Ephemeral, forever

There was something very special about the corner of a river I visited today, by kayak. Although the scenery across the bay, on the approach to the river entrance, was of spectacularly rugged mountains, shrouded in various veils of rain, and was more dramatic than anything I had ever seen by kayak before, it was at the farthest reaches of a lovely but insignificant little river that I found what was to me the most beautiful spot on this amazing planet!

And now, some hours later, in a warm and dry lounge room by the sea, with a cup of coffee in my hand and kayaks safely stowed in the shed until another day, it still haunts my soul; not something I would normally say! If I were at all artistic I would sketch it so it does not slip from my memory. However, words are my only craft even though a poor writer I am indeed.

Majesty, beauty, light-defying reflections, hues of every shade of green, every shape and size of plant, massive fallen trees covered in moss and lichens and ferns disappearing into the depths of the river, the smells of the earth and a sense of wildness unique to remote corners of Tasmania have become my playground these last few months. It was natural to once again drift serenely through such scenery, in awe of nature exerting its dominance over a landscape starting only a few hundred meters from a camping ground full of Easter campers.

As I approached another bend I could hear the tinkling of the river rippling over a shallow bed of stones and soon the silver sparkle of the moving water drew my eye to the nearby bank in search of a place to stop and enjoy the play of light and sound on this day of dark, rolling clouds. Up until now the banks had been either of huge, steep, moss covered boulders which had managed to resist the raging winter flows of thousands of years, or were of densely matted vegetation and tangled tree roots, intertwined with fallen giants of tree trunks often spanning the entire width of the river.

Here, however, was a triangle edged on the long side by an old, sunken log, the whole being filled with worn, round rocks from fist to football size. One short side was formed by the river bank where the tree had fallen from some long time ago. The rocks were smooth and washed clean by the river but, as the water level is low at this time of year, they were exposed. The other short side was of shingles and sloped gently to the water’s edge. Into those shingles had fallen seeds from the plants of the surrounding forest and a little, summer garden had sprung up, sure to be soon ripped out and washed away with the first big rains of winter. Ephemeral, fleeting as a butterfly, nature’s garden was perfectly designed.

Then a light breeze caused movement above the little garden and I noticed that a tree had once upon a time fallen but been suspended by the river bank, its gnarled and splintered end hanging out above the river. Growing in the crevices at the end of that beautiful old trunk, directly above the summer garden in the shingles, was another, almost identical garden. My heart skipped a beat.

The high banks of a beautiful Tasmanian forest, the sound of the water rippling over the shallow river bed, combined with the rocky beach formed by an old log and the double gardens, one hanging above the other, together with the still water cocoon I managed to nestle my kayak into, totally enveloped my senses.

As we left, the rain began to fall in earnest and soon the river will begin to rise once more. It won’t be there when next I paddle that river; this fleeting picture of perfection.

Spring Garden Glory

While I have been working on my vegetable and herb gardens, the rest of my acre has magically looked after itself…. apart from some mowing!

I know this is the most ridiculous thing to say! Gardens are nature and nature always looks after itself but the thing is that the majority of my garden was here when I arrived and all I do is revel in its glory and no time is more glorious here in southern Tasmania than spring.

Yesterday I was walking though the herb garden when I was caught by the beauty of the late afternoon light on the purple sage. Earlier I had noticed lady birds all over it too so I abandoned whatever I was on my way to do, went inside and got my camera.

Rather than choose some photos to share here, I have uploaded an album for you, to play your own slide show, as they look so inviting at full screen size. These photos are simply the capture of the best of my garden on the day. If anyone should think that a photo or two are worthy of downloading and using, I would be most delighted to share with you.

You will find the album here. Enjoy.

One creature to another….

I don’t believe in gods. I don’t believe in life having meaning. I don’t understand why people need meaning. Isn’t it enough to be a human, in a world full of beauty, filled with plants and animals, amazing geological structures and incredible events like sunsets and rainbows?

I feel incredibly lucky to be alive. Doesn’t every body? I feel free to be entirely who I want and I take full responsibility for how I am. I rarely even think about this but I have been watching Richard Hawkins’ programme called Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life in which he explores various ways people seek meaning.

