That’s all.

Have a lovely weekend.

I don’t know if there is anything sweeter than the excitement of eight year olds who have conquered the skill and, absorbed in their task, sit talking about all the things they are going to make for their friends and families now that they can knit.

Recruit them young, I say!

***

Argh, sympathy please - I have a killer ear and throat infection. It hurts and I’m half deaf. After three days of my usual approach to medical illness - drink heaps of water, get lots of sleep and hope it goes away - I admit defeat and am off to the Dr late this morning.

I always think orchids look like they have mouths, throats, even teeth - hence the orchid photo.

I’ve been working on my ‘36 things’ list though and some strange things have surfaced - things I didn’t even know I wanted to do before I started the list. I’ll put it up here when it’s done.

Despite feeling like death warmed up - have been enjoying lately:

shelling the copious broad beans the garden is offering

planning our plot on a new community garden initiative - a corn-field in Paihiatua - called ‘Community Corn’. Each family gets a strip of the field and we are going to try to grow corn, potatoes and pumpkins on ours…

Long a devotee of Brideshead Revisited, I had my reservations about the film, but I put my cynicism aside and went and enjoyed it. There were some cheesey “for a cinema audience” moments added in, but on the whole it was lovely. Like most ‘costume dramas’ - it is worth going to see for the costumes alone (and of course, Brideshead, the manor house.)

doing the hand-sewing part of my contribution to the Kiwi Christmas Decoration Swap

further experiments with vegan baking - yesterday made a date slice with lemon icing & it is very good!

reading the very Mrs Dalloway-like “if nobody speaks of remarkable things” by Jon McGregor - I haven’t read anything ‘difficult’ for a while, and this is one of those ‘difficult’ novels where you have to keep back-tracking to work out what is going on and who is who and why he said that and she did that....but it’s also beautifully written, experimental and evocative.

getting organised for Christmas - I don’t mean to be a smug git, but I have done 2/3s of my Christmas shopping. Heee.

Enjoying read the various ’ethicurean’ blogs of NZ writer Johanna Knox, after hearing her interviewed about her food foraging adventures on National Radio.

Today, dear husband has taken a day off work so that I can actually have a sick day. Mothers don’t tend to get sick days - we usually have to soldier on and thereby get sicker and sicker. I am grateful that he is able to do that, and now I’m going to stumble back to bed with my difficult book and my hot honey lemon drink and try realllllyyyy hard to stay there and not do anything helpful or useful!

“Watch Step”.

Lately I’ve been ‘watching my step’ too much. There is a new caution, a smallness in my thinking that I hate. I am usually a person who is full of ideas and vision and plans...but for some reason I’ve been getting smaller, more scared, unsure, dessicated. It’s like every time I have a notion about doing something - some new project, some daring thing, some big change - there is this new voice in my head going “watch your step, keep it simple, don’t rock the boat, you’ll get hurt, you’re naive, you’re no one special, it’s time you grew up, be careful” blah blah blah - oh boy am I sick of it.

Anyway - every summer I declare to Fraser at some point - usually when we’ve had enough sun-kissed days in a row that it feels like summer might be here, and there are strawberries turning red in the garden and I’m only wearing one layer of clothing *miracles* “This summer is going to be the summer of love”. ‘Summer of love’ as in the 1967 hippy utopia of endless fun, and hanging with the people you love, and swimming, and good outdoor eating and dancing and chilllin’.

So, here goes: “This summer will be the summer of love.” Say it out loud and you make it so. I know, because I’ve had many of them!

I’m done watching my step. I want my courage back.

I saw this fabulous list over at HulaSeventy - and I’m going to write one for myself: ‘36 things I want to do before I turn 37’. I’m so blah lately, I can barely think of five - so do challenge me, inspire me, with ideas in the comments - I would muchos muchos appreciate it. Or even better - write one for yourself! (Just don’t suggest bungy jumping, because it’s never going to happen, people.)

Don’t watch your step. Be foolish. Live larger. Take risks. Keep on trying. Never give up.

In the middle we planted peek-a-boo pumpkins and buttercups, and in each corner a giant pumpkin seed. Willoughby and I painted the first initial of each member of our family on the corners, and we are going to have a competition to see whose corner grows a) the most and b) the biggest pumpkins.

Magnus is oblivious, of course, Fraser is pretty indifferent...but Willoughby and I are in fierce competition. I caught him watering only his corner yesterday (you can see the bed is so small that this is actually harder to do than to water the whole thing) and I weeded my corner this morning and left his weedy.

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago on the day we built the bed and already there are plants! I’ll keep you updated on the pumpkin progress. (I’m sure you will wait with bated breath for that!)

