Weekly snapshots...

Hello again people! Only one minor injury to Matt this week so far, but it is only Monday, so be patient...

Also, I finally changed the blog's timestamp to our actual timezone. I know you're relieved.

AND I changed the way you can read others' comments, so let me know if you like it or hate it or what...

The pictures are relatively self-explanatory, I suppose. The whole shed thing that I'm building is made of ripped-apart pallets, and it'll have some recycled roofing, too.

The garden boxes are old concrete laundry tubs. Why did we have so many old laundry tubs? Keith, my mum's partner, is a packrat to a degree that would shock you. Hope you're well and beautiful!

Hot melon and future potatoes

Hello dear friends and family! Late start tonight, 11:32, oooh la la. We just finished up a really good movie, The Interpreter, to which I said beforehand, “I’ll only watch an hour tonight, I need to write my journal.” The intensity and a little coffee convinced me that I could pull a late-nighter. The crickets are chirping outside my window, my fan is louder though. I think the frogs must have gone to sleep, the mosquitoes are still at work and the possums who sometimes stamp around on the roof have not yet come to visit.

The teepee garden is rapidly evolving with its new native shrubs and the beginnings of our shed/shelter. Matt for lack of much bank work had time to work a lot on the land. He has sunk 8 posts in cement and put up all of the front and back cross beams for the shed. The shed is right up against the chicken forest and looks out onto the teepee and onto the pond, what a view, complete with a nice breeze. Remaining work includes cross beams in the middle, a roof, some shade cloth at the back and a dividing wall between the lounging space (for hammocks and chairs) and the garden shed. He mowed a few lawns and learned about fixing (and giving up on) broken lawn mowers. He fixed a broken water pipe (pierced by Keith’s  pitchfork while creating the new potato garden), and dug a new trench for the pipe to suit the new garden layout and its water needs. Would you believe he still had time to play, make music, help with the potato garden, keep up on world events, eat, sleep and pay close attention to cricket and the Australian Open (tennis)? Well, yeah, he did.

From the “house garden,” we ate our first rock melon this week. What an exciting sight to see, a melon ripe enough to fall off the vine onto the ground. Jacinta reveled in the tiny melon as did I, but it wasn’t sweet. Perhaps it shouldn’t have climbed up the fence rather than along the ground, then it mightn’t have fallen off. But we all had a taste of the little melon and enjoyed the sharing and the beauty of a hot melon right off of the vine. I planted some lettuce, spinach, and a few beets. After months of adding fruit tree after fruit tree to the orchard, I have finally put in a few native bushes which are essential in preventing the birds from eating every last fruit on the trees. A few of my corn seeds have sprouted but we sure miss the short lived love affair with our own corn. The beans keep on coming, and Jacinta hasn’t grown tired of picking them or eating them raw. We prefer the purple ones, sadly though, if you cook them, they turn green. The sunflowers are producing seed now and the birds are feasting.

En fin (finally)! The terracing has begun in the future potato patch and boy is it a lot of work. Like I said before, none of this could happen with Matt or Keith, but now my friend Michelle has gotten involved. Keith, Michelle, Matt, Jess, Rory and I had a great work day on dreary Wednesday and dug in to the slope of the dam. After clearing out the top terrace garden, 12 old cement wash tubs were lined up and dug into the rich soil creating a retaining wall to prevent rain from washing away the whole garden. In front of the tubs is about 2 feet of garden to be planted.  Then 3 fallen trees were dragged up the hill and stacked upon each other to hold up the first “step.” We cleared the next terrace and by then, the water line had been pierced, Matt had bolted in his first cross beams on the shed, the kids were muddier than you can imagine and one was sleeping, we were all sore and proud and the day was done. The wash tubs are still empty but the water line has been repaired. I can’t wait to plant all of my new herbs (a wagon full of pots recently given to me by my friend Melina) in the wash tubs, and certainly to plant some spuds.