It seems to me that a lot of people are bogged down trying to find a meaning or a purpose, when there is none. Humans are not special and they do not have meaning any more than an ant or a cabbage. To me that is entirely liberating. When I am totally responsible for my life it empowers me to take charge of it because if I don’t then my life is a waste of time, time spent waiting for someone or some god or some fate to guide me.

I really think that humans have become entirely self-centred; rarely thinking of the wondrousness of life at all; rarely taking time to watch the light falling on a frosty leaf or listen to the croak of a frog on a pot plant and certainly almost never feeling connected to these things, one creature to another, as I do.

So obsessed are people with meaning and believing in things that if you are not like them, then you are not often allowed to say so…. although I do make a point of saying so, at times. I said so recently, to a dear, Christian friend of mine. I think she felt sorry for me; me not knowing God as she does. We talked about the soul. She said I had a good soul. Evidently God gives us our soul. Well, I said I made my own; I am the accumulation of 54 years of being who I choose to be with life’s ups and downs moulding me along the way.

We were sitting by the window at the shack. Being there, right by the sea, for a great part of my life; seeing and smelling and feeling all that such an opportunity has given me, has definitely influenced my love of and connection to everything around me. That is where my soul comes from, not from a god.

Get rid of the gods and we would get rid of most of the fighting in the world. How can you fight with someone when you are standing under a beautiful tree or cooling your feet as you walk in the sea or watching an insect crawl on your hand or smelling the delicious aroma of a mango?

A picture tells a thousand words....

 

Update.....

If you love the glasshouse in this animation, check out this Gabriel Ash self-design GLASSHOUSE website.

I am NOT having plastic!!

Dreams... one day .....

 

 

My philosophy

The paths that we take in life, although they may dart here and there and sometimes seem to lead to nowhere, do, I think, follow the theme we were born with, or developed in young childhood.

When I was 2 my parents bought a shack on the beach, only 45 minutes from our home, but far, far away from our home life. I am lucky to have the poster of it in my kitchen here. There, I spent every waking moment on the beach; wind in my hair, sun or rain on my face and my fingers playing in the sand, in the rockpools and through the hair of our 5 dogs who were my companions. My brothers are both 10 or more years older than me so I spent a lot of time alone with dogs and the sea. We went there at least one weekend in 4 and for nearly every school and uni holiday for 20 years.

We used to put a little net out in summer. I would paddle my canoe out and collect the fish at 6am, before the crabs got up. I was very young and I suppose my parents were watching me, but I felt hugely free and independent from that young age; just me and the sea. I learned about the waves and the wind. Launching my canoe was all about timing and I enjoyed the challenge. Often it was glassy calm in those sheltered waters and I could see to the sand on the bottom as I paddled.  I frequently shared the early morning with dolphins and sting rays and once even a seal. The net was crusty with salt and often had coloured seaweeds entangled in it. I loved the feel of them in my hands as I removed them from the net but once I had collected the 2 or 3 fish caught overnight, I would paddle madly back to shore before the slimy bodies of the fish slid from the front of my canoe, to the back where I sat. I never thought to take something to put them in until this moment!

In winter the waves crashed on the shore, not far from the shack and I slept to the feel of the shack being slammed with the wild wind and pelted with rain, the roar of crashing waves and the snoring of a dog or 2. There were a few other shacks in the row below the cliff and, luckily for me, there was often someone to play with. In winter we'd run down the beach to where the waves for body surfing were biggest, dive into the freezing cold sea without hesitating, and, with our towels flapping in the wind, we'd race back to hot cocoa and scones. It was paradise for me.

This close connection with nature and growing up feeling I was a part of it and not that it was separate from me, has given me a connection with the earth that few people I know have. I keep it to myself mostly because it is not easy to explain in full. But the philosophy I live by is to live with the earth and do least harm. This means I need to know about food; where it comes from and how it is grown and processed. I do not want to damage anything, just to feed me. All creatures are equal. I would rather eat a kangaroo shot in the wild, than any farmed animal because the kangaroo does not require the clearing of forests, the building of fences or the use of machinery. Best, is eating feral meat, shot on the hoof; wild goats, pigs, rabbits, deer and camels, in S.A. Then I would be helping the wild animals and plants by reducing pests the destroy their native habitat.

