Sunrise

On the beach, at dawn:
Four small stones clearly
Hugging each other.

How many kinds of love
Might there be in the world,
And how many formations might they make

And who am I ever
To imagine I could know
Such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke
It poured willingly its light
Over the stones

That did not move, not at all,
Just as, to its always generous term,
It shed its light on me,

My own body that loves,
Equally, to hug another body.
Mary Oliver

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13 years

Beloved daughter mine
Like wildfire your first breath ignited my mama ness
Like wildflowers you blossom without shy boundaries or pruning
Like sunrise you bravely wake to each new day
Like joy unbound I cherish you and pray you keep growing strong and kind
Beloved daughter mine

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Taking Stock

Making :commitments to myself 

Cooking : wontons in bone broth

Drinking : nettle, sage and yarrow tea

Reading: knitting patterns and blogs about knitting, Kingdom of Kammebornia,  hello cool weather handcrafts

Wanting: to have as many arms as Durga so I can do all my tasks at once, and hug my family, garden and still knit…

Looking: at the tree line against the incredible blue sky, at what grows when you give

Playing: Harmonium, piano, accordian, Set, Chinese checkers

Wasting: energy worrying about all that I shall not accomplish today. I shall stop now.

Sewing: a quilt very slowly but I better hurry up for the birthday

Wishing: I had a few more me’s or a few less interests!

Enjoying: expanding  out into the world, being employed in an area I totally love and get to use and share skills my family don’t request from me. Knowing I’m going away to see my family really soon!

Waiting: for seeds to sprout, ideas to bloom, kettle to boil, to let go

Liking: that I am learning, yes I am, to go at my own pace a bit more!

Wondering: if I can just keep on nurturing that second of time before habitual response, that allows me to look below words to the unmet needs of another instead of taking things so personally

Loving: laying on the ground, half in the gentler sun of the season, feeling supported

Hoping:it will rain, my children will grow through to adulthood with good inner and outer health

Marvelling: at Cedar riding a bike so happily and strongly suddenly!

Wishing: for some tips on what I could do, see, eat and hear when I go to Melbourne solo soon!

Needing: continuity, rain, sea, to express myself, camping, fire, flowers

Smelling: geranium oil, sawdust, sunshine

Wearing: a gift from my mama

Following:  my nose to the blossoming tamarillo tree! Wow .

Noticing: the changing light, the cosy nights, a tall adolescent, 

Knowing: this too shall pass.

Thinking: I’m ready for all this change

Feeling: encouraged

Bookmarking: poetry by Timothy McLaughlin

Opening: my eyes before the sun

Giggling: with a beautiful bearded fellow

Feeling: grateful, anticipation, loss, tolerance


Thanks to Pip over at Meet me at Mike for the taking stock inspiration.

The Apple Shed ( Willie Smith And Sons)

A story from a while ago but such great photos.

I had to celebrate the apple isle Tasmania yet again, especially as we are flush with our northern NSW apples now.

It’s all about baked apples (recipe below) and apple crumble at our house right now.

Just out of Huonville lies the recently renovated Apple Shed and museum

Surrounded by the extensive organic Willie Smith apple orchards.

It’s a great old shed converted into cafe, bar, museum and brewery.

I am very fond of industrial building conversions.

In the wood grain is the echoes of clashing machines and chatter and shouts, dust, busy-ness, productivity and apple perfume.

   
   
The great Apple wall had us captivated with such a quantity of names! Quite poetic really.

   
    
 The old sorting and packing relics are beautifully preserved, I particularly liked the sorting bench with the different sized holes for apples to drop through and land in soft hessian baskets.

   
  

It’s fabulous getting around with someone who knows so much!  
    
    
   
When we got home, Keith’s home made apple pie was yummier than theirs…. 

 

Baked Apples x 8

8 large apples cored and with a belt line scored around their tummy

Almonds up to 16 of them

1/4 cup each of

Desiccated coconut

And

Almond meal
Mixed with 

2 tablespoons rapadura sugar 

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix dry things with about

 1/4 cup of melted butter

To get a stiff pasty mix

Plug the bottom of each cored apple with an almond or two

and line them up in a baking dish

Stuff with your yummy mixture and bake for about 1/2 an hour at 180’c

Or Until You can’t wait any longer! You could always make more as they are delicious cold the next day, put in the lunch boxes.