I’m feeling well at home now. We have some pictures up on the walls, I have my apple plates back in use, my mom, dad and sister have all figured out how and when to call Australia, and we even have our own closet in the bathroom, newly built by Matt. These seem like strange things to make you feel at home but it’s the truth. We have precious things of the past in our reach and precious people from our home in the USA who seem closer through pictures and telephones. The search for work is no fun for Matt, but who likes to lay themselves out for approval and just wait. It’s just a grueling task that will hopefully end in something rewarding. We have found a few lovely friends and love and get to know our family here more and more each day. We often just drop our jaws at the beauty surrounding us and stand in shock that this is our home. Last week we found ourselves on Sunday morning swimming in the surf, eating watermelon, laughing and playing in the rock pools above the beach with our friends the Murphys, how’s that for church?  We sometimes get overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of us in building onto this house. For now, we are and creating beautiful gardens and building a shed for our hammocks so that we can lie near the water and enjoy the breeze.

Jacinta, well, I don’t know how much “lying around” in hammocks is going to work for her. I can see it now…”Mommy! Mommy! Water?!!! Water?!!” She always associates the teepee garden with water play, watering the garden and herself. “Jess, don’t you want to swing in the hammock?”  We’ll swing for a minute and she’ll say, “Plum! Plum!” Plums are her new favorite fruit and the answer to all problems. So we’ll trudge up the hill and she’ll eat her plum and say, “cookie? Cookie?” I try to make “healthy” cookies full of molasses and nuts and fruit and she’ll eat as many as I will allow. As soon as she enters the house, she goes straight to the cupboard and looks for them while I search for better options. Matt, on the other hand, would not touch these cookies with a ten foot pole. He still kids me that I would make cookies with lentil flour if I could find it.

Jess’ vocabulary is just exploding. She says, “piece” and “some” when she wants a bit of something that you have or when she wants to share some with you. She says, “Mommy? Hand?” and takes my hand while trying to fall asleep. She then says,”foot,” and puts my hand on her foot while she goes to sleep. She’ll ask you if you’re “coming?” when she is about to go somewhere and wants your company (often this is the dog). She has finally stopped calling diapers “peepee,” and calls them by their proper Aussie name, “nappies.” She says “daddy” very clearly now and no longer mixes up daddy and doggy. Today she got to help Matt place washers on the big bolts for the shed, what an honor, really. She listens very well to conversations and will act on something you say when you think she was not listening. She loves playing with her musical instruments but this week was injured by a tambourine! Lesson: don’t let babies use tambourines as hula hoops. She still won’t drink milk intentionally but loves her yogurt and will consume “hidden” milk. One of her favorite words is Rory, her 3 year old friend. She chants his name whenever she has a spare non-active moment. It’s strange though, every pair of pants I put on her, she points at them and says, “Rory!” She then points at the window where his mom parks her car. I sometimes bother saying, “No, these are not Rory’s pants, Iris gave them to you! Or Ulysses gave them to you,” but she doesn’t get it. Pants make her think of Rory for some reason. When Rory finally visits, they don’t seem too fussed with each other, it’s all in the lead up. Rory really likes Jacinta’s toys and just wants to stay inside and play with them, it’s hilarious.

So life is good, and as Jacinta is learning new words every day, we learn more about life in Macksville and life in general. We miss you all, miss life in the Mid-West but love hearing about it from you all. Good night.

Matt working on the roof...(danger)

So here I am replacing some metal roofing, b/c the porch was just too leaky all the time.

Surprisingly, the work was completed without any injuries to myself.







Oh, but I did break a window. But not with any part of my self, so that's a bonus!

This is at the nearby Dorrigo National Park. It's a world heritage-listed rainforest, about 1 hour from us.

Jess the Enforcer.
She has taken to guarding the fortress (porch) by standing at the bottom of the stairs and squirting the approaching infidels (chickens) with a water bottle. Viscious child.

Good girl!

Good evening lovely people. It is Friday night and I just couldn’t wait until Saturday to write, so here I am. All week as Jacinta made me laugh and smile, I couldn’t wait to share these moments with you and actually worried that I would forget them. Why the title, “Good Girl?” you may ask. You wouldn’t believe that Jacinta says this now, yes, to herself and to the dog. She has heard it so much over the past few months that she has picked up on the intonation and the situations in which this phrase is used. After Jedda finishes her dinner Jess promptly says with a big nod of approval, “good girl!” After Jess cleans up a mess that she has made she tells herself, “good girl,” again with a big nod. It is too funny, also ironic because Matt and I had in the past told ourselves that we wanted to avoid that phrase. We philosophized it as a phrase that connected the word “good,” a quality that every human being has within them with a silly task. We had decided that using it too much would later on make her wonder if she was not doing something good if we neglected to say, “good girl.” Well, there it went, what else do you say? She is a good girl, innately as we all are, and she already knows it!