Some people say being vegetarian is best. I don't agree, here in Australia. One animal shot dead in the wild would feed me for months, with no other destruction to anything. The rest I grow or collect or buy locally, except for spices and coffee and the odd bit of soy sauce etc. This may not be possible to feed the world but it would certainly help if more feral meat was available here in Tasmania, as it is in South Australia.

Everything I eat has come into my kitchen through close scrutiny, and I read labels constantly, trying to work out what to buy or not buy. It is part of who I am, part of inner me. My whole life I have felt this connection with the earth and the need to teach others to take care of what we have, to look at what you do and do least harm. It reaches into every corner of human existence, not just our food, and needs careful consideration as humans divorce themselves more and more from reality.

Make the connections and do least harm.

The Launch of "Relaxing Stories"

Relaxing Stories App for iphones 

Today we have launched the Relaxing Stories app. It is free to download for a limited period (download here). We hope you enjoy the app.

The App at a glance:
- 29 unique stories (5 available for free)
- 8 stories in both male and female voices
- Set in more than 10 different scenes
- 6 voices to choose from
- Easy to use interface
- Non-intrusive user experience (no ads!)

Of course, none of this would have been possible without a really awesome team that backed us up.

Alex Flint, Christo Fogelberg, Deeksha Sharma and Akshat Rathi spearheaded the project and took on very important roles complementing each other’s skills beautifully.

All the excellent authors who have given us the chance to bring such quality content to you the listeners, thank you very much.

Philip Robinson, Katie Steel, Abigail Ballantyne, Maeve O’Donnell and Dylan Townley for lending their excellent voices. It is their voices that give the app it’s character.

A special thanks to Monic Gupta and George Knott for their excellent support in helping us kick off the project and then continued efforts throughout the project. We are also grateful to Tejas Yadav and Kelly Dhru for their key inputs.

The Oxford student radio Oxide has been very kind in allowing us to use their high tech equipment to ensure top quality recordings for the stories.

 The superb logo that has kept us going through all the hard work in this project was made by Surabhi Rathi. We thank her for all the work and we are very happy that her design skills have spread throughout the project including many of the posters and beautifully designed story snippets.

More than 25 people have beta tested the app for us and their inputs have been key to making the app as perfect as possible. Thank you for your time and efforts.

This simple and clean design for the website was the work of Apurv Ray and Deepak Thomas and we thank them for their hard work.

Here’s a big thank you to all of you and we hope that the product brings to you a relaxing experience.

Alex Flint, June 17, 2011

The Greeting of Gavin and a second Voyage of the Vegetable Vagabond

Recently Gavin, from The Greening of Gavin, started doing some interviews with bloggers, and posting them on his blog. I think this is a great idea because it is so nice to hear the voices and stories of people whose blogs we all read, wherever they are in the world. I was the guinea pig and you can hear the chat I had with Gavin here....If you'd be happy to chat with Gavin, so we can all get to hear you and about you, send him an email: greeningofgavin@gmail.com.

During our talk, I mentioned a trip I went on in 2008, where I stayed with bloggers all around the world, who I had never met, but had communicated with on our various blogs. I called it Voyage of the Vegetable Vagabond. Here is the story of the day I went to Gavin's. There are 37 blog posts from that trip, with photos of the people and vegetable gardens I visited and fabulous local foods I ate, but to start at the beginning you have to go to the oldest post and read from there.

I am giving a talk and slide show of my trip to the Cygnet U3A group in a week or so and this has started me thinking....

In 2012 my son Alex will be graduating with a PhD from Oxford University and I plan to go to the graduation.... what mother would not! And in my mind is another Vegetable Vagabond trip.... and this time I WILL write the book, complete with stories from the first trip too.... Who will I meet this time? Who will offer me a place to stay for a few days in exchange for me digging in their soil and cooking in their kitchen? I have a side bar full to overflowing with my favourite blogs from all corners of the earth.... I'd love to meet some of you and share laughs and stories and local food with you, wherever you live. I am pretty sure it will be in the second half of 2012 but the dates  are not set yet.

Here is the bloggers picnic Patrick and I organised in the Oxford Botanic Gardens...most of us had never met before but felt we knew each other from reading each other's blogs.

Please do send me an email if you think you wouldn't mind me dropping in to see you and we could start making some plans....

Hugh's Essentials

I guess every mother is proud of their children and I am no exception. Let me tell you about son Hugh's latest ventures in the world of food.....

