Mirror mirror on the wall

Reflection and perception are funny things. 

I have this mirror in our new house. It was left behind by a tenant and it has remained there as the only bathroom mirror. Using it the first few times I was frustrated  as it is in very poor light, you can't get close enough to see the finer points and putting makeup on in here was a guess at best, not much better than doing it in the dark, at worst. 

But over the weeks we having been living here I have come to rather like the work this mirror  does. I wash my face in it, check for stray beard-hairs, put on my makeup and do my hair in its mediocre reflection. It all looks OK to me. My skin looks smooth and bright. The eye shadow  and mascara look in place. There doesn't  appear to be any moustache.

I think I actually pass as OK. Certainly presentable enough to pop down the shops, even off to work.

The full length mirror in the hallway, with great light and an honest face and the little flip down mirror in my car are singing to a different hymn book however. They think honesty is the sign of a true friendship. We are no longer friends.

I like the sweet little lies the bathroom mirror tells me. We can be friends.

Which got me wondering today. 

• Do you still look good when you feel inside that you do? (and that your mirror is confirming this)
• Is appearance only what you see or is it how you think you look. 
• Who is judging this beauty contest anyway?
• If you feel great, who cares?
• Is this what blokes have worked out? A quick look in a bad, good or indifferent mirror gives them the false belief that 'yeah I look pretty good.' They strutt out into the world thinking they are gods gift while us women peer and scrutinise and confirm with 4 different mirrors in 3 different light conditions to convince ourselves that we really do look like we think we do.

So, for some smart, young entrepreneur, go out and develop a I-always-look-good mirror to replace all the honesty is the best policy ones. 

This also applies to my over 50 age and having to wear glasses for the small print. If I don't see the dust (or the ring on the tub, or the coffee stain on the bench) - does it still exist? Is this why older women get happier, and more relaxed?

It's the Little Things #2

Go on... you know you want to ... sing it .... 

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

Merry, merry king of the bush is he

Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh

Kookaburra, gay your life must be!

These are a few of our resident Kookaburras that come to visit us each evening to roost in the big Spotted Gum by the stables. They arrive just as the last of the light is fading, laughing and calling to their family to come roost for the night. They number between two and six, and come most nights.

They leave at first light, saying goodbye with a laugh as they head off to hunt for the day. 

It makes us smile to know they like our home enough to make it theirs.

A few interesting facts about Kookaburras and the Kookaburra Song

• They are an Australian Kingfisher
• The song was first performed in 1934 at a Girl Guides Jamboree
• The tune is the same as a Welsh song about a Blackbird
• The song featured in a 2006 episode of Dr Who, Fear Her
• The laughing kookaburra is not native to Western Australia
• The laughing is to mark their territory
• A girl wrote the lyrics to the song!

Weekend Work -

Gardening is the theme this month. Silly I know in this relentless Perth heat to be trying to garden. One advantage is that if plants get enough water, they sure do grow when its hot and humid. If gardening is the theme, then planning is the action. With 2.4 acres as our gardening playground, there is a lot of planning to do. 

Vege Patch (or what I want to call one day The Kitchen Garden)
The vegetable garden has been started, albeit a temporary bed to get some summer greens going. I started back in November by putting down black plastic over the vege plot area to kill off the grass and weeds. I don't want to use any chemical weed killers in my edible gardens, and this method worked well. The searing heat worked to kill off most of the grasses and weeds. A few runners of that evil couch persisted around the edges, and I did spray this with glysophate as no vegies will be grown here - it's the only way to kill that terminator stuff. 

Then we made raised beds from bales of hay and filled it with soil, manure and plants. See It's the little things

It's been good to have the time to watch and observe how this area is effected by the weather. It cops the easterlies in the evening and early morning and is in full sun all day. Shade sails have helped with the hottest days, but a good 12-14 hours sunlight is what vegetables love best. The wind can be managed with well placed wind breaks, temporary ones are hay bales while we plan and plant more permanent ones. 

