hard work paying off

my babies planting out their babies

 My mouths droolin' and I keep stroking my babies. We're only eating a few a day, but this gives us so much delight that we bless each and every one for the energy they give.

"You're so jammy, the lucky one, the one that everything falls into your lap." I've been told this countless times throughout my life.

"You're wasting your life, you're  a bum, luck will not always be at your side" are other snippets of wisdom that I've let fall along the way.

"You're so lucky, you have the time, the husband, the money, your health."

Where these are all kinda true, they don't define my success. 

I don't use the word luck or jammy or other such words that make me feel that I'm not in charge of my destiny. Instead, I look up to my dreams and snap them into place with a few simple guidelines to help fill my sails.

AIM HIGH WITH CLEAR VISION

GRAB TOOLS

CREATE WITH DISCIPLINE

KEEP THE DREAM IN SIGHT

FOCUS WITH RESILIENCE AND PASSION

and this is how we find ourselves with an awesomely growing garden...coming into winter.

Realising life would be tricky for us living with a fridge, an electrical junkie that would rob us of all our power, one of the first goals hot off the 'be doing' list was to create gardens ... from scratch.

This meant finding a suitable location near the house, clearing the site, carting up trailer loads of poo, seagrass, compost, drift wood, river stones and top soil up to our launch pad, roll up our sleeves and get to work.

original piece of dirt

And have fun!

laying cardboard after digging out area

Knowing that we would be fed abundantly by freshly plucked greens gave me a huge incentive to carry out this project. Being in the present and taking the project step by step allowed me to not be put off by such a great challenge.

For sanity during the heat of summer, various cold box projects have kept us entertained. 

The laundry sink now has a lid on it with polystyrene duct-taped to the underside, complete with a driftwood handle. Old polystyrene deli boxes with ice packs that are rotated every few days allow raw chocolate to set, two terracotta pots filled with sand and soaked with water keep the milk fresh. 

The shorter, damper days are now seen with a positive slant now that cakes can set outside, kombucha and kimchee sit smugly in the outdoor toilet and leftovers go straight to the bunny!

And now, as I talk to my dark, leafy greens that get soaked in the autumn downpour and are stroked by the beams from the afternoon sun, I look back at our progress, what we've learned along the way and expand with joy that this gardening lark aint that hard after all.