monthly9 - may 2015

I'm going to sneak in a very quick monthly9…..just before July! This one is my May round up and hopefully June's happenings are a little bit earlier next month! Actually I'm not really even sure of all that went on in May as it was…..well, a whole month ago, so I think I'll just mention what was going on in the photos and save my brain a lot of pain trying to recall too many forgotten details! 

In May I did quite a few watercolour sketches. I must have had a bit of extra time waiting for sporty children or perhaps I just made some time to paint but my sketchbook has several pages of shells, leaves and houses. And shoes. Yes, my shoes. I bought these when I went to Austria in 2012 and have been wearing them ever since, so I felt they deserved their first portrait! 

All my sketches end up with some writing as well although I mostly take a photo as I'm doing them because I always get a bit excited!! 

In May I managed to get up with the birds at least three times to take photos of the sunrise on the mountain and over our house. I do really love the early mornings when I force myself to rise at sun up but I am also equally fond of a nice warm bed and a lie in with my iPad or a good book.

In May we celebrated two birthdays - the Best Mans and our Dj who turned 15. I won't tell you the Best Mans age - suffice to say that 5 was the first number! The girls went wild with the cake and totally covered it in colourings and artificial flavourings sweets, none of which the Small Elf was allowed to eat. Fortunately she doesn't mind, never having had lollies, and contented herself with removing candles.

In May we also held the Blessing Way for my oldest girl.

In May I was busy. Very busy. Too busy, really. But May has been and gone and June is almost over too (and I think June was even busier), so I shall look back at May with fondness.

If you want to see how other people spent May, pop over to Lindas blog, The Greenhaven Goodlife, and check out what interesting things they did. They will have written up their month a little earlier and a lot more detailed ;)

monthly9 - april 2015

April. A month of fruitfulness and abundance in garden and orchard. A month where the weather is playing tricks - frosty mornings and sunny days or alternatively sudden squalls and ferocious winds. This year, summer left a tiny taste of her warmth in April and we enjoyed brilliant blue days with fairly mild nights giving us just a little longer to enjoy the fruits of our labours in the garden. (Here's a lesson we did a few years back where I changed a northern hemisphere poem to suit our southern climes.) 

So here's a photo journey of whats been happening around here in the lovely month of April. I'm joining in again with the Monthly9 roundup that happens over on Lindas blog and if you want to see what others are busy with, pop over to have a look too. 

Nourish - We enjoyed the very last of the tomatoes, cucumbers and lovely red capsicum from the poly tunnel - the very last! Sometime towards the end of April there were a couple of super-frosts and everything in the tunnel turned a nasty shade of brown! 

While in the garden doing all sorts of weeding type jobs, Small Elf and I dined on radishes and baby carrots and few even made it in for dinner! Our Helpxer, Ari, came back for Easter and dug up a monster harvest of potatoes too - 200kg!! 

Oh and I must mention the lovely yellow watermelon that grew all alone in the tunnel and was the sweetest thing ever! A friend gave me a seedling without a name but I think it may be a 'Cream of Saskatchewan' which I grew once when we lived in NSW. Whatever variety, it was delicious!  

Prepare - We bottled a couple of batches of apples but not nearly as many as in previous years….which may have had something to do with the fact that I floozied off to the mainland for two weeks…..??!! Oh well, it just means that I'll have to make some more as we need them.

Reduce - I feel quite good about reusing old things and although this month I was away for half of it, I managed to make these cute seed packets out of old book pages. I think that was about all I did reduce which is not so good seeing as I helped to pollute us all with my jet setting around the countryside……
Oh hang on, I also used up some more old bits of poly pipe that were laying around and turned them into hoops to use with bird netting over the broccoli seedlings. Worked wonders!

Green - Again, this month theres not much in this category.

Grow - We planted onions, leek, lettuce and more broccoli seedlings and I'm happy to say that the broccoli especially is growing awesomely. I also sprinkled around a bunch of leftover chive seeds and parsley that had self sown around the garden. The weeds too, seem to be growing extremely well now that the weather has cooled and the wet weather has begun.

Create - Hmm…there seems to be a lot of arty stuff happening but all the sewing that I need/must/want to do, somehow gets forgotten! But hey, I was only here for half the month……..!!!!!