Happy Marigolds 

Roses
We inherited the rose garden from the previous owners, and although their selection of 30 roses is lovely, the placement and position is not ideal. The soil is very poor and water repellent, with the roots of large gum trees to navigate. I have been adding sheep manure and soil improver, which seems to just dissolve into the parched ground. Must be making some progress however, as digging around it on the weekend I found a lot of earthworms. After we took back the property from the tenants, I also had to content with the rose garden being overtaken with kikuyu and cooch and every weed known to man. Its been a slow but steady improvement. The next challenge will be to try and keep the lorrikeets and parrots of the bushes - they seem to like biting off any new shoots or rose buds. Perhaps if I move the bird bath (der) from there it will be less of an encouragement to the birds. 

Sad, but hopefully still alive, roses

Five rose bushes have been moved as they were in the path of the new carport. Not the ideal time to be transplanting roses (in fact, its the very worst time possible) but we had no choice in the matter. Three have taken well to their move, the jury is still out on the other two. My favourite of these is a lovely fragrant, climbing Iceberg. I hope she makes it. They are now in a little 7.5m bed running along the south/east side of the vegetable garden. There is room for three more roses when the weather cools.

One little rose bush putting up a good fight.

Lawn
The grassed area around the house was in a very poor state when we moved here. Tenants had been parking on the lawn area for years, compacting the soil and killing off any grass that tried to grow. The first job was to get some soil wetting agent onto it, then fertiliser and then work on the compaction. All this done and we could begin to water everyday, with runners being planted in the bare patches. So far, after three months we have 75% coverage. 

From this....

To this ...

...and this.

Ideas
There so many ideas and dreams for this garden. I just keep jotting them down as I think of them and hopefully, eventually they will come to fruition. Some of them are:

• I want to fill the garden with fragrance and beauty. The first part of this is to get some form with fragrant climbers. I found this website from the very knowledgeable Sabrina Hahn. Five of the best fragrant climbers 
• Raised beds of strawberries at the ends of the stables.
• A grove of Silver Birch with bluebells underneath (big ask in Perth, but my English heritage demands this)

• A tropical and lush garden around the pool and cabana
• A native garden to bring in the little birds

It's the little things #1

Among other things that made me smile today, was being able to go out to my rose garden and select a few perfect blooms to place on my desk. This made me smile because it set the tone for the day ... it would be a writing day (well after the work was done). 

It has been hot here in Perth, oppressively hot at times, the upside of this is the rampant plant growth, provided they get the water. This little Honeysuckle was only planted early December and already it is almost to the top of the wire. We can smell it all over the property, when the wind blows or on a balmy night. It thrives in this sheltered spot next to the potting shed and growing up the chook pen wire.

This is the temporary vege garden. Made of lupin straw bales and filled with soil we had scrapped off the shed site, it has proved to be a great bed for our summer crop. I enriched the soil with rotted cow manure, mulched with sheep poo and lupin mulch. This is only 4 weeks of growth, with most plants starting as seeds in the ground. I think the bore water is having a very positive effect, which was pointed out to us when we had the water tested. The shade sails were a must when we had days of 40+ and then a week of 35+ weather. In this bed alone I have:

• Chili
• roma tomatoes
• rocket
• asian greens
• thyme
• tarragon
• zucchini
• sage
• and of course the cheery little marigolds

And in the other bed is:

• sweet corn
• cucumbers
• watermelon

The back of the stables became a temporary garden where all the pot plants were dumped when we moved. They have been in rehab ever since, but will explore them more in another post. Here are the last of the grape tomatoes, which have been producing for weeks now. The little petunias have done well considering this is a very hot spot in the mornings and they are in very little soil. Growing up through the tomato bush is my favorite climbing pelargonium, I thought it was dead, but water and care have restored it. We are picking lots of basil, mint, sage and parsley from here too.

So the journey to contentment is continuing, I hope yours is too. xx

Where has my Mojo gone?

