country dahlias two

It's a magical feeling to find yourself back in a place you visited exactly a year before and notice how much you've grown. Last year we visited Country Dahlias near the end of our first season as flower farmers. Jenny's two acre garden has Australia's largest collection of dahlias with 2,250 different types and over 20,000 bushes.

Last year we'd planted two rows of tubers; we'd staked them, irrigated them, made peace with their pests, picked their flowers, dead-headed them, sold them and given them away, and absolutely fallen head over heels in love with each and every plant. All in all it was a great first season and when we arrived at Country Dahlias all we knew is that we wanted more. We were completely overwhelmed. We loved the colours, we loved the shapes, we loved the pom-poms, we loved the huge ones and the mini ones, and we wrote a wish-list so long that it went over the page. This is the blog post I wrote back then.

A couple of weeks after we visited Country Dahlias last year we experienced our first frost and the end of the season. We let the plants die down, the weather closed in and we dug up their tubers in weather so cold and wet it hurt. We tried to keep the varieties named and separated but by that time the main thing was to get them out of the mud so they wouldn't rot. We brought them in and buried them deep inside boxes of saw-dust from Bren's lathe. We only had two rows but it felt like quite a big job and had us looking over lovingly at the rows of perennial flowers that were independently and quietly taking care of themselves.

By early spring we were itching to get our tubers out of the saw-dust and into the ground. We watched some YouTube and learnt how to divide them and then in November we planted them all. Five rows this time. And again they bloomed like crazy and we adored them.

This year on what feels like it'll become our annual pilgrimage to Jenny's I still had that same heart full of love feeling and I still felt so full of joy I could burst, but we also felt like more seasoned dahlia growers. We recognised so many of the varieties - some even by name, we thought a lot about practicalities - like stem length and strength, we tried to find gaps in our collection, and as always Bren was on the hunt for the perfect white. And this time we only ordered 10 tubers - I still can't believe we were so restrained.

I still can't believe we're so close to the end of this season. I'd really love to have each plant labeled with its name and colour and description before we lose them, but I've had the tags cut out stacked in a neat pile for weeks now and it still hasn't happened. There's always something more pressing to do. Maybe I'll get to it this weekend.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend my friends. Whether it's filled with matza or chocolate or something completely different, I hope it's delicious.

Lots of love to you wherever this finds you. Where is that by the way? And what will you be eating?


See you next week!

Love, Kate

xx

dahlias at dusk

Last night as Bren was filling and rolling the haloumi and salad roti wraps for dinner, I looked out the window and saw the golden glow on the flower garden. Jazzy had already had a shower and gotten into her pyjamas but Pepper was still dressed (and covered with texta drawings). I asked her to grab a pair of secateurs and to follow me outside.

The breeze was still warm from the day as we walked up and down the rows snipping and chatting and snapping. We were spoiled for choice and quickly picked an armful.

After almost 10 years of blogging I know that the fewer photos I take of a scene the better and the quicker when it comes to editing and choosing, but still the light was so perfect that I couldn't help myself. Between 6.50 and 7.04pm I took 34 photos. How fine it is to live in the digital age.

I am savouring these moments of floral abundance. I am trying to imprint their headiness on my soul. I walk the rows often running my fingers over their soft petals and bouncing them off my palms. I spend minutes watching the bees collecting pollen. I love seeing the flower petal confetti covering the floor. I hope that the few who still haven't flowered will put on a last minute show. I dead-head them to encourage more growth. I pick them at every opportunity. And I adore them and tell them so often.

These past few days I have noticed that some of the stems are starting to be thinner and not able to hold up their heavy headed blooms. I have seen the dahlia faces open up with their centres blown. I have been trying my hardest not to feel sad about these signs of the end of the season but instead to admire their new phase.

