all grown up now

There have been some strange sounds coming from the chicken coop these last few days.
Sounds that have been almost forgotten over the winter....long unheard cries and *begurks*....

Our babies are evidently splendid in their feathery dress but certainly babies no more.
And they are really no longer the new girls either.
They have spent this winter in the big coop with the others... our Henrietta and Harriet.
It was touch and go at first but nothing a little night time perch shuffling by me and some days armed with cubed cheese and apple couldn't do to persuade them all to be friends.

And so with not being babies anymore and not being the new girls anymore must come, sooner or later, strange sounds from the chicken coop which can mean nothing else but eggs.....yep eggs. And their laying has prompted the old girls into laying a few too.

I have to admit that together with our excitement there were just one or two little mutters of "about time" .... you see these pure bred girls are a bit precious, especially about laying eggs when the weather is a tad cool....but for all their prettiness we surely forgive them.

And after all we still do really love eggs here...

and the fact we can expect lots more over the Spring now that Prudence and Emmeline are all grown up.

beautiful minds

I wonder can you imagine what it would be like to have a mind so vast and so incredibly open, active and eternally curious? A mind that was so completely compelled to theorise, create and invent?
I recently was lucky to spend some time admiring the machines crafted by Leonardo Da Vinci who's greatness seems matched only by his own benevolent beauty. Did you know he was a vegetarian?

I took pleasure in playing with friction, testing inertia, lifting weights and building a replica bridge that I must admit had me a little stuck momentarily despite having the larger version there to copy from.

I also stood in wonder as I faced *just some* of the results of this man's constant thinking and problem solving. The questions that must have rolled through his mind in a never ending stream... How does it? Why does it? How can I? What if I? What is it?

It truly excites me when I am reminded of such artists, thinkers, observers and creators as Da Vinci....though I think there are few if any that compare to our Italian friend, but nevertheless all messengers of something much bigger perhaps. The world is lucky to have them....just to remind us of how great the human mind can be and how much more we are capable of. It is beautiful don't you think?

Whose mind amazes you?

Here are a few that send me floating....

Daniel Tammet

Kim Peak

Andy Goldsworthy here and here

Stephen Wiltshire

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor who through personal and ironic experience made an amazing discovery about the brain...and happens to be an incredible public speaker. She brings a tear to my eye every time.

a nibble

With kind Winter weather and a mountain of *stuff* over shoulders and in beach bags we recently snuck an early nibble of Spring.

We waited and watched to see which waves would knock down our sandcastles.

We ate a sandy picnic lunch in the dunes.

We climbed and we ran.

We spied pigface and beach daisies and dune grass.

We dug in the sand and bared bones long covered by cool weather clothes.

And we looked forward to taking more great bites of the same with Springs true arrival....soon.

the wild things

I am loving the wild things right now.

Having been away unexpectedly from my garden and it's *space* for most of the winter it has, just a little, taken on some extra life of it's own....in a fantastically free kind of way.

There is not so much order or discipline in it's growing. And I am loving that too... it's wild abundance, it's desire and search for survival and bold liberation.
Instead I am noticing and smiling at the lettuce (and mint) popping up in the lawn....and in the gravel...

The wild rocket, aptly named, that insists on it's ownership of a bed which is also sprouting a second sowing of sweet baby snow peas...

The same wild rocket that also insists on embracing my garlic and shallots...

I spy wild organic cherry cherise tomatoes making a home out of the side of the compost bin and in a corner by the fence.
I see they are kindly accompanying, or perhaps beckoning home, some large green trails of lush nasturtiums that seem to think the grass is surely greener on the other side.


I remember my lessons in passionfruit... and think it seems maybe patience is also a lesson learnt. I am grateful it is indeed fruiting now together with caressing, clinging and re clinging to a tree that it has a preference for over it's own rather large and long trellis. I adore the search among it's wild leafiness and curling tendrils for it's round jewels.


I am watching...
still more banana's on the way
masses of papaya hanging heavily from the trees
a peach that I know should start to produce next season
kale, kale and more kale
flower buds appearing on my blood orange and lemon trees
spent snow pea crops (with a satisfied belly)
awaited pineapples, baby olives, avocado's, apples and more guava's in Summer
all wildly interspersed with herbs.....and the lettuce of course!

My eyes are also feasting on the rainbow chard and the masses of the deepest purple beetroot leaves that are right now providing the wildest splashes of colour...not to be wildly missed of course because the chard is always eaten, by chickens, guinea pigs and people almost as fast as it is sown and grown.


And while noticing, watching, remembering and loving all this wildness, abundance and colour... as the bougainvillea too stretches up through the branches of the poinciana tree above us and lazily drapes outside the other fence lining our space....


I love that when I am outside admiring it's flowers I can also spy....back in through the palings.... just as much wildness and freedom sharing this space....in the people that live here....

and our neighbourhood friends that like to come and play with us here amongst our wild things....