Sunday photos: Morning

The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.  ~Jean Kerr, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, 1957

***

I (Alexandra) actually love the morning. If I’m not up by 7 I feel like I’ve lost the best part of the day.

***

I (Sincerely, Emily) enjoy being outside in the morning. Things just seem a bit more quiet and tranquil at that time of day (and also a lot cooler which makes it more enjoyable if I am working out there!)

***

What do you love about morning?

Read Full Post »

Time – the concept (or lack there of!)

I really liked the theme of our Sunday Photo post this past Sunday – Time!  I am all over the board when it comes to all things “time.”  If I have a meeting or appointment, I am an on-time kind of gal. Arriving somewhere 5 minutes early is quite late for me. While I still am on time for those things, I am here and there and everywhere on so many other time-related things.

Starting more aloe plants for swapping

I am a potterer (is that a word?) I potter around, in that aimless way (sort of). There is a method to my madness most of the time, but I do get distracted easily and find myself working on something completely different than the task I started on initially. I get things done (for the most part.) So many things are on the big “list of things to do”  and I will chip away at it. Some of the projects I can do quickly, others are ongoing and just take time. Heck, everything since January takes a lot more time than it used to. That alone is a new concept in and of itself.

I am a list maker. Always have been, although the older I get the more important it is. I was one of those people that used to remember all the details like phone numbers and little tidbits. I had several jobs working phones. One was a switchboard with 10 incoming lines for a international music company where I knew most of the extensions to everyone in the building. I can’t remember how many employees there were, but I’ll take a guess it was more than 300. I also worked on a switchboard after-hours at a medical clinic where patients would call in to get a hold of the on-call doctor.

Getting back to how this all relates to the concept of time…. Somewhere in my 30’s I decided that if I had this stuff written down somewhere I wouldn’t have to remember it, clearing up all that brain power for other things! I find that with all the changes and advancements in technology I barely know anyone’s phone number at all anymore. they are all in that little Rolodex called a cell phone!

Some days time just flies by, other days it really seems like the day is longer. Not dragging on, just longer and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how much I get done or even how much energy that I have. Before I know it, it is the end of September. Some days are still go go go, and others I can just get lost in what I am doing. Taking plant cuttings and potting them up, starting seeds, planting things, or working on a sewing project or making cards.

Where does the time go? It is filed into the memory banks of our mind I guess.

How do you manage your time?

Sincerely, Emily

Read Full Post »

Rambling through the equinox

On days like this I wonder why we greet the first day of spring with such glee, yet dismiss fall’s first day as just the awful downturn into winter. The spring equinox is muddy, cold, and grey and the trees have no leaves; fall is brighter and warmer, green and gold and full of food and life. It is the second harvest (the first is Lammas in early August) and the promise of a healthy winter. At Spring the stores are low, at Autumn they are bursting– I’m running out of shelf space.

By common law tradition, the autumn equinox is a “quarter day”– Michaelmas or the feast of the angels, a time for fairs, marriages and pay day.

I sit here writing this at approximately the moment of Equinox (and by the way, when did we start thinking of the Equinox as a “moment”), looking at the astonishing blue of the sky and the clarity of the light. There is nothing like the clear intensity of light on a cool autumn day.

I run my hands through the beans drying on the counter, loving the gentle music they make. The rattling of beans on the vine is one of those sure signs of autumn. Every year I face the dilemma– mix all the varieties together, or separate them? This year I’ll separate by color only- reds in one jar, whites in another. I grew Christmas Limas for seed for Peterson Garden Project; they’re all supposed to go to next year’s garden, but I think I’m going to need to siphon off a half cup to cook (for science, ahem). Plus 25 to grow in my own garden. The rest will go back into the project (pinky swear).

It was such a Sconeday— crisp and still– so I made scones– a rolled raspberry version made with half white and half oat flour. It seemed appropriate to use the last of summer’s raspberries, frozen since July, for the first day of autumn. I flavored them for the memory of summer-with orange zest, orange extract and coriander, and glazed with a little bit of peach preserve left over from the peach syrup I made a few weeks ago.

The afternoon will be spent transplanting two small caryopteris bushes to a sunnier spot in a friend’s yard, where I think they’ll thrive better than in the shady spots they inhabit here. She’ll get some divided white iris and phlox as well. I’ve run out room to divide in my own yard, and can’t bear to just toss them. The weather is slated to warm up later in the week, the perfect transplanting formula.