You know what? I wish I could give you this bunch of flowers for your weekend. I love the thought of you holding them in your arms, turning them over to look at each one, taking them home and into your kitchen, filling up your favourite vase with water and them arranging them just so. And then as they catch your eye over the weekend you'd be reminded of how grateful I am for your company. How much it means to me that you come here each week and read my words. How my stories have meant something to you. How you've seen my girls grow over the seasons. How your comments make me think and feel and wonder.  How even though we've never met you still feel like my friend.

Thank you!!

It just occurred to me that I don't think I've ever asked you what your favourite flower is. I'd love to know.

I hope you have a beautiful weekend my friends.
See you next Friday.

Love, Kate x

photos of flowers and things

The other morning when we came inside for breakfast after taking the girls to their schools, stacking a load of firewood in the woodshed and bottling up 12 jars of tomatoes sauce for the Fowlers machine, Farmer Bren looked at me and said 'I get it, this is who we are. This is what we do. This is our life'. 

I guess when you're so deeply involved in what you do sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone is doing it the same way as you. Not everyone grows a lot of their food from tiny seeds; not everyone makes their muesli from the contents of about 15 jars each morning; not everyone lives so far from their closest neighbours that if they went outside and screamed as loudly as they could no-one would hear them; not everyone could have their growing season ended by one surprise weather event; not everyone uses fire to heat their houses and cook on; not everyone has a kitchen floor that's covered with crates full of autumn bounty ready to be preserved; not everyone only ever eats cucumbers and tomatoes when they are in season; and not everyone owns two pairs of the same boots - one for work and one for town.

There are some things about our world that probably sound so foreign to some people, like the fact that we have a mob of about 50 kangaroos that live on our property and most of the time don't bother us, but sometimes tear the nets in the orchards and eat all the apples. I'm sure there are koalas here too, although I've only ever seen one.

And lots of things I do feel terribly ordinary, like looking at my phone too much, trying to problem-solve for my kids a lot, and boring old housework (only ever the minimum I can get away with though).

I don't actually know what this is all about. My head's a bit cloudy today. I guess what Bren said, plus the messages you guys send me often telling me how different my world is to yours, reminds me to notice the special bits, encourages me to remember the choices we've made, and allows me to see the beauty.

I think that's enough words for today. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

I'd love you to tell me a bit about how your world differs from mine, or from those around you. It doesn't need to be big, just anything really.

Wishing you a happy International Women's Day!

And a fabulous weekend.

See you next week.

Love, Kate x

sunshine in my soul

Over the past few months I've settled into this new sort of sleep pattern. After I have a shower and go to bed I read my book until I'm so bleary eyed and sleepy that I can hardly see the words on the page anymore. Sometimes I try to read past this point if I'm up to a good bit in the story, but mostly by now I recognise the peak tired point, I turn off my lamp, pop my ear plugs in and within 15 or 20 minutes I'm asleep. This is new for me, I used to find the getting to sleep part agonising.

Then I generally sleep to anywhere between two and four in the morning when I wake up, get up and go to the toilet and then repeat the reading bit. I can be awake at this point anywhere from half an hour, to the rest of the night til morning. 

I practise mindfulness, I practise good sleep hygiene, but I've never been a good sleeper and I probably never will be.

But the other night, about a week ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and had this realisation that everything right now is good. Now is one of those rare times in life where there don't seem to be any dramas. Everyone in my family is healthy and doing well. There are no big issues, no overwhelming stresses and nothing to keep me awake in the middle of the night. I went through each person in my mind and when I'd convinced myself it was true, I turned the light off and went back to sleep.

And somehow this sense of well being has stayed with me throughout the week. I feel like I've had sunshine in my soul.

On Friday after I wrote my blog we picked little tomatoes to toss over pesto pasta for our dinner, we picked cucumbers and nashis and sunflowers, and we spoke to our Indi while she decorated her kibbutz room with flowers in vodka bottle vases.

On Saturday we picked apples and plums and hazelnuts and tomatoes and cucumbers and flowers. Late in the afternoon I took a basketful of tomatoes outside, laid them out on the ground then stood over them and photographed them. 'Just like I used to do when I was an olden days blogger' I told my farmer boy. He laughed and asked me what exactly I thought I was now. Okay true, nothing's changed there.

