JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
Winter's coming
I have trimmed all the wild and rampant late-summer flowers of my garden back into neat, stumpy little mounds. Bending close, I can just see the buds of spring's growth waiting there, sleeping now until the southern hemisphere circles back closer to the sun. The pomegranate, crepe myrtle and Japanese maple trees are all putting on colour, and dropping leaves like golden confetti at our feet.
Twice a week when I go out early to exercise in the still-dark, the cold air hits like a slap when I open the front door, and my fingers and toes are numb from wind and wet grass* before we even get started. But when we all lie down on our yoga mats to prepare for crunches, I look up, up, beyond the black outlines of the trees, to a sky that is so full of stars they look like rain-drops, frozen in time, and it is perfect. And is that Venus I can see, glowing so big and bright? Why is the sky so much cleaner and more... precise... when it's cold? Dawn breaks somewhere in between plank-holds and left-hook punches, and mist makes clouds of our puffing breaths, before real mist rolls up and over the park, and swirls like a familiar cat around our ankles.
We have pulled our winter hats and scarves and coats out of storage, and I have turned my thoughts once again to soups and casseroles and mulled wine and home-baked bread. I am even ready to befriend the slow-cooker.
Knitted gloves and wooly socks, wading and dancing through rivers of fallen leaves, watching the Christmas pine-cones pop and crackle in the open fire, toasting marshmallows, baking good things with apples, and lighting candles at meal-times. Winter's coming, my friends!
*Wet shoes and socks are the WORST
New crush: Botanical Threads
The next time you make guacamole, don't throw away the avocado seeds.
Instead, leave the stones to dry on the window-sill, then heat them in a pan for up to three days, eventually extracting a colour that looks deep red. Soak some beautiful fabric in the red liquid, dipping it twice and leaving it for several days each time, adding soya milk to help the colours stick.
At the end of all this, if you're very lucky, your fabric will have turned a beautiful, rosy shade of pink.
Alternatively, you could skip steps one through five and just buy some of the truly gorgeous organic dyed tea-towels, scarves and other items lovingly made this way by British lass Alicia, the talented gal behind the simple and ethical online shop Botanical Threads.
Alicia studied fashion design but now works as a gardener, and this shop combines her two passions. Alongside the avocado seeds, she also uses rosemary, nettles, lavender, pomegranate peels and onion skins to create some truly stunning colours and patterns.
I could do with a set of those tea-towels to use as placemats. I think they'd be amazing at our table! What would you choose?
A touch of green. Some inspiration for you
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
* I'm not ordinarily a fan of embroidery as art on the walls, but I'd make an exception for these little vegetable bouquets
* What a lovely alternative to flowers in vases
* This spring salad looks beautiful and sounds delicious
* I've never seen an office organiser like this. So pretty!
* Such a pretty expanding origami pot for plants
* Always walk on the grass
* I would like to live here, please
* Really love these lazy season pots
* Sweet little mini vertical garden made from vintage jars and bottles
* Where to find free botanical artwork
* Potted plants in Taipei
* Wouldn't these edible terrariums be wonderful for a garden party!
* So much inspiration for your indoor plants
* Nature bingo looks like fun!
* Gorgeous waterfall of leaves
* Perfect for summer nights: caramelised pear salad with goats cheese toast
* The Forest Feast for Kids: Colorful Vegetarian Recipes That Are Simple to Make
* How to make natural dyes from plants and flowers in your garden
Image credit: photo by Jaime Spaniol, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons
Winter solstice
I welcomed the sunrise on the morning after the winter solstice in the solitude of my still-sleeping house. The first cup of tea of the day was beside me on the window-sill, making miniature mist on the cold glass.
Slowly the long, long night - the longest night of the year - burned away into grey dawn. The first light pierced the antique glass above our front door, now pink, now gold, and soon the whole room swam with morning. Upstairs, my family began to stir, and the day began.
My winter coat, draped over a chair to dry, still smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke from the previous night's solstice bonfire (a bonfire which, thanks to a week of rain, had taken a lot more coaxing to ignite and somewhat lacked the primal oomph of last year's fire, but was nevertheless beautiful and brilliant in the end).
On the solstice night there had been a tiny break in the clouds as we waited for the bonfire to catch alight and, seeing it, Ralph had yelled "The moon! I want to touch the moon!" We showed the children the Southern Cross, and the two Pointers that show the way, and, glowing steadily directly above the moon, we found Venus. Ancient fires and rocks, all of us, spinning and hurtling through millennia, marking the dark days. And the light ones too.
As the morning's temperature crept into double digits, I ventured into my frost-melty garden to dig and plant and prune, and to think some alone thoughts about winter and hibernation and stillness, and about all the quiet rest and rejuvenation that happens underground, for life to burst forth life in spring.
The first of June
Last night I had a dream that it snowed in Melbourne.
I was awake before the rest of my family and I looked out into the still-dark garden and saw whorling white. Raced upstairs, and woke everyone up. We played in the blanketed garden in our dressing-gowns until we were all wet and frozen, and then came inside for hot baths and hot chocolate.