I’ll walk to the lake, as always, towards the end of the day, to honor the horizon and to hear the sound of angels’ wings that is the waves rolling onto the beach.

Read Full Post »

Sunday photos: Time

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  -Mother Theresa

***

Time is the wait: for the baby to be born, for the bean to sprout, for the bread to rise, for the day to end. (Alexandra)

***

Time is a funny thing, although it isn’t really a “thing” is it? This year, I (Sincerely, Emily) have spent a lot of time waiting, a little time doing, yet still creating more memories. Time can pass quickly and it can come to a screeching halt. Time to relax!

Time to relax

***

Read Full Post »

Swap and barter without money (July 2013)

I went to my first swap this past April. I had heard of swaps but didn’t find one in my area until a friend found this one on a MeetUp page and told me about it.

Swap July 2013

The organizer set up a few guidelines and the rest is history. She holds it once a month.

There were a few guidelines to follow:

• No money was allowed – this is all about the trade and bartering with what you have for what you want/need.
• Items should be sustainably-minded. Something you have grown in your garden, something you conned/cooked/brewed/baked/preserved/dried, etc. Something your animals made (goat milk, hen eggs, lamb wool, etc.) Something you sewed/knitted/re-purposed, etc. Items to do with sustainable interests are also good (Mother Earth News magazines, cookbooks, cooking/camping gear, etc)
• The items you should leave at home: this is not a garage sale, items should be about sustainability. Leave the knick-knacks at home.

Once we set up, we were allowed 15 minutes to walk around and check out the items other people brought so we could see what we were interested in.

Lemon pickles, Dill pickles, Homemade Teriyaki sauce

Each month I have been posting about the swap over on my personal blog. About a month ago I realized that I hadn’t posted about the July swap and I thought it would be a good topic to post here. I have known the swap and barter system is out there and alive, and I realize that there may be others out there that are interested, but don’t know were to look or even how to get started.

Here are the other swap posts I have done”

• Swap and barter without money (May 2013)
• Swap and barter without money (June 2013)
• Swap and barter without money (August 2013
• Swap and barter without money (September 2013)

Here are a few places to look to find swaps in your area: Note: I will add additional information to this post as I find it or as people comment. (updated 19 Sept 2013)

• MeetUp
• Food Swap Network
• The Hip Girls Guide to homemaking
• Mile High Swappers (Colorado)
• Article in Grist magazine about swapping (April 2012)
• Backyard Barter (Seattle, Washington area)

Would you go to a swap if you had one in your area?
Are you participating in a swap in your area?

Please use the comments to let others know about how to find a swap. If you out there participating in a swap, please comment with the general area you are in and add a link to the swap information.

Sincerely, Emily

Read Full Post »

City girl in the garden

I’m from four generations of city dwellers, a rarity. Not a farmer among us. Despite having eventually landed on the central Illinois prairie, we can trace our soil-free urban ancestry back to the 1840s, on both sides, in a family stretching from Stockholm to Dublin to Piraeus.

So how does a city girl come at gardening? Not honestly– my mother once hired a landscaper who was into pine trees. Fortunately we couldn’t afford the 14 firs he wanted to put in on our quarter acre (which we didn’t know at the time get 100 feet tall). Cooler heads prevailed and we ended up with a gorgeous 8-foot tall hedge of mixed flowering shrubs and two decks enclosed by small trees and low bushes. I don’t think that woman ever planted a flower in her life.

So— flowers or vegetables? Flowers are pretty, but when I started I kept putting the floppy ones in the back, where they fell over on the ones that didn’t bloom until fall, except the floppy ones had deprived them of sun so they died. Annuals are pretty— they bloom for months! How hard can it be to plant 20 flats? Every year? I know! Prairie natives. Let’s put some Queen Anne’s Lace here, and some wild phlox, and how about mint! And loosestrife. Now, how do I get rid of it…

We started vegetables slowly and safely— tomatoes. When that went well, we tried green peppers, and then of course we needed oregano. How about salad? Beans and peas and carrots. Now I had to stop planting flats of annuals and get serious about a perennial garden, because there are only so many hours in the day. Before we knew it we were growing 6 months worth of vegetables, but had only 3 months worth of storage space.

