Little tendrils

I cried at the Telstra shop today. Not because my phone is broken. Not because it has to be sent away so the little men can fix it. I cried that I would be losing all those old text messages from my Dad.

It really was kind of funny. There I was being all functional and grown up getting my phone ready to send off while the nice young boys were setting up my courtesy phone and then......while shutting down and logging off what seemed like a zillion services, networks and apps I casually asked if this process would mean that I would lose all my texts.

Well, that did it. 

I'm sorry I sobbed, tears streaming down my face, my father recently died and I just realized getting my phone fixed means I have to let go of his text messages. The nice young boys were a bit taken aback but also very kind. They even passed me a box of TISSUES bless their little GenY cotton socks.

It's the little things isn't it. I am trying to stay open and just let the million little tendrils of Dadness entwined in my life recede and drift away. But some things make me want to hang on with white knuckles.


Did I ever tell you how much I love you?
Three lines of so. 

Holly Crap

Dear Julia. I love that you can knit. I think you look great with glasses. I had to get reading glasses too this year. I really want to say thank you for being our first girly prime minister. I think you did a great job in very very trying circumstances. I think you had to work with a lot of pricks. I can say that on my blog now because my Dad is dead and can't read it anymore.

Anyway. I just want to say thanks. I really hope you get to have a bit of a lie down and a rest, and that you get lots of cups of tea in bed for a while. Perhaps you and Tim and Reuben can go hang out at the beach for a while. Or go camping. Or go stay in the shed on that little bush block Tim bought.

I really hope you get some time to recover and rest up and have some fun before you get onto the next big thing. You are really awesome.

Lots of love

Duckie.

Sky Light Canberra

Sky Light Canberra from GCNelson on Vimeo.

This is where I live.

my movie has been funded!

So cool, the movie I backed on kickstarter has reached its goal and is going to get funded!




I think I have watched this trailer perhaps 10 times and it still fills me with incredible joy and still makes me a bit teary.

Its not too late to become a  backer and perhaps get your very own copy of the DVD sent out to you, or receive a free download........

The internets. Making it so easy to connect and be part of good things.

lives of quiet desparation

Hey internets. Its only 8:00am and already I have been moved to tears by three lovely things. How cool is life! How lovely is it to be ALIVE?!

Some of you may not be aware that earlier this year I did a very cool thing. (just as cool as green smoothies)

I gave up STRESS.

Yup. Just gave it up. Don't need it any more.

Since then, I have noticed (from my serene sea of calm) that people I LOVE LOVE LOVE catch and hold on to stress so so much and this makes my heart so sad. I notice the bad habits that I used to be very GOOD AT and COMMITTED TO being played out in my lovelies.....something happens at work, our staff do something stupid/dumb/mean/silly/REALLY STUPID, and somehow that becomes OUR problem, and we get STRESSED and distressed about things that really have nothing to do with us, and really, while we may be able to influence them/it/the situation, it really isnt something that we can change or fix (we can not actually stop stupid people from being stupid) and it doesn't actually need to affect US PERSONALLY and cause us distress......and headaches, and tight necks and force us to eat timtams and all the rest.

We CHOOSE to take things personally and get stressed about things.

Anyhoo, I choose LIFE!

My dear friend Sherdie who I suspect is also on the verge of giving up stress blogged about this:

Have you seen the Should I Quit Test? A free 5-min test to see if you should leave your job.

I scored 28 on a scale of 130 where 130 means you REALLY NEED TO QUIT YOUR JOB NOW. So I think this is a good sign I am kinda on the right track.


Other lovely things that happened today is that I became a kickstarter backer. I backed this film which means I am now a movie investor!

You might like to watch the short. It made me weep in a nice way. I think it is an important message.


Now what was the other lovely thing....


Oh, thats right....I am a big fan of the whole hungryforchange phenomenon, and this morning in my inbox there was this nice link to a clip about John Gabriel's book about weightloss. 




Now I know I am someone who does not struggle with weighty issues, but I have friends that do and I think the whole hungry for change and john gabriel stuff is really really important.

Somehow, giving up stress, choosing LIFE, drinking green smoothies every day, spreading the word that its OK not to live a life of quiet desperation, giving yourself permission to quit your stupid job and start following your hearts desires and growing the things you want more of in your life, and loving your body and finding what it needs to feel safe and not be porky and being kind to our selves and each other and backing a project financially that I think deserves to happen which is also rewarding the project team for following THEIR dreams all on a Saturday morning before my greensmoothie points to a lovely Saturday methinks.


big love everyone

Lacuna Sabbath

 Hooray. Today was a slothful devotional to the Lacuna Sabbath. I did manage to get out of my jammies by noon, but only barely. I did manage to finish a new crocheted beanie in delicious Noro Silk Garden yarn, a scrumptious indulgence.

