If I were to write a post today, what …?

May 17, 2017May 17, 2017 / kategresham / 7 Comments

If I were to write a post today, what would I write?

It’s a grey day, almost winter, cool, windy. I’ve been pondering blogging, I’m so out of touch and it’s so long since I wrote regularly. I’ve been reading the Daily Post, thinking about one of the short courses, anything that will move me to action.

As I think about writing, consider ideas and glance through old posts, my mind wanders to the garden.

The garden

After so many years of waiting I now have a garden- my second, a source of joy and concern and frustration and pleasure. Yesterday we planted some bearded irises, one of my very favourites and I’m anxious about how we should plant them. My brother advises to keep some of the rhizome out of the soil, but how much? One rhizome has rotted and died in an earlier planting. I don’t want to lose any, I have been wanting to grow them for so long. So I have just checked youtube- lots of videos, but now I’m worried that we may not have spread out the roots, the rhizome may be too exposed and we haven’t planted them in groups … one expert suggests they are very social plants. Mine may be lonely.

not enough soil?

This is the second year for our roses, such splendid plants! They flowered abundantly last year, even being baby roses. This year they have grown very tall. My cousin, the rose expert, tells me these are rain shoots. We had a long and hot summer, then suddenly lots of rain. She tells me roses love such conditions. And here it is, almost the end of May and I haven’t finished pruning them. Another rose expert advised not pruning early as there could be a second flush of flowering- there was! They look gorgeous and smell so wonderful. I love walking outside and picking a bunch of roses.

more roses- such pleasure.

joy- a bunch of roses!

Oriental lilies are another favourite and I have grown them for two years now. The plants from last year haven’t done well, so another question for youtube. Was it too hot? too dry? Should I have lifted them? What is their ideal climate?

Oriental lilies- if only you could smell their fragrance!

Such a lot to worry about when you garden. My co-houser says that she thought gardening was all about digging and weeding and planting, then flowers and vegetables and trees would happen and … a garden! Instead she says it’s all killing and chopping and destroying … the aphids love our plants, there are various other sucking insects, black spot, rust … and several varieties of grasshoppers … how do you get rid of grasshoppers? big brown ones? even baby greens? You can’t spray a grasshopper. The garden books suggest catching and squashing or vacuuming them up. I can’t quite see how to vacuum without sucking up the plant. And squashing? the big brown ones?!? Yuk!

I remember one afternoon, sitting on the ground and weeding, it occurred to me that gardening was like life. I realised how ridiculous such an idea was- gardening isn’t like living, it is life. Isn’t my life whatever I am doing at that moment? Watching Grantchester last night, Sydney’s sermon concluded with “This is our life. Not yesterday or tomorrow, but today. We owe it to ourselves to live it.”

And writing? blogging? Pondering, reading, reflecting … I owe it to myself. In spite of aphids and grasshoppers I will keep on gardening; in spite of disruptions and long interruptions I will keep on.

and maybe I’ll have a friend to help.

I could call this climate change or global warming, but it’s too bloody hot!

November 24, 2014November 24, 2014 / kategresham / 9 Comments

Ah! cool.

Hot. Hot and more hot. It’s only November, although it was only September last year when we had a heatwave and an out of control bushfire raging a few kilometres away. So this year it’s a bit later. Something to be grateful for.

It’s been so hot for days. Can’t sleep, too exhausted to do anything. I’d drive to the beach but I might fall asleep at the wheel.

A local beach.

Yesterday at half past five in the evening it was thirty-seven degrees, that’s almost ninety-nine Fahrenheit; on Friday, in the morning, it was forty-four, that’s one hundred and eleven Fahrenheit. Friday I had an appointment at Forster, a local beachside town and went swimming. The ocean was rough so I bobbled about in the beach pool. Cool, cool, clear water- absolute bliss. I could go today…

No lush garden here yet.