It's the 27th January and I should be full flight into a planned routine and have a full Master To Do List, each task scheduled into the next month with a checkbox next to it. Instead I am aimless and lost and still eating mince pies out of boredom and a lack of enthusiasm. This is repeat on a theme, see 2012 Pretending its the 1st January

I am at a loss as to why this is. We have moved to the place that I thought was going to be my utopia. I should be waking up full of energy and joy every day. The high point of my day is that I wake up at all. 

I am happy, of sorts, and I am starting to feel a little more contented. So why the lack of energy? Why the lack of a clear daily routine. (A few weeks ago I was bragging about my routine, silly me, it only lasted a week)

Here are my reasons (or excuses) why I can't seem to get out of bed early and why I keep searching Google for 'why am I the only one who can't stick to a routine', 'why do I feel so tired all the time, when I sleep so damned much?', 'painless ways to motive me'...

My reasons for this lethargy ... what are yours?

• It's summer, in Perth, and its freaking HOT and dry and everything is as listless as I am
• The move is not complete - we still have a whole furnished house that is still being sold and every week we have to go and spruce it up for the Home Open. 
• The new house is only partially set up - see above for why
• January is always the month where people take holidays, the kids are still off school ... it still feels like we did as kids with no structure to our summer holiday. 
• Did I mention that it's freaking hot, for days on end, with not a drop of rain?
• My diary only just arrived last week and I am still working out all the new features
• We are still unpacking boxes .. they seem to keep breeding and multiplying the longer I leave them
• I have been told my Chakras are all out of whack.
• I haven't found the perfect pen yet - or the perfect app on my tablet - to be all creative and organised.

February is coming up, this Sunday will be the 1st. This is my start date, who wants to run with the crowd and use January 1st as the start date anyway?

1 December 2014 ... Moving Day

My calendar has a big red ring around Monday 1st December. In black writing it says Moving Day!!!

The house when we first bought it almost 5 years ago. Tenants certainly took their toll on the lawn.

This date was selected 11 months ago, in our driveway, on our way to work. Why this date? Neither of us know, it was just a date, far into the future, that would cement the coveted prize of living on our beloved property, rather than a long line of tenants. The planets were coming into alignment. Tenants had given notice, all thoughts of selling WG had been dashed by a stagnant real estate market, especially acreage such as this, other factors had come into line.

This day was 4 years, 9 months in an exercise in waiting. 

This day was the day that kept me going, kept me getting out of bed each day, kept me working in a basement with no light, gave me hope that one day it would all work out.

Except this day, today, happened two weeks ago. 

We time traveled into the future. 

So today, Moving Day, has been and gone. 

Today is for settling in, unpacking boxes, building wardrobes and hanging clothes, finding homes for all the stuff that makes up our lives. All the million and one little jobs that come after the moving day.

It is not a complete house move. We are leaving the old place mostly furnished so it will look better for selling. I think they call this Staged!  I am hoping it sells fast as I want my furniture in my farmhouse. My dresser and dining table that my Dad made, our well lived in leather couch, the sofa for our bedroom, bookcases. 

But for now, we are comfortable .. and happy.

Contentment is not far away.

A daily routine begins to form

I have a natural aversion to routines, but deep down they have a way of balancing the equilibrium of our mostly hectic life. I waver from being a rebellious fan of spontaneity to closet craving a structured routine determined by the clock.

The clock in its new home .. the kitchen. 

At WG, Animals are determining that a routine shapes me, not by a clock but by the hours of daylight, and I must say I am starting to enjoy it.

It's light(ish) here at 4.30am, although the official sunrise is not until 5am (or 5:03am according to the ABC weather - I always love their unwavering optimism "The sun will rise at 5:03am ..."). Tom Dog tiptoes into my bedroom at first light, he shoves his wet, cold nose into my warm blankets and the minute I acknowledge him, two black and white paws launch onto the sheets for excessive pats. When I say enough, he click, clicks on the wooden floor, around the other side of the bed to sniff and poke the princess dog, Minty. She is less of a morning person than I, greeting him with a growl. He eventually flops down on the rug beside my bed, with a melodramatic, teenage sigh and goes back to sleep until 5:30.