Anyhoo, I know I have been tardy dear interwebs.........

So now for a quick update. Behold the first Austrian Oil Seed Pumpkin. Now, I am a FAN of the pepita......it is true and I was especially looking forward to seeing inside of this magical beast..........

On the PLUS side, these pepitas are HUGE and DELICIOUS. On the down side, many of them have already germinated........which is a bit weird. Any ideas? I did have the pumpkin showy-offily displayed on the warmth of the kitchen bench for a week or so....perhaps too much warmth?

 Another downer is that this is one TASTELESS pumpkin......but with really tough and bitter skin......the flesh is OK in an insipid overgrown squash hide it in a casserole or curry kind of way, but even me who is a signed up lover of pumpkin skin was pretty keen to steer clear of that yucki bitter stuff..........

Would I grow them again? That depends on whether the other pumpkins from this vine have better pepitas......fingers crossed.

I have discovered the delights and wonderfulness of GREEN SMOOTHIES.  Behold my breakfast, just before it gets whizzed........organic apple, pear and an assortment of greens from the garden. I love this stuff.

I am on the hunt for purslane......I am sure I have seen it growing in the garden and around the traps..... I am on a mission to identify and EAT as much as I can before the first frost........and have purchased some seeds from greenharvest so that if I grow it from scratch, I might better identify the stuff in the wild!

And I am thinking about chemicals. Dieldren to be exact, because I have a sneaky suspicion it is everywhere........Dieldren used to be sprayed around all over the place with gay abandon and strong government endorsement......just like DDT........anyhoo, Dieldren is something I regularly test compost for (mine and others) and let me tell you, even it you didn't put it in, it is there in the finished product, even if it is just a tiny whisper........it turns up in the most unlikely places..........

And if it was sprayed on your farm, or your garden, or your house, it is probably still there. In the soil. 


sheesh. Sometimes its better not to know these things!

Oh Blessed JOY

OK folks. This is the thing. I am frantically packing for New Caledonia. I leave at sparrow's fart tomorrow. Before you get all jealous, it is a WORK trip. I will be WORKING.

I am ALWAYS %#&*ing working it seems. Seems like I have been on the road for WEEKS. 

Anyhoo, I need to take some gear to wear on the landfill, (because that's how we roll) which means I have a bit too much luggage for carry on......So I need to take a larger suitcase.....which means it has lots of empty space, I mean, everything is just swiming around in there.


And then I realised


I can take my pillow.


My very own pillow.


Fucking bliss man.



Yes, I know. It is the little things.


Amen. 

Wolf Peach Wednesday

OK, so did Mr Duck get tomatoes for his birthday, well yes he did. Actually we have been eating them all week - just a couple each day......and three this morning. Happy Birthday my Beloved Duck.

Other things are going well too. I am loving the new raised garden beds......my beans are not being eaten by ANYTHING this year.

The basil is happy happy.

Mr Apollo is BIG but still green. He has some friends now.

And here we have a WALL of Wolf Peaches.

And here is a lovely capsicum. Loving the greenhouse.

Here is another happy raised garden bed shot. We are having salads for lunch every day. Yum Yum.

little things

My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
but I'm in total harmony with them.
I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything;
nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
Who cares about wealth and honor?
Even the poorest thing shines.
My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
drawing water and carrying wood.

Layman P'ang

Everything is pretty mellow here at duck central. Things are very quiet and still on the inside. The weather is just starting to heat up. The kiwi vines and other trees shelter and shade our house so we are dark and cool inside. Bruce the universe thinks I need to do a heap of traveling before Christmas. Armidale, Townsville, Noumea, Geelong and a conference. 

Queen Malina on the front deck is strong and amazing. The smell of ripening honey fills our house every evening.There will be honey for Christmas I think.

Sweet joys of working at home

This is my office. Here is Ziva. She likes the warmth from my desk lamp. I had to give her my felted laptop cover to sleep on. Previously she insisted on sleeping on my mouse mat....which made life a bit difficult.

Once we get over the daily cable chewing and mouse hand pouncing, things settle down and we get on with it.

The weather has turned a little wet and cool. But it is cosy in here. Over my desk I can see the ducks preening themselves in the rain on the lawn.  The seedlings that were on the deck are safely hanging out on the dining room table. The others are squished back into the glass house. Standing room only in there. And no room for humans.

