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Hello honey bunches,

How has your week been?

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 sitting on my bed in my pyjama bottoms and a hoodie, wearing noise cancelling headphones to block out the sound of Bren on the chainsaw, and I’m writing my blog. So far all the tech is working well; the photos have loaded and the words are showing up on the screen in their neat little text boxes. I’m warm, I have herbal tea next to me and I even have tiny little butterflies dancing around in my tummy when I think about the lovely weekend we have planned. It’s all good.

I really do want to thank you guys for the emails and comments and messages you’ve sent over the past few weeks. The care and kindness you’ve shown me, the advice you’ve offered, and the personal stories you’ve shared, have filled me with so much love and gratitude. This little foxslane community seriously warms my heart. Thank you!!

I also want to add that I always have such good intentions of replying to every single one, but some weeks computer time is just hard to come by and they get away from me. I always hope to do better in that department.

So let’s get on with the blog…a numbered one I think…

one - one would have to be how short the days are at the moment. Take yesterday for example - by the time I got up, drove Pepper to school, did an exercise class with Leah, ate breakfast, dug up and labeled and stored half a row of dahlias, took the dogs for a walk and picked Pepper up from the bus stop, it was dark again. It’s already hard to imagine those summer days when time felt endless and we had more than enough to get our work done and still have time to spend reading a book in the hammock. It heartens me to think that by the time I write my blog next week, we will be on the other side of the winter solstice and the days will have started lengthening. Even if I won’t be able to feel it for a while, I’ll know it and that’s what matters.

two - yesterday Leah and I did a step aerobics class which was the best workout, the best fun, and took me all the way back to Zaks gym in Prahran in the 1990’s. I just loved it! It was quick, my heart rate was up from the very first track, and although my body didn’t remember all the moves, it didn’t take long before I was marching up and down, v-stepping, hamstring curling and skipping across that step with the best of them.

three - after months and months of rehearsals, preparations and covid cancelations, Pepper finally got to perform in her school’s musical, Matilda and it was incredibly amazing!!!! The performances, the costumes, the scenery, the band…the entire cast and crew did such a wonderful job. I only wish I could go and see it again. I loved it!!

I did see yesterday that Netflix have just released a trailer for the Matilda movie and it it looks like it’s going to be so good. I just can’t wait!

four - because the days are so short and the season has been so incredibly wet, we seem to be a bit behind in some of the jobs we need to do to put the farm to bed for winter. But due to some breaks in the weather this week we crossed a few things off the to-do list and made a good start on some of the others. Most notable was getting almost all of the garlic into the ground at last. I’m usually happy to go by the old saying - plant before the shortest day of the year, harvest before the longest day of the year, but with only a few days to spare and garlic that is so desperate to be underground that it has already started sprouting, we were in a bit of a hurry.

five - last weekend Bren and Indi sat down for their semi regular budget meeting and even though I usually tune out when anything involves numbers and columns, this time I followed along enough to understand the general gist and I was really proud. In such strange and uncertain times, Indi at 21 years old is managing to go to uni, to live in a share house, to work a few jobs, to have a social life, and to indulge her love of op-shopping while keeping to her budget beautifully.

six - after dark while we’re watching stuff on Netflix, and at the bus stop while I’m waiting for Pepper to come home, I’ve been knitting rows of my sweater. I finished the colour-work bit late last week and wondered if I’d slow down once the fun part was over and all there was left to knit were long rounds of knit stitch, but I’ve been finding it so comforting. Meditative even. Not long now until I start the bottom rib and then it’s just the sleeves to go. I really can’t wait to wear it.

This pattern by Jenn Steingass is called Norwood but I think I’m going to name mine Bracken; the design looks exactly like bracken don’t you think?

seven - a few days ago I was coming out of my bathroom first thing in the morning and I heard Jazzy call out ‘bye Ima’. It was such a strange feeling. Jazzy has been overseas and hasn’t been in my day to day life for four and a half months, but when I heard her my heart felt like it jumped into my throat and I missed her so intensely it hurt. I had gotten used to her not living here and calling out to me as she left the house, but after that morning when I thought I heard her, it’s felt harder. I love that she’s having the most incredible adventure ever, but I also long for her.

I know now that it was Pepper but gosh it felt like Jazzy.

eight - over the past little while I’ve found myself reading and watching stuff written and filmed from the point of view of the mid twenty year old protagonist. Books like No Hard Feelings and series like Everything I know About Love that are so densely packed with thoughts, and predicaments, and feelings, and issues that you feel and go through at that age. Reading and watching them took me right back there in my own life, and also spoke to me of what my kids are going through. Some parts more than others. I’m probably not the target audience for either, but I found them both so rich and well executed that I couldn’t stop bingeing them and thinking about them.

Which then led me to reflect on my own life and the stage I’m in and the writing I do here and how I try to capture the essence of what it feels like and means to live in my life from day to day. Often I agonise over the fact that I just repeat the same thing each season we pass through and that nothing ever changes. But maybe I just need to turn it around and see it as a time capsule. An attempt to capture a moment of my life and include all the beautiful bits, all the mundane crap, and all the ugly prickly parts too. Just thinking about this through the past week has helped me reframe my blog and encouraged me to persevere even through the depths of the bleak winter when I feel like there’s nothing new to say. I guess that’s all part of it. My gloriously unglamorous, seasonally living, farming, knitting, thinking, not sleeping, making, parenting, forest dwelling, loving, blog.

nine - I’d love to introduce you to Bec, that’s her in the photo above with her daughter.

Bec has three children, Henry 7 and twins Isla and Louis 3 and owns a small business down in Tasmania that sells flower, veggie, herb and Australian native seeds.

In 2020, in extremely uncertain times during Covid lockdown, Bec found herself spending more and more time in the garden for both her mental and physical health. The act of gardening grounded her; digging in the soil really is such a calming thing to do. From there Bec started her business Veggie Garden Seeds.

Bec is very passionate about sourcing new varieties of flowers to bring other gardeners joy.

In the beginning she was packing orders off the dining table, while her twins napped. Gradually her business expanded and now she employs five amazing women. Five women who have had babies and are keen to return to the workforce.

And just in case you needed one more reason to love Bec, for every order that Veggie Garden Seeds receives, one tree is planted.

People are always asking me where to buy seeds from and I highly recommend Bec’s store - Veggie Garden Seeds. Just clicking on her website makes me dream of springtime and all the colours and flavours to come. I can hardly wait!

ten - is for our weekend plans. Tomorrow morning some friends are coming over to stay here for the weekend and then we’re driving to Melbourne. First stop is lunch with Indi, then we’re leaving Pepper with Indi, getting dressed up and heading out to a special birthday dinner for one of my nearest and dearest friends. After that we’ll sleep over in the city. Depending on how we pull up on Sunday morning, there will definitely be coffee, maybe some shopping and food, and then home again, home again, jiggety jig.

I hope you’ve got a lovely weekend planned too.

Tell me a couple of things that have been going on in your world. Has someone made you proud? Have you been somewhere interesting? Have you read something that’s stuck with you? I’d love to know.

Thank you so much for spending your precious time with me again this week, it means the world to me.

Love, Kate xx