Saturday, November 21, 2009

Collective Nouns

My sister Kate from Fox's Lane is this week's theme queen for My Place and Yours. The theme she has chosen is My Collection.

Whenever I think about collections, a line of comedian Steven Wright's comes to mind: 'You can't have everything. Where would you put it?' Which is why I just collect red things; it narrows it down some.

I have been waving my red flag high for the past ten years, during which time I have accrued a lot of great treasures. Here are some of them:

Thank you Kate for the great theme!

Now, I'm going to put the kettle on for a nice hot cuppa while I drop by Meet Me At Mike's to see what everyone else is collecting.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Do Nothing

For the first time in a long time I have started to read a book that's on PJ's reading list and not mine: The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka.


I have loved each passage PJ has read out to me, and then when he blogged this quote yesterday I just knew that I had to read the whole book myself:
The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something. Originally there was no reason to progress, and nothing that had to be done. We have come to the point at which there is no other way than to bring about a "movement" not to bring anything about.
Fukuoka's solution is called Do Nothing Farming. It's not entirely Do Nothing, but is more concerned with nature playing the starring role and not people, pesticides or machinery.


I live in the country because I love the lack of hustle and bustle, but feel that my desire to create, accomplish and be productive has gotten in the way of my ability to be quiet with myself. I have forgotten how to do nothing.


And so, I have decided to start Do Nothing Blogging, where I will blog according to the season of my mood, and not every single day as I have been doing with gusto for the last year and a half.


This has been a big decision that's been coming for a while. It feels good to actually make it.


So stay tuned, and thanks for visiting us here in the Land of Meg.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

My Left Hand Part 2

Part 1 here.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Salad Days

Monday, November 16, 2009

Learn Something Every Day

Learn more here every day.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Sharing Food

It's my niece Indigo's 9th birthday today and to celebrate she had some friends over for a slumber party last night. I went over to hang out with them for a while. What a great age 9 is — so mature yet still so gorgeously unselfconscious.

For dinner they each dressed half a homemade pizza base with their favourite toppings. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for the eating as I had my own dinner to get home to.

It was my turn to cook, and on the way home from the party I was busy planning what I was going to make. But it turned out all I made were ooh and aah sounds as PJ had surprised me with this delicious home grown, home caught, home cooked meal.

The greens are all from our garden — silverbeet, spinach, broccoli, snow peas, sugar snap peas, spring onion, spearmint, wild rocket, broad bean leaves, oregano and parsley. The Redfin (English Perch) was caught by yours truly in the local lake the day before, and the lemon was gifted by some friends.

I like what David Graeber says in his book Possibilities:
Sexual relations, after all, need not be represented as a matter of one partner consuming the other; they can also be imagined as two people sharing food.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Run DC

This is my mum's friend, Declan, at her book launch on Thursday night wearing a rip off of the Run DMC t-shirt, featuring Obama.

And here is a whole bunch of other people who were there, imitating the US president imitating the East Coast Hip Hop stars:

It seems everybody's getting in the mood, including this lovely softie I saw over at Handmade Romance:

Hope you are having a great weekend, too!