Growing things is a primal, grounding pleasure. And I write this with a sore fingernail from an embedded wooden splinter and a sore back from hoeing duck poo laden straw for hours. It is almost childish in its simplicity and in a strange way, nostalgic even though I never gardened as a child.

I remember reading picture books and learning all these profound agricultural concepts as a child. Richard Scarry’s illustrations of cheerful farms with seed packets flagging out lines in neat furrows. Stories of scarecrows who come alive, Peter Rabbit’s adventures, James Herriott’s veterinary mishaps, Gerald Durrell’s Corfu olive groves and Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Foxes ran rife in my imagination. How important farming used to be, culturally-speaking.

And it is a bit of a miracle when you realise that you can feed yourself with a bit of planning, sweat and knowledge. You reap what you sow. And what you harvest can be pickled, jarred and stored for winter or the zombie apocalypse. It’s a really satisfying experience looking at jars of your own homemade goodness in your larder, like a bank full of edible gold.

Our project for the past few weeks has been building Vegetable Patch #3 at the back of our house. The main vegetable patch is quite far from the house, surrounded by a passionfruit fruit hedge, rosemary bushes and olive trees. We wanted to build one nearer to the back door so we could send the kids out to pick sugar snap peas and herbs without having to worry about them running on the driveway.

The Irishman and I did some vintage trash store hunting and found these cool old zinc arches which we are going to run the peas, beans and zucchini up the sides of.

I even love the lexicon of gardening with its fullsome words. Tilling and aerating the soil so that it is light, fluffy and friable.

We reaped our first spring harvest today – succulent spears of asparagus and exploding armfuls of leeks. Someone wise once said that flowers were beautiful, but vegetables are majestic. And they are, in their simple, rugged and regal glory.

This week we will have asparagus, potato and leek soup, thickened with creme fraiche and herbs from our garden. We will have asparagus dipped into soft boiled eggs with brilliant saffron yellow yolks from our chickens. We will make fresh egg pasta with pesto , our wild watercress and locally cured prosciutto. And we will feast like kings.

We’re very lucky to live in horse heaven on the Mornington Peninsula. Or should it be the other way around? Sometimes I suspect the horses have domesticated and trained the Peninsula folk to worship them. I know friends who have acupuncturists, physiotherapists and farriers for their horses, and on special occasions, hairdressers who do fancy horse french braids. I on the other hand, have not seen a manicurist for 4 months and suspect that my hairdryer is cultivating mushrooms somewhere under my bathroom sink.

Horses are absolutely stunning creatures though. The kids love feeding carrots to the horses next door and started showing an interest in riding, so we started lessons recently at a peaceful, spacious riding school called Cowarie Park (http://www.cpridingschool.com/) just 5 minutes from our house.

The kids have only had 4 lessons so far, but I’m so impressed with the quality of the equestrian teaching here on the Peninsula. I think Finn was doing rising trot properly on his third lesson, and it is so cute to see 4 year old Dylan bouncing along wonkily with a huge grin on her face when the pony bursts into a springy trot.

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Just look at that grin! Animals really are magic for children. It is a real confidence booster for a tiny little girl to realise that she can control a creature 5 times the size of her. It also teaches children to listen carefully, have a deep respect for animals and learn to develop their communication and coordination skills.

Over here, horse riding is taken very seriously. Our instructor Kellie West teaches friends of mine with 3 year old kids, and even the small ones are taught all the basics thoroughly from day one in the full arena.

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Going over the poles.

Finn waiting patiently for his turn.

Finn has always had a quiet confidence around animals. He looks like a natural on the pony!

Leading Bonnie back into the stables after a hard day’s work.

Our riding instructor Kellie shows the kids how to take the tack off and brush Bonnie. Ponies love the sensation of a brush, it’s like a massage for them.

In my next life I’d like to come back as a horse on the Peninsula for sure!

This week was like a jigsaw puzzle. Frustrating at first but satisfying when the pieces finally started coming together. We started the week with Brad the Builder installing some big glass french doors to the patio. Well actually they aren’t strictly french doors, but we call them french doors because everyone gets what you mean that way. Never let the technicalities get in the way of a good story, as the Irishman likes to say!

I developed an affliction called Builder Love. Which is when the sound of power tools on your property in the morning puts a “Yeeha!” on your face. It means something is getting done at Cable Car Estate! If I had my way we’d have a builder live with us permanently. I actually got anxiety pangs when I heard that Brad had to go on holiday to Queensland. But why? I whinged plaintively. We live in paradise Brad! You love it here in our house! Please don’t go!!!

The wisteria is blossoming everywhere and the house looks a bit hobbity, in a good way.

Ok now that the un-french doors were installed, it was time to move the piano. This piano is one of my favourite things in the world, a handcrafted limited edition Shigeru SKIII Conservatory Grand which was an anniversary present, but it was languishing in a corner of the kids playroom never having had its own space.

The movers had to build a ramp for it over the stairs and roll it down precariously on a ramp. It weighs about 350 kilos or so and the floorboards creaked and groaned dramatically as it rolled through the house. It was a nerve wracking experience but it looked splendid when it was finally installed.

Ta da! My repertoire spans Bach to Zedd to Nirvana to Chopin to the Plants vs Zombies theme tune on any given afternoon.

Ok now the tricky bit. We had to get the 16th Century Burmese buddha head off the ground. It weighs about 150 kilos but is also incredible fragile as it is made out of crumbling bits of 500 year old sandstone. When we first moved from Singapore, the Buddha cracked to about 50 different bits in its padded crate. Luckily we had insurance and it took a team of museum grade restorers in Sydney 2 years to put it together again. They did such a beautiful job you actually cannot tell where the cracks are.

After a lot of deliberation between the Irishman and our plumber Ross (“The Boss”), a wooden H frame was built around the bottom of the base and four men lifted it up on top of the drum table. It’ll stay there for now until we finish building its real home at our new entrance way.

As Dylan would say, Ta Dah! A much brighter living room. In the morning the sunlight just floods in from those doors and the whole place literally glows.

Just to give you an idea, the photo below shows the old living room when we moved in. Notice all the lights were on in the daytime. It was cozy but dark. About the only thing that’s still there is the ceiling! We replaced those two windows with the doors, took down the fireplace and the mud brick wall to the right.