It has been another peaceful rainy week. I don’t think I left the house during the week at all, other than to take the trash up the road and to run into town for mail. Actually last Sunday we had a big outing to Coffs Harbour, the biggest city around, it even has an airport. After a trip to the big chain hardware store (like Home Depot), we went to the Tender Center. This is the silent auction heaven of which we have spoken before. We wandered through the aisles looking for things we might “need,” and bid on quite a few items. It was then on to the beach for a quick swim (the sun is too hot to linger, and cricket was on (Matt’s interest)), and afterwards, homeward bound. Matt gets quite nervous and excited to find out if we have “won” the items when we go “tendering” so the rest of the day is exciting. We won a futon, some bean bags, a stool, a box of hinges, a bag of crafty paints, and a cupboard to hold all of my kitchen treasures. Matt then had to drive Keith’s truck back to Coffs (45 minutes) by Tuesday to pick up and pay for our new belongings. It was all very exciting.

There were a few hot days, but mostly a cloudy good working week. I spent my time cooking, some night gardening, dragging cleared trees up the hill to be mulched, chicken care, of course, weeding, fertilizing, planting a few seeds here and there, clearing out unproductive plants, staking trees, spreading compost, transplanting broccoli, walking up and down the hills with Jacinta and so on. The black bean seeds that Jess and I planted have sprouted in a pot and just today we planted them in the teepee garden with some more broccoli. I won’t go into business just yet with my black beans, I have to see how they produce. I have never grown “dry beans” before. Anyone have tips??? I planted more corn and cleared out space for lettuce. I have heard that it could cool down some day in the next month or two, so I’m getting anxious for cold weather crops. Strange though, my tomatoes are just starting to produce, the melons are almost ready to eat, and beans are still producing. The lack of winter in my bones is just starting to get to me.

Matt spent his time this week working a few days at the bank, but more excitedly working up a sweat here at the homestead. He and Keith mulched up a great big pile of divinely scented trees and brush. Honestly, the smell wafting up in the air, I thought it was some essential oil based cleaning product when I caught the wind. Eucalyptus and Camphor Lauryl, yummmmmm. It’s nice to be able to picture the trees and brush that has become your mulch and will soon make your veggies smile. This mulch was once the green that covered the slope on the dam which will soon become our terraced potato patch. Today “the men” made a new roof on the leaky part of the veranda, Matt was on the roof, yes. Any incidents, you may ask? Well….almost none, no bodily injury at least, just a plank dropped into the sun room window. After all that work there was still time for future building plans and discussions, some cricket watching, and of course a lot of tickling and giggles with Jess. Jacinta got to go with Daddy on a few runs down to the chickens and on a bike ride to watch the evening fall.  The chicks, on that note, are starting to look like hens and roosters, still small, but taking shape. The first one to show a red bump on top of its head and a longer “tail,” we’ve decided that it will be Otto because it is a male, no doubt, well, we think. There is a very curious little female that always come up real close while we are sitting on the ladder, we are calling her Iris. There is another male looking chick whose red bump is starting to appear, and we call him Ben Jr. (The real Ben Jr will be born sometime soon and this will make Ben and my sister in the end of her pregnancy VERY happy). The fourth chick, very cute and female looking but you never know, we are calling Divozzo Jr in honor of our friends Jason and Adriann’s baby who is on the way.