I’m so glad the garden has been delayed. I’d be frantic if we had created our garden beds and done intensive planting. At least I don’t have too many plants to worry about. A friend who has been gardening here for eleven years says the sun is now much hotter and plans to cover all her vegetable garden beds with netting to provide some shade and protection from the heat. Seems ludicrous. We used to aim to get the most sun exposure possible and now we look for some protection for our plants. What will it be like in a few years? Experts agree it’s only going to get hotter.

We would like to have some tanks here. Australia is one of the driest continents (is it the driest?), and our rainfall is less and more scattered. The locals tell me we would need large tanks if they were to be of any use and we lack space. It’s too expensive to put them underground. Strange to think that water may become the commodity wars are fought over.

Last year’s flood. We are a “land of droughts and flooding rains.”

Living in the country I have become much more aware of weather. In the city I would notice if it was very hot or cold. Rain could be a nuisance, but I was less aware of the absence of rain. There’s not so much land around and any parks or gardens can be kept watered. Strong winds can be obvious but even their impact is broken by so many buildings.

Here it’s right in my face. Sometimes I think my body is attuned to the weather. I react emotionally to extremes. Too much hot weather and I turn nasty. Days of strong westerlies and I want to lock myself away in a cupboard. I grieve for the coolness and the refreshing of rain through the dry and the drought. I grieve for the land and the animals. Driving around here through the dry times, and it’s mostly been dry, I sit by the road , near the cattle and I mourn. I mourn for what we have done. I mourn for the future. I mourn for our earth.

And I long for rain. I long for cool. I long for summer storms and cool spring seasons, for autumn crispness.

if only.

Locals tell me that even with good rain the land no longer recovers. It might recover to about 80%; but then there’s another drought and another and another. Each time the land recovers to some extent but never completely, so over time the land has become drier and less resilient, it’s more difficult to grow the food and the pastures.

Karl, who lives up the road a way, tells me that his creek hasn’t run fully for over twenty years and I know that the river I grew up beside is much shallower. In some places where it once flowed fully there are banks and it slows to a trickle. Great swimming holes, but not the wide, free-flowing river it once was.

I listened to an interview with Jackie French, a notable author and conservationist. Her latest book “Let the Land Speak” explores the idea that Australia has been shaped by the land itself, rather than by events. I listened as I drove and I found myself in tears as many callers spoke about their intense love for where they had lived or had grown up.

Part of my valley.

I know that I needed to return to this particular area to be near the country of my heart so this piece of the earth could heal the heartbreaks and the wounds of a life.

I will cherish it and care for it all the days of my life and I will fight for it while I have breath.

Blocked

September 17, 2014 / kategresham / 11 Comments

?????

I feel overwhelmed. Stuck. Blocked. Frustrated. Can’t move forward. Can’t move back. Can’t move sideways. Haven’t been writing, haven’t been to the gym, the “to do” list just keeps on getting longer.

Know that feeling?

I live in a spacious house. All by myself. Large rooms- back deck and front porch; wide, long room downstairs; gracious loungeroom and a huge, sunny family room + kitchen. When my co-housing partner lives here, there will be the grand total of two of us

scary, isn’t it?

But. I can’t settle my work space. Right now I’m camped in the dining room (yes, there’s a dining room as well) – computers set up on the dining table, papers strewn everywhere, books stacked…Angie, my co-housemate suggests the second bedroom is my space and some stuff is in there- left over clothes of mine that don’t fit in my bedroom, a largeish table, full boxes and plastic crates, all my paperwork, stationery…Downstairs is stuffed with furniture- a desk, a workbench, cupboards, bookshelves, books and books and books, filing cabinets, plastic crates full of stuff belonging to both of us, all my parents’ family photos waiting to be sorted, my notes from courses I have run, old letters (of course!), boxes of Angie’s…all waiting to be sorted. There’s no garage, so downstairs is where it’s all at. My stuff, and it is stuff, is scattered in three places. No wonder I keep losing things.