This new living room extension used to be the old guest room in the house which was a real waste as it had the most beautiful morning light.

Ok now comes the real gritty part. After all the builders, movers and plumbers left, I found myself annoyed at the messy speaker cables marring my lovely new living room. So I decided to thread the speaker cables under the floorboards through the holes left by the wall radiators. Couldn’t be that hard right? After all the pest control guy and the plumbers go down there all the time!

So it was thus I found myself under the house, crawling on stomach and elbows with a torch in my teeth, through the tiny 50 cm high gap between our floorboards and the foundations of the house. This was not what my mother had envisaged when she paid for my law degree.

It was basically great piles of rubble, insects, moths and water pipes under the house. I had to crawl 10 metres in either direction from the opening to feed the speaker cables to either side of the living room. Just when I found the light shaft which indicated the hole to feed the cable through, I realised that my elbow was on a rather large, mouldy desiccated rat the size of a New York bagel.

My natural ninja reflexes kicked in and I jumped up in fright, knocking my head against the underside of the floor, which thus started a chain reaction resulting in 8 hairy Huntsman spiders being dislodged and clouds of damp dust rising up from earth like a zombie horror movie.

When I finally extricated myself from the crawl space, I pulled myself up into the living room covered in cobwebs and rat faeces to discover two gleeful faces of the 4 and 6 year old recanting the new colourful swear words they had heard emanating mysteriously from under the house. “FUK!” Finn crowed!!! “Mum said FUK!!!!!!”

I pulled myself up with as much dignity as a person wearing a pink hat and a cobweb covered old Juicy Couture sweatsuit could muster and pronounced “You are ONLY allowed to say that word if you are a MAMA AND if you are fighting the zombies under the house!”. That is that.

Oh how the sheep laughed.

I think we should look at lovely pictures of our garden now to recover from that little unpleasant incident. Look at these beautiful magnolias and lavender sprigs I cut from the garden! Bright shiny things. Look here!

So I held a dinner party to celebrate our new mini-renovation.

We had portobello mushrooms with our own organic asparagus and an anchovy, miso, chilli sauce. Salt baked snapper stuffed with herbs from the garden. Japanese slaw with a sesame yuzu soy dressing. Imogen’s lovely berry pavlova. We stayed up till nearly 2 a.m. in the morning and I played the piano while taking sozzled bizarre requests like “The Hippotamus Song”, the Australian National Anthem and “Tiny Dancer”.

Everything was in its right place. Except for the rat bagel.

Spring is:

Lying in the garden with Dylan in mismatched floral bathers, watching clouds in the sky

Jade green avocado halves lavished with goats cheese and sprinkled with jalapeño slices

Heavy sheaves of wisteria unfurling along the eaves like a languorous yawn

Getting excited about baby animals on the farm

Early evening strolls with the dog to sniff out scurrilous fox holes. Four were found around the chicken coop today- this means war!

Reading Roald Dahl classics to two avidly listening little faces at night by the fire while it’s still cold enough to light it

Dreaming about summer days and buying a boat

Putting the roof down on the car for the first time and feeling the eucalyptus wind on your face while you drive, happy as a doggy

Planning, planning and more planning of paddock and vegetable patch configurations

Spring cleaning the library books of cobwebs and getting endlessly distracted by reading random pages

Stopping at the driveway to see if you can spy breaking waves on the beach

Airing out the camping tents in anticipation

Rabbit hunting with Sean and the local butcher at dusk

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and last but not least…

Discovering Dylan in her bathers, fur vest and wellies because the weather outside changes every 5 minutes!

Last weekend was one of those perfect weekends, munificent with its bounty of delights, all laid out against a backdrop of perfect weather. And I say this with a twinge of nostalgia, sitting here amidst the incessant rain and hail that has plagued us for the past few days in Victoria while New South Wales burns to crisps around the edges. Crazy times.

Last weekend we made watermelon, feta, mint and shallot salad for the first time since last summer and brought it to Point Leo Boat Club. This is the definitive hot weather salad. Refreshing and unexpected, every mouthful is packed with a embarrassment of textures and tastes, the tart sherry vinegar marinated shallots, the green freshness of the mint and the succulent sweetness of cool watermelon. Every once in a while you get a splodge of kalamata olive or a crumbly cube of feta, just to spice things up. I am one of those people who hates fruit in anything but dessert, but I carve out a concrete exception for this salad.

We saw the craziest beautiful moonrise. It was brighter than the sunset due to the eclipse which occured the night before.

First the sun faded and sank away.

And then, as we sat on the deck eating charred greek lamb and That Watermelon Salad, we saw an iridescent copper orb float up from the horizon. I thought it was the sun coming back for an encore, and then realised that it was the moon.

It was the freakiest thing, as the sky grew brighter and more radiant, the rose gold moon suffusing the entire surface of the sea with rippling, flashing slivers of eerie salmon pink light.

The next day we went to one of the Peninsula’s best secrets according to our kids, the Ripe and Ready trout and cherry farm in Red Hill, for some trout fishing.

Finn was absolutely delighted as he managed to catch a beautiful golden trout not 2 minutes after he lowered his rod into the dam. There were so many trout the whole surface of the dam exploded like a field of squibs every time we threw bait into the water. We ended up catching about 20 trout and throwing all of them back but four. They charge you by the kilo at the trout farm, a very expensive pursuit if you’re as dedicated a fisherman as Finn! But we thought he deserved this little expedition given that he had been fishing for the last 6 times and caught nothing but one squid at the Mornington Pier.

The farm has about 20 varieties of cherries and the kids picked blossoms and checked the development of the cherries while we cleaned and gutted the fish.

They didn’t last for long and the kids declared they were the most delectable, freshest tasting fish on earth. We stuffed two of them chock full of herbs and limes from the garden and grilled them for dinner. And the other two were smoked over wood chips and had for lunch.

Then it occured to us that this past couple of weeks half of the meals we had eaten were from things we had caught ourselves – our Muscovy drake which became roast duck, duck quesadillas and then fried duck rice, and the trout. The kids are learning a lot about where their food comes from and all of us are treating meal time with a lot more respect and gratitude.

