Evolution...

...for Knots in the String.

OH (Other Half) has been carting sileage.

We’d much rather it was hay but the season is against us.

So too, the price of mutton, no doubt with lamb prices to follow (again, driven by the seasonal disaster Eastern-Australia-wide, with many farmers having to sell stock). How lucky then, that the wool-cheque this year was a good one.

Next on the agenda is lamb-shearing, but with a week of wet weather coming, it’s hard to believe that it’s happening. I’ve made a Christmas cake and this astonishing lemon cake (made with almond meal - dense and moist) for smoko (morning and afternoon tea).

And of course, with all the humidity and damp, farmers must be on the look-out for flystrike where flies lay eggs in damp wooly spots leading to erupting wounds filled with maggots and sheep dying of septicaemia. So we need to paint the whole flock with the right guff to protect them. If only it would stop raining!!!

I don’t mean to whinge and whine because if one looks at the up-side, we have stacks and stacks of beautiful pasture, our big storage dams are full, our silo is full, we won’t have to irrigate anything, hopefully our barn will eventually be filled with dry fodder, we’ll have the Wall of Sileage, and we have a strong flock of good merino ewes with marketable fine-grade wool. In addition, the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trees we’ve planted are thriving, and all our infrastructure is in good shape.

Normally at this time of year, paddocks are filled with verdigris-tinted waves as the wind rustles through the flowering heads of pasture. It’s a beautiful sight, tracking the whiffles across a field as the stems and stalks bow before the breeze. After harvest, it’s a green-gold parkland as a little fresh pick comes through, and then the paddocks harden off to pure gold with dust on the air as the world subsides into siesta in the heat of summer.

I wonder if that will happen this year, or if we will just move from early summer green-cut fields to mild autumn growth before everything slows into the hibernation of winter with its frosts and cutting winds. And then too, what is normal? Didn’t Covid create a new normal? As does climate change?

But it’s hard not to appreciate life when one has access to the country. At the moment we breathe all sorts of scents – astringent eucalypt, spicy wattles, wet wool, truffle-damp soil, petrichor. And in a way, the steadfastness of seasonal drift grounds one, even if we need to adjust to climate change. It gives one hope. Things still grow, albeit differently. We learn, we change and we adapt.

Evolution…

However, I’d like to think my son and husband can rest from farmwork after Christmas. Go out saltwater fishing, have boating picnics, go fly fishing, enjoy time with offspring. Take time to breathe because breathing is life after all.

My Time:

Recuperating. I’ve done one day of 11,000 steps and one of 10,000 since coming home from hospital. Mainly about 6000-8000-ish. That’s fine. I’m feeling better. I’ve picked the first offerings from the berry house and found the first tiny zucchini. It’s me or the bugs and beetles and it has to me or else! We’ve already eaten a broadbean and fennel tart with our own beans, and our salads are starting to fill with fresh herbs and flowers. It makes one glad to be alive.

In a spirit of new energy and endeavour, I layered lucerne hay around the garden and in the half wine barrels of lemons, limes and grapes. The garden said thank you – all that nitrogen!!!

In addition, I’ve stitched Tomtes like a demon and delivered a 1000 Hearts bag of 25 hearts to to the childrens’ ward of the public hospital.

I’ve walked with the terrier, because walking makes us both settle and ‘energy breeds energy’ after all.

As to writing? Not much. It was this paragraph…

One of her sleeves slipped back up her arm and the red thread hung there, no worse for its terrible adventures in the sea. She wondered if Heng’s still hung from her wrist, even in the Afterlife. Perhaps her fate was the storm and Yue Lao’s thread around the maid’s wrist had underlined what was to come. She imagined Heng tumbling down through the sea water, down down and the red thread unknotting as Heng met her awful fate…

…that made me think I should change the title from The Mapmaker’s Scroll to The Red Thread. We shall see. I hate trying to find eye-catching and meaningful titles.