Where do I settle my study? upstairs? second bedroom? downstairs? the dining room? turn the loungeroom into a work space? Where do we put guests?

questions,

I haven’t mentioned the garden. You remember the garden? One of our aims is to be as self sufficient as possible, so the garden is a top priority. Well, here I am, eighteen months later, and I’ve only been playing around the edges. Where will I create the beds? How will I make them? Where do I start? Treated pine edging or colorbond or? If I put a tree there, will it stop the sun? Questions, uncertainty, indecision… and I’m back where I started from, feeling stuck.

By now, you’re probably feeling irritated with me and want to tell me to “stop carrying on , just get on with it!” I’m irritated with me!

However. And there is usually an however. I have watched people talking about how they feel blocked and I have seen that they have solutions. I’ve watched them reject any options or possibilities. For some reason they didn’t want to move forward.

What does this tell me now? That I am refusing solutions? Choosing to stay stuck? Why do I keep rejecting any possible solutions? What am I frightened of?

This is a life lesson, of course. It’s not just in our homes or gardens we get stuck. How many times have you been at a point where you have felt powerless, you can’t make a choice and your life’s been in a holding pattern?

And isn’t it an uncomfortable place to be? No energy, restless, I take to prowling about, unable to settle anywhere. Nothing gets done.

What was I told once? It doesn’t matter where you start, you’ll always get to where you need. Here and now, it doesn’t matter what choice I make. All that matters is to start. It’s my old friend, fear- the fear of making a mistake. What did I learn, many years ago, from Susan Jeffers? To “feel the fear, and do it anyway”. What do I have to lose?

a Spring bouquet to cheer me up.

P.S. If you have an idea about the garden or the house, I’d love to hear it. Think outside the square!

Garden Diary

August 12, 2014 / kategresham / 3 Comments

Yet again, I’m forced to acknowledge that I can’t do everything. Does this mean that yet again I need to let go some things I want to do?

One of my highest priorities is to live simply and sustainably. This includes having a beautiful and productive garden. Gardening is always one of my highest priorities. It grounds and renews me and brings me quiet joy.

a sad plant

A move to a new home and environment? Start the garden! But here I am, more than a year later and the garden is almost untouched . The weeds are still there, old plants cry out for pruning, there’s lots of potting to do, plants I bought last week are languishing, unplanted. And there’s a whole new garden to develop.

Whenever I’m outside I end up feeling disheartened, overwhelmed and frustrated.

What can I do? I can judge myself, become highly critical and end up with no gardening done feeling thoroughly miserable. Or, I can choose to practise self-acceptance and self-compassion with no judgement. To do this I must first accept that I cannot do the impossible; to start this garden from where it is now, is just too big a task for me. So I stop thinking I will.

So here’s what I shall do: I have settled on a plan, after much deliberation; we shall create no-dig gardens, or lasagne gardening; growing on top of the ground by building up layers. This soil is too hard and too degraded to attempt to dig. And to begin with, we shall have beds where there is now lawn, leaving some lawn around each bed.

the beginnings at Tarbuck

I can’t do this. I don’t even make an attempt. It’s too big for me, even if I practise doing it “a bucket at a time. ”

So this week I shall find a gardener who will plant fruit trees and set up the garden beds. I have two sources to go to for information. I’ll ask my same sources if they know where I can buy old railway sleepers for my garden edges. If I can’t get any, then I shall order treated pine. I will talk to the garden suppliers to decide if I will order garden soil and compost at the same time. That will depend on whether I can begin to move it myself, slowly, “a bucket at a time”, to build up the beds. I need the beds started to get me over the first hurdle. Once the beds are in place and some initial layering is done, I’m going to try hay bale gardening. That way, I can start growing some vegetables before the beds are set up fully- I do know that it will take me time to set

a new bed

them up. And as the bales break down they will become part of the process.