Every Saturday Dylan wakes me up demanding to see The List of Activities I have planned for the weekend. I blame this on cheerful Nanny S who is the Queen of Cupcakes, Park Excursions and Lists. Normally my sleepy response is “Nuffink! Go away! I’m not your Helper, I’m your Mama!”. I’m not very PC when I haven’t fully woken up.

Anyway last week I came up with a great game for Dylan and myself. It’s called “Girl’s Spa Day” and involves Dylan and myself relaxing in a bath of Epson salts, smearing honey on our faces (and in Dylan’s case, eating it straight from the jar), getting Dylan to apply conditioner on my tangled tresses, giving each other “footsie taps” and culminating in a session of luxurious lolling about on my bed with, as Dylan says, “pickles on our eyes”.

You can see the obvious genius in this game – Dylan being happily occupied for hours and me emerging plump, well moisturised, and tenderised, like a glistening turkey ready for the oven.

Recently I ran out of “pickles”, and tried to con Dylan by substituting the thinly sliced stem of a head of broccoli. This was all going fine until she decided to eat the pickles as she is prone to do after 90 seconds. After her squinty eyed surprise, she still ate them both. That’s my girl!

This blessed wonderful game will continue for as long as possible on weekends and is usually only broken up when Daddy comes into the bedroom and tries to reclaim his territory. Much indignant squealing ensues over his invasion of our female goddess sanctuary and his general lack of hygiene. As below.

The last time Dylan was exfoliating my back, she thoughtfully mused “Well, I figured it out. Daddy is MY helper and I am YOUR helper.” What a clever girl, my goodness! I’ve finally gotten one up on Nanny S!
Just running off to stock up on pickles and sea salt now. Ta!

Halloween is something we look forward to every year. When we first came to Australia 5 years ago, we decided to hold a big Halloween party and invite all our neighbours and friends (http://thecrystalbawl.com/2010/11/08/halloween-party-awards/) as our neighbourhood is in the rural countryside and the kids didn’t relish walking 5 km to see the neighbours and coming back with more horse poo cakes than lollies.

As our family is half Irish, it’s also fun to celebrate Halloween, which very few people down under seem to know is actually a festival which has its roots in Celtic traditions, having originated 2,000 years ago as the festival of Samhain on October 31st.

On Samhain, a portal was believed to open up between the worlds of the living and the dead, ghosts returning to haunt people and the Druids making use of the supernatural energy to predict the future. Celtic people used to light huge bonfires, make sacrifices and wear costumes. Over many years, after Christianity spread to the Celts, the Christians attempted to take rebrand the Pagan holiday of Samhain by renaming November 1st All Saints Day or All-hallowmas, to honour saints and martyrs.  Thus making October 31st All-Hallowes Eve, and now as we know it, Halloween.

This year we decided to set up an elaborate treasure hunt involving staging 13 spooky locations around our property. A list of clues were given to the teams and they had to search for a specific item at each location. Sean, his best friend Spenser, Finn and myself had great fun thinking of the clues and locations.

Sean’s favourite was “Dead Tree Creek” where you had to dig up a lost baby as the clue… super creepy!  Dylan wasn’t the least disturbed by the ghastly babies and claimed them as hers after the party was over. Finn’s favourite location was “Hangman’s Corner” where we hung a sound-operated skeleton head which said “I SEE YOU… HE HE HE”. Which he repeated ad nauseam until we all strangled him cheerfully.

The day finally arrived, which was great because our gardeners were started to get really weirded out by our property, what with Mark and Sean digging “graves” all over the compost and erecting signs that said “ZOMBIE PARKING” and “KEEP CALM AND SCARY ON!”.

Here are some of the cute party goers. I think we had over 35 kids and 25 adults, so Zombie Parking was at full house. Best Kids Costume goes to one of Dylan’s friends who came as Bride of Frankenstein in a little wedding outfit complete with veil and bouquet!

Finn insisted on going as Mario which necessitated me sewing him a costume out of felt and modifying my red beret. Dylan wanted to go as Princess Peach, bless her predictable soul, which is pretty much her everyday uniform.

To start the treasure hunt, we first got everyone seated on the floor in the living room and played a body parts guessing game. The Irishman read a poem we had adapted from a boys scout game we called “Poor Paddy”.

It went something like this:

(SPOOKY BACH PLAYED ON PIANO BY YOURS TRULY)

“Poor Paddy. He should have stayed home on that Halloween night.

But out he went in the dark, dark night. A goblin was watching Paddy walk ‘cross the land.

He swooped down beside him, and snatched off his hand!

Poor Paddy.

(Irishman passes cold stuffed glove next to him to the kids. It continues being passed around until it returns to Narrator who sets it down and then continues with story.)

All the kids were blindfolded and thrilled to have the chance to feel all of Poor Paddy’s body parts – peeled grapes for eyeballs, an apricot for his ear, etc. and then the ones who guessed the items correctly at the end of the game got candy thrown to them. Well, maybe not all of the kids were thrilled, as poor Dylan is still having grumpy dreams about “That scary poem Dada read about Mrs Paddy that I Do NOT like”.

And then we sorted everyone into 3 teams and gave them a treasure map of the property and the list of 13 clues. They had to find dogs bones in the Horrible Hedge, climb the Terrible Tulip Tree to find eyeballs, snip a lock off the victim in the electric chair (Dylan’s lawn chair covered in aluminium foil), locate frogs in the Vicious Veggies garden, dig up sets of teeth in the Grisly Grave, hunt for roaches in the Rotting Compost and much much more.

And to make things even more interesting, Sean played the part of the Grim Reaper and if you were tapped by the Grim Reaper you had to freeze for 10 seconds. And Spenser was Candy Throwing Frankenstein, who pelted kids with candy if they were singing. The kids absolutely went mad for Spenser, and the most hilarious part of the evening was when Spenser burst into the house dramatically yelling “I’M OUT OF CANDY, SAVE ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”, followed by a string of 11 tiny kids screeching songs off-key at the top of their lungs. “I can’t even kick them! They’re too small!” lamented poor Spenser, looking more terrified than the ghoul in the Electric Chair.

The Irishman saw the kids scaling the fence to the veggie patch and turned quite pale, declaring it a scene straight out of World War Z.

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When the teams finally finished, there was a bonus round where they were led to the Haunted Orchard and each team was given one tree which had been wrapped up in 30 metres of rope, to untangle.