Well, I had better stop procrastinating and finish this report. Perhaps after a pot of tea......

peak oil - bring it on!

Today I am especially looking forward to peak oil because:


a) I just saw a cool documentary about Cuba and urban agriculture and it would appear that life without cars and pesticides and herbicides and agricultural chemicals is going to be awesome. Decentralized, local, organic and fresh for all!

b) The average Cuban lost 20 pounds as a result of eating less and better food, walking more and riding bikes.

c) sooner the oil runs out, sooner I can get a donkey.

winter stars & rocket

Riding home from the gym tonight on queenie, groceries in my basket,  I fell in love all over again with my velvety green fur trimmed hooded parka. Toasty warm head, neck and ears. Except when I turned my head to check for cars and well, just ended up seeing inside the hood.....not quite what was required of the situation.

Anyhoo it is another crispy clear ONCian night. The STARS. Just amazing. Quiet roads. No cars. Riding as slow as possible, standing up on the pedals, gazing up at the stars, enjoying the wide quiet streets, the dark, the solitude, the stars, the night.

Warm ears. Sneaky cold air biting the gap between my socks and my leggings.....warm hands from yummy gloves.


Winter in the ONC.

Speaking of winter in the ONC - never forget rocket. ARUGULA if you please. Friend of sliced pears, parmesan, olive oil and balsamic vinegar - caramelised if you can get it. 

A Different Kind of Luxury

Yesterday I pulled out one of my favorite books to lend to a friend. I am very grateful to the weekend farmer for introducing me to this book: "A Different Kind of Luxury - Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance"

Anyway. It is a beautiful book. Flicking through it again I found lots of little underlines and scrawls in the margins from my last reading. (Yes, I am one of THOSE people that likes to have a written dialogue with my books)

For example:

"If you have time, a lot of things are enjoyable. Making this kind of wood block, or collecting the wood for the fire, or even cleaning things - it's all enjoyable and satisfying if you give yourself time." Osamu Nakamura, (p70)

"Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant. Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountain and of the trees"Wakako Oe, p201

"It is important to me to be someone who has time...There's a term we have in Japanese, furyu: the characters are "wind" and "flow". Someone with furyu has time to write haiku, or can appreciate flowers, and they have space in their emotions to look at the moon or the stars. They're not too busy working or making money. Those people who don't have furyu are not full people." Gufu Watanabe, p245

"...the large external universe and the universe inside each person are not separate: they are the same. Thus dreams that jumans see are actually also the dreams of the universe. I don't feel that an individual human's origins and destiny are different from that of the universe as a whole." Masanori Oe, p285.

Its good instantly calming and centering and connecting-you-back-into-the-good-stuff stuff. May your lives be full of furyu.

Dirt Girl World

 Heehee. I was just visiting Aussiemumbec - a new blog I found whilst meandering about the internets and HOW DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT DIRT GIRL?  (well, being firmly Gen X, I only knew about tank girl....)

Taking Stock

One of the things I truly rooly love about working from home is being able make soup for lunch. Charmaine Solomon has taught me to cook lentils with a stick of celery, a carrot, and some home grown garlic, onion and a few bay leaves. Once this has had the crap cooked out of it  simmered gently during the morning I take out the stock veggies add what ever other veggies are handy - pumpkin, taties, more carrots, just picked parsnips, salt, pepper, spices, herbs from the garden, perhaps some stock, mushies....what ever I feel like eating that day and then let it finish cooking for about half an hour. How healthy and simple and easy is that?

It also means that if someone pops in, there is usually something to feed them too.

On the other hand I do struggle sometimes with getting the balance right. Sometimes I wake up early and get into work - on Monday I started at 4:30am.....and I was still focused on the computer and the phone and my notes and still in my PJs at 1:30pm when I finally stopped long enough to have a shower. Hopeless.

Sometimes I am a bit like a terrier with a bone. Anyway, making soup, remembering to have a shower and get dressed, getting out for a walk or going to the gym, or riding Queenie down to tend my plots at the community garden, or even just going out to feed the ducks in the winter sunshine........all these things are just golden and important and remind me how lucky I am and how gorgeous life is. I tend to work in fits and starts - full on for a day or so where I plow through everything interspersed with days that my brain refuses to focus and I am exhausted or just plain need a break from the mobile/email/'puter/humans.

Anyway, all this gorgeous alpaca yarn arrived this week. Just lovely. I wasn't sure if the rainbow colored yarns would be self striping....it turns out no - the way they are dyed means short colors and a total kaleidoscope thing happening.

