Tomatoes" yet

Eva Cassidy
Fields of Gold

Rupert Holmes
The Pina Colada Song

E-Type Jazz - mellow jazz with magic vocals. Local Adelaide group.

TO ALIGN OR NOT TO ALIGN, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Just a moment ago I was in the kitchen having a cup of tea with son Alex who is home from Sydney for a few days, on other Google business. We cut through all the crap pretty quickly in my family and soon we were discussing our views on life, the universe and everything. It is so nice when your children become adults and it was interesting to hear Alex say, "You and I both have a similar outlook, Mum, - we align with the left wing." I protested somewhat, saying that I didn't know that left-wing was how I would describe myself. Rather, I care about things other than economics - does that make me left-wing? Alex doesn't beat around the bush, and replied "I describe myself that way and generally people know what that means and therefore understand what my views will be."

Of course, he is no doubt right - he nearly always is - but it doesn't sit comfortably with me to align myself with a political stream of any sort. I don't think, for example, that my love of nature and wild things has anything to do with politics at all, although I do usually vote for 'The Greens' because of the leader, Bob Brown's stance on wilderness and non-logging of old-growth forests in Tasmania etc etc. I don't like taking sides in a general sense and would prefer to see my views as independent of anyone else's. Life has somehow taught me that, once confined to a set of rules - any rules - the first thing I want to do is break them because sometimes I need to change my opinion and I want to be free to do so. I am nothing if not open to other points of view.

When your children become adults you can stand back a bit and see what you have created, or at least had a hand in moulding into shape. This is much more evident when you only see them once in a while. What then can happen is that you, the adult, become influenced by them. In the same way that you start wearing their cast-off clothes which they leave behind when they move out, you begin to feel a great sense of connection to their generation through them and want to understand and sometimes absorb their adult outlook into yours. Someone recently and innocently said to me, when I was answering a question about Alex from them, "It sounds like you take after him." We both laughed and laughed but it certainly has a ring of truth to it.

So, what exactly are my views and where is that square when I need it to refer to?? I do not see the human race as superior to any other species and I feel no need to go out and develop medical science to a point where humans can be cured and healed of illness simply because they are people. I would prefer it were the opposite - we go all out to save the earth and in the process make a world where the human race, not individuals, can exist in harmony with everything else. The big picture needs help, while we spend too much time choosing the colours of paint to use!

Is that left-wing? I have no idea and I don't care because until it is mainstream we are all stuffed anyway and we might as well start believing in a god for all the good it will do us. Today was one of the best days I have had for ages, in a funny and unremarkable kind of way, and it illustrates what is meaningful and what is window dressing. Again we weeded and extended Sally's vegetable garden. It is the first time this year that my toes have been cold in my gardening boots = winter is finally arriving; Sally's soil is now rich and beautiful and ready for production; we had a great talk together about some meaningful things; I spent the rest of the day in my garden, alone and deep in thought, until Alex arrived home; I got some lovely emails that made me feel appreciated by people I have never met and I have a husband coming home tonight who I love and trust. I didn't buy anything or go very far from home or need entertainment. I listened to the birds, ran my hands over the soft fennel fronds, saw the light changing on the hill, sowed some special seeds from Glenys and stood for a moment in a little spot in my vegetable garden from which I can see the sea. Is that left-wing?

My views on biodiversity, food production systems, water usage and a whole lot of things have been developed primarily because I don't like what I see happening to the earth and I want to find better ways to do things which will rebalance inputs and outputs to an even zero impact. Why others think differently is a little bewildering to me but I respect people's rights to have an opinion, never the less, and very much would like to dig deep into the minds of other humans more often than I have the opportunity to. Alex and I have this in common, I know, and find it frustrating when people won't voice their opinions. For me this is partly because I don't know anything about the square - like I was born in a different world - and have no preconceived ideas of what the hell anyone thinks about anything.

Alex may well use left-wing as a means to describe his views but I will continue not to align myself with anyone and shrug off constraints at every turn in the quest to improve the life of the earth that we inevitably rely on to provide us with everything, including the air we breathe and the food we eat, every day. Life is not to be wasted on oneself....(I have just - 1 day later -realised how hypocritical this is because I am writing this on a blog I set up entirely about me!)

MOTH OR BUTTERFLY?

The last few days have been another of those defining moments, perhaps - I will only really know later. It it time to metamorphose from the caterpillar - to finally grow up into something, but what to turn into is the question. There are 2 opposing schools of thought here and both were brought home to me within minutes of each other, a couple of days ago. There are so many people in my life just now that it is good when a phone call makes it all seem so clear; only to have the opposite seem so much more sensible, by another phone call only a second later. Both these people, from our seedsavers group, may read this and may or may not realise the effects they have on me.

Slowly, like a snail creeping towards its leafy dinner, have I become firmly and single-mindedly attracted to food-growing and seedsaving and all they mean to life - from the beginnings of flowering plants on earth to the future life of the planet. All of it. All that deep and meaningful stuff I think about and write about all the time plus a whole lot I haven't even become aware of yet.

At the same time, other people have begun to want to reach out and push forward these same ideals; as threats of climate change and its turmoil just begin to become visible and agri-business takes over the very roots of our existence, in direct conflict with all that I see as paramount to basic survival. Various of these other people seem to think that I would be a useful person to have as part of their teams to make a truly international influence in the food-growing scene, from poor, struggling villagers left starving because of agri-business interference to the affluent, city-dwellers of the western world.

One night there is the phone call, out of the blue, from Jude at Byron Bay Seedsavers Central - the people who wrote that great seedsaving book and who started Seedsavers Australia 20 or so years ago. I am very excited about that call. A couple of nights later there is the phone call from the USA, asking me to be part of what could be a great group of people world wide doing what I want to do. Another whole hour spent chatting and discussing and luring me out of my safe place. Then there are comments and encouragements/discouragements on the blog and emails from people who, I feel, have become some of my best friends, in such a short time.