When the trees were untangled, all the kids were led to the magic wooden wheelbarrow which was heaped with exotic candies for them to loot. Now that the hunt was over, I could finally relax and enjoy some ghoulish adult company.

Best Costume Award goes to the group effort of Ally, Tony, Imogen and Kate, who came as… “French Kiss”. Very punny indeed.

Laziest Costume award was my ninja costume as it was basically my workout unitard with leather obi. Hey, I was planning the party right!

Best Disappearing Act goes to Kaz and Anne (Kaz is pictured below with Jacqui as Anne had already vanished!), both of them vaporised halfway through the party to play some devilish tennis…

Prettiest Little Devils award goes to Poppy and Harper who were a vision, playing in the woods at sunset.

And Hardest Working Guest goes to Candy Throwing Frankenstein also known as Spenser Paul, who is still in therapy, haunted by recurring nightmares of being torn to pieces by tiny singing candy demanding ghouls.

Thanks for coming guys and making it Samhain to remember!

I never thought I’d marry an Irishman. I’d never thought I’d move to the countryside. And most improbable of all, I would never have dreamed that I would be reading gardening catalogues in bed on rainy nights. Oh yes, it’s time to talk about our secret obsession that rears its nerdy little head this time of the year – The Diggers Club Garden Annual Seed Sowers Manual. This little baby arrives by mail at the beginning of spring, and is the bible of heirloom gardeners in these fertile parts. But this is no ordinary mail order catalogue. For a start, you have to be a member of The Diggers Club, a gardening group that prides itself on reviving long lost heritage breeds, and owns two beautiful heritage properties which showcase its vegetables, fruit and flower gardens. One of them, Heronswood, being just 15 minutes from our house.

I just love the illustrations and commentary in the catalogue. It is brimful of quirky Australian humour. Take “Granny’s Throwing Tomato” below for instance, which is advertised as “Perfect for throwing at politicians or mining magnates like Gina and Clive. This is Italy’s favourite tomato and is used in salads and pastas and for hurling at old lechers like Silvio Burlusconi. ” Heh.

After circling our family selections in the catalogue ;-  Edamame for Mame, Teddy Bear sunflowers, “Bonk Choy” and watermelons for Finn, Zucchini and beetroot for Dylan, heirloom potatoes for Sean and too many things to count from Daddy, we headed down to Heronswood to have lunch at Fork to Fork cafe and peruse the Diggers nursery.

Somehow Finn managed to sneak in 2 Bhut Jolokia Ghost Chilli plants. Which we found out later were actually semi-lethal, being the hottest chilli known to mankind and ranking at more than 1 million Scoville heat units (compared to Thai birds eye chilli which ranks 50,000 units.) In fact it was used by the military in chemical crowd dispersion bombs! It’s called the Ghost Pepper because of its deadly powers. All this was extremely thrilling to Finn, but I’m secretly planning to dig up the ghost chills and replant them outside the chicken coop to deter the foxes.

Our veggie patch #3 is doing very well despite Coco the greyhounds efforts at sunbathing on top of the seedlings. We have acquired a number of derelict items from junk shops to use as planters such as the vintage bath tub cum herb planter below. The zucchini flowers look beautiful and the spinach is extremely prolific.

In fact the Irishman has done such a splendid job I think I may forgive him for The Horrible Flowers he planted around our new driveway. I distinctly recall saying to him “I don’t mind whatever plants you get, but I DON’T LIKE dark reddish brown flowers at all. White, purple, blue or anything is fine darling, JUST NOT DARK RED.” Which he somehow interpreted as “Blah blah blah DON’T LIKE FLOWERS” blah blah EXCEPT DARK RED”…. which resulted in an entire driveway full of hundreds of Dark Reddish Brown Kangeroo’s Paw plants as far as eye can see.

Upon confrontation, the Irishman squeaked “Oh, I didn’t know those grasses had flowers honey!” . Right. Urgh.

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Never mind. There are better things to worry about in Spring, such as our new alpacas, Blackadda and Mandate, the roses which have been decimated by the storms, the vineyard which has developed some strange new worrying affliction, the little swallows which have chose to nest perilously on an unstable ledge over the back door, the scrapping scamps, our busy international work schedule, the influx of Summer visitors… well really there are so many things I really think it is time to reach for a calming tea and that well-thumbed Diggers catalogue!

If you’re thinking of visiting the Mornington Peninsula, this weekend would be perfect. The weather looks to be sunny and the Red Hill Country Fair is on, this Sunday November 17th with plenty of good family things to do. See you there!

Last week my daughter had her first ever dance concert. The concert itself was a logistical feat, with 56 dance items over 3 hours in the cavernous Frankston Centre for the Performing Arts. When I saw the length of the programme, I gripped my husband’s arm so tight he nearly developed gangrene. However, I found the whole concert quite entertaining, and unexpectedly touching. The kids danced so enthusiastically and with such whole heartedness. Their families whooped through the entire event with every wiggle and leap.

My favourite part is when Dylan caught sight of us in the audience and smiled the biggest heart bursting smile, and I looked back at her father and saw the same smile reflected in his face.

I had this thought then – love is two people being witness to each other. Your children ask “Do you see me?”. We as parents say “Yes I do, in all your glory.”

We do this with our kids all the time but we mustn’t forget to do it with our partners.

Sometimes when we fall in love, we think “This person is my soulmate! He’s just like me! I can’t believe he hummed that song when I was thinking of it etc. etc.” That’s falling in love with a reflected image of yourself. And you then get disillusioned when you realise the person you’re married to is quite different really, and unfathomable at times, with different values, ways of communication and ways of interpreting things. “He’s an idiot!” we think, “if that were me, I would never have done that…” and then we close ourselves off and stop growing.

After many years of marriage, I think it’s very important to appreciate the separateness of your partner. That he or she is a unique, flawed, frustrating miracle. Perhaps the entire point of life is learning to connect with people who are not you. Or learning that you know nothing. Like that chinese saying “True wisdom is knowing what you don’t know.”

We can never walk in any one’s shoes truly, but even when we don’t understand, we can say “I see you. I see you for all you are and I love you.” And we can be grateful.