Jess, well, she’s growing and learning all she can. It’s astonishing what she can pick up, she can repeat many words, and then I think, it’s just repetition. But then she pulls out the right word the next time the object comes back into her sight, example: shampoo. She says Grandma now! All four of her grandmas will be very excited, it sounds like Bumma. She points at pictures of my mom and says “Grandma.” Yesterday I dressed her in a blue cardigan that my mom had given her. I had mentioned this a few times to her in months past, and she said “Grandma” pointing at her cardigan. She calls for “breakfast,” in the morning, and dinner in the evenings (always before it is ready). She says, “go away!” and “shoo!”  to flies and mosquitos as they pester her (this comes to mind as a mosquito is feasting on me while I write). She goes and fetches the “shovel,” when there is chicken poo on the veranda to be gotten rid of and sometimes fetches her broom to “sweep” it away. She is anxiously awaiting the melons in the garden , but has learned how gentle to hold them while watching and waiting. She learned her first word in Wolof (a West African language that I can “play” in) which is “woow,” yes in English. She loves dancing to the Senegalese music and saying “woow,” when it comes up in the song. When it is time for a nappy change, she pulls out her changing pad, grabs the “powda,” sits down and waits to be allowed to spray the cloth with a tea tree and lavender solution.

I never really liked following Jacinta around on the playground, up and down ladders and slides. It’s a bit exhausting so I’m quite happy to miss out on living one block from a playground. What I do miss is living close to our friends with whom we went to the playground. This whole place is a playground though. Jess hangs from tree branches with us holding her waist and bouncing her up and down. She balances on the uneven teepee border logs while holding my hand (my other hand is weeding). She climbs up to the second rung of the chicken ladder, climbs through the hole to the ground, slides under the ladder, climbs up again, and slides down the ladder. Last week she made herself a mudslide while we were beginning to clear out brush in the potato patch. I am about as productive in the garden as an 8 year old would be, but for now, that’ll do. If it weren’t for Matt and Keith, all I’d have right now would be a few tomatoes, some herbs and vegetables climbing all over each other, looking for something to climb. I often have to remind myself, and Matt does so even more often, that my work is creating a joyful playground for Jacinta.

As it is bedtime and I am looking forward to my pillow, I’ll close with a bedtime story. Jess avoids sleep at all costs. Now she can say, “sleep,” but tries everything she can to stay awake. “Water!” “Sippy??” and she chugs a whole bunch of water. “Book!!” she’ll call out, but books keep her awake. “Candle?” she’ll ask, she loves to watch it burn and blow out the match. “Gnome???” she’ll ask, and then Mrs. Gnome (a felted wool gnome that I made with (and thanks to) my friend Estelle and her mother from France) will come down from her perch, listen to Jacinta’s adventures, play peek a boo and finally say, “Good night.” Most nights at bedtime Matt comes in and plays his guitar on the bed. He sings while I hum along and act as a lifesaver to our dear Jacinta hurling herself at each of the pillows laid out all over the bed. She dives from one side of the bed to the other, giggling and burning off her last few spurts of energy. We sing Paul Simon, John Denver, Greg Brown, some lullabyes, some old folk songs, and eventually Matt kisses Jacinta goodnight and sneaks off so she will go to sleep. Tonight she seemed quite sleepy, and was lying on my chest dozing when Matt kissed her goodnight and left the room. She turned to watch and waved her little hand silently for almost a minute. Once he had gone, she lay there silent for a while and then shot up and loudly said, “See ya!” a few times. She then laid back down and cuddled on me quietly for a while. Then she shot up and said to me with this strange tone asking for approval, “Bone?! Bone?!” She said this about 15 times, while I replied sometimes with silence and others saying. “Yes, bone. You gave a Jedda a bone today.” After this outburst she laid back down, grabbed onto my knee and eventually fell asleep. As she drifts off peacefully into dreamland, she is thinking of bones. Strange, aye? Jacinta’s deep thoughts before bed…bones……
Good night y’all. Have a good weekend.  

Explorer girl!

Explorer by night...

















...and by day.









Things you find at night include a droopy
sunflower the size of my head. Well, most heads, anyway, maybe not mine.

Note the massive grasshopper hanging onto the flower. If Shana ever decides to feed us grasshoppers, this one could feed at least her and Jess.

Things you can find by day include a rocking horse with woolen mane, a faithful dog, and rockmelon (aka canteloupe).

The hard life of a 19-moth old

The corn has come and gone!

