encore- new beginnings

it's been a funny old winter, with one thing and another. mostly, though, with being pregnant and having a 2 year old, well, i guess you can figure out that.

i've gazed longingly at my garden through the window, from the couch, and carried on dreaming. i commissioned the chickens to do my work.

and then, in between times, i was asked by our community to write the fortnightly eNewsletter.

i can do that! i thought. and the more i do it the better i become at it; i've become even more passionately involved in my community.

because, you see, the chances of us being self-sufficient here are pretty slim. but we can become more self reliant. and we can make a difference in our community which has a chance of being self sufficient.

so, despite being inactive, on my couch, i have become very active in another sense.

i have engaged.

(i post the newsletter to a blog, check it out- cos it might just inspire you to make a visit sooner!)

and then, one day, while surfing the net, i came across a writing competition. it looked interesting and i felt inspired, so i entered.

well, it wasn't what they were looking for for this competition, but, (not all buts are bad!) the editor loved my piece so much she invited me to write for them!

so check out my first story- you know it, of course, but it's just seeing it somewhere else that's exciting...

so, now, when an editor introduces you like this, well, you kinda have to carry on!

once a week i will be publishing from happyzine.co.nz and, if you're interested in our neighbourhood and what's going on, check out the new brighton project blog.

which means, what with being a full-time mama to two, part time peasant, and trying to fit in being a student (Dip Permaculture) and my paid/volunteer community work, i might not get back here all that often.

sorry about that.

maybe i'll just have to pester pascal into writing eh?

xxx

mama b

hurricane season...

i'm totally over winter already.

it arrived with a bang and a bucketfull of water last week. with a roar and a hiss. it started with the rain- the rain, that special super penetrating rain that will even soak things claiming to be waterproof. and then we had a frost.

of course, i can't really complain, but i will.

so it's only been here a week, winter, and, well i'm over it! i'm over my lounge looking like a laundry as i' try to get clothes dried inside. i'm over the humidity. and being indoors all day - over that as well!

but, even still. i have it lucky.

my girlfriend sent me an email linking me to photos of a little town in guatemala. a town called solola, where, 5 years ago, her and i were trapped between landslides; with sporadic electricity and barely enough wine and cigarettes to see us through the emergency that was really happening outside our door. quick lessons in spanish taught us lluvia and derumba. while other lessons taught us that cigarettes and wine weren't all that was needed to survive...

but this time solola wasn't so lucky. judging from the pictures, most of the town has succumbed to the pull of sliding mud.

once again, from the comfort of my warm house, with electricity and heating i can thank my lucky stars.

xx

mama b

summer in winter

it is very confusing writing about summer while the horizontal rain pelts the windows.

it was a very confusing summer.

at the beginning of the summer pascal and tom went for a surf on tom's birthday. mid-november, the sea's temperatures haven't yet caught up with the season so surfing is a brave thing to do.

but this is what men do when they're dedicated surfers.

they made a deal, that, henceforth, the pair of them would make either of their birthdays the first and last surf of the season. pascal's birthday, being in april, was an equally brave commitment.

but april arrived and despite the earth having already tipped on its axis, nobody noticed it wasn't summer any more.

the problem with summer in april is that there are choices to be made- is it too late to consider buying a second pair of jandals?

can i make the last of the suncream last the last of the sunshine?

while march is considered an early easter, usually by an april easter we've already experienced our first frost of the season. but not this year. our first frost wouldn't come for another 2 months!

xx

mama b

Big Surprises

summer rolled on

march, usually signaling the end being nigh, was quite the opposite: summer had arrived!

and so had nannie.

some time before christmas nannie couteleau emailed me and said -i'd like to come over to visit for calix' bday, but i'd like it to be a surprise...

and so for the whole summer i was charged with a secret!

i'm hopeless at keeping secrets. i had to tell somebody! and so, i told everybody. everybody that is, except pascal and calix. then it became the job of everyone else to guard the secret!!!

one by one i told all our friends. i told all the people at calix' playcentre. i told my midwife. the woman at the supermarket knew. the cat knew.

several times i nearly let the cat out of the bag...

but swiftly managed to recover by changing the subject.

pascal's suspicions were never aroused.

nannie arrived on calix' birthday.

calix and i went to playcentre and pascal (who wasn't working that day) stayed home to cut the lawn.

granny (who is equally useless at keeping secrets) had been charged with the important role of getting nannie from the airport.

she arrived at the house

- i have something in the car for calix, can you help me bring it in? she asked pascal.

and so nannie arrived in the rara republic in time for a party with lots of chocolate cake!

with happy birthday sung in 4 languages.

and suddenly calix embarked on the business of being 2.

xx

mama b

a short hop to the beach

the summer recovered.

meals were shared in the garden, or at the beach.

nature was being generous & handing out salads left and right.

linda, originally from freiburg, a town that's about 500km from the beach, visited the beach nearly every day. we were all very happy to be so close to the sea.

until one sunday morning.

the phone rings. it's 7am and i mutter something about having a pretty good excuse...

kerry -ah, i don't know if you've heard, there's a tsunami warning; they're evacuating the peninsula.

i guess that's good enough!

in milliseconds i'm up. pascal's at work. i try to gently wake linda and give her the news: pack your bags, we're going on a bit of an adventure. we fill our bags with stuff and put it in the car. by all accounts the forecast wave won't be that big- but i wasn't about to take any chances.

