I love having a craft activity in my life. Simple, repetitive, meditative hand work. Knitting or hand-sewing or embroidery, whittling or sanding or carving, painting or potting or mosaic. You hear so much of how healthy it is to do daily meditation, but I don’t have the self discipline for it. Life beckons from too many places.
I think most rural areas in Australia at least would benefit hugely from a big population influx of people intent on creating a simple green frugal lifestyle. But in reality, the majority of the population lives in cities, and it is there that the real work of creating change needs to be done, and will have the biggest effects, for all of us.
Independence and self-sufficiency are all very well when everything is going smoothly, but in floods and bushfires, food shortages and fuel shortages, community counts for a lot, and the skills to create it are good skills to have.
This post is full of contradictions. I’ve spent my Easter Saturday holiday getting very scratched and itchy, bitten by ticks and leeches, tired and sore, clearing lantana just so we could get to the worse weed – Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia). I had a wonderful morning doing it in a group with friends, really satisfying to see the difference we made in one session.
The actual solstice is not until the early hours of Wednesday morning, but since this is the closest weekend, we celebrated last night, and I had to share my gift with you. I have been grumbling so relentlessly lately about the turkeys and bower birds raiding my garden, that it inspired Henry, a most magnificent scarecrow.