I come to you at 11pm with a belly full of garden produce and a heart full of joy after an evening spent with the Murphys, our organic farmer friends. It has been a good week. After the waiting for corn, we tore into the first ear and shared it among 4 people. The next night we each had an ear of corn. Yummy! Fresh corn off your own stalks lives up to its reputation and more! It is so wonderfully sweet, not at all floury, even raw. Jacinta prefers her corn right off the plant, no messing around with heating and cooling. She tears off the husks very well saying, “cohng,” and bites in as soon as she sees the golden seeds bursting through. Each day or night we ate a little bit and after a week of corn heaven, it’s gone. I have tried to plant a little bit every few weeks, but now I know I must plant all the time. Some of the cobs were very cute little things, others had been interrupted by hungry baby cows who munched off the top of the plant and then created a cob of corn which had every 3rd kernel developed, the rest flat, white and tiny. Other cobs were just like the ones you buy in the store, but tasted better. The caterpillars found their way into a few ears, and the grasshoppers took 2 ears entirely and left the rest alone. I suppose this was our offering to nature in return for some yummy corn. We will plant a lot more if we can get it in before the heat diminishes in autumn.

Although Matt was not overjoyed at his lack of paid work this week, Jacinta and I were! He had one day of work at the bank on Thursday, but worked here on the land and in the house for the rest of the week. Other than enjoying Jacinta’s playfulness and attention throughout each day, he found time to continue preparing the future shed site by cleaning out Keith’s daughter’s stuff which was being stored in this spot. The things we find around the place never cease to amaze us, the variety, the quantity, the random mix of stuff. For example, in this pile we cleaned up some lumber, a cast iron bath tub, twelve 15 gallon water jugs, a pile of fossils, 200+ plant pots, a bag of foam pieces, 3 buckets of tile, 2 crates of green glass bottles, an immense iron grid, 2 huge water tanks, a pile of chicken wire, 10 old cement wash tubs, a refrigerator door, a whole lot of slugs, and so on and so forth. Then there was a huge amount of lantana, a non-native noxious weed brought over from England, to be cleared out. It had grown over about a third of this pile. (It smells like sweet fruit and is quite pretty though.) He built a new closet in the bathroom, mowed the lawn, and mulched a huge pile of brush which he had cleared earlier in the week. We also came up with a new plan for an addition onto the house which will be easier and more practical.

One problem which is more present in the summer is that the trees block off our access here in the house to a breeze. One reason we are clearing out trees is to allow more wind to cool us off. Other reasons for clearing are either to get rid of non-native species and to make more space for garden. My friend Michelle and I are planning a large potato and root vegetable garden and have decided to do it on the slope of the dam where the soil is rich and the potatoes can grow down the slope. This will entail a bit of work, first clearing,  then dragging all of the brush to the mulcher, then terracing the land so that rain will not wash everything down into the dam. With Rory, Michelle’s 3 year old, and Jess in tow, our meager efforts to begin clearing were just that. So Matt and Keith went in and began the attack on non-natives with machetes, successfully bringing more of a breeze up to the house. This is the beginning of the potato garden and a whole new world of which I am completely knowledgeless, terracing.
It rained a fair bit this week, again. It is said that February is the most dangerous bush fire month. January is typically very dry, so this rain is acting as a lovely preventative measure. Thanks Creator/God/Earth, whoever’s in charge! We are still eating beans, more cherry tomatoes, herbs, corn, and watching the melons grow. The trees seem happy with their mulch and are also enjoying the rain. We have a mango tree now! Fruits which you can hope to eat when you visit one day are apples, oranges, blood oranges, mangoes, nectarines, pears, plums, lillypillies, passionfruit, lemons, limes, mandarins, macadamias, coffee (??), and avocadoes. All of the sunflowers, save one, in the teepee garden are so heavy that they don’t follow the sun, they look down at the ground instead. One tall proud sunflower follows the sun, it’s about 8 feet high and has a beautiful scarlet runner bean vine encircling its thick stalk, it’s covered with red little flowers. The king parrots have come back and are now eating out of our birdfeeders. The baby chicks are growing, of course, and now try to escape when we feed them each morning. In their little mansion is a wide wooden ladder leaning up against the back wall, for the chickens to climb up and sleep at night. I don’t know how Otto, Iris, Ben Jr and Divozzo Jr get to the top each night, but they still sleep under their mum’s bum on the top rung! It’s amazing!

