I’m fine. So different to last time I wrote. Isn’t it incredible the difference that one week makes. This time last week I felt rotten. I was overwhelmed and exhausted, and sad and sore. And here I am now, just a couple of days later, feeling really calm and happy.

I’m just popping in quickly to let you know that I won’t be writing my blog today. In the interest of full disclosure - I barely slept last night, I have my period, I have an awful pain in my lower back, I can’t get warm and I’m feeling ridiculously over emotional. All together not a great combination for blogging. Ugh hormones!!!

I’m feeling bit wobbly today. I woke up this morning at just after two in a puddle of sweat and never got back to sleep again. It was awful. Over the years I’ve heard so many stories of perimenopausal night sweats, hot flushes and general raising of internal thermostats, and to be honest I’d wondered if that might be a good thing for someone like me who feels the cold intensely and painfully. Why wouldn’t I want the extra degrees of heat? Especially now that we’ve hit winter and the temperature has plummeted.

I can’t remember what day it was, I can’t even remember what context it was in, but during the week I was having a conversation with Bren when I replied to whatever it was he’d just said by saying that all I’ve ever wanted was to live a slow and intentional life.

My camera stopped working this afternoon, so these are some photos I took on my phone over the past week.

So it seems that last week when I wrote my in autumn blog post I was seeing things through a particularly romantic lens. The air was crisp, the leaves on the trees were turning golden, and although the produce was definitely slowing down, we could still pick enough to fill our baskets, bowls and vases each time we ventured out there.

I ran into an old friend in the street the other day and she described to me the chaos of her child filled home. The noise and the mess and the demands and the overwhelm. As she spoke I could visualise her picture in our house; the dirty plates stacked up by the sink, the clutter over every surface, the voices and music competing to be heard, the urgent, endless shopping lists, the driving rosters and the laundry piles. I listened to her and I felt her words in my body.

For the first time since Covid we flew up to Queensland with Indi and Pepper and Bren’s parents and had a proper beach holiday and it was wonderful. It was hot and humid and we had nothing to do but walk on the beach, swim, read and spend time together. I really feel like we recharged our batteries. . It was a true break. Exactly what we had needed.

I’m just popping in to let you know that it’s school holidays here and I’ve decided to take a little blog break for this week and next week to spend some time with my fam, to slow down and to try to unwind. It’s been a tricky few months.

one - the tomatoes have arrived! If there was any fruit or vegetable that heralded true autumn for me, it would have to be the tomato. Without fail every January and February I panic when they don’t seem to be producing properly yet, and then March arrives and I remember. Here they are again. Those dainty yellow flowers have become red bulbous fruit, have become crackers adorned with thin slices for every meal, have become stinky black finger-tips, are covering the kitchen table. Oh tomatoes, where have you been all my year? I heart you!

After two years of tracking this virus around the globe and doing everything in our power not to catch it, it’s been quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that it’s here. All those lockdowns and masks and regulations, all that fear and paranoia, and here we are. Covid is in this house. It’s in our bodies. And it’s bizarre. I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

I’m really good except I have no clue what I’m going to write about today. Last week I felt a bit like this and then as I sat down and started typing the breast cancer scare story tumbled out of me. I hadn’t intended to tell that tale at that time, but apparently it had to come out and I went with it. I’ve been hoping that today’s blog post would let itself be known in much the same way.

We’re okay. Absolutely devastated by what’s happening in some parts of our country and the world. And at the same time relishing the fact that we have a kid-free long weekend, and that the garden is bursting with colour and flavour. It’s hard to reconcile the two, but somehow we must.

Hello lovely ones,

How have you been? This past week has been a lot hey.

After I wrote an entire blog post about feeling flat and heavy last Friday, I woke up on Saturday morning feeling different. A bit brighter and more energetic. It felt like by articulating the dull, bored feeling, I’d gotten it out of my system.

So here’s the thing: when I was deep in the middle of my health crisis last month, when I was sitting in waiting rooms, when I was stripping my clothes off and putting on hospital gowns, when I was watching my phone desperate for results, and when I was awake distressed in the middle of the night, the thing I kept wishing for was some boring time. It was a month filled with such intense anxiety and distress that the thought of just cruising through life for a while felt like it would be heavenly. No extreme highs and lows, no crying, no fear, no dread.

I’m just popping in to wish you a happy new year! A happy Bren’s birthday! And a happy Australian Vantastic publication week! It’s actually out in the shops now.

Welcome to the last Friday Foxslane of 2021. The ninth post since my blogging come-back in November, and the 1,134th post ever. Wow, that feels like an enormous amount of photos and words about family and flowers and farm-life.

In February of this year, about 13 months into the pandemic, the publisher of my book Vantastic, Melissa, emailed me to see if I’d be interested in a refresh and a republish. She told me that the pandemic had seen a huge increase in caravan sales and caravan travellers and thought that the timing would be just right.