A season in time

My arms are stinging as I write today, not from typing overload, but from cutting back out-of-control rose bushes and ground covers that reach to my navel instead of crawling along the ground as advertised. I have cleaned up the blood trails from my forearms and wiped the dust from my eyes. I look at this patch of garden and inwardly I groan. It has been a rose garden since I was a little tacker. I remember planting the thorny bastards and in the following years they have stood firm during frosts, winds and rain not to mention the dry and neglect.
When we moved back here, a few years ago, I added more roses, most of them given to us for significant reasons - to mark the death of my mother, to mark a friendship, now also dead, and finally to mark the death of my father. There's something strange about giving a living gift to mark the end of a life. Do we do this to remember the life that has gone by seeing new growth? I'm not entirely sure, but I understand the sentiment. For me it's the aroma. Anytime I smell roses, I remember. So many memories to be found in the familiarity of fragrance.
Recently, however, many of these roses have grown woody and tough, they send out weird tangled shoots, there are so many they bite me anytime I go to pick the flowers or trim them back. So I had decided to cull them and today, I finally finished the task.

The death markers are still there, they are younger and produce stunning flowers, fragrant and rich in colour. In the height of the flowering season, the blooms are always cut and I fill the vases inside, which in turn fills the house with a sweet scent infused with emotion and memory.

Of course this time of year the rose bushes are bare, its getting cool and finally the fires are being lit. The sweet scent is now replaced by the smokey, woody warmth that wraps around you the moment you enter the front door. The chimney gives away the warmth inside, the plumes of smoke ascend high into the sky and the wind plays with it, sending it east and west, at its will. There is comfort in seeing this as I drive down the road that leads home. During winter I am guilty of keeping the home fires very well

stacked, a jumper is never needed in our place. I can only do this thanks to Daryl's wood cutting efforts and his diligent gathering of fuel. He and his Dad have spent many hours during the past few weeks filling our shed full of red gum. Despite his advancing years, my father-in-law is fiercely independent and active, hauling wood, using the splitter and even the chainsaw. I hope we have many more seasons with him, although the time may come soon when he needs to leave the job of chainsawing to the young ones.

Occasionally, others have helped out and even helped themselves to fill their own sheds. Daryl says he enjoys it. I have not had the chance to help this year, apart from the odd collection of wood from the bush. I haven't contributed much at all. I rationalise this by the knowledge that Daryl and his Dad are spending time together, creating unbreakable bonds and memories that are more precious than gold.

With every season there are tasks to be completed, preparations made, the cycle never ends. Like every day, today is just a moment in time, a season, an opportunity. Make it worthy and take a moment to breathe deeply, enjoying the sounds and smells of today, they will be the memories of your yesterdays for all of our tomorrows.

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."-  Diane Ackerman


Until next time,
N

Escaping to an Escape Room

Ever been to an escape room?
If not, I encourage you to do so. It is one of many recent crazes to amuse our small minds but I must admit this one has got me. After hearing about it, from my son and his partner, we decided to surprise Daryl with a belated birthday trip to a 'Clockwork themed' Escape Room in Oakleigh, a short time ago. Armed with only our individual problem-solving skills, friends Zac and Carol joined Daryl and I on our adventure. In the beginning, Daryl was indeed skeptical but by the end he was a converted fan. According to a Google search an Escape Room is a real-life team-based puzzle game, where you are locked in a room and have to solve puzzles together to get out. The escape rooms are team based, and we found four an excellent number of people due to the limiting size of the room, but also allowing enough diversity in problem-solving skills to enable us to work together. Escape rooms have a clear objective which is to "escape" the room, which will involve finding a key, a key combo, or activating some sort of mechanism that will unlock the final door. Escape rooms are usually themed under some kind of "story". Some of these themes are stories, where you play some sort of character who was trapped in X and need to find themselves out. We chose clockworks, which was about travelling back in time, given Daryl's attraction to old clocks. The rooms were decorated from this theme and I have to say the designers are very clever. The puzzles involve finding hidden objects around the room, using tools to find clues,  pattern matching and recognition, ciphers, visual and spatial reasoning, putting together related physical objects and so much more. The puzzles aren't really the "logic puzzle" type - usually these puzzles are highly biased towards ones that require mostly creativity and a little bit of "thinking outside of the box". Our escape room had two rooms and we had to find a number of keys and codes, allowing us to progress to the next step. It is time limited, so there is a little pressure, especially if you want to succeed. We found the organisers very helpful and only had to ask for help twice. As we endeavoured to unravel each clue, there were moments of small tensions and frustration but mostly it brought the best out in all of us. We worked well as a team and we were determined to solve it. And we did, after they gave us an extra ten minutes. What conversation it created when we finally escaped, what fun it was to re-visit the scenes and scenarios. So if you looking for something different then why not find an escape room near you! 

