by Krista | Nov 1, 2020 | Spring
Wind continues to howl through the tree tops for the third day in a row, scattering leaves and branches around the farm yard and keeping us nice and cool. Since we’re only one month away from the blistering heat of summer, I’m overjoyed by every cool day we get.
We had luscious rain last week, truly glorious. It sank deep into our parched soil, washed dust off every leaf and limb, and sent newly-planted seeds shooting up into seedlings faster than I’ve ever seen. It is absolutely amazing to look outside and see green grass where we haven’t seen any in years. We still need more rain to fill up our tanks and help the land heal, but we sure are grateful for what came.
Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS) continues to dog my footsteps, stealing my voice, waking me in the night with a wheezing, rattling chest, and sending me to bed for days at a time in agony of head and body. We don’t know how long this will last. Some have it for a few months, some a few years, and some never fully recover. I’ve had my weepy and discouraged moments, that’s for sure. And in those times Bear gives me big hugs, urges me to have a good ol’ weep, and reminds me that no matter what the future holds, we’ll face it as we always have, together. Such things are deep comfort to me. It is a dreadful thing to feel inside like you’re a disappointment and a burden, and inestimable relief to hear the people you love banish those lies and assure you that you’re loved for yourself, not for your health or energy or strength, just for you.
So, I have my down moments, my weeps, my woe-is-me’s, and then I take a deep breath and get back to what has become my superpower: finding joy in the midst of it all.
I try to find or create something good every day. Every. Day. Each morning I get out my pen and paper and write down a list of good things, things that will bring joy or comfort or healing or support, and then I do what I can.
Sometimes the “what I can” isn’t much at all: look out the window and watch the birds, listen to part of a really good audio book, have a cuppa with Bear while I prop my head up on his shoulder.
Other times, I can do more. I love those days. Days spent in my gardens harvesting herbs to dry and veggies and berries to eat, hours spent in my kitchen blending herbal teas that help me breathe well, sleep well, and not catch flus and colds on top of this PVFS yuck.
Making things is my favorite good day activity. Homemade cheese, fresh bread, quick Scandinavian-style pickles, that sort of thing. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing bottles and jars of goodness lined up on the counter that gives me courage to wait out the really bad days.
In my good moments this past week I made Black Bean Pumpkin soup, Cheesy Dill Scones, and Hazelnut Cacao Nib cookies with a generous splash of homemade whiskey.
Sometimes my good things are solitary, and others I get to do with Bear. A few weeks ago we decided on two projects that make us smile: building a model train set and building a Scandinavian dollhouse. These are things that can inspire and delight us on the very worst of days, and we are having so much fun sketching plans, writing lists of parts and supplies, and dreaming up the looks that will thrill us most.
The train set will be mostly Australian with sections for Central, Western, and Eastern Australia that feature desert, rainforest, and coastline. In a nod to my Canadian heritage, we’re having a snow-covered mountain with an alpine village and a Canadian Pacific train chugging along. We grin every time we think of it.
My dollhouse will actually be a mouse-house, a cozy, log home to felted mice with Scandinavian design, furniture, and implements. I can’t wait to see it come together.
This weekend I made a beautiful little pot of mustard using garlic scape vinegar I made last year. Mustard is so easy to make and, if you’re anything like me, makes you feel downright happy to be alive. I like my mustard hearty and strong so I used whole brown mustard seeds to give it a mighty punch. If you prefer yours more mild, feel free to use white mustard seeds or yellow mustard powder. It is scrumptious on a toasted ham and cheese sandwich or a fresh one using leftover roast beef or pork. I love it in homemade mayonnaise and it gives tuna salad and potato salad a zingy bite that is marvelous.
Today, writing this post is the good thing I can do, so it’s time for a lie down with a cup of tea and the Christmas issue of Victoria magazine that just arrived in the mail.
What good things cheer your heart each day? I’d love to hear your ideas. xo
Homemade Mustard with Garlic Scape Vinegar
Vinegar Ingredients:
- Handful of fresh garlic scapes
- Apple cider vinegar
Vinegar Directions:
- Finely chop garlic scapes and place in clean glass jar. Cover with apple cider vinegar and seal. Place in dark cupboard or pantry and leave for 2-3 weeks. Shake once a day to ensure scapes remain covered by vinegar.
- Strain vinegar and bottle. (Reserve the scapes and as a pickle.)
Mustard Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup brown mustard seeds (use white mustard seeds if you prefer a mild mustard)
- 3/4 cup garlic scape vinegar
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Mustard Directions:
- Place mustard seeds in clean glass jar and cover with garlic scape vinegar, stirring to ensure there are no air pockets. Cover and set aside for 12-24 hours.
- Pour jar contents into food processor and pulse until smooth. If mustard is too runny, add more seeds or mustard powder and pulse until desired consistency is reached. If mustard is too thick, add a little vinegar and pulse until desired consistency is reached.