I have no complaints this week, after my whining last week. The heat has been less intense, no need for a spa every 2 hours. I was able to use the oven more this week as the sun gave us a break and made space for more cooking. I’ve made tortillas a few times now which I love doing. It brings me back to Honduras where I learned tortilla making on a clay wood fired stove from Dona Ena.  Mexican/South American food is not well known here. I had to search high and low to find black beans. Voila, I now have some and have even tried planting store bought beans (uncooked, don’t worry) in the hopes that I won’t have to drive 45 minutes to buy them each time. I enjoy evenings if I can work up the energy to move after laying down with Jacinta. I have no reading energy for some reason, and did no night gardening this week. Now that I have finished knitting for Lecia and Ben’s baby I am trying to write real letters in return for all of the beautiful cards that we received for Christmas.

Jess thinks she’s in charge now, perhaps it’s because she can express her desires with words.  She is very forceful using the word, “Sit!” now. When she wakes up at 6:45 and goes to her little table to munch on peanuts and raisins, she sits in one of the little chairs and looks out the window, sometimes silently and sometimes naming everything she can see. She gets lonely after a while and whines at me to get out of bed, bringing me a chair, putting it up on the bed and yelling, “Sit!” We like to sit on the bottom rung of the chick’s ladder and watch them scratch after their morning feed, but sometimes I’m ready to go back up to the house and have tea. On these days when I neglect our little morning sit, she goes and sits down and yells at me until I sit down and join her. She stands on the veranda watching birds eat the seed she has just spread and calls out, “seed!” She points to the bucket of seed when she wants me to carry it calling out, “bucket.” Jess is really using the word, “carry” now, but I’ve worked up the courage to tell her, “no, walk.” She points at things in the kitchen and names them, “salt, dough, toast, avocado.” She loves getting a hold of pens, but knows that they are “no-no’s,” so as she’s saying pen or paper and writing on herself, she is also chanting ”no, no, no.” She wakes up in the middle of the night thirsty and says, “water,” has a drink and goes back to sleep. She walks into a sunny patch of ground or a hot plank of wood and says, “sunny.” Tonight when looking at the moon she said, “shiny,” that was so beautiful. It is a full moon tonight, we saw it rise out over Justin and Melina’s farm. It will be a full moon in about 10 hours for you all. Enjoy it and know we are (were??) looking at it with you. We miss and love you all. Good night.

Bethany!

Hey Bethany...

email me at matt@paintedguitar.com,

I seem to have lost your email address...
Thanks!

"Qi" is a legal word in scrabble

New Year's Eve fireworks.

We didn't really know the best place to sit, and it was really dark. So we found a spot on someone's lawn, and waited.

When they started, we realised that we'd sat pretty much right where they were being set off. Hence the need for hands over little ears, and the straight-up-getting-sore-necks postures of Shana, Ted and Jen. Right when I took this picture, a piece of fireworks hit me.

Danger is my middle name.


Night gardening.

Best for:
a) catching nocturnal plant-munchers
b) wearing a nifty headlamp
c) working while babygirl is sleeping
d) all of the above


Answer: d

Three generations of women... Only the little one in the middle is a "blood Henry," meaning that she's the only one who'll have the psycho-competetive must-win-scrabble-at-all-costs gene.


Awww, pretty.

Sore backs and fingers

Good evening loved ones! I wouldn’t typically choose such a whiny title, but for the pain in the tips of my fingers tapping on the keyboard. Today was a good day filled with a bit of labor, more for Matt than I. After a week of driving 45 minutes each way to work about 5 hours at the bank, Matt awoke today inspired to sweat. After some coffee and a newspaper he began stuffing all of the barna grass and random sticks that had been collected earlier in the week. The mulcher is louder than your average airplane and demands a huge helmet with a glass cover for your eyes, and ear plugs if you think ahead. He began this work in light rain, and eventually stopped when the rain became too bothersome. He then went down into the teepee garden/orchard to begin tearing apart old pallets to be used as lumber to build us a new shed in the orchard. This is true recycling and hard work. He has to bang apart each piece of wood and then later grind down each and every nail that held it all together.