Here are his savoury muffins, baked in clay pots, and available from The Corner Store, Semaphore, SA.

He developed what I think is the best toasted muesli ever, just for his own breakfast enjoyment (and his mother's!) but now also is selling that at The Corner Store and at Goodies and Grains in the Central Market, Adelaide.

Next, he has made up little packs of amazing, spicy nuts. When he tried them out on the other chefs where he works, they bought the whole lot! They are now also available at Goodies and Grains....the nuts not the chefs.

His range is currently called 'Hugh's Essentials'... I am still waiting for more photos, however.

Now, this is all very nice and enough in itself but what makes me even more proud is that he has enrolled in a course for starting a small business, has found a class of graphic design students to help him design a logo and some packaging, has set up a business bank account and started to really take charge of his finances and his future ........ at last!

All this while he is working full time as a young chef and growing much of his own food in his backyard.... not to mention surfing and jogging and partying, not necessarily in that order!

Hugh's food garden....

From this..... to this.

A mother, passionate about home grown and local food, could not more proud.

They came, they cooked, they laughed and then they left.....

Magnificent food from morning til night, every day	Beginning with Alex's egg curry, superb dahl and chapatis.
A Sunday morning trip to the Tas Farmgate market and then...	A walk at Mt. Field through a valley of tree ferns to Russell Falls and the tallest flowering trees in the world, up to 100m high...
	.... where the first branches begin at 35m. Here, Hugh is standing on part of a recently fallen tree about 400 years old.
We finished the week with a picnic at the Hartzview Winery	How did I get 2 such handsome, delightful, wicked, talented sons?

Isn't organic supposed to mean healthy?

 

 

The new Yoyo Bakery in Cygnet has some extraordinarily exquisite pastries, like this poppy seed scroll.... crisp, buttery, oh lalalala ..... divine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But..... my lemon tart drizzled with a raspberry coulis and served warm with a splodge  of yoghurt ..... compares rather favourably. .... and improves daily..... for at least 5 days, which probably cannot be said for the scroll!!

 

 

 

 

Pickle obviously ate far too much..... and slept all afternoon.

 

You can find the recipe for the lemon tart here.

Stories from a happy garden...

 

Once upon a time there was a huge flax outside the window.	Then it was cut down .....	And the cows came and began to eat it .... so it was moooved !
Once upon a time the broad beans sagged from the heavy frost.	But the coral lettuce stayed bright and cheerful....	...and so did the mizuna.
All the Adelaide people thought the kale had aphids ......	But when the sun shone, all the aphids melted away!	In the glass house, though, the fennel twirled and danced.

THE GAME OF 6 BILLION PEGS

What chance is there of ever finding the right peg for the right hole? Sometimes it seems like a perfect fit but after a bit of of travelling, the edges rub and gaps enlarge and by part way through the journey it is obvious the two just are not compatible after all. 

Some say never mind, better the devil you know than one you don't.

Some argue about which is the wrong piece.

Some try to smooth corners and fill gaps to help ease the wounds.

Some find that the wounds begin to fester and so cover themselves in armour for protection.

Some blame themselves and try to change to better fit the other.

Some hide behind a cheery face.

Some fail to see the train heading straight towards them.

Some spend half a lifetime doing all of the above and then, just when all seems lost, the right peg arrives, quite unexpectedly.

They both know it is right instictively.

They share a common thread but need no strings.

They laugh and love and look and talk in harmony.

They jump hurdles, climb mountains and swim through floods to stay in touch.

They dream of being together.... some day some how.

They know and understand about the pain it will cause the other pegs in their lives.

But they only get one turn around the park..... one chance at life.

Take a leap and always trust your cape.

Old Friends

There is nothing like old friends. You can be separated by thousands of miles, not see each other for years and have lots of new friends but, when you get together again with an old friend, it is like you only saw each other yesterday.

I have such a friend who lives in Tasmania. We met in the Adelaide Uni Mountain Club and have kept in touch ever since. She came to stay recently and it was fabulous. She came to Wednesday gardening, we stayed up late talking, we laughed and reminisced and talked about everything but most of all we were just at ease with other. In my post on the blog about her stay, I likened her to an old gardening boot - comfortable and warm - and she sent me an email when she read it saying thanks, that was a compliment and she felt the same way.