- Blend in salt and pepper to taste.
- Pour into sterilized glass jar and seal until ready to use.
by Krista | Feb 26, 2020 | Summer
Slowly but surely I’m getting back into the gentle rhythms of a life not marked by one catastrophe after another. I’m learning to breathe deeply again, to relax my shoulders and unclench my stomach and be at peace instead of desperately trying to keep afloat as towering waves crash and smother.
It takes time for a body to adjust to the security of knowing that our land is no longer in mortal danger, our animals are not on the cusp of death, and our community is no longer withering away before our eyes. You don’t realize how much energy is expended hanging on for dear life until you loosen your white-knuckle grip and see that the roller-coaster you’ve been on has stopped, the ground is steady underfoot, and you really can start to rebuild.
I love looking out my office windows each day to see the hills and fields covered in lush, green grass, vibrant weeds, and succulent herbs. Even after 3 weeks of this wondrous beauty, it is still a delicious jolt, a glorious surprise.
I miss seeing the kangaroos and wallabies grazing side by side with our sheep and goats, but I’m overjoyed to know they’ve gone back into our bush, safe and sound, with plenty of grass for them to feed on and leafy trees and bushes for them to rest under.
The wild birds that came during the drought have stayed, and we love having them. We toss out birdseed for the big ones and finch seed for the little ones and every day we are rewarded with the arrival of double-bar finches, zebra finches, satin bowerbirds, top-notch doves, wild ducks, and magpies. This morning they were joined by sparrows – the first ones we’ve seen in ages.
We love having our cuppas on the back veranda, watching the birds hop, swoop, and dance as they feast in the grass and bathe in the birdbath until the geese arrive, honking and hissing, to stake their claim.
We don’t know when the next rains will come, so we’re letting the farmyard and paddocks run wild, watching them get tall and thick so we have food for our animals through the winter. It is rather wonderful to wake up early in the morning when the wildflowers open and see the paddocks full of them, tiny shimmers of blue, orange, purple, yellow, and white in a sea of green.
We’ve let the gardens run amok too, excited to see what comes back, what reseeds itself, and what starts producing again. Tomato, berry, and pumpkin vines form a tangled and prickly web that requires careful stepping when I harvest. Leeks are getting tall and fat, eggplants provide a vast umbrella of leaves for the jewel-like purple and white fruits that dangle underneath, and the capsicums have finally started producing beautiful, plump peppers. Herbs that went to seed during the summer heat, drought, and smoke have returned in a haze of seedlings – basil, dill, mugwort, lemon balm, pineapple sage, and others I haven’t managed to find yet under the forest of weeds.
Our land looks wild and unkempt now, and I absolutely love it.
I feel myself rebuilding along with the land, animals, and plants as I recover from nearly a year of severe illness, surgery, and hospitalizations. I get so excited to feel my muscles grow and strengthen, my mind clear and calm, and see my calendar steadily fill with projects, meetings, and consultations that delight and challenge me instead of overwhelming and tiring me.
I’ve purposely rebuilt slowly, quietly, so I didn’t take too much on and end up back where I started. I’ve clarified what I want to do, how I want to do it, and who I want to do it with. It feels so good to be working with people I respect, enjoy, and trust.
My business partner, Shaun, and I have been working hard on a new website for the work we do. Until recently we’ve been happy to take on projects by word of mouth, but now we’re ready to grow and expand and we’re having so much fun putting together packages, designing our site, and choosing how best to share our work so it connects us with kindred spirits who share our love of creating thriving online spaces for businesses and bloggers. We hope to launch this week and I promise to share it with you.
I’m so grateful for this time of my life. This welcome and longed-for season of rest, renewal, and growth. Life is always sending crazy situations and encounters that unsettle or upset us, but it also sends amazingness. Today I’m especially thankful for the lovely people I’ve met, delightful opportunities for learning and adventure, and treasured chances to get to know myself better and get more comfy in my own skin. xo
by Krista | Aug 28, 2019 | Winter
It’s raining.
Just saying those words aloud has made me cry a few times this morning. And laugh with unfettered joy.
It. Is. Raining.
It’s not enough to break this hellish drought, not near enough, but it IS enough to grant us a reprieve, to give us hope, to bolster our spirits with rain-washed air and that luscious smell of damp earth.
It’s enough to wash dust-encrusted leaves and give new seeds and seedlings a boost.
It’s enough to add some precious water to our rainwater tanks and maybe enough to grow a little grass to keep our animals and local wildlife going a bit longer.
It’s cold outside, but our windows are flung open to welcome in the freshest air we’ve breathed in a long time and let us listen to the glorious symphony of raindrops falling on our tin roof.
Thank you, dear rain. You are so very, very welcome here.