A few nights ago we dug big holes and planted 8 trees in the orchard. This meant that there were now 8 more wonderful trees to be mulched to add to the 9 other
un-mulched trees. We have “only” 19 fruit/nut trees, and after all of that talk about my grandiose mulcher, only 2 had been properly mulched. In my old suburban garden mulching meant going to the store and buying a bag of mulch, carrying it a few yards to the garden and spreading it on. Here on our big hilly lot mulching means walking up and down hills, most likely with Jacinta either doddling along, running dangerously fast down the hill or whining to be carried, collecting big piles of sticks by cleaning up dead overgrowth, and then dragging them up or down the hill to the mulcher. Then they must be run through the mulcher by someone, usually Matt because it is too dangerous for Jess to be near. Then the mulch sits in a heap until I get around to scooping it, load by load into the wheelbarrow, and pushing it down the hill (this is a lucky thing) and then finally spreading it around the tree, ahhhh.

The only problem (whines the Mid-Western flatlander) is the hills! Oh, they are gorgeous to look at, but maneuvering a wheelbarrow filled with heavy dirt or mulch on a hill is tricky. I’ve lost about 4 loads now to the hill, and after shoveling it all in there once, I don’t usually want to do the same load again after it has landed on my toe. So whine whine whine, I’ll just let it all out. I cut up my hands on chicken wire constructing the new chicken mansion. I sliced off a small piece of my pinky staking tomatoes. I grated a bit of my thumb thanks to parmesan making pesto. Jacinta has learned the word “carry,” and now tell me every time she wants to be carried. She had her first fever yesterday, and really needed to be carried. Right now my right hand fingers all tingle from hand shoveling the splintery mulch for the trees.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel: We have 19 trees that will fruit for us someday and all because they are all mulched!??? Jacinta’s fever passed in less than 24 hours thanks to lots of carrying, fluids, rest, ginger, garlic, peppermint, love, chamomile, and baths. We are finally building something that we can call our own, a garden shed to store tools, seeds and machines, but also a haven where we can hang our hammock and put a few chairs, relax while watching the sunflowers and the fruit trees grow. The tomatoes are staked and will give us fruit soon. Matt’s earning money, emotionless or not. I have gotten through all of our boxes and the hallway is no longer filled with our stuff. The pesto was good and it was made with macadamia nuts. We shared the pesto with friends and enjoyed the time together. I finally found all of the ingredients that I used to make granola with and made my first batch of granola. We now have a chicken mansion which is big enough for all of us to enter and play with the chicks. Even better, the chicks and especially Major, the mum, are all happy. The cool thing about this shed is that everyone helped, our friends Jenny and Ted who were here on holiday, Matt, Keith, Mary, Jacinta and I. Perhaps this will keep the snake out??? Jacinta, whether she is doddling, scaring us, or whining, makes us smile and give thanks for life.

The holidays were wonderful, perhaps my favorite part was the few “jam sessions” shared amongst friends and family. One night this week we had 3 guitars going, a few drums, some rhythm sticks that Keith had carved, and of course a few voices. Jacinta likes to drum along with me on her new drum that Grandma Whittinghill sent her for Christmas. That night she saw the biggest tree frog of her life, perhaps mine too. The holidays are over now and life is back to normal. It’s quiet here. We only see friends once in a while and are enjoying the sound of the crickets. It has rained for the last 3 days, and for this we rejoice. I must admit that after the tank filled up again and made us feel better about doing laundry and taking showers, I was ready for some sun. And it returned this afternoon, just as Matt and I were digging into our work and Jess was napping. We don’t often get to work together and alone, so today was really nice. Hard labor and sweat are so rewarding when you’re working for something you really want. Mary listened for Jess and …my gosh,here the rain is again!

All of this rain obviously makes the plants very happy, especially since it is not accompanied by hail or wind. There are now baby watermelons, pumpkins and canteloupes on the vines. All of the sunflowers are in bloom and in fact, if any of you have a bird book, look up King Parrots. These are gorgeous red, green and yellow birds which have come to our land for my sunflower petals. This makes me so happy, to be able to bring even more native bird life to our surroundings. There are plenty of beans to eat, but no zucchini. They have “mysteriously” stopped producing. Jess has gotten a few strawberries after the birds munched the bottom half of the berry and still loves cherry tomatoes. I can’t bring myself to eat much of the arugula, but the basil, that’s easy. The corn is still almost ready, perhaps I won’t know when it is ready. They say when the silk is brown, but I looked in one brown silked ear and it wasn’t ready. Time will tell.