Yesterday I got a birthday card from her. It is all hand made and full of drawings and cuttings of vegetables and birds and flowers and says everything a friend would want to hear on their 50th birthday ..... including the bit about me always being hungry for good food! Along with another hand-made card I have received, this will be cherished and not hidden away in a drawer when the birthday is over.

People do change a bit over time but old friends know you from the inside out so there is nothing that can be hidden from them! I am very lucky to have a few old friends and a few is all I need.

ALWAYS TRUST YOUR CAPE

I heard this song for the first time yesterday and I thought how it is like my philosophy of taking a leap and seeing where you land, all put into words and made into a song. (I liked the Australian version I heard but it is not available online). If you never move outside your your comfort zone you are not really living, it seems to me. I always encouraged my boys to be the ones to say yes, I will give it a go, even when they didn't know if they could do it....always trust your cape.

Eight years old with flour sack cape
Tied all around his neck
He climbed up on the garage
Figurin’ what the heck
He screwed his courage up so tight
The whole thing come unwound
He got a runnin’ start and bless his heart
He headed for the ground

Chorus :
He’s one of those who knows that life
Is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold you breath
Always trust your cape

.

All grown up with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his dream
He’s full of piss and vinegar
He’s bustin’ at the seams
He licked his finger and checked the wind
It’s gonna be do or die

He wasn’t scared of nothin’, boys
He was pretty sure he could fly

Chorus

Old and grey with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his head
He’s still jumpin’ off the garage
And will be till he’s dead

All these years the people said
He’s actin’ like a kid
He did not know he could not fly
......So he did

Chorus

THE WHOLE TRAVEL THING

We are always saying that the world is a very small place - coincidences that happen and people we meet make this true. The day before my 21st birthday, when I was just hanging around in Japan, I met a girl whose 21st birthday was also the next day - on my birthday! She asked me to her party and we celebrated together even though we had never met before or since. Now that was an incredible coincidence. In Japan people spoke to me all the time and some had never seen a non-Japanese person before. It made for a great trip and I did some unbelievable things because I could speak Japanese and I was on my own, with no plans. None. A one way ticket to Japan. Every day was a new experience and I remember thinking one day "where in the whole world shall I go today?" Eventually I left because my second visa ran out and I went to England..

.
This next trip is not dissimilar in the whole 'do it alone and go with the flow' thing but I have a lot of plans because of all the wonderful invitations and that is an unbelievable experience, even before I leave home! And the world is even smaller now than it was in 1979 - I will have a laptop and get email and post to the blog whenever I can find a connection. In a sense I will not be as free as I was before because someone will always know where I am - but it will do.

I think people see travel in different ways and as you get older your ideas about it and just about everything change. I want to step into the shoes of the gardeners I visit; I want to see life from their perspectives; I want to see their food gardens as they see them, rather than as a visitor sees them. I want to experience what it is to live their lives, why they do it and share with them the fun and follies of living a bit outside the square. I hope to leave them as friends, good friends, connected through a belief in going softly and taking responsibility for ourselves. I want to eat their food and drink what they drink, with no concern for what I might like at all. I will give them anything I can and share everything I think, and hope we have a good laugh along the way too.

This is not a generally accepted travel plan, I feel, but it is mine. I don't feel any anxiety over plans or things I should take. In fact, if I could, I would just take what I wear on the plane and borrow some clothes when necessary and travel with hardly anything - except all the electronic gizmos! That would be ideal but, again, not what most people aspire to doing, I think. I did this in Japan, after deciding to leave all my luggage at someone's house and just take a small daypack. When it got cold I bought a jumper at a second hand shop. When it got hot, I bought some sandals. I still have both these things and wear them and remember buying them. It will be interesting to see what I end up taking, won't it. Not much, I hope.

After all is said and done, the world is full of people just living their lives, like I do here. Why people get so stressed about travel I have no idea.....maybe I will find out!

Life is good. Take it with you on your journey and share it around.

.