It only took twenty years, but I think I have it figured it out— flower border, herb plot, patio, vegetables. The flowers are hard to start, but then they take care of themselves. The vegetables are easy to start, but need care all season. The herbs just deal.

originally published on the Mahlzeit blog, 7/26/2009

Read Full Post »

Plains

Hi All,

When I found out that this week was where we would get to explore the concept of “plains” I had a lot of trouble finding images to support my post. Serendipity Farm, and indeed Tasmania, isn’t flat. It’s hilly at the least and downright mountainous at the worst but flat plains are significant by the absence in our neck of the woods. I managed to find 2 photos that Steve and I took on our daily walks with our dogs Bezial and Earl. The first is of a dirt road that we decided to explore one day as a most welcome variation to our usual well pounded walkways and the second is of Auld Kirk Road, the road that runs along the front of our property…

The dogs love walking on country roads

The road that runs past Serendipity Farm

I then had to renegotiate “plain” in my head…from this point in the post on, plain isn’t quite to do with level areas of the earths surface…this first image is of one of the lawned areas around the house. This is a gorgeous little native Tasmanian “Superb Fairy Wren” male who was dancing about looking for insects…he is just “plain showing off”…

Pretty little wren on the lawn

Next I wanted to share this little rainwater tank that a good friend loaned us because he insisted that we needed to be drinking rain water for our health…lots of level surfaces here and just “plain generous”…

Lots of straight lines but not a lot of plains…

As a vegan I eat some strange and unusual foods in order to make sure that I get enough variation in my diet and I found this packet of shrivelled green things in one of my cupboards…all I can say is thank goodness for “plain English!”…

Seaweed!

A vegan meal that goes to show that just because I only eat plant based food doesn’t mean I have to go without…just “plain stubborn” when it comes to ensuring that I get fed well I guess…

Burger anyone?

When Steve moved to Australia from the U.K. his Greek friend Chris gave him this Greek eye because he was “plain superstitious”…

A Greek superstition called Mati where this eye is placed at your door to prevent the envy of others from cursing you

My daughters bought me a lovely friand pan along with lots of other lovely foodie goodies this year for mothers day, they are just “plain wonderful”. Here are some of the first batch of friand’s that I made with it and I made my own almond flour to make them…

Delicious dense little almond meal friand

Here is proof that Steve is just “plain clever” when it comes to sorting out the problems that I hurl at him. I don’t use this little gas stovetop in winter as Brunhilda, our 4 oven wood burning stove is constantly on and we have no need for it so to give me a bit more bench top space Steve designed this stovetop cover

Steve’s clever fix for my desire to have more bench space

Steve picked this bunch of daffodils from the garden here on Serendipity Farm. They are just “plain beautiful”…

I love daffodils, they are the first sign of spring on Serendipity Farm and are out all over the place at the moment

I hate having to throw away perfectly good sourdough starter that is excess to our needs and so I started drying it out in my dehydrator and powdering it to give it a longer shelf life and to share with anyone who would like some…”plain frugality”…

I am very proud to be living a frugal lifestyle

Here are some of the mushrooms that we let grow in our bags of mushroom compost that we bought to use as mulch in our vegetable garden last year. If you are clever (and we are) you can get lots more mushrooms out of these bags. We collected an incredible amount of free mushrooms before it was tipped out and used as mulch…”plain permaculture in action”…

Little button mushrooms. If you leave them a week they end up to be the size of saucers

Lastly here is one of Steve and my cakey creations made with homemade sponge cakes with our free range eggs this one is just “plain delicious”…

Anyone for cake?

See you all next Monday. No idea what I will be posting about but you can be sure it won’t be “normal” 😉

Read Full Post »

Landscapes: Plains

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.”
Henry David Thoreau

***

Serendipity Farm is almost devoid of plains. Plains are not something that we get to see a lot of here in Tasmania. I struggled to find a few photos of “plains”. I then remembered that “plain” means more than one thing! I want to share someone here who is just “plain old comfortable”…

Bezial found a sunbeam

And here is one of the bush tracks within an hour of Serendipity Farm that we can head off to whenever we get bored of our regular dog walking tracks…it’s just “plain gorgeous”…

Cool Temperate Sclerophyll Forest track in Northern Tasmania

***

I (Sincerely, Emily) and in the same boat with Fran (figuratively speaking of course.) No open plains or prairies with beautifully dancing grasses. Just plain life happening around here.

A plain view of dinner (not quite a landscape, is it?)

getting ready for a plant sale as part of the local garden club I belong to.

Need to keep an eye on that deer in the left of the photo! She will come and munch on everything

I want to say “just plain life,” but my life is anything but plain. There is a lot of “not dabbling in normal” around here.