And in that moment, you can see in a grown person’s face, the surprise and happiness of a child at a dance concert who has been seen and loved. Waving!

This year I kept getting requests to do a Christmas gift guide type of blog post from my readers, but I procrastinated and shoved it to the back of my mind. Our family is such a quirky family that I wasn’t sure that the types of things we liked would be of interest to anyone!

For example, Finn’s very specific Christmas wish list included a large square of green astroturf from Bunnings (so that he could recreate a Plants vs Zombies garden patch in his bedroom), three trophies (to be engraved for “Best Asparagus” and “Animal Whisperer”), a fake ruby and a piece of honeycomb in a glass jar.

Dylan wants an All Areas Access Pass to Mum’s wardrobe and shoe closet.

Sean wants cold, hard $$$.  I suppose that’s fairly typical of teenagers though.

Even our animals are quirky. We have a gay peacock called Pooky who is having a torrid affair in our bush with a wild peacock who turned up two days ago, calling plaintively to Pooky outside the orchard. They are now called Pooky 1 and Pooky 2, rather imaginatively.

And don’t get me started on our very silly singing alpacas!

Anyway in the spirit of Christmas, I present you with Gift Guide of Random Cool Things as selected by the Leahy Family!

- Awesome coffee subscription from 3000 Thieves. I bumped into this cool guy, Athan, on a self-sufficiency workshop in Daylesford. When we weren’t gutting rabbits, he told me about his business which sends coffee subscribers a different package of specialty coffee beans every month with the low down on why that particular brand is so amazing. I signed the Irishman up for Father’s Day and he has been in Coffee Heaven since! They deliver everywhere by post and have Xmas vouchers too.
http://threethousandthieves.com/

- Polaroid Camera – There’s just something purely magical about watching a photograph bloom to life. I keep ours next to the Guest Book in our house and all visitors must snap a polaroid for themselves and one for the guest book.

- Toca Hair Salon Me – Download this from the App store and the next few hours are guaranteed to be full of giggles as everyone in the house gives horrifying makeovers to their freaky animated selves
http://tocaboca.com/game/toca-hair-salon-me/

- Water colour set & postcards – You can get these tiny little watercolour artist sets from art supply shops and they are the best things to whip out when you are feeling artistic on holiday

- Who doesn’t love camping? My kids have a variety of play tents permanently pitched around the house and their favourite is from Australian tent maker “Such Great Heights”. /www.facebook.com/sghsocial

- Lego Architecture model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater. An achievable family project!

- A subscription to Dumbo Feather – a intellectually stimulating magazine about “Conversations with extraordinary people” and part of Melbourne cultural psyche. http://www.dumbofeather.com/

- Sage Smudge Sticks – available at all hippie shops, for chasing bad dreams away and creating magical white smoke to cleanse the house of bad energies and impress children. http://www.treeoflife.com.au/Homewares/Fragrances/Pure-White-Sage-Smudge-Stick
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- Everyone needs a good sewing kit, even grown men! I have this one from Dumpling Dynasty (pic from http://fromthelark.com/) but you could easy assemble your own in a cool tin.
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- I customised these chopping boards and wooden trays for our house. https://www.etsy.com/shop/RichwoodCreations

- My current obsession is Bestmadeco.com which has stylish and well made camping equipment and boys toys (even though I am the one playing with most of their stuff). I love their pocket knives but Finn adores their Map notebooks which come with a dotted grid and compass rows on each page for you to plot your own real or imaginary map

- Lastly, anything that gets you outside as a family whether it’s a camping trailer or a paddle board. This was my early Christmas present and I love it! Thanks Santa!

Final thoughts – I’ve found this whole season completely overwhelming as a person who never celebrated Christmas as a child. What’s with this month long marathon of parties, shopping, ordering, preparing, decorating and frenetic activity? And in Australia, the school year ends at the same time so we have all the year end madness, school reports and concerts as well. Sometimes I just want to hide out in my bathtub and lock the door!

What helped me the other day was talking to a good friend who reminded me that Christmas is about our presence, not presents. So I have been taking big breaths and remind myself about being graceful under pressure, and reflecting on self-care, good boundaries but also being generous with my spirit and not just my time and effort. I hope all of you have a wonderful, intentional Christmas season!

“Santa came last night and left footprints next to the fireplace, he ate a little bit of the biscuits and he drank ALL of the beer!” reported Finn, hyperventilating as he bounced on our bed this morning. Stretch. Oh yes. It’s Christmas again, the one day a year I get up at the crack of dawn-ish.

This year I learned a new trick from our friends. Last night when I was at a beach barbecue, I tried to leave early saying that I had mounds of presents to wrap. “WRAP?!? What do you mean wrap presents?!” bellowed our friend Duncan, brandishing a beer bottle with scorn. Dave chimed in “On the Peninsula you get a big black rubbish bag and throw all the presents in there for the kiddies. It’s Santa’s sack! That’s the sack! None of this staying up till 3 a.m. wrapping things! No muss no fuss!”

Alrighty then. Well I refused to go the complete bogany hog, so I retrieved 3 antique french linen flour sacks, one for each kid, and merrily tossed their presents in there. Done!

As you can see, Finn thought it was great fun.

Santa brought trophies for all the kids for special achievements during the year, like for learning to ride a bike and growing the best vegetables.

The Irishman also loved his cool wobble board chess set although we’re still trying to figure out how to kid proof it. In other news, I got a lovely red hobie kayak ready for the start of summer. Paddleboarding and kayaking will keep me busy!

Bruno and Coco had some special Mongolian beef jerky and promptly fell asleep amongst the presents and tinsel.

I hope you had a magical day as well, have a very joyful Christmas and remember that you are loved.

xxx,
C

This week I said “Yeah, Christmas was great!” and “We’re just chilling out” a lot. Actually I felt like I was drowning under a relentless tide half of the time. I’m not used to spending this time of the year in Australia and it seems to me a cruel coincidence that the festive season is also the end of the school year (read 2 months of the kids turning feral), and the time when your cleaning lady, plumber, nanny and babysitters all go on a long vacation, and you’re expected to party like it’s going out of style. Big smile!

And add to the mix, the fact that the poor Irishman is down with some scary staph infection of the knee and confined to bed, and it all adds up to hours of tedious monotony everyday doing the dishes, caring for the farm animals, cooking, vacuuming muffin crumbs, pulling tinsel out of crevices and cleaning up science experiments of exploding bottles of coke and sand.

