Be careful what you wish for...

... for Knots in the String.

Be Careful What You Wish For…

For a large part of 2022, where we’ve slogged around in mud and had grey skies for day after week after month, I’ve begged Huey for sun and Vitamin D, to be able to wear something other than raincoats and boots and not to have to wash the dog down before we come into the house.

I’ve despaired of planting summer veg, picking summer fruit, of cutting hay and filling the barn, of seeing the lambs turned off with the kind of lustre that only Vitamin D can give.

But now we’re harvesting – beautiful celadon-coloured pasture hay, with fresh lucerne hay to come (seriously, is there anything nicer to smell, apart from the ovine fragrance of a shearing shed?). The pics show the start of the barn being filled.

By the time our harvest ends, the barn (a big stone one dating from the 1800’s) will be chokkers. The barn has been rebuilt after the tragic burning of the property in the 1967 bushfires – hence the steel (and wood) infrastructure. But it is the original sandstone and footprint. So much of the property burned – but we cherish what we have left by way of hand-carved stone blocks, foundations, convict bricks. We know where the original homestead was, the bakehouse, the stables, and so forth. And we still mine artifacts to this day.

Now though, we really do have a summer! The paddocks have hardened off, there’s gold across the property, except for the rich green-blue paddocks of irrigated lucerne. I can see the happiness on husband’s and son’s faces as the careful shepherding of ‘Camden’ through the wettest year on record, comes to its apogee. Nice lambs, fine ewes and great feed. And for me, being a lover of merino wool, knowing that if it’s a drier year to come, then our merino ewes will have a finer, brighter clip. Merino wool clips are not known for their best in a wet year.

So now it’s true-blue summer where the sky is endless cerulean, and it’s hot. Any day I grab beachbag, towel and swimsuit is summer. Even if there’s a rip-snorting sea-breeze! Three weeks ago, there was no need to buy summer clothing. If anything, I thought I might look to replace a worn sweater. Or more sports gear because I seemed to wear it constantly as I floundered through puddles with the terrier in 2022.

Ah, how times change.

Today, I ordered a new swimsuit online. All bold, bright colours.

We’re having mid to high twenties daily and we’re not even in the hottest month yet.

I smear Number 50 sunscreen all over, tug on one of my old swimsuits and my worn Target linen shirt, grab a towel, pull on a straw hat and head off for what has always been my favourite thing.

However…

I’m not sure when I began to find that days spent in the sun become tiring. Perhaps like our swimsuits, in the sun and salt we fade. Maybe it’s an age thing. (Please don’t answer that…)

I find I must retreat to a cool house (aircon on), look at the green garden from a shaded porch, watch the fish kite on the flagpole undulating in the warm breeze, have a day not greased up with Number 50 like a chook ready for the oven. Bask in solitude and think quietly, rather than chattering away on the beach. I might write 1000 words on the porch whilst the sky does its infinitesimal blue thing.

And that night, I might sleep as if poleaxed and yet if you count my footsteps, I’ve actually done half of what I would do on a cool day.

Sometimes, when I stand in the sea, thinking about diving under the cold water, I think twice.

Oooh, ouch, that’s cold…

But then I remind myself that life’s short. So under I go and within minutes I think, ‘Oh by the stars, this is beautiful.’

My Time:

See above.

Reading:

On audio, because I dashed down to the big supermarket and the plant nursery an hour away, I had plenty of time to listen to Graham Norton’s Forever Home. A dark Irish comedy. Norton is a seriously good entertainer.

I‘ve read no Kindle or print books at all because I crash at night. But during the day:

Tom Ryan

How could anyone not love Tom, his dogs and what he writes?

Mike Sowden’s Substack

Why Space Is Wet (And So Very Far Away)

which was synchronous really – all about oceans.

David Michie

His writings, both fiction and non-fiction on the Buddhist way are exceptional.

Watching:

First time ever watching Call the Midwife. Quite liked it.

But more importantly, a superb doco series called Old People’s Home for Teenagers on cross-generational loneliness. This series shows how damaged some of our young teenagers are by the force of their age and the last three years of Covid.

Mix them with equally lonely elderly folk and it ultimately becomes a potent mix of hope, mentorship and positivity as each of the participants reaches out to the other. Brilliant TV in the style of the earlier series Old People’s Home for 4 year Olds

As I write this, it’s hot outside, the terrier is in one of his ‘confused’ moods (heading toward Doggy Dementia) and I’m sitting in the cool.

Would love a change in the weather. Just for a day or so… (I can hear a whisper of ‘be careful what you wish for…’)

I leave you with this wonderful song. If you’re not in the throes of summer as you read this, the song will brighten up a dull winter’s day.

Wonderfully coastal.

Happy days…