Just when I need an answer comes the first phone call from someone who is very wise and seems to be able to see right through me. We talk about lots of things, as always, and she manages to make me feel so worth-while and kind of special but in a very down-to-earth way, despite my protests. She says that although I say I am not all that keen on being with most people, obviously I have found people with whom I have a lot of things in common. She says it is time for change in my life and she puts me on a pedestal that I don't deserve.

I hang up the phone and immediately it rings again and it is someone else whose opinion I respect and seek out. We also talk about lots of things and she sees me quite differently and maybe more realistically, maybe not. She reminds me that I am always telling her I don't really like being with people that much and that I enjoy solitude and should, perhaps, stick to the peace and quiet of my garden and not get all fired up about things so much on the blog. I have a cocoon, in other words, and I am comfortable in it. They are both right.

I am just a woman with a passion for the earth, basically, who grows stuff and writes stuff on a little blog in Australia. Of all the 6 billion people in the world how the hell did I get here? And should I just stay put and turn into a moth, with my wings out flat to shield me from predators? Or should I stand tall like a butterfly and use my colourful wings to attract attention in the hope that, in the process, I may join others and together begin to lead people down from the precipice we are on now to a safer, happier, sustainable place, one vegetable garden at a time?

Until I get this off my chest I am finding it difficult to put my mind to writing anything useful at all! There is a lot more to it, as there always is, than this sketchy outline but it is not worth spending much time on so this will have to do. Hopefully putting it down in words like this may get it off my mind because really, I am a butterfly ready to fly off that precipice and see where the wind takes me. Are you coming with me?

10 DEFINING MOMENTS

I was thinking about the post I wrote on the seedsavers blog about the trip to Tasmania all those years ago and the fact that I wouldn't be the same person now if I hadn't done that walk. It started me thinking about defining moments in our lives and also crossroads where we took a definite change of direction. Sometimes they are obvious but more often you can see them in retrospect, I think. Here are mine so far:

1. The day I decided I wasn't going to study to be a vet because it would have meant going to live a long way away and I wasn't ready (because there weren't any vet courses in my state universities). I gave up my desire to be a vet for African wildlife that day. So, I went the way of Japanese, French and the study of language, in general.

2. The day I told my year 12 maths teacher I was not going to her lessons because she was such a bad teacher and then, that same day, being voted class captain by my classmates (for standing up to her) and since she was the class teacher too she then knew that they were all behind me. I had been a nobody at school until then. That day I learned to have the confidence to stand up for what I believed in and that, once I did, others would stand up behind me but I would always be the one to act first and take responsibility for it.

3. One day I came home from uni and said I wanted to grow vegetables. I was 17 or 18 and I have no idea why I felt that way, but start I did, over 30 years ago. and never stopped.

4. The day I met Roger at a friend's 21st birthday; I was 18 he was 20. Also over 30 years ago! I knew that night that we were made for each other but it took me 6 years to convince him! I always get my way eventually.

5. Here slots in that walk in the Tasmanian wilderness, followed by many more wilderness trips.

6. Getting married - the proudest day of my life.

7. Being pregnant and having a baby. No words to describe how that defines you forever!

8. Then not much time for defining moments for about 20 years!...next one 2006 and the start of the Hills and Plains Seedsavers group and that first meeting at Fern Ave Community Garden.

9. Making the blog for the group. This has been the greatest change in my life since having children. Connections, writing, growing food for other purposes than just eating it, developing ideas and plans and looking at the 'why' in everything.

10. Deciding that this whole earth-care thing is what I want to do and realising that I am really happy with where it is taking me. Creating my motto:

"Life is Good. Get there fast and then take it slow."

Where to now? My idea for Australia's 2020 vision. Making it happen.

TAGGED

The idea is that someone tags you and you have to type out the next 3 lines after line 5 of page 123 of the book you are currently reading. Cwm Goch Chronicles in Perth tagged me for this.

This is a novel called "Twenty Chickens for a Saddle" about growing up in Africa....These lines are about the (small plane) flying abilities of the father....I am skipping down a couple more lines to start:

..."several horrible thuds and bounces followed, then the plane clung to the ground with a soft, screeching sound as we skidded to a jolting stop at the far end of the runway. Magazines, papers and old shopping receipts flew past us towards the front. "Astronauts have a word for that, chaps" grinned Granpa "It's called re-entry."

Is that it? Maybe we could then have a discussion about these lines or what people read or something? Or is that just me being obtuse??

BONGIORNO

Mi chiamo Kate e sono australiana, di Adelaide. Il mio compleanno è luglio trenta. Lavoro a casa. Il mio numero cellulare è zero quattro due due quattro sei nove tre zero otto.Parlo japanese e parlo francese un po' anche studio l'italiano da 12 settimane.Non practico uno sport ora ma faccio la vela, la pesca, lo yoga e cammino. In tempo libero preferisco giardinaggio, cucinare e studiare l'italiano. Preferisco cucina greca e turca, il vino rosato, il tè al latte e preferisco il caffelatte.

Ho una borsa nera. In il mio borsa è una penna nera, una matita marrone, una gomma bianca e un cellulare rosso. Ho bisogna un vocabolario italiano ma ho un vocabolario japanese e un vocabolario francese.

In macchina ho un ombrello arancione e la patente di guida. Non ho una tessera.
Ho voglia di vigiare in Italia, France, England e Austria.

Ciao!



Maintenant, je l'écrirera en français parce-que .....l'année prochaîne je voyagera à Europe et donc il est necessaire de le practiquer chaque jour.