All of yesterday I felt like someone had died, but of course it wasn’t ‘someone’ it was ‘something’ = a reasonable government with some vague interests in the welfare of the whole spectrum of the New Zealand community.

When I heard Roger Douglas talking about the “adjustments” NZers would now have to make - it was terrible history repeating itself. I felt like I was in a time warp. And Mr Off-Key said the word “individual” FOUR times in his acceptance speech. FOUR times. You know when he talks about the rights of the ‘individual’ he means the rights of rich ‘individuals’ to hold on to their wealth while less fortunate ‘individuals’ can go join the food bank queues.

I have little faith in any form of government - like those vegetarians who still eat bacon, I think of myself as an anarchist who votes. Ha ha.

& As Fraser said on Saturday night “Ah well, whatever the result, it’s still the government who gets into power.”

Exactly.

Anyway - this is the last thing I’m going to say about it all.

Back to poetry, children and creativity tomorrow.

Time for a change?

That is what you say when you are bored with your breakfast cereal. Or when you’ve gone to the Coromandel for four summers and think this year you might try the Marlborough Sounds. It is NOT, repeat NOT a good basis to choose who you are going to vote for.

This bizarre NZ tendency to think “Ah well, they’ve had a good go. Time to give the other guys a chance...” This is not equitable and egalitarian and reasonable. This is silly. The political parties are not kids waiting in line for the swings at the park..."C’mon Labour, get off now. It’s the other guys turn. You’ve had a good go.”

Yargh!

There is also a tendency to revert back to FPP thinking and focus only on the two biggest parties. It is NOT a two horse race - unless we keep voting that way. There are manifold smaller parties who will get representation so long as we can all get on board the MMP bus.

For the record, I DO NOT vote Labour either. I’m sure you can imagine which way my allegiance lies - there’s a colour clue in the photo above - but please, please do not vote the blue guys just because you are bored of Helen Clark’s bad teeth and out of some misguided sense of egalitarian thinking.  If you are going to cancel out my vote, at least do it because you have engaged with the party’s policies and are making an informed choice. Maybe it IS time for a change...but to assume that means there is only one option - to vote for the other major party - is just plain dumb.

WHOLEMEAL CRACKERS

2 cups wholemeal flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
half a cup of cold water
half a cup of butter (you could use a quarter cup of oil and remove cheese to make this vegan)
quarter cup sesame seeds
1 tbsp poppy seeds
1 tbsp ground linseed
salt to taste
2 tbsp grates parmesan - if a cheese flavour is desired

Rub butter by hand thoroughly into the dry ingredients until they look like breadcrumbs. (I use frozen butter, then grate it with the cheese grater to make this step easy.) Slowly add water until the mixture forms a firm dough ball. Flour your surface and roll out the dough very thinly - it’s easiest to cut the dough ball into four and do one quarter at a time for optimal thin-ness. Use cutters to cut crackers. Bake at 190 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes. Store in an air-tight container (not a tin.)

NOTE: The key to good homemade crackers is cooking them long enough so that they are crisp. A couple of times when I made them, I took them out of the oven too soon and the crackers were too soft and biscuity in texture. Happily, this is easily remedied by bunging them back into the oven for a bit!

Similarly, if they GO soft - you can re-toast them back to crispness. This is also a good way of re-crisp-ing stale rice or wheat crackers. Don’t throw them out! Just re-toast them!

If you know of any links to other good cracker recipes - they would be most welcomed!

Enjoy! 

I have scaled my op-shopping habits riiigggghhht back these days. Partly because of money, partly because I am just generally less and less interested in consumerism - even the second hand kind and partly because I don’t enjoy opshopping with Magnus in tow...but today, as a little celebration for finishing a massive pile of work - I went out for a solo coffee and opshop mooch and got some great summer clothes, some kid’s books in good enough condition I’ll be able to use them for Christmas gifts but more excitingly....

I decided a few weeks ago that I would get the lads a ukelele for Christmas. I visited the music shop to see how much they were new, I nosey-ed around on trademe...I nearly laid out $40 for a trademe one on Monday night, but then I thought: “I’ll wait a bit. I’m going op-shopping on Wednesday. Probably won’t find one, but still....I’ll wait.”

Well, I only found a ukelele this morning, didn’t I?

It just needs a coupla new strings, otherwise in perfect nick and a mere $4.

*dances around the room in a smug fashion*

Here’s a very cute new (to me!) New Zealand blog.

Get in quick! Louise at Twentycentmixture is organising a handmade Christmas ornament swap for New Zealand crafty types. I’ve joined and am already plotting my contribution. Good fun.