This morning we celebrated the rain with sourdough French toast and huge cups of coffee and by declaring a holiday. We have solemnly sworn to only do fun and happy and cosy things today: great books read under the covers, old movies that make us grin, walks in the rain, hot chocolate, and the most comforting of comfort foods.
We’ve been celebrating a lot lately. Not because life is consistently jolly and celebratory, but because it’s been ridiculously hard, scary, stressful, awful, no-good, exhausting, and yucky, and at such times celebrations are vital to survival.
The last time I wrote to you I had returned home after nearly a month in the hospital. It was a traumatic time, to say the least, and we were looking forward to peaceful, pleasant weeks of recovery while we planned for a brighter future.
Then my doctors found cancer on my head, and our peaceful, pleasant world lurched to a standstill.
They said things like, “We think it’s malignant, but we’re hoping it hasn’t spread to the skull or the brain,” then booked me for surgery and the waiting game began.
We were scared and sad and tired. We’d already faced and made peace with the possibility of my death while I was in the hospital, and here we were, only a few weeks later, facing it all over again and trying not to live in fear. But that’s the thing about cancer. It is scary. Especially during the we-know-you-have-cancer-but-we-don’t-know-what-type-so-we’re-going-to-cut-open-your-head-and-hope-for-the-best times.
So we did the bravest thing we knew to do: we talked about it. All of it. The sad, the scary, the what-ifs. And we let ourselves feel. All of it. The sadness, the fear, the hope. When we caught ourselves stuffing things down trying to put on a brave front, we stopped and un-stuffed those things and brought them back into the light where they could be processed and released.
We also hibernated and took the best care of ourselves we possibly could. We rested and read beloved books, watched favourite movies and had cuppas on the back veranda, looked for treasures at second-hand stores and ate the foods we like best.
My surgery was August 9. It took 2 hours longer than anticipated and left me with a partially shaved head and a 10 cm incision that was held together with a dizzying number of staples. Last week the staples were removed and the doctor gave us the good news: they got all of the cancer and I was officially cancer-free.
We cried. We laughed. We hugged a lot.
And I realized my hibernation time was only just beginning. It turns out that when you go through one physical trauma after another, your body finally says, “Hey mate, let’s rest, OK?”
So I’ve been resting as a happy little hermit, treasuring the gift of life, knowing that this year has changed me deeply, knowing that is a wonderful thing.
Yesterday something happened that still makes me smile. I was pottering in my gardens, planting purple snow peas, cucumbers, and French beans as an act of hope that rain might fall today when Fezzik started barking and jumping around madly. I looked up and there was this chap sitting contentedly in the branches of the golden rain tree that overhangs the garden.
I could hardly believe it! In my eight years on our Australian farm, I’ve never seen a koala. Not once. I’ve seen a giant goanna clamber up the gum tree outside our bedroom window, found an echidna waddling through the bush, spotted innumerable kangaroos and wallabies in our fields, but never a koala.
Bear helped me set up a tall ladder and I stood up there for ages watching this beautiful animal. He watched me too, not nervous or angry, just curious. We knew he couldn’t stay – koalas do not eat golden rain trees – so we enjoyed his presence as long as we could before tying up the dogs and leaving him alone to mosey along to his next destination.
We’re so glad he stopped in for a visit to brighten our day.
by Krista | Oct 13, 2018 | Spring
It’s been raining steadily for hours, and the grass seems to be growing before our eyes. Puddles dot the yard and little streams meander down the lane past fallen leaves and branches tossed hither and thither by wild winds yesterday.
The air smells so good, clean and fresh and earthy, and I smile as I hear little bleats and grunts from under the house where the sheep and goats are keeping warm and dry out of the rain.
This morning I took a break from writing to check on my gardens, thrilled to find everything flourishing in this damp, cool weather. The herbs are flowering like mad, asparagus spears shooting up over a foot tall, tomatoes and peas blossoming perkily.
I also discovered that the goats had broken into my kitchen garden, happily devouring everything in sight. I shooed them all out, Bear found a strong rope to secure the gate better, and I forgave the little blighters for they had thoughtfully only eaten the leaves of all my plants, so most of them should come back.
It’s been a quiet couple of weeks around here as Bear and I recover from a particularly dreadful virus that knocked us both flat, snatched our voices, and had us hacking and feverish and exhausted. Poor Bear got it twice. Needless to say, we are more than ready for it to skedaddle and leave us in peace.
The good side of this misery is that we’ve had lots of quantity and quality time together, watching movies, listening to audio books, just sitting and listening to the rain fall. We enjoyed those moments immensely.
I’ve been writing a lot, tucked up in bed with a giant mug of tea and a candle flickering beside me. I’ve watched the raindrops run down the windowpanes in our bedroom while I untangle thoughts and hopes and goals, letting go of what doesn’t fit anymore, embracing what is good for me now.
