My First Veggie Garden

My first veggie garden!
pictured: veggie patch with cows in the distance and a new baby potty calf 1 day old, reeifie was excited to have a friend til mom came along!!!

Fridays have always held a magic place in my heart pre australia because it meant the end to the work week and 2 days office free! Now living in Byron Bay Friday means visiting the most colorful farmers market in Mullumbimby. The veggies are organic, locally grown and picked with love and are indeed colorful but its the people and the vibe are magically colorful. Live music is payed by rotating local musicians who always seems to match the music to the energy. Fashionable hippies adorned in their accessories usually including a hat, belt and boots with their children in toe sipping on coffees or waiting to order sushi from the Japanese local. The hippies are exceptionally stylish not in a trendy way just with absolute self expression.

Fridays are also our veggie garden day with Pam Brown at the Browns farm in Tintenbar. Pam has grown and tended to veggie gardens in this spot for most of her life. But as they kids moved out and the years wore on the combustion stove was necessary but upkeep to the garden was not. Shorty and I decided to take this on as our first project. Being the city mouse that I am and having never really set shovel to soil before i was excited for the adventure. I felt confident knowing that i was under the experienced guidance of Pam who had grown gardens before! Pam showed me how to use a pitch fork to turn over the dirt...looked easy enough. WOW farm work is not for sissies!!! So we spent 3 weeks every friday turning over the dirt and chopping it up as Mr. Brown relished in our presence he choose to sit up above the garden 'talking' us through what we were doing and show it 'should be done'. This was the day i gained great insight into the Australian culture...tough love and if in doubt just laugh and agree. But as Shorty Pam and I used all of our body weight and strength to unearth the dirt and Mr. Brown put in his 2 cents i shared with the girls something my mom used to tell me when i was little, "anything boys can do girls can do BETTER!". As far as farm work goes...mom this may not be the case, sorry!!

So the soil is tiled and the sugar cane mulch is down and the rain for the next week will prime the dirt properly and on Friday we will plant our seedlings...

Chapter 2 : living for the journey...not the destination!

Chapter 2:
(pictured: 7am this morning on our way to the doggie beach just before our rainbow and dolphin sighting)
Living for the journey, not the destination!

Until a few weeks ago I believed i was living for the journey, each day to its fullest with little regard for the destination. And i stand here now at 37 with the grand opportunity of completely being able to experience the journey with no destination. I had no experience of purposefully not setting major goals for the future. As simple as this sounds it is a struggle for me to let go of the golden egg, that dream of maybe one day some day ill be_______ ( fill in the blanks).

The opportunity to live my journey is a gift, a gift the universe is giving me right now. All my basic human needs are met and all I have to do is 'journey'. So what does this look like? Well its unclear to me at the present but ill paint you a picture. Early walks on the dog beach with Shorty and reeifie, Ive never seen him so happy. I'm helping to revive a 15 yr old grass overgrown veggie garden, I've been gifted a huge bag of mandarins and lemons with instructions to make marmalade to be able to attend the produce swap. I completely enjoying watching a pair of the most intrusive swooping Spur-winged Plover birds court and mate in my backyard which will continue for the next three weeks, and we have a 30 year old Japanese student, Asuka, who is spending a month here in Byron Bay to improve her english and...surfing! She is lovely and in my eyes very brave to be in Australia with only a limited working knowledge of the english language but a massive desire to learn!! Oh yes, and god bless my hour of work with Linea Pelle!!!

Photography will be part of every day as will meditation, exercise, and cooking, and enjoying the beauty around me. Generally, It feels more like playing on the playground rather than have toos. Were reviving a clown party business, Buzz Buzzz (www.buzzbuzzz.com) we put to rest, and im planning trips, and hoping to make friends in the community. It feels natural to regain the glimmer of a baby in our future.

So the journey is like painting a blank canvas, flowing from one corner to the next unsure what the end result will be and being happy with not knowing.

As Amma whispered to me years ago, " flow like a river, the ends will meet"!!!