Housework is not my favourite. In fact I have never done any housework prior to coming to Australia at all. Which doesn’t mean that I spent my childhood lounging about Gatsby-like sucking on bon bons, but in Singapore kids generally contend with mountains of psychotic homework (and hours of tuition lessons after school ) instead of the laundry. Dylan sighed “I miss our maids Auntie Margie and Auntie Sholekah” the other day, and I said “I miss them more!” as I tried to glue my shredded cuticles back together with Shelleys superglue.

In the meantime, my only domestic assistant is “Bot Bot”, our robotic vacumn cleaner. He also doesn’t require superannuation or have a TFN (*Tax File Number for you non-Aussies) , so he does have some things going for him.

The only time I got some respite was after the kids were in bed. One day I just had enough. I left the dirty dishes in the sink, the air of frying hanging in the air and ran out into the cool evening garden barefoot with a pair of secateurs and my camera. Shoot and snip mission. I found glorious hydrangeas in every shade from palest robins egg blue to deep cobalt. Just growing around the water tank, under our window sills, thriving in the unexpected places.

And the alliums were taller than me. These are actually garlic flowers. Their geometric beauty lending them an alien air. These guys are so robust that they last for months and months after they’re cut and dry out eventually, preserving their beautiful globe like heads.

And the passionfruit vines were bursting with these cheerful little purple and yellow flowers, harbingers of the sweet, tart fruit to come.

Arranging flowers in the evening is very meditative. Snip, tuck, place.

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Even as the year drew to a close, every day brought new milestones.

The last day of the year was especially big for us. Our littlest one, Dylan, lost her first tooth and you never saw a girl more pleased with herself. Her whole face looks different now, less of the buttery baby chubbiness and more scamp street urchin.

And our 15 year old Sean, started his first day of proper paid work as a kitchen hand at the beautiful Crittenden Estate restaurant, one of our favourite places on the Peninsula. I picked him up at 1 a.m. in the morning on New Years Day and he collapsed into the car in a excited puddle of sighs. Apparently he had witnessed a Greek wedding for 300 which culminated in hundreds of smashed glasses and a topless 70 year old dancing on the bar. It’s fair to say Sean’s no longer a child!

Mark and I felt like it was the end of an era. The biggest one almost fully hatched, the youngest one losing her baby teeth. We held hands and went to bed a little dazed by how fast time has flown by. The clothes remained on the floor, the rooms dishevelled and disgraceful, but in our hearts we felt rich as kings, drunk as fools and full as gluttons celebrating the end of another brimful year.

Happy new year all my friends!

Living in the countryside is learning how to dance with chaos. Where our life in the city was a tightly choreographed ballet of appointments and plans, our other life in the countryside is improvised, loose, freeform.

You never know what the day has planned for you when you wake up.

A tree blown down in the middle of the night. The sudden arrival of snowy cherry blossoms. The death of a beloved chicken (RIP Explorer Biscuit) or the smallest peeps and flurry of activity in the coop signalling the arrival of a new duckling.

Walk into your kitchen and there could well be your plumber who’s popped in for a cup of tea and to collect a cheque. Or you could find your eldest son missing, having been taken to the movies by a neighbour since they were passing by your house on the way there.

I’ve learned to make it up as I go along. And also to always wear a nightie around the house (although the plumber did give me a generous discount that one time…).

Now I “plan” my dinner by surveying the vegetable patch and what’s left in the fridge. This week we had an abundance of zucchini in the garden. Masses of papery lantern like blossoms on shiny car-enamel yellow stalks. When you have zucchini, you really have zucchini. It’s like that old country joke that you know you have no friends if you’ve got to buy your own zucchini. I’ve been known to push eggs and veg on my friends until one of them shrieked “Stop! You’ve become a produce-pusher!”

So I made a feathery light tempura batter spiked with curry powder and sea salt and fried these gorgeous flowers up. The secret is cold cold sparkling water and mixing it in a lumpy fashion.

The kids loved it, I’ve never seen them fight over zucchini before!

Another improv memory – we came back from an overseas trip and realised we had nothing to eat. Then my friend Imogen texted me to say that she had seen a huge smoked eel at the fishmongers and bought it for me and dropped it off in my fridge as I was the only person she knew who would appreciate such a cadeau. I was overjoyed! That night I made smoked eel cakes, mashing the eel with potatoes and onions and then fried up some silver beet from the the garden with tomato passata, red wine and simmered lentils. The Irishman declared it one of his favourite meals ever. (That’s Imogen below saying “The eel was THIS big!”)

And lastly, one of my favourite unplanned memories of 2013. We were supposed to go to a party at our neighbours house, when their water tank broke. “What shall we do?” said Anne. Well the answer was obvious. So we ended up hosting a party for 20 or so adults and children on a magical sunny afternoon.

The kids borrowed swimsuits and played in the sprinklers, rowed in the dam, chased the chickens about and picked sugar plums in the orchard for dessert.

There was a race and a talent show.

And of course there was much rolling down the hill in billy carts, bikes, ride ons, skateboards and tractors.

“This is magic!” one of the kids shouted. Dylan stood in the wind, arms outstretched as if trying to harness the wind.

Can there be anything better than unplanned perfection? Cheers to 2014 and to all the surprises it holds, I can’t wait.

It all started with a small comment at a party. Someone recognised me and told me a story. Apparently I had a stalker, not just a cyber stalker, but someone who lived within 10 minutes of my house. This person had trawled through reams of my old blog posts to extract details like my car licence plate, would spot my car at the local super market carpark and watch me from a distance, while i darted in and out of the shops with laden with paper bags of meat and flowers.

It’s not the first time in my life that I’ve been stalked before, but this seemed worse, a incongruity in this pastoral corner of the world we live in, where neighbours leave fresh avocados at your door, where the post office has a special corner for your parcels, marked with a cardboard sign and roadside stalls with honesty jars line the way home.

I didn’t feel like writing much any more. It was the New Year season, and for many reasons other than the stalking, I felt like I was stuck in a liminal space.

No routines, no structure, the rictus grin of inane festivity.