You see, this will be my second spring here and still I won’t have sweet peas, poppies, cornflowers, delphiniums, forget-me-nots, lupins, irises, daffodils, jonquils, anemones and all the other joys of a spring garden. For a second year we may not have the pleasure and sheer delight of extravagantly beautiful, fragrant roses; fruit trees take several years to bear fruit. I want to go out to my garden and pick that night’s dinner. For too many years I have not had the things I consider to be essential I don’t have years to wait. Housman talked of having only fifty years left to see the cherry hung with snow. I sure don’t have fifty years.

bluebells in Spring at Tarbuck

What have I learnt? To accept, yet again, that I am not superwoman and I can’t do everything. That I am prone to self-judgement and am still learning to be kind to myself. That I remain a work in progress. That, surprise, surprise, I’m still not perfect.

More prosaically, I realize that I have needed to live here for a time before I could clarify what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. And that plans take time to develop. Patience! There will be enough time! If I live each moment fully, that moment will be enough. When the flowers are blooming, Kathryn, remember to appreciate them. Drink in their beauty, share them, fill your house with them. And always, keep your hands in the earth. It’s the Amish who say that we are closest to God when we have our hands in the soil.

a Spring bouquet

Country Life.

June 8, 2014 / kategresham / 4 Comments

Some of my loot!

I’ve just arrived home from our monthly farmers’ market. It’s a lot of fun, although I always buy much more than one human being could possibly eat. There’s so many yummy fresh vegetables and fruit, home-made jams and pickles, organic meat, seedlings and much more all begging me to take them home and grow them. Chooks and ducks, rabbits… once I was offered a belted Galway calf (oh, the temptation!). For a person who yearns for the large, productive, rambling and beautiful garden, for the paddock with an alpaca or two, a donkey or two, maybe a pretty cow, a dovecote, chooks, ducks, a dam, a creek with a stony bed and maybe platypuses, deciduous trees, an orchard every aromatic herb ever…it’s an endless source of temptation! You get the picture?

(The reality is a yard that is too small for even one alpaca or donkey or cow; there is no dam or creek; the garden is still in the planning stages; maybe there will be chooks; maybe we’ll get a paddock.)

But there’s still the monthly market. I’ve been living here just over a year and so I’m familiar with most of the stallholders. There are the wonderful women from landcare who run the community stall- when I have an excess of produce I will sell it there. I go into the local Landcare office with all my questions and they provide advice with endless patience.

John’s Japanese pumpkin. Isn’t it beautiful?

Then there’s John from Chichester- probably three hours away. He’s a large genial man, dressed in King Gee overalls with a broad grin. He gives me practical advice on saving seeds, on how to grow everything. He’s a country man of several generations so his advice is grounded in what has worked. His produce, like all the others, is picked that morning and will last for weeks. Goes without saying that everything is delicious.

This week I meet a young couple who are pickling the vegetables they grow. They also have some ketchup, some harissa paste, some fermenting- all from their own garden and all organic. They ooze their dedication and love of what they’re doing. I make a note to remember the ketchup for Christmas presents. They also have Jerusalem artichokes and guavas. I have to buy them because my grandmother grew them. As I eat them it will be a chance to remember her.

Jerusalem artichokes and guavas, in memory of my grandmother.

I don’t need fresh macadamia butter or oil from the couple with the macadamia business. The macadamia butter is probably addictive it’s so delicious. And, it’s good for you!

I buy some pecan nuts and make a note to myself: visit Uncle (about an hour away), to gather some pecans for myself. He has so many they fall to the ground, ungathered. Maybe I’ll meet my niece there to talk about bees and bee-keeping. My uncle lives on my grandparents’ farm and my grandfather kept bees. My niece who is experimenting with dried honey products, wants to see her great-grandfather’s bee hives and talk about bees.

I’m glad to see the family with the local, organic oranges is back. It’s orange season and these are sweet and juicy. Almost as good as the ones were on my father’s orange trees.

I meet my neighbours and we have a coffee. I’ve talked to everyone and had a wonderful time. Once again I relish the sense of well-being from that comes from the simplicity of life in the country. And I’m grateful.

An Ordinary Day

May 20, 2014 / kategresham / Leave a comment

Well, maybe not so ordinary. I’ve just spent almost three weeks relieving in a local school library, and when I work all my routines go out the window. All I do is go to work, come home and get ready for the next day. So now I’ve finished that block I’m focused on writing, publishing some posts, exercising, practicing mindfulness… AND tidying, cleaning, vacuuming, gardening… catching up on long overdue paperwork….