Discover - I am in the time of life that women must come to at some time - the Change. Its been happening for a few years now and while I didn't want to fully acknowledge it for some time, I am finally accepting the fact that I am changing both in body and in my thoughts. I've been doing quite a bit of reading, listening and inner work and feel quite good about where I'm at right now. One interesting Australian website I discovered, 'MoonSong' has a fabulous article regarding the Evolution of the Triple Goddess - its really worth reading and pondering.  

Enhance - again, the only enhancing done was our bi-monthly whole foods order which is always appreciated by the women that need food for their hungry families!

Enjoy - Well, first there was Easter which was delightful, relaxing and delicious! Then later in the month four of us took a pilgrimage to Wauchope in NSW for a friends 21st birthday party which was a hoot! We stayed for two weeks and caught up with all our friends and some family and really, really enjoyed the balmy weather.
There was also the purchase of a lovely wood fired cookstove!!! Oooh, I'm so excited about this and can't wait until we can install it. Theres a water jacket to go with it as well so I'm hoping for a cheaper hot water bill in the near future too!

So. Thats my month of April. There was a whole lot of fun and relaxation, a small amount of preparation, a bit of gardening and painty of arty stuff. Not a badly balanced month at all, I say!

monthly9 march 2015

And I'm late again!!!! Oh well, here it is…… I'm joining in with Linda at Greenhaven Goodlife for a round up of whats been achieved in March. I've noticed that we seem to have a birthday every month so far so at least we have been celebrating if nothing else!!!

Nourish - for a week or two this month we were eating beans but now we are eating beans no more! Jack Frost has bean been for several visits and left lots of shrivelled leaves in his wake. Same for the zucchini which were going so well and we were so enjoying. The tomatoes, capsicum and cucumber are still providing us with lots of food although they are slowing down as well. We are eating more potatoes and I'm starting to buy more winter veg which is always a sure sign that a) theres been a frost and b) the weather is cooling down!
And Im not sure how nourishing the chocolate birthday cake for my sons 20th was……or the brightly coloured and icing sugared Minion biscuits either!! But they were consumed and by all accounts they were delicious so perhaps nourishing of the soul counts for those!!

Prepare - pesto has been the big preparation here this month! I processed loads of basil, parmesan and walnuts and stored all that green deliciousness in the freezer in lots of cute little jars. I'm hoarding it until mid winter when the smell of basil will momentarily transport us out of the winter doldrums and
into a warm summery state of bliss! On a more mundane note, we started digging the potatoes although thats still in progress -  I think it won't be a huge harvest this year as the weather was so dry over summer and there seem to be a lot of small ones.

Reduce - I have an odd little item that I reuse, so please don't think me too silly! I can't bear to throw out a good bit of fabric, no matter whether its just fabric or……um…..well…..undies!!! Yes, by the time the  children grow out of their smalls, the elastic is usually gone or they have a hole somewhere or other and no one in my family wants hand-me-down undies! Over the years I've mostly used them as cleaning or dusting cloths but now that the Small Elf and I have regular art sprees, I've started using them as paint cleaner uppers. They are nice and small which means that theres not a whole heap of spare cloth to drag through the paint pot or painting and they are made of cotton so are quite absorbent. I do just throw them out when they are all covered in paint but at least I've given them a second life! (ok, you can stop laughing now!)

Green - okay, so I'm going to mention again that I'm still using bicarb soda as deodorant and I still love it! All summer….no smelly armpits! I tell all and sundry about the marvels of my 'bio-dorant' and I can't believe why everyone is not using it! My teens, of course, think I'm bonkers but I have noticed that the older they get the smarter I become….so, I know they will eventually be converted too!!

Grow - I've got a lovely cabbage patch coming along and an equally beautiful broccoli patch which were all planted a little later than they should have been….never mind, we'll eat well in late spring! Last year I saved some big bunches of coriander plants that had seeded but never got around to putting into seed packs - so I just flung the whole lot into some empty garden beds and hoped some would sprout. Well, they did. Everywhere. Now I have whole green mats of young coriander plants, squeezing out the carrot and beetroot babies. Most of my family are not keen on coriander so there has been a bit of gifting to others!