Come Thursday, I’ve volunteered to teach a bunch of 8 year olds at Willoughby’s school how to knit a scarf. I am somewhat nervous about it because there are four sessions over the next four weeks. What am I going to do with the kids who just don’t get it? But then I saw this adorable photo on flickr - surely if one so wee can knit, then bright 8 year olds should be able to get it? (The thing that makes me think this photo ISN’T staged is the way the wee girl has her work tucked under her arm. Only a person actually engaged in knitting would know to do that, don’t you reckon?)

If I had a bit more discretionary cash, I would treat myself to this yarn. Not only is it home-dyed and home-spun, look closely - it has tiny little crocheted pod things all through it. This really is yarn as art. I love it.

Whoever said “don’t play with your food” had not seen this Day of the Dead sandwich. Tee hee.

And check this out - girls dressed as boys. Sweet, Victorian boys. It makes me wish I were younger and skinnier so I could rock a pair of lederhosen and some handmade leather boots. (Oh the weird s**t that occupies my waking life...)

Have a good day, lovelies! And as always - do leave me links in return if you have any good ones.

xxx

I reaaallllyyyyy don’t get why, just because of their anatomy, people think boys wouldn’t be interested in ‘playing house’, pretending to cook, caring for dolls and animals - emulating all those things they see their parents doing. How is that a girl-only thing?

I want to grow young men who can cook for themselves, care for themselves and their domestic needs, care for others, be good parents if they choose to have kids etc. Therefore it makes sense to me to instigate all that in play from day one.

We also have lego, trucks and cars and all manner of ‘boy toys’, but boys are people too, right? And in our world, men cook, clean and care just like women do. 

One day, the house was empty. I presumed the old lady had died and felt a little sad about that in that way that you might about someone you didn’t know, but was somehow part of your environs. Soon after that, it was put up for sale and a while later, a SOLD sticker appeared. Then, a couple of months after that I was walking towards the place and there was a sight which stopped me in my tracks. The white house was gone! Flattened. Bulldozed. A grey concrete pad and the front and back steps were all that remained. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut - even though I had no connection to the house, beyond admiring it and the garden...but there was something about the sudden-ness of the demolition, the violence of it.

The bulldozer was parked in the corner of the section, and I could tell that they would be flattening the garden next. I couldn’t stand the idea of the beautiful, cottage garden getting ploughed over to make a neat concrete section for some bland business or a car park. ("Pave paradise and put up a parking lot” and all that.) So that evening, I roped in the support of my long-suffering husband and children and we drove down there after dinner. Taking care that no one around was paying much attention, we set to - rescuing as many plants as we could. I uplifted some of the smaller lavenders, some nandina bushes, some perennial daisies - all of which survived the move. We dug things up until the boot and back seat were full of ‘stolen’ (I like to say liberated) plants and taking one last look around, said goodbye to the garden.

Sure enough, a week or two later the garden was bulldozed and is now a big, bare dirt patch awaiting ‘development’.

Anyway, what I’m getting to is that I also dug up a lot of the red poppies - they were just about to flower. I didn’t know, however, that poppies cannot stand being moved once they are established and despite my best efforts they all fell over limply and died. I thought the poppies were the one failure of my guerilla gardening rescue.

But look! a year later, and the poppies have come back. All around my garden, mostly nowhere near where I planted their parents, poppies are appearing. Beside my doorstep, in cracks, under the lemon tree, in the vege garden…

And because I am fey, romantic and sentimental - I am most happy about these poppies...inexpressably happy…

Have you ever wondered what a poppy sees all day? In my excitement about the poppies, I took some ‘poppy’s-eye-view’ photos. (Whilst no poppies were harmed in this daring photo shoot - a certain 36 year old woman did badly graze one knee.)

What a poppy sees:

Sky:

More sky:

And more sky:

And the corner of the shed:

And the movement of the clouds across the sun.

“Your poems are dark and sinister, but with pretty pictures of a kitten rolling a ball of yarn they might just capture a wider audience.”

***

Anyway, I haven’t posted a poem for a while - here is a newish one. I’m not sure it’s ‘done’ yet, but I’ll post it anyway and you can tell me what you think:

BEFORE THE DEPARTURE

You hide under my skirt,
though I try to shoo you.
Face pressed against my thigh,
hands sliding up to find
the flesh that pillows
over the top of my tights.

In every house we visit,
there is a monster
on the wall. You roar
at shadows, You hide
under me, egg to chook.

Years now, small hot hands
on my body. I’m stooped
from lifting. My hip
cocked sideways, a seat.

Your brother, eight, touches
more cautiously. Waits
for farewell, greeting or injury.
I can’t remember when he
decided my body was not his.
He is harder to hold, all
angle and gangle and bone.

Today though, you own me.
I sit at the kitchen table trying
to write this and you are
leaned across my back, you
tug the elastic bands from
my hair, breathe warm milk breath
into my ear. Small hot hands
rest easily around my throat.