You get the idea. I had breakfast sitting in the sun on the front verandah, making lists, with all my different colured textas and pens. Arrows, asterisks, underlinings, highlightings….What would be the best use of my time? How can I make sure I get the most important things done? What are the priorities?

Eventually I decide that I’ll feel best if my home is clean and tidy; chaos is unsettling and clean floors are a pleasure. Somehow, deciding this gives me permission to just get on and stop worrying about wasting time.

the calm of clouds in a blue sky.

It’s a beautiful day. Sunny, warm, still, blue; small clouds decorate the sky. This town is set in a ring of hills, but not buried in a valley. It has the best skyscapes and since I’ve been here I keep driving out of town to take sky photos.

There’s washing on the line. I’ve finally planted the struggling peppermint geranium cutting – it may still survive. It’s been sitting in water on the window sill for?? weeks? months? and I’ve kept promising myself that I’ll plant it today, but then, there’s always those priorities… But now, it’s planted!

the pleasure of washing, drying in the sun.

I’ve sprayed the aphids on the roses with soapy water. And I’ve sat in the sun drinking cups of tea, chatting with my neighbours. I confess, I’ve also spent some time gazing at the sky, watching birds, checking out the way the gum looks against the blue of the sky… in other words, daydreaming and simply being glad I’m alive.

The vacuuming isn’t done, nor is the house tidy but I feel relaxed and happy. Of course the question still remains: how do I manage to do what needs to be done and also those things that are the most important? I read other writers who juggle the demands of caring for a child while earning a living as full-time writers. I am in awe of their discipline. I’ve recently read a TED blog about a woman who was bed-ridden with chronic pain and chose to work as a TED translator during that time. There are plenty of role models of people who achieve in spite of the odds.

A pretty end to a pretty day.

But today, I will revel in my freedom.

My garden diary.

February 23, 2014 / kategresham / 1 Comment

The beginnings before the drought hit.

the drought hits.

My first garden post! Yay! It’s one of our aims is to be as self-sufficient as we can, so the garden is a high priority. Besides, I love gardening, it feeds my soul.

But making any garden here needs hard work, time and patience and then more hard work and more hard work. It’s easy to get overwhelmed:

We’ve had drought and extreme heat for many months. Around the town even well-established plants have been dying. I’ve been glad I haven’t starting planting, especially since water restrictions came in.

There’s the old bones of a garden that was planted thirty plus years ago when the house was built. So there are old and tired hydrangeas, clumps of agapanthus and straggly daisies, all struggling and clinging to life. The previous owners were not gardeners so it’s long neglected. Needs a lot of loving!

But, the big obstacles, apart from the weather, are the way the garden was set up.

Strong black plastic was put over all the beds to kill the weeds. It killed the weeds but also cooked any living organism in the soil. The plastic’s now tangled in the roots of the old plants. I don’t know how we’ll get rid of it.

In many places, someone has spread gravel over the plastic on the bed and on the few plastic-free beds, thickly. So the soil is full of gravel. Getting the picture?

But that’s not all. The next- door garden is even older and more neglected than this one. It has had a big area of the backyard cultivated, I’d guess, for vegies. It’s become a wonderful place for sticky beaks (farmer’s friends) to flourish. They are such splendid seed spreaders this garden has its own crop. Pull them out then the crop next-door seeds and we are re-infested.

I don’t mean to complain, but rather to set the scene so you can picture the garden and share its progress. I’ve had time to watch sun and shade and get some ideas about where to plant. I can see abundance in my mind- flowers, herbs, vegies, fruit trees…a pond for frogs, birds…why have lawn?

Emma Goldman said” I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds round my neck.” Happiness is going out picking what you need for the meal and the flowers for the table.

The other evening, hand watering some pot plants, the gift of

one, small, perfect, green frog.