Five Little Things - Frost in the Garden

 

At the moment we wake up to a white world every other day. The days it's not frosty it's misty and it feels a bit like living in the middle of a fairy tale. I love the crisp, cleanness of frost how it highlights the skeletal structure of everything. 

I took these photos in my pajamas with a very thick sweater and a coat over the top, gloves, a scarf and a hat! Afterwards as I looked through them words began to flow and I found myself writing a short poem full of the details I'd seen. One thing led to another and I found myself contemplating how we too get frozen in life, frozen into habits or frozen in the sense of not being able to let go of things. All this fed into my writing and from the frost in the garden I moved onto loss and the things we cannot let ourselves lose, those things we carry with us wherever we go - loved ones who've passed, very special memories, the vague souvenir of a feeling...  

This is just one way the writing process can work for me, from image whether photographic or seen live through very specific detail and description and often only towards the end the emergence of the philosophical or emotional which is what probably made me react in the first place. It's like passing through a series of rooms and seeing what's in each one. And I realise more and more that this journey that I take through writing is also how I make sense of my experience of life and this is probably the most precious gift writing can give me, to better understand myself and my world. This year I plan to travel through these rooms often.

 

New Year, New Beginning

Just a few months ago, after a summer hiatus I committed myself to being regular about blogging again. And then, the cat got run over and ended up with a broken leg and surgery. An awful lot of taking her to and from vets appointments as well as adapting our home and lifestyle to her recovery. Just when it was all coming to an end, no more cage, no more confinement, no more pins through her leg ... my husband broke his ankle. And yes it all began again, surgery, hospital appointments, adaptation. He spent 8 weeks in plaster off his feet, 8 weeks where there was only one driver in our household oh and one person to cook, clean and wash clothes, build fires, haul logs... the list could go on and on. 

Cat recovery means a lot of sleep

The cast

On the positive side it's been a validating experience for me. Many of the things I've been doing are things I do a lot of anyway but some of them were definitely Frank's jobs before. Things like the log pile, a lot of the driving, the bins. And although it's been tiring it's also been great to see how much I can do and that we can adapt and function through difficult circumstances. 

The logs when they arrived - luckily Frank was still on two feet!

Perhaps the most important achievement personally was driving to and around the UK. Having only passed my test in March I was really nervous about the amount of driving involved and particularly the idea of driving on the left. My first reaction was to declare it was impossible and start looking at how to cancel our ferry plans and take a plane. I was very determined to spend Christmas with my family but really scared about the idea of driving. Well in the end taking flights was so complicated and expensive that we were faced with driving or staying home. Thanks to my husband's belief in my abilities and my determination to go we took the decision to drive and really it was fine. After years of thinking I might never drive, I am so pleased to have nailed this skill. It was also inspiring to see that with determination I can do things, even things I find difficult and frightening - something I really needed reminding of.

Definitely worth making the effort for - Christmas with family.

So we were forced to slow our lives down and do things differently and just like every other time this has happened to us, I can honestly say that while difficult at times, it's been a rewarding and enriching experience. Having only one driver meant we let some activities go for a while, and Frank's lack of mobility also meant I took my youngest with me a lot when normally she'd stay home. She loved our sculpture class and the class loved her. Luckily she is a cuddly kid so didn't mind everyone kissing and making a fuss of her. It really made us feel so welcome as a family and offered some much needed moral support. 

More time at home gave everyone a chance to rest and rediscover all the things they love doing together which has been great for family dynamics. Sadly slowing down didn't stop us all coming down with a very bad dose of the flu before the holidays. And while it was horrid at the time, the after effect of this illness and our recent experiences seems to be one of those developmental leaps that kids take sometimes x3. At the start of the year the children seem calmer and more able to co-exist and find solutions. We've begun having regular family meetings and even our smallest (4) is taking big steps, going to sleep on her own and playing by herself with a lot of imagination more and more. 

Winter in the Garden

All in all these hard times seem to have done us some good and it's a new year now and the cast is off! There are going to be a lot of physiotherapy appointments and sadly the cat still has a limp but really there so much to be grateful for. We're all ready to start this year enjoying the calmer activities that rhythm the last few months of winter and kicking off lots of new projects and new ideas. Here on the blog that will mean the return of twice weekly blog posts. One will focus more on writing and inspiration and the other on family and homeschooling. I hope you'll enjoy reading!

Crazy Halloween Fun

Although I dislike the commercial side of Halloween, we found much to enjoy this year in the dressing up and messing around with things that are a little bit scary. We decorated our windows and lights with bats, spiders and black cats, made scary Halloween luminaries, dressed up and played all kinds of funny games. 

The costumes were fairly easy to put together. A classic ghost made out of an old table cloth for Noah. I did a bit of sewing down the sides to get a better drape and painted round the eye holes with black paint to make him a bit spookier. He came up with the idea of using his headlamp on red (just got it for his birthday) underneath to transform into a bloody ghoul once it got dark - it was pretty scary. 

Maya decided she needed a Hermione Granger costume. I made her some robes with black cotton I had left over from the time she dressed up as Kiki the Witch. I used this tutorial. I didn't have material for a lining so I just edge stitched round the front to prevent fraying. She likes them so much she's been wearing them ever since. For the Gryffindor scarf we taped strips of yellow felt to a red scarf we had. Her hair is a bit flat in the photo but in the beginning it was very Hermione, all over the place and wavy. We achieved the look by plaiting her hair the night before and then backcombing it a bit. Under the robe she had a grey skirt, white t-shirt as we had no shirt and a grey cardigan. She was really pleased with the results.

Lotta's costume was the easiest. She wanted to be a black cat and I made that costume years ago for Maya. It's an old polo neck sweater of mine. I sewed ears made out of some old tights onto the rim of the sweater. The wearer pulls up to frame their face and the ears stand up. I also made a tail out of some old tights. Worn over black tights with a nose and whiskers painted on (I used water paint from a tube - so easy to clean off) the costume is complete. She was very cute.

The games included, a giant spider web on the floor to walk along in order to get to some treats thanks to no time for flashcards, pin the boo on the ghost, halloween bingo (we used Crayola printable boards) and the pièce de résistance in my humble opinion - toilet roll gruesome ghost bowling as pictured below. This was so simple to put together - 10 toilet rolls (recycled paper please), some black dot stickers for eyes and mouths drawn on with a red pen. What I really liked about this craft compared to mummifying one of us for example was that all we have to do is peel off one layer of toilet roll and we can use the rest.

We didn't trick or treat, we didn't watch a single scary movie and we didn't even get round to carving our pumpkins but we had a lot of fun. And anyway, pumpkin carving was a traditional 5th of November, Bonfire Night activity in the UK before apparently so we're going to do them then and maybe we'll have another round of bowling while we're at it, or perhaps we can make a pin the bang on the dynamite!
 

Hello Again - glad to be back!

 

It has been a very long time since I last posted. What started off as a short break for holidays with the intention of posting a few holiday pics has turned into a three month hiatus. There are so many reasons, family sickness, an injured cat, other projects taking priority. All things which have led me to wonder how much time I can spend on blogging at this point in my life. 

After a lot of reflection though I realised I miss sifting through our everyday to find things to share here. So I'm going to begin again with no promises to do much more than share a few a photo or two for now. And aren't these just lovely ones. 

Good times in the forest, amazing light and mighty tree stumps that lead me to want to share this poem I discovered recently as part of ModPo a brilliant mooc I'm following at the moment. It's by John Ashbury and it's called Some Trees. Here it is:

"Some Trees"

by John Ashbery

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.