I get up, dress, and head on out to let the girls out of their house. I have them locked up at night for the moment, just until I can trust their yard to be fox proof. Tom races to the chook pen whilst I am still putting on my shoes, sniffing about for any night time intruders scent. I can hear the girls all clucking and telling me off for taking so long to release them. Once I open the door, four bossy black hens coming racing out, down the step and into the yard. Poor Daphne, the lone Light Sussex, comes out last, keeping well out of the way of the matriarch Daisy.

The first view that greets me in the morning on the way to the girls

Back to the house to feed Tom Dog, the princess will sleep in for another 30 minutes. He is eating and I make my coffee and empty the dishwasher. We sit on the veranda and enjoy the 'quiet' of the early morning. I say quiet, but what I really mean is the quiet of nature. Magpies with demanding offspring, Mudlarks, Ring Neck Parrots, Red Tail and Carneby Cockies, Galahs, ducks, Rosella's, Wattle Birds ... as my mum says, it sounds like a bird park!

Almost to the bottom of my coffee cup, and there is the short, sharp yap of her majesty. She is blind and old but certainly not quiet and easily forgotten. I carry her to breakfast, and while she eats, I make my bed and put on a load of washing. Its all about multitasking.  She is finished her breaky so we head back out to the garden for her morning constitutional and my chance to potter about while I watch her. 

I am enjoying the watering for now, seeing new seeds sprout, new leaves unfurl, flowers opening. The girls watch me for any sign I might have food, or even better I might open the gate and let them free. They get a few hours each evening, to minimise their enthusiastic harvesting of anything green.

There is always a job to do, or a walk out to the paddocks, or up the drive. I can not think of a better way to start my day. Even sleeping in holds no appeal, not when there is so much to do, so much to smile about.

By 8am, I am ready for the second cup of coffee, a bowl of muesli and a chance to read or write. I like the writing mornings, words and ideas hit me while I water, or potter, and I can't wait to get them down.

If this is routine, then I am liking it very much.

Laundry with a View

The Girls House

'Jodie's Girls'

The girls house was one of the first things we build before the move. We had to have a safe home for them to come to live in, and only the best for the divas would do. What started as an idea for a lean-to henhouse became a fully lined house fit for humans!

The Floor going in with Tom Dog supervising. Mr K is digging the post holes for the yard

The foxes are pretty bad around here, neighbours on either side of us said they didn't keep chooks because of this. This worried me, but I figured we could build a substantial chook house that would thwart the smartest of foxes.

The frame going up. Built from the old fence posts that we pulled out - solid, old jarrah

Dad and Mum came up to stay and this was to be our weekend project. Except it took a whole week, plus another few days to make the yard. Built up on stumps, it has a solid floor, jarrah stud frame, and clad in (brand new) weatherboard. The weatherboard extravagance was born from two needs - one was aesthetics, we can see the hen house from the house and all the outdoor sitting areas and two, this was the lining we were considering for the house extensions and we could have a trial run and see if we like it. I think we do!

Weatherboard cladding and a half painted door

The roof matches Mr K's shed, the doors were from a salvage yard and modified by Dad to have some ventilation. Its roomy and comfortable for some very spoilt hens.

The potting shed was built at the same time to match, the little window is in the girls pen

The yard is pine poles with two layers of wire. One had been dug down into the ground with a trench lined in wire too. Then a second layer of chook wire that goes up to the top of the poles. We have also put a wire roof over the yard to stop the crows and maggies getting in.

The yard ... we captured a little dog!

Next installment, I will recount the turmoil of the girls moving house and having their country sisters come to live with them. All was not well in the hen house!

Bring it on ..

Bring it on ... the last words on the last post. Did I really challenge the universe with that?