 Ziva wasnt really putting much energy into helping me work out what to make first......
She really loves the pink chair. 

And here is another project. My home veggie bed is becoming increasingly shaded and invaded by roots from various plum trees and naughty chickens. Its hard to come up with something that keep chickens out but lets us in. Anyway, I have had the girls in there cleaning all the summer crops up and now I am ready to do something AMAZING. I picked up a full days work yesterday which was enough to cover the cost of some very very very very trendy raised garden beds and netting structures which should give my beds more sun and less abuse from roots, shade and feathered friends. Stay tuned! Watch this space.......

My Mountains

My Brindabellas. 8:00am. Mt Stromlo. enroute for coffee and a hamandcheesecroisant @ SCOPE

Forgive me Bruce for I have sinned.

There has been a %#@load of airyplane travel lately. ONC - Tas, ONC to Armidale and now ONC to Sydney all in the one month. I am not sure how to fit destroying the planet through plane travel into my efforts to help shift the current trajectory of the universe. Efforts to not have a job seem to have fallen by the wayside. The good news is the universe completely supports (and indeed is DEMANDING) that one commits totally to diversion of organics from landfill (yay!) and helping folks get their composting processes all sorted out. I love my job(s).The duck even found herself at a FEEDLOT if you can imagine. My what endless possibilities for composting there are there. Its like heaven. But without the sad cows of course. Who would have thought all that work and study in anthropology and other human related fields would land one so knee deep in photosynthetic bacteria........best not to dwell on it.

Anyway, here is where the pink chair is currently parked. In my office. Facing the hug window. Separated from my desk by a book case. Perfect for reading and thinking and drinking tea and cushioning sleeping cats. Having a good workspace is reaping its rewards one hundred fold. I have managed to solve the whole preference for having one's back to the wall while facing the window quite nicely thank you. 

So now there is actually a floor in the office/cat room/hooch room. And no hole in the floor.

Here is a cat.

And here are the bees. Queen Malina on the Front Deck.  All packed down for winter. Enjoying the sun. Hooray for deciduous trees.

Lacuna Sabbath

 Yesterday we celebrated the Lacuna Sabbath in the usual moochy way.

We admired the lisbon lemons - almost ripe.

Queenie and I went down to the community garden The soil is so dry - it has been a dry autumn. So we watered some stuff. This is saffron. No flowers yet - perhaps they will not flower until next year....I am not sure.

The garlic is going well (three rows in the center), as are the onions growing in the tomato tunnel. There is rocket and silver beet, a few cabbages, lots of parsley. A gazzilion Jerusalem artichokes. We won't starve......

The other week we batched up a huge pile of compost. This will ferment away during winter and hopefully be ready in Spring.

I need to get around to cutting back the Asparagus - but it looks so pretty with those little red berries.

Here is Queen Aprilia. She has made it to her new location in the bee garden. She had some trouble with ants, and is going into winter a little depleted. I may have to feed her a little over winter. Not sure yet.

Later we had visits from friends. There was much dancing on the roof.

That is all.

Tasmania - the crochet isle

Sometimes you go to a City and you just fit in. I mean, REALLY, just look at these dainty sweetly knitted bike racks in South Hobart.

This isnt a great pic, but it is where my sister and I had coffee.
You can see Mount Wellington covered in cloud in the back ground.

South Hobart is just so lovely. It is like a little village. I made friends instantly. People liked my new scarf.

Yes, this is my latest creation. It is BABY ALPACA. I really like crocheting in alpaca. It is so nice and soft to wear too.


The last time I was in Tasmania, I was a baby 19 year old hitch hiking around with my BFATT* having a marvelous adventure on just $8 a day. Folks are just as friendly 22 years later, and the food is just a delicious.

Everyone thinks Hobart is cold, but it is warmer and milder at night than the ONC.
I could live here very easily.


*boy friend at the time

Back soon I promise

Hello dear internets

I am just about to jump on a plane to Hobart to buy more Tasmanian Devil Teacosys visit my dear sister. I have been absent - mostly mostly because my camera died and I have had much to show but not much to tell as there are lots of unformed words but no sentences or even dot points as yet. BUT I preempted an invoice being paid and VOILA I have purchased me a new camera thingy. It is TINY.

If I do not lose it in the next few days I promise some kind of normal broadcasting will resume shortly.

THANK YOU oh gorgeous well wishers and bloggy friends for your hellos and comments and sweet words about tea cosies and post project existence (ppe) . It is all good. There is much to tell.

Well, I am away to undo some good carbon sequestering works by gittin' in an airyplane.




AMEN.