Jess wakes up jumping in her crib some days with a smile, exuberant to join the new day. She always has a lot to say. Lately I’ve been hearing complete sentences of Jess language ending with the one word I understand, “Mommy.” I wonder what she’s saying about me. New words this week are spa, kiwi, mango, butter (she’d love to eat this rather than cheese), paper, Jedda (the dog), bone, frog, tree, flower, shower, pants, skirt, shirt, pretty, sorry, and boots. She has this bright red pair of mud boots that she has been dying to wear since we arrived. They are too big, but I took them out for her friend Rory the other day. They did not fit Rory but Jacinta saw them and had to have them on her feet. The first outing to the chook pen in these boots was a mess. She needed coaching on how slow to walk to keep them on. She likes to be carried and every time I picked her up, her boots fell off and we had to put them on again. Now she wears wool socks underneath and they stay on better. The last new word that I can recall at 11pm this evening brings me to this story with which I will close.

Yesterday Jacinta awoke from her nap at about noon and was very hot. After a meal, we came back into the bedroom where I was finishing up unpacking. Jacinta lied down and cuddle the packing foam and watched me, sleepily rolling around from time to time, or coming over to cuddle me. We laid down and read books in bed, and eventually she took another nap. When she awoke, she lied down on the bean bag and watched me knit, no smiles, no giggles, no words! She watched me start chopping veggies for dinner and then wanted up. I put her in the carrier and she stayed on my back for over an hour, awake but dopey. Later she let Mary read her a book and daddy try to make her laugh. She then got back up in the carrier and watched me cook a teryaki stir fry and ate a bunch of raw marinated tofu. She cheered up after dinner, played a little bit, had a bath and then dozed off to bed, watching me knit, trying to help by grabbing onto the ends of the needles. She woke up in perfect health this morning, ate some granola, fed the chickens in her red boots, mulched a few trees with me, got fussy and came up the hill for a snack. After her snack she started whining some word at me, I had no idea. I let her lead me where she needed to as she continued to call out, “Kawwy!” “Kawwy!” She brought me to my closet where I hang the baby carrier and yelled out, “kawwy!” She wanted me to carry her, in the carrier, so I did. What an amazing thing communication can be when you’re on the same wavelength.  

Frogs, tractors, sunflowers and....

This tree frog normally lives inone of our downspouts, where his croaking reverberates through all things connected with it. Amplifies pretty well. Anyway, he came for a visit...











Contrary to most expectations, I haven't had an accident or injury or caused any unintended damage with the tractor yet.



Mmmm.... diesel fumes.











Sunflowers at last!

















This place, about 20 minutes from us, is actually a part of Australian folklore by virtue of a famous song by our most famous country singer (who was from this area). Anyway, the good news is that they found some beer, although Shana, being a non-beer kind of girl ordered a Bloody Mary. And do you think the bartender knew what this most simple of mixed drinks was? Nope. And do you think - when told of the challenge of adding vodka to tomato juice - that he could do it? Nope. No tomato juice. Th epub with no tomato juice doesn't quite fit the song, I suppose, though.

Here's the song:
It's lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the camp fire at night where the wild dingoes call,
But there's nothing so lonesome so morbid or drear
Than to stand in a bar of a pub with no beer.

Now the publican's anxious for the quota to come
There's a far away lock on the face of the bum
The maid's gone all cranky and the cook's acting queer
What a terrible place is a pub with no beer.

Then the stock-man rides up with his dry dusty throat
He breasts up to the bar, pulls a wat from his coat,
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer,
When the bar man said sadly the pub's got no beer.

There's a dog on the 'randa-h for his master he waits
But the boss is inside drinking wine with his mates
He hurries for cover and cringes in fear
It's no place for a dog round a pub with no beer.

Old Billy the blacksmith first time in his life
Has gone home cold sober to his darling wife,
He walks in the kitchen, she says you're early me dear,
But he breaks down and tells her the pub's got no beer.