Create - other than lots of arty stuff, I haven't created much this month. There was a dashing brown cape for my Fairy though, which I made using a piece of fabric from the op shop.

Discover - I have been listening to a few cd's from Clarissa Pinkola Estes and thoroughly enjoying not only the content but her lovely soothing voice.

Enhance - hmm, not sure. I've started keeping a list of things for each month as I seem to forget quite a bit of the stuff that goes on, due to always being late for this linkup!

Enjoy - there were a couple of very enjoyable weekends this month - the first one was Steamfest, which I always love. We didn't have a stall there this year but still managed to go two days out of three. Then there was a three day campout for the annual homeschool camp - another relaxing weekend which I'm keen to repeat.

So, here's to another month well spent!

monthly 9 - january 2015

A new title for a new year - the name has been changed for a while but I'm just implementing it now! When Christine started this challenge she called it Slow Living Monthly Challenge or something like that and as I joined in each month I began thinking that there was no slowness about it! Each month seemed to be filled with gardening, cooking, busyness,  creating, repurposing and busyness…..anything but slowness! Although Christine meant the title in a different way, it always seemed to me that my life is indeed filled with so many 'busy' bits that there are  really hardly any 'slow' parts and all I was chronicling each month was the busyness - when I should have been sharing about the relaxing!!
So, I was really pleased when she changed the name to Monthly 9 - it makes me feel like its okay to write about the stuff that got done not the sssslllooowww bits that were just to be savoured from the verandah with a glass of wine or a cup of tea!
Anyway, enough thinking, lets begin….

Nourish - this month its all about garden food. If its growing out there, then thats what we eat! Capsicum, cucumbers, tomatoes as well as pasta with pesto, strawberries with cream (no one complains about that!) and potato salad.

Prepare - well, I can't say theres been much of that this month. January has been reasonably lazy and holidayish and not much thought has gone into any preparation at all! Usually I make a large batch of plum jam using roadside fruit (from a very loaded tree not far from here…) but this year I've still got quite a few jars from the previous batch we cooked up last January and as I was feeling a tad uninspired, I didn't bother.

Reduce - the only thing I can think of that I've reduced in January is the amount of old second hand books that get thrown out if no one buys them from the op shop. I've been picking up a few beauties and creating some very nice journals from them along with old children's workbooks. They do make such cute journals!

Green - once again, nothing to report. I've always thought I was a nice 'shade of green' in my day to day life but I'm beginning to think I'm a fraud!!

Grow - now on the other hand, this category is always fairly well covered! We finally harvested and stored all the garlic (maybe I could have put that in the Prepare category?) we ate blackcurrants, dug up the onions, harvested and enjoyed the first of the potato crop, picked bucketfuls of strawberries, have eaten so many cucumbers that we are already sick of them and have swooned over the sunripened and very luscious tomatoes! Yes, its that lovely prolific time of the year again and oh how I love it!

Create - this one too, is well covered! I am still painting and drawing my way through my various journals and have joined in with a few online classes and challenges. A very generous friend gifted me her no longer used set of pastels and I've had a lovely time practising with this new to me medium. I think I've taken on more arty challenges than I have time for but I blame that on my disappointment at not going to TAFE to do the Visual Arts course I had planned on. Due to some changes in our business, Stuy now has to work outside of our home and so I no longer have him here to spend time with the last two of our homeschooled children. I was bitterly disappointed but have accepted that it just wasn't the right timing…sigh…. And so I must practice when ever I can at home, with the help of tutorials and online classes.

Discover - I have been listening to a lot of podcasts in January. Lots of inspirational women speaking to women about womens business. And art business. And just business. I've discovered a whole lot of interesting information since my lovely man gifted me with a new phone for my birthday in December. There are just so many awesome and inspiring women covering subjects from self love to creating calm homes and all things between!

Enhance - I'm sure I had something to put in here, but I just can't remember now….I should have written it down immediately!

Enjoy - there were quite a few outings and picnics in January - spot of fishing, a laze around on the rugs and a beautiful sunny day - combined, they make for a perfect memory!

I'm running quite late with this Monthly round up this time but I am very busy cooking, cleaning, planting, weeding painting, ahem……
Do stop by and visit all the other interesting blogs that join in with Linda at Greenhaven for this great end of month look at our achievements!