The mornings are growing colder. My garden is gathering into itself for the coming winter dark, and thick steam from the shower in our cold house has more than once set off an over-enthusiastic smoke alarm.
Comfort-food cravings. Warm, oatmeal porridge in the mornings. Hands wrapped around steaming mugs of tea, cold fingers tingling against hot porcelain.
I return inside from training climbing roses, tending straggly gaura, pruning back salvia, and wash my cold-stiffened hands. Boil the kettle for a cup of tea. Sit down to write another postcard, and make tiny envelopes out of century-old transparent paper.
(Smells like old books).
Painting this botanical series (more 
More mail-art from the old herbal
"My gardens sweet, enclosed with walles strong, embarked with benches to sytt and take my rest. The Knotts so enknotted, it cannot be exprest. With arbours and alys so pleasant and so dulce, the pestylant ayers with flavours to repulse." ~ Thomas Cavendish (1532)
(More botanical mail out here and here)
All in good time
Pulling out towering, still-flowering cosmos, taller than my head. Shaking the soil from the roots. Lopping dead flowers and seed-heads from a hundred different plants, tossing them into the garden bed to nestle and rest and seed to grow again another season.
Cutting away the dead and decomposing once-green things that had suffocated beneath the cosmos’ enthusiasm. Gently tending, trimming, clearing, watering, anything that had somehow survived in the floral dark. Training the climbing roses up and over fence and pole, and cutting back the potato-vine, inviting flowers.
Tending, training, trimming, trusting. It is a precursor to the big winter cut-back, settling the plants for rest and eventual rejuvenation. The autumn harvest, the garden clean, planting and sowing for fresh new blooms in spring.
And in life, the closing off of long-worked projects, the handing over of harvest, a preparation for hard-earned rest (learning to say no!) and hopes of new growth to begin again. All in good time.
Mail-art from the old herbal
When I was a teenager I read this book by Mary Stewart, and became instantly fascinated by the world of herbs and the mysteries of folklore and medicine surrounding them. By day, I planted and tended a herb garden at our home. By night (by candlelight because we had no electricity) I studied reference books about herbalism.
When I had a pimple, I tried pressing the petal of a calendula flower to it to make the pimple disappear (no joy). When I had a headache, I made a tincture of feverfew and drank it (it tasted so disgusting that it definitely distracted me from the headache). I found some glycerine capsules at the local pharmacy and filled them with crushed herbs to 'medicate' members of my family when they were sick. Don't worry, I was smart enough to research which herbs were safe for consumption and in what manner, before I did all this. I just wasn't smart enough to speak to an actual herbalist, who might have been a little better at achieving the health and beauty results I hoped to achieve.
My favourite two books for discovering new herbs to plant were a small-and-simple guide called "The Pocket Encyclopedia of Herbs," alongside "Complete Herbal," which was written by Nicholas Culpeper in 1653. I love the descriptions and language in Culpeper. About borage, the herb at the top of this post, for example, he said "The leaves and roots are to very good purpose used in putrid fevers to defend the heart, and to resist and to expel the poison or venom of other creatures." Also, he assigned every herb a place in the astrological charts (borage is under Jupiter), and was sometimes (unintentionally) very funny.
And it's these books that bring us (finally! I can hear you cheering!) to the point of this post.
After having a lot of fun painting antique botanical prints for my mail-art recently, I have decided to extend the theme, and paint some of my old friends from these two books. On the back of the envelope, I've shared a tiny tidbit about the herb for the recipient's reading pleasure (or not). Something like this...
ΔΔ "Venus governs it. Ladies' mantle is very proper for inflamed wounds, and to stay bleeding, vomitings, fluxes of all sorts, bruises by falls, and ruptures: and such women or maids as have over great flagging breasts, causing them to grow less and hard..." Culpeper, 1653
ΔΔ "It is a strange coincidence that the leaves can be used for wiping fingers after eating crabs, to wipe away the smell. Crabs, chrysanthemums, wine and the moon are the four autumn joys of our scholars, artists and poets." Chiang Yee, The Silent Traveller in London
ΔΔ "The name of this herb conjures up biblical images of aromatic resins and healing oils... has a strange 'masculine' fragrance -- the kind of musky scent that gives depth to perfumes." The Pocket Encyclopedia of Herbs
ΔΔ "The leaves of mallows, and the roots boiled in wine and water, or in broth with parsley or fennel roots, open the body, and are very convenient in agues, or other distempers of the body, to apply the leaves warmed to the belly." Culpeper, 1653
"And autumn garner"
"I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time."
~ Robert Browning
Keeping within yesterday's botanical mail art theme, here are some links "of beauty and utility" that you might enjoy:
* Decorating with houseplants - Taipei style
* Lovely fern-pressed jar DIY
* Gorgeous gift: seed bombs!
* The most beautiful self-watering pot I've ever seen
* How to incorporate plants into your home
* Make a mini green wall out of old jars
* How to keep your house plants alive
* Good idea for Mother's Day? DIY marbled hanging planter
* Love this forest-on-a-cake!
* Plant your herbs in old teacups and milk jugs
* Stunning art made out of petals and leaves
* The right plant for your home
* Invites you in: urban jungle in Antwerp