in which i see the light

In summer the Robinia tree in the corner of our garden is showered in leaves of an astonishing green, radiating light and life. Through winter it has been a mass of sticks and thorns but I have still thought it beautiful, maybe because I know what is to come in just a few months. 

I think this tiny glimpse of green is what nature likes to call The Light at the End of the Tunnel. 

raindrops on ... nasturtiums

Mother Nature was having a particularly fabulous day when she came up with nasturtiums, you'd have to say. They smell sweet, they're a work of art, you can even put them in salad - and they never even seem to try. Not needy and showy like roses, which are beautiful too but in a trumped-up kind of way. Nasturtiums are more like a little brown girl in a yellow sundress and bare feet.
So I hope someone patted Mother Nature on the back after her nasturtium moment, although she doesn't strike me as somebody who'd need anyone else's validation for a job well done. She's more of a: 'Here is my work. Admire it as you see fit. Ultimately I do not require your attention or praise - you need it more than I do.'
A few days ago I was kind of craving a nasturtium day, because it seemed that not much was going right. But then just yesterday I was down on all fours above Rosa and I leaned right in and gave her a big noisy kiss on the cheek and she just gazed into my eyes, six inches away, and smiled at me. Nasturtium moment.

doe: a deer, a female deer

I had to have this lovely deer when I saw it in a retro furniture shop out in the backwoods one recent weekend. When I say backwoods, I'm referring to a town that has a distinct Twin Peaks atmosphere about it, being set at the foothills of a mountain. At this time of year there's always a bracing chill in the air, although I'm never sure if it's from the frosty atmospheric conditions or the dead bodies in the back streets.
The nice lady in the retro furniture shop restores and sells beautiful furniture from the 1950s and 60s, which looks about as foreign in the backwoods as a small spaceship - possibly a time machine. She told me this deer was missing some antlers, although I prefer to think of her as a mother deer anyway, since she's so lovely and placid and graceful. Or maybe it's school holidays in the woodland glade and she's climbed this mountain of boulders, at great risk to her own personal safety, in order to get FIVE MINUTES PEACE. That expression on her face is deer for: Do not even think about following me up this mountain. The girls think the mountain looks like a pile of poo. You say potato.

season's greetings

We bought this wondrous new ornament at a second-hand shop that's just opened nearby, and discovered on the box that it is a Weihnachts pyramide, or Christmas pyramid. Apparently they are very big (figuratively and literally) in Europe. The idea is to light the candles around the bottom, and the warm air sets the fan at the top spinning, which makes all the little people inside spin too. We fired it up on the night we bought it and turned off all the lights. Hard to say which member of the family was more mesmerised, although the looks on the girls' faces (all three of them) were priceless. It occurred to me that most traditional Christmas activities are much more enjoyable when it's cold outside. Hot lunch, open fires, carol-singing. And how sweet would it be to give hand-knitted mittens and scarves as Christmas gifts, if only it wasn't 35 degrees.

This is quite the turnaround for me, if you'll forgive the somewhat obvious reference to the above. In years past I would dread winter - in fact I'd start dreading it in early Autumn, thus missing the beautiful leaves changing colour and instead gritting my teeth against the coming cold. My jaw would only unclench some time in Spring, and not because of the signs I now cherish - tiny buds on the peach tree, green shoots defiant against grey skies - but only when the weather turned warm.

I credit the girls' school with my newfound appreciation of the seasons. They have such a focus on nature and its changes throughout the year, learning poems and stories that are based around the seasons and all their glory. It is a rare thing in this part of Australia to embrace winter. We tend to kid ourselves that we're living in the tropics, and try to shut out the cold by shutting down. I'm learning that embracing the cold can warm you very effectively from the inside.

layin' everybody low with a love song that he made

I was thinking the other day, as you do, what my favourite song of all time would be. Naturally I could not make such an immense decision, but I did go as far as making a shortlist, and this song would be way up there on that list. It makes me cry every single time I hear it, for lots of reasons. It's so filled with teenage angst and that heart-shattering love that you think might actually kill you. And while I love it, I don't actually own a copy of it, so I Googled it today and found out that some hip band called The Killers, which I think the young people are listening to these days, has done a cover version. It does do the song justice, which apparently the lead singer feared it may not, although his voice tends to prove that nobody other than Mark Knopfler can bring it down so low it makes your knees give way. But then it also got me thinking that if any man on the planet sang this song for me, whether he could hold a note or not, I would be his forever. Right after I picked myself up off the floor. And I can say this secure in the knowledge that it will never happen.

Can't do anything, but I'd do anything for you.
Can't be anything 'cept be in love with you.

this way up

Call me what you will - daydreamer, stargazer, procrastinator, bubble girl - but I can't get enough of the great big blue skies these days, when the sun is performing under duress but still managing a magnificent show (even if it does end early). It may be a little light on substance, but for me the wide blue yonder is the closest thing I have to religion. Even when it's more grey than blue, just look at those clouds. It's like your own private viewing of the Sistine Chapel, minus the queues and price of admission. Doesn't matter what the day holds, what ungodly state the world is in, the house is in, your mind is in. Go outside, look up and open your eyes. I defy you not to be amazed.

time as a whole

It will shock nobody who knows me that I am not very good at time management. I struggle to get my shit together unless there's a deadline fast approaching, breathing down my neck or even pinning me to the ground. This could be seen as a good thing in some ways, as it so clearly illustrates my grasp of the whole "live in the now" mantra. I am so mindful of what I'm doing right now (starving) that what I should have been doing three hours ago (ie preparing dinner) has clearly passed me by. Embrace the moment or plan ahead? Is it really possible to do both?

The minutiae of time, the regular tick-tock, is often my worst enemy. It's in the big picture that old father time and I seem to see eye to eye. Just lately I've had cause to compare and contrast this time with this time last year. Is it really twelve whole months since I suspended self-doubt and spent two nights alone in the big smoke as part of the Happiness and Its Causes conference? Since I joined in a group meditation with Tibetan monks without knowing the tiny little seed I carried with me would be a sleeping Rosa just one year down the track?

As winter approaches, I remember feeling cold and nauseous last winter as I sat on the lounge in my hideous but delightfully warm flanno jarmies, cursing my inability to stomach milky tea, relishing every moment of Around the World in 80 Gardens and dreaming about sweet babies and warmer climes. I hung on every word Monty Don uttered, imagined myself having a little boy named Sol and a magnificent garden in the Spanish style. Before bed I'd use my Natio skin toner, still in Monty mode, thinking about growing and travelling and babies, and I'd read the key ingredient on the front of the bottle: Palmarosa. Something about that word. Turns out I was growing and travelling the whole time.