Enjoy x

Roselinde

Mama love x

  
Dear Mama dear Mother dear Mum

My Mother my first companion
Mother my dearest friend

Mother feet ever walking 

Steady footsteps heartbeat of your journey

Mother of my heart

Mother of my soul

You have given me love and life to make me whole

Mother hands I see always strong and tender

Making strumming playing planting carrying loving curing weaving healing winding spinning soothing calling calming

Mama makes life and soft wool to shawl it in

Mama is there and here and listening and singing

Mother is mama mamala mum music

Patient boulder of kindness

Trustful quiet tide

Love as simple as the sky

Tolerant as the stones on the shore

Strong and brave as the storm winds 

Gentle as the birds flight

Musical soundtrack of my childhood 

Quirky and generous uniquely you

Mother of my heart mother of my soul

You have given me love and life to make me whole

My world is a beautiful place with you in it x


 

 a first day. surprising happiness.

The first day of both children at school spanning before me And I don’t have to drive the 50km round trip, and I fulfilled my promise I would swim in the river and then be home all day and read in bed in the morning and try to nap and refill after staying awake way too often since we returned from Tasmania, unable to unwind with all the transition and change and shifting happening in and around me at this time. Life is looking so different and I’m facing such new possibilities and being pushed towards things I never thought I wanted and here I am home alone for hours. 3.5 more self directed hours. I promised myself a day of following my whims and going gently towards what I wished to  while also planning to taking care of a couple of  household needs and making some dinner too so I could Just  hang out with the children when they return and you know do some washing and mow some grass and vaccumn and maybe have a good long talk with my mama And talk about parenting the adolescent  And wonder what the new phase brings and what shall I do now, just like so many parents around the country this week who choose school for their kids and have sent off their littlest one, hopefully I will cherish a few moments in between productivity and work to just be me and feel so grateful for this day,

and then without planning it, I had a surprising  piece of fun when I followed a lesson from great storytelling teacher Justus Neumann at the Tasmanian circus festival and allowed the words to bubble out spontaneously and fast and follow them without a thought and write them down, instead of listening to them babble on while I wanted to nap and there, in it, was the sweetest reminder of how fun it is for me to write and play with words and see what untamed combinations of verbs want to play with me without fear and inhibition, And the effervescent chuckles that land on my tongue when I’m really having some of the quiet wordy solo type of fun and how balanced I feel and contented afterwards.

So here is my fun, lightly edited as computers come up with the most profoundly amusing types of word suggests when you type so fast ones keypad can no longer spell, spell checked and not for judgement, just for fun and to share a bit of my fun because not everyone’s fun looks the same but maybe my fun will connect to your fun or maybe your fun will respond to my fun or maybe not but you’ll think about fun and what you’ve done just for fun just for You todayand maybe I will hold this reminder of fun as what brings me a slice of happiness pie. Fun!

I began with a phrase I’d created spontaneously in the workshop with Justus. By the way Tassi Circus Festival was really fun! More another day!

  

The child blew away, the child blew away that day

 And left Behind was a husk of crisp leaves and stick and stones and dry earth bones and the query of where in the sky do you go when you die as who you used to know

When the wind blows and blows and you want to go go go go go

up there it was so blue 

Blue blue Blue Azure cerulean heraldic blue

Like an eye like the depth of a lovers eye where you can melt and join and drift and rise lightly like A balloon set free from a small fist without a cry

The child blew away and I was the child too and I lifted up into the sky and was immaculately free

To be me and to see with such vast all seeing eyes what had been revealed just for my sight 

That inside, the child had blown away and without her I was a dry crispy husk of leaves and dry parched earthen bones and that

With only stones I was no fun and that my joy to live and caress life with my gift of creativity and sight had left me high and dry

Like a ship with no sails and only seagulls on the gunwales and seagulls are not patient by nature and squawk like a nagging sagging fish wife and that was what a slice had become of my precious life when. I let my child blow away, always it was a contrast of being freed and being me and being dreamy and high but I was left with only the fishwife who knew not what it was to be light and blow with life and find the heart in all matters and people fun and to be poked and poke fun and revel in the disturbances of living and think of more than . Which fish needs to be scaled or which mountain needs to be nailed or which duty needs to be mailed

Because the joy and the flight was up up up in the blue blue blue and the child was where the happiness flew and the child needed the big child that was Me to hold her hand and . Guide her across the land of living and being me but she so needed it also to be one of the many faces to see to have fun you see you see to have fun like a child unaware like a child without a care like a child who is truly there present truly there in the moment and not thinking if she’ll be liked or lied to but just there in the moment to be and have fun freely and be safely held and sheltered and trust the wind

And so when we blew away it wasn’t whinging id left my shoes at home, it was with the beautiful trust that I as mother was there holding the string that joined my soul to the earth and in my great knowing pocket was everything i ever needed to fly.

Roselinde

PS what are you doing for fun?

Spookiest to the punctuation prefects. (Read; Apologies, see isn’t it fun what the computer auto suggests…)