-this sort of thing never happens in my town, linda says, still excited about living at the beach.

we spent the morning at granny and grandad's in town. we went to the market, which was filled with people who would normally be up to sunday business out on the peninsula.

they forecast more than one wave, but by the afternoon we'd all but given up.

round here, a 1m wave surged through the estuary at low tide. it topped walls and jetties. but it didn't do any damage.

luckily

xx

mama b

the summer of love

with broken heart and heartburn, two residents of the republic mostly moped their way through a cloudy january, not caring to notice one thing or the other...

...until the month's end, when a new visitor brought a suitcase full of sunshine with her.

the clouds lifted a little when linda arrived.

part of the local college's foreign exchange programme, linda wanted to come and stay with a vegetarian kiwi family while she was visiting from germany.

bringing with her the hope of a warm summer (and some german chocolate) she immediately healed calix' broken heart.

every morning calix would get out of bed early to 'help' linda prepare for school- handing her a specially ripened plum to put in with her sandwiches, or a red truck.

he quickly learnt that linda said danke instead of merci and it didn't take long for calix to call out tchus every morning when she left.

smitten.

and when linda's friends came to visit.... we could barely bribe him out of her bedroom with papaya or chocolate!

he wouldn't be the first french man to fall for an older woman.

good things tend to happen when love is in the air... and so the summer recovered sufficiently to bring us plenty of tomatoes,

some nude bicycle riding

and a good bunch of potatoes.

xx

mama b

coming up- more tales of tsunamis and sunshine.

a summer in the shadow of el nino

i've not stepped foot in my garden for a week.

it's not been any old week either.

for example, this week, the week of the full moon, we had a month's worth of rain in 24 hours.

and then it kept raining.

so i kinda figured, if it can do a month's worth of rain in 24 hours, then maybe i can do a month's worth of blogging.

or, if you like, i could so 6 months worth of blogging in a week.

i'd forgive you for losing faith, for giving up, for buggering off all together even.

i have been a bit slack.

but it's not without cause.

it's like this...

it was one of those summers. we went camping, we had our beautiful traditional kiwi beach fest where we decorated a tree in the camping ground for P. Noel to drop off the goodies. that bit was alright.

sun coming out our ears.

but then we went to marlborough for a bit, the sunshine capital of aotearoa. but would you credit it? it rained. lots.

we came back to the republic to full rain barrels and news of el nino.

el nino, the child, the very naughty, petulant child, who stomps around and cries a lot and generally makes a mess of the summer. not terribly many sunshiny days. the soil doesn't heat up and those veges that require a longhotsummer just become disinterested and don't do what their told.

it's a good thing we didn't choose this summer to invest in solar whatsits cos we'd be disappointed on that front as well.

but, if you're looking for good news all is not lost:

the family in the rara republic is expanding.

i'm not talking about the fertilised eggs we left under our chickens (strange things happened there! but maybe i'll let you in on that story another day)

i'm talking about us.

la famille may-bouffandeau has been blessed.

so, coinciding with the petulant summer was a rather large dose of morning sickness. or rather, mid-afternoon poorliness. i tell you, i wouldn't mind if i was feeling crap first thing. i'm not a morning person, so i could just stay in bed. nothing really lost. the problem with this mid-afternoon nausea is that the morning was the best part of the day!

what a waste!

so while the sun wasn't shining there was a couple of months devoted to lying on the couch feeling very sorry for myself (while secretly having to still feel grateful that i had been blessed in the first place).

the garden wasn't the only place where there wasn't a hell of a lot going on...

horizontal in my couchdom i had uninterrupted views of the floor beneath the dining table and there were times when i thought it would be more simple to plant something than to sweep up after my family.

years and years of being vegetarian, of eating healthily, of prattling on and on about good diet and all of a sudden, here i am, only able to eat white heavily processed bread, pasta, noodles... in fact, i only fancied white things: tofu, almonds (luckily), cheese, yoghurt. nothing acidic. everything gave me indigestion. even water.

but you'll be pleased to know i persevered.

someone had to eat the chocolate!

and now, into my third trimester, we await the arrival of la nina in the spring

but this time we're not talking about a weather pattern.

xx

mama b

ps, seriously, i'm thinking of a week worth of blogging. a month per day, with photos and all sorts. what do you reckon?

Sunny!

what would a summer be without sunshine?

but a summer without love, could you imagine that either?

meet Sunny Lee, 5 years old. sunny and her mum, sally (who calix called 'mum') have been visiting from england. this was their first big trip to the southern hemisphere, their first beach-side camping christmas and so it's only fair that she was calix' first love.

on arriving at the airport, the boy who was too big to hold his mama's hand, gladly took that of sunny while she led him across the carpark; when he woke in the morning her name was the first he uttered. he laughed at her jokes, burried her with sand, offered her his marmite sandwiches. they bathed together, played together, danced in the sea together.

alas, these summer romances always seem to come to an end with someone jetting off into the sunset... sunny and her mum yesterday caught the plane back to england.

the house is empty and quiet.

calix still asks after his petite amie.

and her mum.

xx
mama b
(not quite planning the wedding, but still looking at hats all the same)

new year, new eggs

we've got one very clucky hen. she's always clucky. she lays about a dozen eggs and then she'll just stay on the nest and brood.

the other day we went and visited a wildlife park where they have an old farm yard (amongst other things) with a collection of old breeds of chickens (and pigs, horses and goats...) where they advertised fertilised eggs.

and so it is, four little eggs of the silver spangled hamburg variety are now being loved beneath the fluffy black feathers of our ever broody silkie.
we've only got to wait 21 days!
xx