It’s funny how the habits we make in times of crisis no longer serve us in times of peace. I’m becoming more mindful in how I live out my days, more purposeful, less reactionary. I’m getting better at scheduling, guarding my play/rest time as jealously as I do my work time, and not letting them get muddled together. I’ve been prioritizing time to learn new things, create art, sit quietly and do absolutely nothing, burrow under the covers and chat with a dear friend. Work is lovely, essential, and I’m deeply grateful for it, but these other things are equally vital, and I’m no longer letting them play second fiddle. I’m making sure I look after me, no matter what.
When I started feeling better, I made good things for us. Elderberry Licorice Cordial to soothe our raw throats, wintergreen massage oil to reduce inflammation and ease pain, and this lovely calendula and lavender oil which will be done infusing in a few weeks and feel so wonderful on dry skin and insect bites. (To make it yourself, just fill a jar with fresh calendula and lavender flowers, cover generously with grape seed oil, seal, and shake once a day for 6 weeks. Strain and bottle.)
I picked mulberries, our very first mulberries, and have them infusing in vodka to make a delicious liqueur for the holidays. Each day, as the berries ripen, I pull them off and add them to the mix. It will be ready the end of November, just in time for my birthday.
I received my monthly order of dried herbs and spices, and couldn’t help but smile as I poured each bag into big glass jars and lined them up on the kitchen table. Astragalus, hawthorn berry, hibiscus, rosehips, elderberries, and cinnamon bark. In the months to come they’ll be turned into teas and tinctures, syrups and pastilles, all sorts of nourishing things to help us feel better no matter what life throws at us.
It felt good to finally have the energy to do chores today. I mended our favourite flannel bed sheets that one of our dogs decided to play with when they were drying on the line, cleaned out the fridge, swept the house, and remade our bed with those oh-so-cosy sheets that will be bliss to sleep in on this cold, rainy night.
I’ve started getting things out of storage that always bring me joy. Favourite books that I never tire of rereading, a lantern my brother brought me from Morocco, a basket of pretty stones, a painted tile I found in Portugal, silver bell earrings I usually reserve for medieval events. I love seeing them on side tables and bookshelves. Little vignettes that make me smile.
Now it’s time to wind the cuckoo clock, put away the green ginger wine we’ve been sipping for our sore throats, close my journal, and climb into bed.
It’s not often I get to fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof, and I don’t want to miss it. xo
by Krista | Dec 4, 2017 | Summer
It’s a stormy afternoon, rain falling gently as I watch the old school version of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and have soft ginger cookies.
I like old-fashioned Christmas things, moments and experiences that remind me of good memories and jolly times with my loves. I’ve pulled out my collection of Christmas movies, and have been watching them one by one, feeling warm and happy inside as I see beloved characters and story lines that never fail to cheer me.
Earlier I took a few of my Christmas decorations for a walk, setting them up in truly Australian settings instead of the pine trees and snowy fields of my Canadian childhood. It made me smile to see them perched jauntily next to peeling bark and lush green grass. It’s not the Christmas setting I grew up with, but it’s still special.
It’s been a quiet few weeks for me here as I took time to care for myself after some intense healing sessions.
When I started on this healing journey several years ago, nothing prepared me for the aftermath of healing. Those days and weeks and months when the raw wounds have been scrubbed clean and healed over, leaving gaping holes that need to be filled with new things, with good things.
I’ve felt like a garden plot after all the carrots have been pulled out. Quiet, peaceful, but barren.
I felt strangely still. A bit fidgety. Not quite sure what to do with myself now that the big battles were over, and the time of rebuilding had arrived. When you’ve been fighting for so long, regular life does not unfurl naturally.
So, I’ve given myself time. As much time as I need to figure out what to put in those gaps that have been occupied by pain and grief and loss.
I’m waiting still. And that’s OK. I don’t want to rebuild with just any old hodgepodge of stuff. I want to deepen my roots and feed my soul with nourishing things so I can grow strong and resilient.
I haven’t been able to put things into words or clear plans of action, so I’ve just been preparing for words and actions.
I’ve been clearing spaces around the farm where, when I’m ready, I can create and make and build again.
I cleared out the granny flat and made it into a cozy place where I can do my writing and editing and reading and artwork, and also where guests can have a comfy cave to hide away in when they come to visit.
We started a man cave veranda for Bear where he can do all his painting and leather work and chain maille and store his swords and other medieval bits and pieces.
I made three work stations in the breezeway that will be perfect for our wine-making, preserving, and butchering projects.
I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next, but it feels good to know that when I do know, the spaces I need will be ready for me.
I’m so thankful for this time of quietness and rest and hope too. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I’m excited to see it unfold in good time.
Now it’s time to heat up carrot ginger soup for dinner, and join Rudolph in his adventure at the North Pole. xo