***

The plains are my (Alexandra) landscape. Although I spent my childhood in the rocky passages of Pennsylvania, my heart belongs to the prairie. My brother has an eye for its beauty:

photo: (c) Andrew Paul Nelson 2013

Do you have great views of plains in your area?

Read Full Post »

Cry me a river (gotta get that “river” in there)

This past Sunday we focused our Sunday Photos post on “rivers.” South Texas has been getting some spotty showers. Don’t get me wrong, every drop helps, but I have nothing to contribute about rivers at this point. In the beginning, I had even titled this post “This has nothing to do with rivers.”

Oh, sure, I can show you what the neighborhood dry creek beds looked like on Memorial Day weekend this year. That was great! It is just frustrating to not get much rain at all. Heat, Hot, Humid. Yuck. That is summer here (for me at least) and come this time of year I am more than ready for it to me over over OVER. This is also the time of year I talk about giving up trying to start a garden in the spring. I know it will start to cool off at some point. Hopefully I will feel better when that happens and I will get excited about starting the fall garden (at my own pace!)

scented geranium ready to selling at the jubilee this weekend.

This week I have a lot going on. The local garden club, that I am a part of, participates in the annual jubilee in our town. We sell plants that each member donates, and I donate a lot of plants that I have nursed a long throughout the summer. This year I also have made up 2 of the planters that are for the raffle. The deer, possums, and racoons have been less than helpful over the past month and a half. I go out and find the majority of the pots nibbled down to nothing or plain old dug up. I’ll tell ya, it is hard to get a nice pot of succulents or greenery looking at its best in order to sell raffle tickets with those kinds of set-backs.

You know when you really want to cry but all you can do is laugh… that was me. Finally decided to bring the raffle planters inside each night. What a pain!

During all this, I took the plunge and bought a brand new laptop, complete with Windows 8. I was working my way through the Windows 8 part but the laptop started acting up. Looping on start-up, getting stuck. After days and days and hours each day talking to technical support the laptop just up and died. DIED! (this is #1 in this chain of technological events!)

You would think that would be enough. Nope. Then my cell phone died. Died! Dang it, that is #2 in this string of events.

My brother helped to calm me down and get me set up with a new phone. Oh, let’s make that a challenge too! I now am the proud new owner of an iPhone 4 (I don’t feel smart yet!) right in the middle of the week with so much going on. I am working through figuring out some stuff. Just working through why I couldn’t hear any calls on the phone or head set was downright frustrating… until I figured out I just needed to take off the plastic protect bit on the front of the phone. Oh, that is so much better. The fun part about the phone is that it has a Wisconsin area code, so I am just telling people that I moved to Wisconsin and got a new phone. Maybe I will get some peace and quiet for a while. haI’d like to say it has just been one of those weeks, but in reality it has been 2+ of those weeks. To top it off, my brand new iPhone slid off the car seat and into my nice tall tumbler of water yesterday. YUP! Can you believe that? The next call was to my brother to ask if I had insurance on the phone (no, I don’t!) but it is still working. and Yes, I did put in a bag of rice.

After writing this all out I figured out a better title to this post, so I changed it. No tears have been shed, but things sure have been frustrating. I will tell you that it was nice and quiet around here for a few days without a computer or cell phone. Technology is sure nice when it works, just super frustrating when it doesn’t!

Somebody must be trying to tell me something…. I am a bit slow sometimes and I haven’t figured out what it is yet.

How has your week been turning out?

Sincerely, Emily

Read Full Post »

Shanksville

What strikes one first about the site of the crash of Flight 93 is how remote it is. A reasonable drive from Pittsburgh, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., set among forested hills full of resorts and towns, the plane came down in the open fields of a former surface mine, safely removed from habitation.

Unless, as has been speculated, they were shot down where they would do the least damage, the hand of the god is the only explanation. The minute luck that planted them here, where only those on the plane could be hurt, is almost impossible to grasp.

Unlike nearby Gettysburg, where centuries of rain and sun, where replanting and plowing and growing have put the ghosts to rest, they still drift on the breeze in Shanksville.

I was there on a rainy weekday- perhaps 10 people were there. Prayer felt difficult, but I recited a psalm, and the kaddish, and yes, a Muslim prayer as well, inscribed on a scrap phonetically. I placed a pebble on the end of the monument (wondering why there were no pebbles there but mine), to mourn the suffering of the world that was highlighted by this terrible act, and to honor the terrible bravery of the passengers and crew who died.

Read Full Post »