We spent the eighth day of the year celebrating my Mum's birthday and in the veggie garden.

We've been having conversations about busyness over the past few days.  About how our society seems to value busyness and how people seem to wear their busyness as a badge of honour. The busier we are the more we must be achieving, the more we must be succeeding, the more demands we must have on us, the more we should be admired, or pitied, or assisted or heard.

Although we also live a life where lots of things need to be achieved each day, where often the to-do lists get longer rather than shorter as the day progresses, and where we really need to work hard to achieve what we want to, we've been talking about ways we can get rid of the busyness. Ways we can slow down, prioritise, be more efficient and more selective.

We started today off with a discussion about what needed to be done. After making the list we decided to stay close to the house in the garden. We worked with Pepper showing her how to use the seeder to plant carrots, we spoke about weeds and pulled out a bunch, we examined the beans climbing up the fences, we watched for any blossoming sunflowers, we dug to see if we could find any potatoes yet, we watched the birds, the bees and the butterflies, we squished a few caterpillars but left some for the ladybirds, we looked at the clouds for rain, we noticed the breeze on our hot skin and we saw that the shallots have divided. It was a gorgeous few hours that could have gone on longer but we were chased inside by the rain.

I feel like we are practising at not being busy at the moment because the girls are on school holidays and we have more freedom to play around without the routines and deadlines of the school term, but hopefully we'll learn some tricks and come up with some strategies to manage the busyness for when things heat up again.

It's amazing how busy the slow life can be, I wonder if it is possible to achieve all that we want to and still feel like the tortoise - slow and steady.


Oh I almost forgot, the five winners of the TikkiKnits beanie giveaway are:

Sooz
Skye
CopperPatch
Sue
Darklyss

Please leave me a comment with your Ravelry user-name and Georgie will send you your pattern over there.Yay!

Before I go I'm really interested in how you manage your busyness?
Do you rush through your list or are you more calm and considered?
Do you have any tricks for a beginner like me?

I hope your days are sunshiny and productive.

Lots of love xx