On Sunday we strolled the aisles of The Daylesford Sunday Market trying to decide if we should have a flower stall soon, I bought some new kitchen knives and then we came home and celebrated them with super thin slices of tomato, cheese and pickled cucumber on toast. After that we picked huge bunches of straw flowers to hang upside down and dry, we picked tomatoes and cucumbers and we visited our bees to see how they were coping with the heat and if they were making any honey.

On Monday we spent time in the garden deadheading, weeding and harvesting. When the sun went down and it got a bit cooler I started stacking firewood in the woodshed - as much as I hate to think about it, I'm sure the first fire of the season can't be too far away. And I made the most delicious cauliflower and freeka salad from Julia Nishimura's book Ostro for dinner.

On Tuesday I started ceramics lessons and I LOVED it!! The first lesson was all about hand building - pinch-pots, coil pots and slabs. I made a few different styles of vases. It's so interesting to think that I've never enjoyed ceramics when I've tried it in the past and now I love it. Why the change? Why now? My teacher Kim sent us home with a chunk of clay to play with over the weekend and I'm hoping to have time on Sunday, I'm so looking forward to it.

On Wednesday we covered a few of the rows of the apple orchard with nets. It's been an incredibly hot and dry summer and despite the fact that we've been irrigating continuously, this year's crop has been small and disappointing. I blame the dreadful cold, windy and wet weeks we had last year when the blossom was out but the bees couldn't leave their hives to pollinate. If you've been waiting to see us at market or to pop into the farm gate stall, it doesn't look like it's going to happen this season. We're sorry and we're disappointed. But we do claim to be seasonal growers and some seasons are just crap.

This morning when we drove past the orchards to take Pepper to school the trees were FULL of white cockatoos holding apples in their hands eating them. The ground is littered thick with half eaten cores. We didn't feel like it was worth the cost and effort of netting the whole orchard for a disappointing crop, but hopefully we've saved a few rows of our family's favourites.

On Thursday apart from driving Jazzy to school, picking tomatoes, cucumbers and flowers and going to gym, we spent almost the entire day in the kitchen. We squished tomatoes and made an enormous cauldron of sauce and I made some more pickled cucumbers.

Every year just before our tomatoes start to ripen I have a panic and fear that we'll never have enough and end up buying a box from a local organic farmer to get me started and stop my worrying. This year I made a decision to be patient and to trust and not to panic buy.

Last year I made somewhere between 100 and 120 jars of tomatoes sauce and there are still around 15 jars left in the cupboard. That means I'd better get busy and fill that cupboard back up. I'm sitting on zero right now but I do feel so happy that I waited and that they'll all be ours.

To make - fry up an onion and some garlic, stir in the squished tomatoes, add loads of basil, bottle, seal, water-bath.

Rather than just bottling tomatoes by themselves, we add lots of other summer seasonal ingredients from our garden that we won't have growing later in the year

Which brings us to Friday, today. I took Pepper to school early, I picked bunches of flowers, tomatoes and cucumbers with Jazzy, I hunted through the dahlias for the grasshoppers that have been munching my flowers, Bren had a meeting with Dave and another guy about fixing our house dam and now I'm writing my blog.

Over the weekend I hope to start bottling the tomatoes (I'll keep you posted on the tally), keep knitting my socks, continue reading Abby's copy of Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman, start listening to the latest episode of Who The Hell is Hamish podcast, take Jazzy to the orthodontist, maybe speak to Indi, hopefully crochet something that's in my head, go to gym, fill baskets and vases with produce, and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully continue this streak of family wellness and wellbeing-ness.

And if at all possible I would absolutely love to order another week of this sunshine in my soul feeling. I'd love to order one for you too.

So how's your week been?
Did you get up to anything fun?
Are you making anything interesting?
Deciding on anything important?
Dreaming about something wonderful?

See ya next Friday.

Lots of love,

Kate x