The escape room was one of a number of activities we took on as part of Daryl's surprise weekend. Taking him away from the farm, can be a challenge, finding someone to mind the animals and ensure they are all ok, is not always simple and I know he worries while we are gone. But taking him away is important not just for his physical health ( he needs to rest even if he doesn't think so!) but also for our relationship and the relationships we build with our friends. Farming is not everyone's cup of tea and it's nice to play in someone else's backyard on occasion. 

So the escape weekend consisted of dodgy accommodation (thanks to it being grand prix weekend); shopping at DFO (sorry Zac we know you hated it); fabulous food at a variety of locations, of particular note souvlaki at Stalactites Restaurant (go there, its just divine);  club style tenpin bowling, (or disco dancing Carol style with encouragement from tequila shots and cocktails); Go-Kart racing; food truck festival and lots of coffee and other liquid refreshments. We didn't realise that when we organised the trip it would be the Greek Independence Day and therefore found ourselves among thousands of Greek descendants as they celebrated their day in Oakleigh. Lots of noise and colour and barely a space to walk between the crowds we managed to miraculously find a table in a restaurant and enjoyed the delectable delights of Greek cuisine. The weekend was busy and terribly indulgent but if you can't indulge now and again, then life is simply hard work and where is the joy in that?

Speaking about hard work, the hole from my previous blog is still not big enough so Daryl spent a few hours this morning digging some more. At least he got some reprieve after escaping the hole and enjoying the delights of the Tinamba Food and Wine Festival. The hole will wait another day. Will keep you posted.

Until next time,
N

Watch out for large holes

I came home today and found a very large hole at the front of my house, and my husband, surrounded by the canine family, looking more than exhausted as he rested on a very large drainage pipe. The hole has grown extensively over the past few weeks with the help of the tractor and auger, however today’s efforts were impressive, to me the observer, after the fact. Having bent the auger (who does that!) due to the ground being like concrete, and hiring a mini digger not fitting in the budget, it was left to major muscle on a crowbar and shovel. You will not be surprised to find that Daryl needed a shower, new arms and a couple of stiff drinks before he returned to his former self, albeit a little achy. This hole is indicative of the frustration we are facing of late, with no rain in sight, the ground continues to harden and remain dry and desolate. We are feeding the cows hay and lucerne and we are on the lookout for silage to supplement the meagre picking of the paddocks. We also feed them bread collected each Saturday from a local bakery for a small fee which we pay to take the excess loaves which would otherwise be thrown in the bin. Such a waste, if you consider that some weeks we get anywhere from 5 to 15 massive garbage bags full of bread. The sweet treats are sadly thrown in the bin, another example of how our laws encourage wastage. The cows and chooks love the bread, as do the damn rats if they can get hold of it. The cows will gallop down the paddock if they hear the ute and I’m sure they know when it’s Saturday evening and the bread collection is done. Speaking of animal feed, we have trialed a new chook feed and coincidentally the egg production has decreased dramatically. This is not a good sign. The egg orders are flowing fast and I am delighted each time we get a new customer. Our reasoning suggests It could be some chooks going into molting season, a select few chooks who are free loading or a protest in the change of grain. To try and work out the issue we have bought a couple of bags of the former feed and put it in their feed bins. If egg production improves problem solved and if it doesn’t then some of these chickens will be walking a fine line between free ranging and soup. Unfortunately, the new feed is much cheaper as we buy it in bulker bags and if we return to our old feed source our costs will once again be raised. This is not something we need right now. On the back of a long, dry summer/autumn season is the increased costs associated with the farm, including having to source hay rather than cutting our own. We had the depressing tasks of trying to balance the books last night, the resulting efforts sent us straight to the wine cupboard, a few glasses allowing the numbers to blur and eventually we couldn’t see the negative sign so clearly. Funds are certainly stretched these days with no income from the farm expected and only expenses going out. Our social life is severely on hold, not to mention other treats or gifts. It is not only the continuous warm weather that saps me some days. But this is the cycle of farming, no doubt in a season or two we will thrive again…at least that’s the plan.
 Back to that rather large hole, it is required to be used as a sump pit beside the carport concrete to drain away the excess water which runs off the concrete driveway we are intending to lay. Unfortunately, the house was built lower than the fall of the paddocks and every winter for as long as I can remember the area surrounding the house has flooded. Poor design is once again causing issues. My father tried to resolve the issue by running pipes into the paddocks and this achieved an ineffective lake of mud. Mind you he chose where to build this particular house and I suspect it was the cheapest option! 

The carport has been a long, slow developing project, but hopefully it will be ready before the winter season. In readiness for our slow approaching winter the chimneys have been cleaned and the combustion stove thoroughly scraped and all the excess ash cleared. We have tested the stove a couple of times recently and once again the water is boiling super-hot and the comforting aroma of wood burning permeates the house. I am eagerly awaiting the cooler days and chilly nights, unlike most people I know who relish the hot summer sun. The forecast still ranks a few days next week in the high 20 and low 30s, way too warm for autumn and I am hoping I can avoid the sun’s sting as best as possible. 

However you spend the last remaining warmth of autumn I hope it is with a happy heart and soul filled with sunshine.


 Til next time, N.