If you want to show your love for someone, build them a veggie garden. That's what my family did for me last year as a surprise and I still get choked up thinking about it.
While Chris, Bassie and I were away on holidays last Christmas, my mum, dad, elder sister, brother-in-law, five-year-old niece and two-year-old nephew secretly built us a veggie garden in a neglected patch of our back yard. My sister is a natural green thumb and she wanted us to experience the simple glee of growing food with little Bassie like she does with her cherubs.
When we returned from our holiday and I first stumbled across our magic garden, I couldn't believe my eyes. There it stood - as if it had sprouted from the dirt - pretty as a picture. It was full of mint, thyme, sage, basil, eggplants, green beans, baby tomatoes and a chilli bush. There were pink flowers dotted all around and the veggie name tags were written in my mum's beautiful calligraphy handwriting. Apparently the littlies had helped count out the screws that held the bed together. I felt so loved.
Sadly, I soon killed our garden with kindness (I think I may have overfertilised it). After its second planting, our resident possums ate every green morsel in one sitting. Its third planting got flooded out by rain. But finally, with a new net and lots of attention, I am proud to say our garden is starting to flourish.
Bassie and I love spending time near our veggie patch in the afternoons. We potter about pretending we know what we're doing. While I water the patch and pluck out weeds and fallen tree bark, Bassie keeps very busy - poking holes in the soil with his chubby fingers, making mud puddles at my feet, sticking his hand in front of the water spout and licking the cool drops off his fingers. And I'm sure he would sit and twist that hose for hours if I let him. We are so happy here.
Thank you, my beautiful family. x
NOTE: If you want to see a real veggie garden in action, check out this stunning film vignette of Fig and Fauna Farm in South Florida filmed by the super talented Tiger in a Jar. I consider this film to be meditation. It is just so peaceful and dreamy.
Earlier in the week I heard Sydney stylist, creative director and author Sibella Court speak at Riverbend Books to launch her new book, Bowerbird. She is such a sweetheart - down-to-earth, passionate, grateful - and clearly a go-getter. She works constantly ("there's no loitering by the water cooler for me", she explained sweetly) but like most creatives and entrepreneurs she doesn't see her job as "work" because it feeds her soul.
This year alone Sibella has traveled to 20 countries (she noted Ecuador
and the Galapagos Islands were standouts) for design inspiration and research for her books.
Ever the collector, Sibella made me smile when she said: "I'm not great at
remembering what happened last week, but I can tell you about the
people I was with and the place I was in when I collected an object from
many years ago. It's just that I don't record my life chronologically but rather by the objects I treasure."
Sibella
also commented that collecting objects on her travels and through her life is her way of slowing down, of
focusing on the little things, of finding calm within the chaos. I guess this theory rings true whether you are globe trotting or simply pottering in your garden.
I love how memories are hinged to special objects, whether they are found or purchased, received or gifted. When I look around my home and dig through my cupboards, drawers and my great-grandfather's wooden war chest, I find so many precious memories hung on walls, tucked in boxes and wrapped in fabric.
Last month, I found dried flowers and seeds I had saved from Spain when I lived there 10 years ago. Pressed inside a folded piece of paper, their spicy scent took me back to the cork oak tree farm where I stayed alone in a yurt for a month over summer. There I would read books outdoors for hours on end until the sun slipped behind the hills beyond. Feels a lifetime ago.
Sibella's book will inspire me to display my treasured objects - perhaps to pop the dried seeds in a tiny glass bottle on my desk, rather than stashing them in cupboards and folded bits of paper.
What would you choose to display if you dug out your memories?
I'll be picking up a copy of Bowerbird from my friend Sarah's stunning interiors and homewares store, Carmel's Designs, at James Street, Burleigh Heads. Her two other stores are at Mooloolaba and Peregian Beach. So worth a visit. Sarah is a natural when it comes to displaying things beautifully.
Image: These are four of my favourite things (L-R) A hand-crafted Moroccan ceramic cup from my other dear friend Sarah to celebrate my boy's first birthday; a stone sculpture from our home country of South Africa that I took borrowed from my parents - they've had it in our home since I can remember; two of the three little bison milk jugs my very generous elder sister, Nichola, bought for me on my birthday many moons ago.
I interviewed Israeli singer and songwriter Yasmin Levy for the November edition of map magazine. The story lives online here. I felt so happy after our chat as Yasmin exuded such infectious joy down the phone line - it spilled out of her in the most natural and grateful way.
Yasmin is living the dream as she tours the world with her band (along with her husband and their 13-month-old son), singing traditional Ladino songs with a contemporary twist to keep her heritage alive. Ladino is an archaic form of Spanish and considered a "dying" language. It's sad to think that stories and memories can be lost forever in words no longer spoken.
map's November edition also offers an interview here by editor Mikki Brammer with Matt Pember of The Little Veggie Patch Co. It's such a fun little Q and A to read. Matt and his business partner, Fabian, have started facilitating veggie plots on top of a carpark in Federation Square in Melbourne's CBD. Another reminder that growing food is for everyone, everywhere.
I
thought our cafe days were over when our little one started to wake from his newborn slumber. But coffee expeditions are actually more fun now if we get the venue right. We
love this local cafe and its veggie gardens - perfect for a boy who likes to clutch at stones with his chubby hands, pull up on wooden benches and swat at flowers. Much more relaxing sitting among the garden beds with coffees in hand than trying to entertain him in a high chair. It sounds obvious, I know, but we're still pretty new at this parenting gig.
I've decided to buy Bassie a piece of art every year as part of his birthday present. As his collection grows with him, I hope each piece and the story it tells will spark his imagination in some magical way. For his first birthday, I think I'll order this Hobo the Bear print (above) by illustration artist Jayme McGowan. Just looking at it makes me smile. The James and the Giant Peach and the Flight by Kite prints are cute-as-pie too. Jayme sketches her illustrations, then carefully cuts and layers them to create miniature paper scenes, which she then photographs. They're kind of like theatre sets, except built with pencils, paper, tweezers and teeny scissors instead of timber, hammer and nails. Here's a time lapse video of her creating a piece for an advert. So clever.
image and art by Jayme McGowan
