Hello lovely ones,

How has your week been?

I’ve been sitting here for the past hour having all sorts of issues loading this page to write my blog. No matter how many times I tried to open foxslane.com.au, it just would not load. Oh my goodness I hate tech issues! Why didn’t I think of this part when I decided to write my blog again? How could I forget that out of control, out of my depth, clueless feeling? Seriously!

After realising that what I was doing wasn’t working, I turned my modem off and back on, no. I turned the wifi on my computer off and back on, no. I connected my computer to the hot-spot on my phone, no. I closed all my open tabs, no. In between all of this I tried to load the page a hundred times, no, no, no. I tried to load other pages, yes, weird. I decided to pack up and head to the local library to try my luck there. I called Bren in a panic and told him everything I’d tried and that I was going to the library and he suggested that before I go I turn my computer off and then on again….YES!!!!

Of course now that I’m here on the other side of this drama writing this I know that I should have done that to begin with. I absolutely know that it’s the first rule of tech trouble-shooting. But in the moment I completely forgot. In the moment I got completely intimidated and frightened and irritated.

So I guess the moral of the story is, when tech things go wrong, to remember to breathe, to turn things off and then on again, that websites time-out, and to not take things so personally. It’s all good in theory anyway.

And now, on the other side of that drama, I can’t actually think straight to remember what I was going to talk about here today. I’m in a muddle. I think I need to turn my brain off and then on again.

The last few days have been hot with huge stormy build-ups, wild wind, then rain, hail, thunder and lightning. It felt completely unsettling. But in amongst it all were the roses. As each set of heavy grey clouds drew toward us we’d grab the secateurs, scamper out and pick as many stems as we could. Big fat bunches of pastel coloured roses. Rescued from the rains and filling my heart and my house. Every vase, every shelf, every table and every bed-side has been filled. And the smell is out of this world. Heavenly. I’m so in love.

We started pulling the over-wintered crops out of the garden.

Admiring our soil.

And then planting the seedlings I’d grown in the hot-house over the past few months.

I think one of my favourite things about having a garden is watching it change. Throughout the days and the seasons. I love it when we pull out the carrots with their big feathery seedy tops and then all of a sudden the whole landscape changes, there’s space and opportunity. I love spreading a wheel-barrow load of mulch on the peas and then stepping back and admiring how cozy that bed looks. I love covering a brassica crop with netting to protect it against the cabbage moths and noticing how all of a sudden it looks like summer has arrived. And I love it when the rosy red poppies lose their petals and leave their brown pods sticking up in the air like exclamation marks. Mowing, planting, watering and thinning out all do the same. It’s an ever-changing project and I am constantly inspired by it.

I remembered something funny the other day when Jarrah was filling in her university application forms. When I was in my last year of high school everyone in our class had to fill out some sort of personality questionnaire. I think our answers were fed into a computer and then the reports sent back to us told us what career we were suited to.

Believe it or not, the computer thought I should be a flower farmer. Or a florist!

You can probably imagine my despair, coming from an incredibly academic school. Especially when everyone around me was being told they would be suited to medicine, or law, or architecture, or teaching, I quickly stuffed the ‘stupid’ report in the bottom of my bag and tried to pretend it never happened.

And then it did.

And here I am. I guess the computer got the last laugh.

With the onset of summer and hot sunny days here on the farm, there hasn’t been much time for knitting, but it looks to me like the Cloudberry Tee has grown an inch or two since last week.

I finished reading Love & Virtue, which I really loved. I thought it was current and topical and fast paced and engaging.

And then at 6am this morning, 150 pages in, I decided not to finish reading Lucky’s. It is so rare for me not to finish a book I’m already reading but I’m just not that into it. I don’t know what it is exactly. I guess I don’t really like any of the characters and the story isn’t drawing me along. I feel guilty and part of me feels like I should keep trying, especially because I’ve read some really good reviews, but I just think this one’s not for me. Sorry Lucky.

10 other random things that happened this week are;

1. We saw the first snake of the season. I HATE SNAKES!!!!!!!!! I am petrified of them. This particular one slithered (eeeeew) out from under a tarp we were moving from one garden bed to another and I fear I may never sleep again.

2. One of my dearest friends lost someone so near and precious to her and my heart has felt broken for her all week.

3. Classes at my gym resumed for the first time since lockdown and I loved every moment of the four I attended. Don’t get me wrong, they were hard as hell, but there is something so fun and encouraging about exercising in a bunch. Gosh I’m sore though.

4. I have pimples! What on earth? How is this fair?

5. George, our only buck goat, went to live on another farm. It was a bit sad but we have decided to add some females to our herd and we don’t want him having his way with them. We would like to breed in the future but only when the females are old enough and only Boer goats.

6. Bren and I have been eating our breakfast each morning on those chairs in those photos above. As the seasons change our breakfast position moves around the house and garden. Sometimes we eat in the house, in the sunroom, under a tree in the garden, on the deck near the fire and now on those chairs. Breakfast with a view of the house and garden.

7. Bren took the first three photos in this post and the one of the poppy.

8. My kiln arrived this morning!

9. I counted and there are eight days left of the school year! How is that even possible?

10. Now that I am a blogger again, I often think of stories I’d like to write about during the week and consider writing myself notes to remind me, but I never do. It’s a shame because I’m sure I’ve left some of my best work out in the rows of the garden. This week after I had that computer issue I tried to think of what to write about and couldn’t think of a thing. So I knitted a few rows of my Cloudberry and as I did I started to write a few notes. These 10 quick things are pretty much those notes. I do like the format though and might keep it going. I’ll see how I go.

And there you go, my Foxslane Friday finished before we have to go and get Jarrah dressed for her graduation tonight.

Before you go I’d love you to tell me a few quick things about your week that was. I’m forever interested in how similar and how different your lives are to mine.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend dear friends.

Look after yourselves.

Love, Kate x