Swapped my office at Basso to a nook at WG ... so much nicer

Well I did, and I got what I asked for. 

Today is the first day in months that I feel I can lift my head and see the progress we have made. (as in we have been head down, bum up working for what seems like an eternity). Remember that move in date we had? 1st December if you forgot. Well it kinda got shunted forward by a month and I am typing this from the desk in the corner of my lounge room at WG. 

Yep. We are IN!  I could just now say that the Journey to Contentment is over, we are living in our little bit of paradise and all will end happily ever after.

Except, we all know that life is not like that.

There is always more to the story. 

The move began as a temporary measure when we had painters come to paint the granny flat and persuaded us to paint the rest of the house as well. Wow, as I write this I realise there are so many things that have happened which all need an explanation. Now that I have time and energy and a desk I can go back and write the posts that will explain all the happenings.

So, painters invading the house, the WG house is now empty of tenants and my folks had booked it as holiday accommodation for 10 days. We gatecrashed their party and wickedly put them to work helping us to move. Small price to pay for a free holiday!  Not a full house move, just enough to live and be comfortable. The idea being that Basso house will be left mostly furnished so that it can be 'staged' to sell. We have the very great indulgence of no time limits other than those we self impose. 

In a way its an annoying way to move house, in dribs and drabs, but I guess its not nearly as bad as trying to live in a house while its being painted. The other advantage of moving bit by bit is that it gives you a chance to find homes for all the stuff as you go. The logistics are that we are moving from a 5 bedroom 3 bathroom house to a 3 bedroom farm house. The name of this game is Decluttering.  We go to Basso, fill up a car or a trailer with stuff and come home and locate homes for it. 

Being an old house, there are no built in robes or linen cupboards at all. We have purloined one whole bedroom (just as well we have no kids at home anymore) as a walkin robe. Wall to wall IKEA has created the ultimate in wardrobes. (When I walk in there I feel like some rich mans wife with a whole room to store her frocks!)

My girls in their new home ... happy hens

The chooks have moved in, the doggies have their beds, I call this place home now. It still makes me smile during little moments - looking out to the trees as the sun comes up, watching the ducks and their ducklings on the stream, the kookaburra's that come at dusk and laugh hysterically, cleaning the beautiful jarrah floor - even pegging clothes on the line makes me smile.

This is still a journey, I guess life is like that. Contentment is still not 100% but it is certainly closer than it was last week. 

So yep, Bring. It. On.

Minty has found her contented spot.

Lost sight of the point of the this blog.

When I started this blog in April 2010, it was because a few desires needed to be filled. One was the (seemingly) unbearable frustration and heartbreak at not being able to live the life I craved and needed to. Time has shown me that I did bear it, and dreams can come true ...  as clichéd as that sounds. So I thought that writing about my journey to this contentment would help me, and maybe, hopefully, help others in a similar situation.

The second reason was because I could not find anything to read about other peoples journeys into the tree change. I found only two books written in Australia on the subject, and both had very peculiar bents (peak oil and living for a year with no money). Both interesting books, but not relating to whet we were doing. Still not able to find any books on the subject.

The third reason was to share my suburban life with my family and show them in words and pictures the dream unfolding.

And I did achieve all these objectives in the beginning.

What I didn't expect was the journey to take so long and take such a toll on my health and mental wellbeing. Its hard to keep the enthusiasm going - the rollercoaster has taken me on more ups and downs than I care to recount. We bought the property on 10th March 2010.

We finally have a move in date. Set. In. Stone. 1 December 2014. Almost 5 years later. 

However, the journey is not almost over, oh no. This has just been the first phase. The fun part is about to begin.

There are sheds to build, extensions to the house, refurbishment of the pool and surrounding area, a chook pen and yard to build, a potager garden, water tanks to install, an orchard to rejuvenate and enlarge, a carport and driveway to put in, gardens to establish, stables to paint, a workshop to be built. And many, many more projects. 

Bring it on.