A CAULDRON OF WORDS

Now I am so far outside the square there is no point looking back - is there ever any point, except for fun? Fun is something that is not too hard to find and that is good and it can be found in the tiniest of things and most unusual and unexpected ways. For me it is often to do with something someone innocently says that sends a whole conversation into quirky and creative places. Maybe this is a family trait - it is certainly something that I enjoy enormously with Alex and Hugh - and whole conversations swerve madly from one direction to another with puns and quips and tangents and a lot of laughing. Certain other people can join in - I can think of maybe 3 or 4 - but it is not everybody's cup of tea. It is great to meet a new person who has the same sense of humour as yourself because it just makes things fall into place so much more easily. Words -so much of my life is about words.

By exchanging emails and only having contact with a person through writing I find it more difficult to see what they are thinking unless they write lots of words. I love reading humorous stuff but that's not what I mean...it's the intended joke which is not necessarily clear or even implied to the reader, that is most difficult to get. I need to see the face and the body language, I think. One friend I write to sometimes is great in this way, because we knew each other first, before we started writing emails. I can see them and hear them in my mind and know what they are saying, even without so many words.

My father used to be great with words and every week or so from when I was very small he would teach me a new word - how to use it and spell it - to expand my vocabulary. He called them awkward words and he would spell out a-w-k-w-a-r-d every time until my mother and I got really sick of it but he never gave up, until the day he died, teaching me new words! The last words he taught me were to do with chemistry - something I never thought he would have known anything about. Amazing how much you don't know about a person, especially your parents, I think. For a bloke that didn't finish school he had a wonderful cauldron of words that he was always stirring and adding to, like spices, and pulling samples out to test and would pull out the interesting ones right in the middle of a conversation about something else, much to the irritation of my mother, whose forte is maths and logical thinking! How they ever became attracted to each other is a mystery to me but it means that my boys and and I have a lot of funny genes all rolling around in that big cauldron, especially when we throw Roger into the picture too.

Having spent a considerable time learning and using other languages, I think my English vocabulary has diminished. However, in the last few months I can feel the recesses of my mind opening up and every now and then a forgotten word will come to me unexpectedly, when I am searching for just the right expression to say something on the blogs. Somewhere in there are all those a-w-k-w-a-r-d words my father taught me and I want to dip into that cauldron of words more often and even add a few spices and extra ingredients myself.

PISSED OFF

This is not a phrase I have ever had cause to use until recently. I hate swearing, but feel that 'bloody' and 'pissed off' have become strong words rather than swear words and, thus, have entered my language by the back door. The other day I was doing my usual rant about inept governments and their lack of environmental awareness and the consequences for all of us. The person I was speaking to said "You are pissed off with everything today." And she was right and I still am and so long as I stay pissed off and not become morose, I feel I am on positive ground, so to speak.

Morose is not a word I would ever have used about myself until recently either....hmmm...is there a theme happening here? But, there you go. After pissed off, closely following is stubbornly morose (I like the italics better). With the whole lack of rain thing, together with the oil thing and the environmental degradation thing and the food biodiversity thing and a whole lot of other things that I tend to care a lot about, it is a slippery slide to morose, from pissed off.

This morning when the garden group came, I had managed to get away from morose and told them I was pissed off, big time, with almost everything, but not them, of course. This idea of spending time gardening together is really wonderful therapy for any one of us who seems a bit out of sorts about something, which is not often but sometimes the case. Things can be thrashed out in the garden, with a bit of digging or pruning or shovelling and 5 women, all with different opinions and not afraid to voice them, and by the end the rough edges have been smoothed over and ruffled feathers preened and a pleasant humour restored. What is more, it is free and you and your garden get a workout at the same time!

The only trouble is that the problems mentioned before don't go away but, rather, get more acute every day as the solutions which seem bloody obvious to me remain elusive to anyone with the power to do something great about them. And so, pissed off returns a little faster than before and so enters morose again. Where do we go from here? I wish I could up and go a long, long way away to a land of milk (well, water, actually) and honey but those fences are always there and always bring compromises. Once again, ignorance would be bliss. Maybe I will just go and pig-out on wattleseed icecream instead!

A NEW IDEA

Ideas are my forte. I just had the idea of sub-titling myself -

"Kate; fortified with ideas and opinions"

Totally. The other one I like is -

"Fearlessly living an authentic life."

So self-indulgent; I can't get used to talking aloud about myself on this blog. Me; whose always been so well-mannered not to talk about myself. "'Don't talk about yourself; always ask about the other person. " My mother said. Sorry Mum.

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.

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?