Actually, on the topic of books, I have studied 100 images from the photoshoot the other day and settled on one for the new cover of Passage. More later…

I’m sitting on the window seat as I write this. The wind blows and the sound of waves drifts up from the Front Beach. The starlings/blackbirds chip away at each other, being very territorial. I’ll be so glad when they bugger off. Pardon the language, but I worry about my tiny birds – the finches, silver eyes, wagtails. Surely they’re entitled to garden space. These clamorous birds mess everything!

Bookshelves:

Via audio, Sheila Handcock’s Old Rage.

A memoir of her life from 2016 to the present day. She doesn’t take kindly to age as she breasts 90, that’s for sure. I love her stark honesty because as she says ‘growing old is not for sissies’. She’s so articulate, so filled with a desire and need to make this world a better place and she’s a warrior for things that she believes in. I think I’ll enjoy this as I loved watching her with Gyles Brandreth on Great Canal Journeys. And she was phenomenal in that beautiful and inspiring movie, Edie (which if you haven’t seen, you must!) where she did actually climb that mountain!!! At the age of 86!!!

On a side note, I’m rather miffed that my grandson of four lists me as the 3rd oldest person in the family after my brother and my dog! Me – the person that does ballet, gardens ferociously, walks miles and keeps up with him when he’s with us! It has to come down to white hair which my brother, my dog and myself all have in common whereas everyone else in the family is golden-haired (or bald). That’s my reasoning anyway and I’ll brook no argument!

Via Kindle When We Were Brave by Karla M Jay. I think it was one of those 99 cent specials from Amazon. Has almost 1000 reviews so here’s hoping. One thing I will say is that it scored an award from Readers’ Favorites which is always a good sign.

Via Substack:

Christmas & Hanukkah Cards for Founding Members

He’s always my number one favourite.

I live in a Cabin. Or Maybe It's a Cottage

where Ramona talks of her beautiful (and enviable) lakeside cabin and lifestyle.

Winter Chic

Lindsay, who talks food with feeling!

And

Issue 121: Meet the forest nymph & wild strawberry places

with the scariest tourism advertisement I’ve ever seen.

On the screen:

A Spy Among Friends with Damien Lewis and Guy Pierce, about the Kim Philby case. Brilliant production values. This is in a class of its own.

Spooks. Nearly finished the whole series. All of them. We now have Richard Armitage, all smoulder and simmer under duress, as Lucas North. But I know what happens, so that spoils it a little. This was released at the height of the fame of the Armitage Army, when I wrote a fan-take on Guy of Gisborne for my blog and which garnered more views than I could ever have imagined and propelled me down the ‘proper hist.fict’ path. (Seven novels later, an eighth one half written, some truly 3 dimensional characters, and rather a lot of awards. Thank you, RA!)

Really though, we’re just dipping our toes into the whole Christmas TV thing courtesy of Britbox. We have laughed with shows like Vicar of Dibley (want to see an hilarious midnight Christmas mass? Watch the V of D) and the Great British Sewing Bee and drooled at Mary Berry’s Christmas cooking and more will follow because we actually want complete mindlessness and jollity. Who doesn’t?

And no, we won’t be watching Harry and Meghan. On any account!

Thus we reach the second week before Christmas. The year has evolved through global drama and unease to this point. And yet I can look back on it and say that I have loved almost every single minute of my life.

The tree is up (v. coastal grandmother and plain) and most of the shopping is done. The cakes are made, the pudding is stashed safely in its little steamed pudding pan, the brandy butter is made and frozen. I have just to make The Hebridean Baker’s Christmas Rocky Road https://www.instagram.com/hebrideanbaker and Mum’s Shortbread and we’re done.

Thank you for your company this week and please feel free to share the newsletter wherever you like. I’d love it if you did.

I hope your week has been as filled with R and R as mine. I bet its been more exciting (sure to be). Tell me about it if you’re game!

See you next week?

Toodles!