Only two happy hands

Happy hands. Photo by George Angus

It’s not that I don’t want to write. I had a resolution at the start of the year to write every day, even if just for 15 minutes. Because I love it and I know that it has to be practised if it is to deliver the goods. Like my sporadic Pilates exercises, it does me good, making me feel focused and balanced, but sadly, both of these I neglect, to my own detriment. 

I wake up every day planning to do my bit and write a blog post about the many subjects floating around in my head. After my hour of meditation, journal writing and Pilates (if at all), I get dressed and prepare our breakfast fruit bowl. Then make the bed, maybe start on the laundry if it’s laundry day, or start the yogurt if it's a milk day. We have a cup of coffee and discuss the day ahead.  “I’m going to try and write some”, I often venture. But first I must go down to the vegetable garden and see if the carrots are up/the beds need watering/the tomatoes or beans need harvesting/the duiker got through the fence and sampled the cabbage.

Most often all of this applies, especially in this season of plenty.  Also, the aubergines are hanging in huge purple drops from their stems and the light is just perfect to capture them on camera. So this is what I do. Fetch camera. Have a shoot with the shining beauties, harvest some, already contemplating  lunch,  a ploughman’s platter with some aubergine relish, copper penny carrot salad,  bread and a tossed salad of these gorgeous blood sorrel leaves, the rampant rocket, a couple of freshly pulled radishes, only- just- picked tomatoes. I’ll add a store bought avo that should be just about ready to eat by now. But goodness, the basil needs picking over and I will have to make some pesto to preserve it.

On my way back from the bottom vegetable garden, I make a mental note to cut the lavender stems and prune the lemon verbenas to dry them for my special blend of herbal tea and bath bundles. I drop by the little ruin that doubles as a hothouse in winter. I have left some of the carrots, coriander and spinach there to go to seed.  Brushing passed the huge carrot seed heads my sweater gets covered in hairy little seeds. So this is how they behave when they are ready to be harvested. I’ve wondered about that, not wanting to collect them too soon.  I cut a couple of seed heads and settle at the kitchen table to collect the seeds from them and my sweater and put them in little labelled bags for next season’s planting. Only to notice that my seed drawer is in a mess! So I throw everything out, reorganize and neaten the drawer, feeling very virtuous.

George comes in for tea at 11:00. No writing done yet? I show him my neat seed drawer. And the discovery of a couple of packets of seeds of calendula and sweet peas.  Maybe I’ll squeeze in the writing before starting lunch. But I’ve noticed that the indoor plants needs watering and the newly discovered seeds need to find a spot outside as they are due to be sown just about now, beginning of Autumn on this side of the globe.

When I come back from outside after having decided on the flower beds to be prepared a.s.a.p, it is time to start lunch. The bread I have baked the day before. The copper penny salad I take down from the pantry shelf.  I cut the onions and aubergine, go outside again to pick some sweet peppers, cut and add them to the saucepan and then start the salad. The pesto takes a bit of time and the amount of dishes I manage to accumulate in the process makes me consider pulling up all the basil plants and buying a readymade jar next time I go into town.

Lunch is ready at around one and by two the pile of dishes is done and we might squeeze in a catnap before the afternoon shift.

Now I may have to mention that my job description here at The Restory is that of retreat facilitator and artist. Being in the last throws of the planning and renovating phase before the retreats formally kick off, that means I busy myself with interior decorating, garden planning and overseeing the installment  and upkeep thereof (read many hours of watering by hand as a result of a persistent drought),  advertising, blogging, social media networking, retreat program development, booking admin, email correspondence and lately a range of products, cosmetic and culinary, stemming from my love of herbs and the joys of preserving.

These are distributed to a couple of shops in the nearby towns. Along with the producing came the necessity of a simple bookkeeping system to keep track of output and income, the scouting for ingredients and containers and of course, the development of our very own brand and look, labeling and packaging.

Add to that the normal day to day activities like cooking; doing the laundry, shopping for groceries, having our elderly dads visit over weekends, and it stands to reason that Matilda the artist and retreat facilitator is rather caught up in all of this with never a dull moment.

It sounds hectic, I know. But it is the good kind. Where there is a sort of a hum in my head like in a beehive to coordinate all these exhilarating activities. And as the tempo increases and we start seeing not only what we have planned and hoped for when we first moved here, but some interesting new prospects and ventures, the excitement rises in me and I love the chaos of piles of books next to rows of preserving jars on a table next to a chair where my latest piece of knitting lies on a gardening magazine. I search for my reading glasses and find them on top of the seed packets sitting by the front door on the air ventilator waiting to be installed in the bathroom.

Things are happening here, thick and fast. So pardon me if the writing gets waylaid a bit. I only have two hands, like my mother used to say. And they are very happily occupied.  

Matilda