And then one of the children did something deeply upsetting and required extra care and especially mindful parenting.  The cure to everything is love. What if it doesn’t work? Increase the dose. Simple, but not easy.

Out of nowhere came the horrible heatwave in Victoria, a week of incendiary temperatures that swept through our area, leaving fires and parched grass in its wake. We were lucky to escape unscathed, but the damage was everywhere. Our friends olive grove where we camped at last year was wrecked by a violent fire tornado, and our favourite cafe burned to a crisp.

We started drawing up detailed fire escape plans, realising the perils of the beautiful acres of native bushland surrounding our house, the only sizeable thicket of trees for miles around us. Each tea tree, gum tree and olive tree a miniature explosive device.

Everyone has little routines, secret poker tells, which are leading indicators of their well-being.  If they’re doing them, you know everything’s alright in their world.

For my husband, it’s exercise.

For me, it’s cooking, having friends over, taking photographs, putting on lipstick in the morning, and most of all, writing.

But the writing dried up and the usual wash of morning shower ideas thinned to a weak trickle, not worthy of documentation or even rumination.

The difficulty of getting your groove back is an exponential curve. If you make constant small adjustments and regular maintenance, the wheel keeps turning, the momentum goes on. Once you stop, the effort it takes to start again is painful.  Writing this post has been torture. Five words forward, four words deleted.  It was the same when I went back to work after having children. Self-doubt is a familiar stranger.

At times like these I go back to basics. One foot in front of the other. Meditation to Sogyal Rinpoche. Playing music that gets me going. Light a candle and sit in front of my desk. Go outside and watch the prayer flags flutter in the wind.

One of the lines from a book I love (American Dream Machine by Matthew Spektor) -   “If you live long enough, you get to play all the parts. You get to be every person in the play.”   Everything comes and goes. Everything is a phase. This too shall pass.  And I am slowly learning to be cool with this.

Usually I can’t wait to fling open the windows in the morning and get that first hit of cool dewy eucalyptus infused air, but fires are still raging across Victoria and the windows must stay shut for now. This summer has been a ferocious and erratic one. The tender herbs and vegetables have dried up into wizened crisps, the soft little berries didn’t stand a chance. The only things flourishing now are the ones with thick skins, swarthy skinned tomatoes, watermelons, zucchini, passionfruit. Such is life. A thick skin has served me well too.

Just the other day, I noticed that we had pennants hanging in our playroom, medieval looking Bhutanese prayer flags fluttering in the gum trees, raw silk banners hanging from the window frames, even the labels of our Cable Car Estate wine has a colourful bunting motif that I painted with watercolours.

Perhaps I have subconsciously populated my house with them, because of the metaphor at the heart of one of my favourite pieces of writing, by Jean Dominique Bauby, who was paralysed completely save for his left eye, and laboriously dictated an entire, extraordinary, astoundingly beautiful novel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, through blinking the alphabet hundreds of thousands of times.

He wrote a passage about the letters that he received during his long convalescence, which I’ve never forgotten, not only because of it’s unvarnished, austere beauty but also knowing the painstaking process that governed the creation of each word.

“I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence…

“Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.

A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark…I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship. It will keep the vultures at bay.” – Jean-Dominique Bauby

So many of my friends, acquaintances, and even people I have never met before, have written to me in the past month since my last blog post, sending me messages of encouragement and support. Sometimes the most prosaic words are the most touching. Thank you all, especially Robb, Pauline, Deirdre, Lisa Tainton, Tony Paul, Tanya Highfield and many more.

I think of my own half-mile friendship banner often, gusting valiantly while the winds of life blow fiercely, at other times, a gentle ripple in a calm breeze, and I know that I am loved. Thank you.

It’s time for another randomness post. I haven’t been taking many photos recently as we have builders sanding, painting and plastering everywhere and the cameras have been safely tucked away in my bedroom, so here are the meagre few that I have for February.

The kids have just returned to school after almost 10 weeks of holidays. I was so relieved when they went back to school. I felt a bit like we were under house arrest because of the building work, and the kids were turning completely feral on each other.

I took this photo the other day when I found Finn meditating in his favourite tulip tree after school. It’s his latest thing. Apparently he has a new best friend at school who likes “meditating” too, although Finn’s idea of meditation involves rolling around on the mat and making alpaca sounds.

The rooms in the house are in flamboyant disarray due to the painting going on. It was fun choosing wall colours, but I think I let myself be unduly influenced by the paint shade names. My study got painted a calming Donkey Grey as velvety as a jenny’s ear, the powder room in Butter and Sugar, the mudroom in Rubble and so on…

I didn’t feel like cooking much with all the mineral turps in the air, so I ended up eating a lot of takeaway sushi in my car, windows rolled down, parked beside Mornington Pier.

Mark was away for one whole week in Singapore and Hong Kong, and it was a little nerve wracking because we were on alert for severe fire danger risk and I had to rehearse the fire escape plan in my head every night while the kids were in bed. Step One – Wet towels, then respirators, then kids and dogs in car, drive through vineyard into neighbour’s paddock etc. I’ll sleep a lot easier when our fire bunker gets put in.

Now that summer is kind of over, Finn’s Potion Stall had to come down. We did tell him that his pricing needed a bit of fine tuning although he did rake in about $12 of pity sales for little potions. “Listen up Finn, no one is going to pay $5 for potions that don’t do anything.” His eyes widened and he said “But they make your plants grow bigger! I took some of Dad’s fertiliser and mixed it into the potion. Not the exploding type you make bombs from, just the normal blood and bone fertiliser.” Good to know.

Coco got really really fat because the builders took the mudroom door and gate off and she kept breaking out of the house to raid the compost bin. She is on the strictest of diets now. Look what a scamp she was, she has white paint all over one shoulder after sneaking past a painter to get out of the house.

And… we have another round of ducklings! The first one died yesterday, then we had 3 today who look really healthy, and they have been named Itchy & Scratchy & Patchy.

We converted a crate into the Duck Penthouse on top of my formerly beautiful grand piano. The two yellow ones are Itchy & Scratchy because they fight all the time. And obviously the spotty one is Patchy.

Poor Finn got cut in the eyelid in a playground accident at school today but he was all smiles when he saw the little ducklings.

