Caterpillars attack

The caterpillars attack!

Hello loved ones! Thanksgiving is coming and they are advertising in the shops to “Order your Christmas Chook (chicken) now!” No one seems to realize that we should be thinking about turkeys (or tofurkeys), but they eat pumpkin here on a regular basis, and not in a pie. This weeks headlines: Jacinta got her first library card, drinks from a real cup now, drank her first glass of milk, stayed awake for the first time on the bike ride home from playgroup, and had her first day away from mum (me). Matt had his last week of lazing in the sun (not really) before bank-telling training begins, began digging out a plot for his workshop (a big dig with tractors, shovels and rototillers), and spoke a few times with the council discovering various annoying rules and regulations that will slow down the building process.
I worked a day on a friend’s organic farm and absorbed as much as possible (cow manure gathering included so I absorbed a bit extra!!), had my first pest investigation, dug up an old turkey nest for mulch, drove an hour away to go to a great market with Jacinta, heard some local music, and made it through 3 “round-abouts” in one day, without crashing or pissing off too many drivers.

The weather has been hot and dry, perhaps we got about 50 drops of rain. There was a big lead up wind storm, unbelievable wind, making me think….ooooh! Rain??? It’s going to rain tonight, I won’t water. The next day, gray and very windy, it will rain…..no, then came the 50 drops. The wind was amazing. I guess we have enough land that 2 black wattle trees falling over didn’t cause any damage, just saved us the work of chopping them down. They’ll make good firewood, garden border, and mulch. Mulch is a major need right now, we’re researching the mulcher market. For the time being, I’m using bales of hay, grass clippings, and the turkey’s old nest. Did you know that the male turkey will create a nest about 25 square feet, all by scratching over good nesting material from as far as 100 feet away? Up hills, down hills, over grass, through downed trees and messes of branches, he works all day long preparing the nest for his woman to lay her eggs? This is the reason that I am not using the compost, because of his trials. Therefore, we used an abandoned nest from 3 years ago. With this gold, I mulched around the teepee and lined the teepee with logs which Matt and Keith had cut from an old black wattle tree. The teepee is looking very good with its wooden table in the middle and 3 black wattle stumps serving as stools. The vines need to get to work though, Jacinta needs some shade before she can really enjoy her playhouse.

Keith and I have spent a few nights out in the house garden with a big flashlight trying to figure out who’s munching the corn and sunflowers. One night a moth was caught, and the next night, a big fat caterpillar. So out came all of the garden books, none of which said much about a natural solution. Jackie French, my new garden guru, failed me, or so I thought. One bit of wisdom was, no matter how much they are destroying, do not act yet, allow the garden to become a natural place. The pests have just discovered new territory! The birds and other predators have not yet found this to be a place of feasting on your pests, so invite them by planting flowering and aromatic herbs and installing a birdbath. So that was the next step. I’ll give it a while and then perhaps resort to dusting with pepper and perhaps some glue spray. The library happened to have a natural pest control book, written by my guru. Lovely.

Jacinta has been making us all laugh a lot lately. On our trip to the library while I was trying to browse through the gardening section, she was placed on a big fluffy red couch with two great kid’s books filled with animals and a big picture window facing the park where she watches ducks. Shortly after being seated she sees two magpies (birds) hopping towards the window and calls out at the top of her lungs, “IES! IES!”  I whisper, “Shhhhh,” from my position two stacks away. She stands up, calling me over yelling, “IES! IES!” continuing until I come over and look at the birdies with her. Lesson learned….libraries are not quiet places when Jacinta is present. In the middle of the night Jacinta will now stand up in her crib and rather than cry, she will call out in clear English, “Mummy?” until she is picked up for a cuddle. She now has twelve teeth including 4 of her back teeth and her hair is long enough to be really sweaty and messy when her hat comes off. She understands more directions, most impressing for me is, “Put the plug in the bathtub.” She loves the bathtub and promptly climbs in upon entry to the bathroom, even if it’s just following me in for a pee. Her new calling in life is hunting for poo. Poo of any kind: chook poo, cow poo, dog poo, or even Jacinta poo. Out on the veranda she is the first to discover the chooks having snuck through the gate to scratch around the deck where we eat because she sees their droppings and calls out until we have verified, “Peepee,” that yes, it is poo. In the paddock she does the same and will some times when given too much space, pick it up for verification.

Today’s trip to the Bellingen market with Jacinta was a big highlight for the week. Markets take place in a different town each weekend day. Everyone has spoken of the Bellingen markets as the place to go, and it only happens on the 3rd Saturday. They also warned that the “aroma” of the markets might make us high, actually the aroma of Bellingen. So off we went to the bustling market located in park, filled with maybe 150-200 stalls selling handcrafted everything, flutes, digeridoos, clothes, plants, trees, ready to eat food, drinks, honey, nuts, not many fruits and vegetables, herbal remedies, soap, leather crafts, wood crafts, and best of all, my most sought after good, wool! Handspun, hand-dyed merino wool from Aussie sheep is better than what I had hoped for. I’d been searching for good wool (you’d think it’d be easier in sheep producing Australia) since I came out in December. But it doesn’t get that cold here, knitting is not so chic, and acrylic wool is “more fashionable” and much cheaper. I also found a stall selling Waldorfy dolls and beeswax candles and rightly guessed that they were from one of the nearby Steiner Schools. The funny thing was when the woman, embarrassed, explained that her first grade daughter was only playing a Gameboy because she had taken it from her brother, it was not hers! For those of you that don’t understand why this is humorous, it is because we Steiner school people, in short, tend to frown upon “unimaginative technological entertainment” for young children because it seems to contribute to later difficulties with attention and socializing. Hmmm...moving right along… there were good bands to listen to while eating, native trees and plants being sold, and lo and behold….I met a Frenchmen! I thought there were none around, but I happened to choose this particular plant stall as my first shopping interest and sensed an accent. It was great to hear this beautiful language again after leaving my wonderful French friends in Detroit back in August. So after a long hot day, a sippy cup lost and found, and none of the infamous strange “aroma” in my system, we took the road back to Macksville.

The most beautiful sight I see these days is at dusk, when Jacinta and I, and sometimes Matt, go down the hill, past the chook pen, past the compost heap, into the teepee garden to water. Looking across the dam at the towering wattle and gum trees with the sun gone down behind them in the distance, the ducks flapping their wings to escape us noisy humans, it’s awesome. Although we don’t have our own space, we are making space for ourselves here. Although we expect no phone calls from friends wanting to stop by or just to chat, we can just sit down at night, drink some tea or coffee and discuss plans to build, and what the kitchen should look like, and go to bed. Although I can’t make Christmas plans with my family, or plan a big Christmas party and cook for all of our friends, I get to sit back and go for a ride and celebrate Christmas with Matt’s family while he works out the details. Life is new here and so very different from home, but it is slow and beautiful. I sometimes have to stop myself from running because I scare the chickens, the ducks, the turkeys and the birds away. I am still a city girl, learning to be a country girl. I guess I’ll take my time.

I miss you all, and will miss you more as the holidays approach.
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m thankful for you all.