Grief is a wiley bastard. You think you’ve tamed him. Taught him to walk by your side. Then he lunges at you in the hallway and the photo that you walk past a dozen times a day draws tears. Your loss is new again and you realise that you haven’t tamed him at all. Yesterday, I walked past this photo carrying a laundry basket of clothes that needed folding and it cut me anew. How is it possible ...
Gardening
show day
It started like any other show day. Bearhands went to work early. The girls had dippy eggs for breakfast and were still in the pyjamas at nine. After lunch we headed up the hill to the show. I didn't enter anything this year, but the Big Sister's school had submitted some entries as part of a display dedicated to the ANZAC centenary. The Big Sister's drawing was awarded Highly ...
beef and beer stew with parsley dumplings | the good, the yum & the ugly
Before our first date, Bearhands and his brother Craig sat on the back deck of their house, had a beer and made a checklist of qualities I would have to possess to be qualified for the vacant girlfriend position. The list was extensive but three items stand out in my mind: must eat meat. must drink beer. must have brothers. I, of course, was blissfully unaware of the existence of ...
bake it off
So yesterday wasn't wonderful. Our farm website was hacked, my back is playing up and the Big Sister's butterfly project wasn't coming out as hoped. Then I asked myself, if Taylor Swift were a thirty-six year old mother of two, with a crook back, a hacked website and a Lepidoptera assignment due, what would she do? Hackers broke my site, can’t think of what to write It's been quite a ...
run it up the flagpole (and other things I’m wrong about)
If I wrote a list of all the things I'm wrong about we'd still be here next Tuesday, so in the interest of brevity I'll limit this to things I discovered I was wrong about on Saturday morning. Bearhands is always working on a project. Normally the process goes something like this: Bearhands: (enthusiastically) We should have a nine metre flagpole in the hedge garden. Me: (skeptically) ...
roasted vegetable soup
The thing about farm life is you never know what the day will bring. You can spend your morning decluttering the house, with the intention of spending the afternoon picking grubs off the veggie garden and writing about soup, only to find that your to-do list has changed. Yesterday afternoon I found myself of the harvester instead of at the computer. So I’ll make this quick. I made some ...