I had a million things to do today, but managed to scramble around town and find these little guys new duckling crumble feed and a ceramic infrared heat lamp to keep them warm during the chilly Melbourne nights.

3 chirping scrapping ducklets in a shanty town. An appropriate metaphor for our life at present. Can’t wait till the building work is over, but I know it will be chaos for a while more as we embark on the kitchen / wardrobe / mudroom reno, not to mention the fire bunker / pool installation. I’m trying to stay zen amidst the rubble and focus on the tiny sounds coming from on top of the piano, as fresh and delicate as hope itself.

My very dear friend Alan from Singapore arrived at our door last week with a suitcase packed full of spices mixes (Dancing Chef – the quick & dirty secret of all good Asian cooks), 3 pairs of pristine white house slippers poached from luxury hotels and a capsule wardrobe sponsored by Prada Sport.

Unfortunately the South Wing of our house (previously known as the carport) was still in the process of being turned into a habitable guest room, and the next morning Alan was awoken by the pleasant sounds of floor sanding and kids howling, a duet that surely must be the music of Hell’s waiting room. I tried to convince Alan that it was really posh to have to jump out of his bedroom window and walk along the garden path every time he wanted to come into the house. “Just like when you’re walking to your villa at the Four Seasons Maldives!” but it was rather tenuous.

I decided the best strategy was to distract Alan by taking him for a long drive to check out Portsea, the nipply tip of the Peninsula, summer playground of the Botox crowd, and a 30 minute sally from Chez Noisy. There are few things Singaporeans love more than a good nose around other people’s homes and I had wanted to check out this elusive Millionaire’s Walk since I read about it on Love the Pen. It was a fabulous late summers’ day and we drove all the way with the roof down chatting away like magpies on steroids.

The walk starts at the end of Lentell Avenue where we found an unmarked door on the left and set of rickety wooden steps straight ahead leading to the pier. This was a test. Signs everywhere said “Private Property”, but we were not daunted. With more than four decades of banking experience between us, we could definitely smell the filthy lucre wafting seductively through Unmarked Door #1.

Pushing it open, we found ourselves in someone’s front garden. Apparently this was the start of the 1.6 km Millionaires Walk, but it certainly has a very dodgy feel to it as most of it entails traipsing across pristine front lawns following a very very subtle poo-brown public trail which must be a thorn in several Cavalli-clad buttocks. Who wants to pay $30 million for a home when lying by the pool you could be gawked at like a zoo exhibit by any old Wang Chung? “And over here, a prime specimen of Richistanis Vulgaris sunning itself by its watering hole…” Anyway, their loss, our gain. We embraced our Chinese tourist roots and got the cameras out and went all slap happy with our trigger fingers.

Gardeners and house keepers were busy manicuring the lawns but no one seemed to be home. What a waste! You can bet your last dollar that if I had a house like that I’d be sunning myself in leopard print until my hide turned into Hermes Croc Porosus.

Imagine a front yard like this, leading to the cliff’s edge.

This was the view on the right hand side of the walk.

It felt like we were in Italy or the French Riviera at certain points.

Alan enjoyed himself tremendously and we had a great time voicing the concerns of our inner frustrated architects. “OMG if I see another Corinthian column, I might vomit in my handbag!” I cackled insincerely.

In fact, we had such a rollicking good time that I had the bright idea to continue the house gawking fun by popping over to our friend James Tutton’s house / estate to walk in his marvellous private Botanical Gardens. James very kindly took some time out from his very busy schedule of overachieving to show us around so we could ooh and ah over the garden in its full late summer glory.

I just love the amount of water James has on his property, this is one of several dams he has and it looks just magical at sunset.

A very contented Alan, sated on the reverse of Schadenfreude.

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I love these Pencil Pine trees. They remind me of the gardens in Rome.

And what a funny coincidence, the very next day, James’ house was featured in the uber hipster blog The Design Files. You can see more of his stunning house and estate here. http://thedesignfiles.net/2014/02/mornington-peninsula-home-james-and-imogen-tutton-and-family/ We were there first!

Now I’m off to scrounge behind the sofa cushions for spare change to put towards the lottery ticket fund, wish me luck!

Finn turned 7 yesterday and we got him a skateboard. He was thrilled and insisted on going to the local skate park, a somewhat dubious part of town. Unsurprisingly, Finn immediately became fixated on reading all the interesting slogans on the walls.

“Hey Mum, that guy can’t spell ‘math’ correctly” said Finn, pointing to a big red spray painted ‘My mom does meth” artwork.

“And Mum, what does it mean by ‘Smoke weed and see god?’”.

Hmm. I wasn’t anticipating his 7th birthday to be such a game changer.

The wind was blowing strongly and all of us sat at the edge of the cavernous skate pit. We watched the skaters, a young girl in a pink helmet and frills, a grizzled grey nomad and two surfer dudes, teeter on the edge, waiting for their turn, before decisively swooping into the bowl, grinding graceful arcs, etching lacy designs in the smooth concrete.

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This whole week I had been plagued with separation anxiety. That familiar secret solitary ache.

Missing my little family pack already before I embark next week on a long half work – half 10th wedding anniversary journey to Singapore, Sumba Indonesia, Bhutan, Rome, Marrakech and London.

But sitting on the warm concrete, inhaling the liquid velvet air, heavy with the promise of rain to come, I was just happy to be there, with my family. Existing.  Moments of stillness and togetherness, I knit them into the fabric of my soul and rely on them to keep me warm when I am in the temple of my aloneness.

In my old Singapore life, from the minute I woke up I had people tending to me. The kids would have been dressed and sent to school by the Fillipino nanny. From bed, I would dial the extension to the kitchen and place my breakfast order with the Indonesian cook. The driver would start idling the car when the cook cleared away breakfast, making sure the air conditioning cooled down the leather seats before I got in so my pampered little bum wouldn’t stick to the hot seats.

Didn’t that last paragraph sound  obnoxious? But I want to give you an idea of why my friends thought it was highly ridiculous when I announced that we were voluntarily moving to the middle of the Australian countryside to grow vegetables, wash dishes, cook 5 days a week and live 62 km away from a decent hairdresser.

When I announced I was leaving, one of my friends dramatically crumpled a piece of paper and smoothed it out over the starched restaurant table cloth to show me what my skin would look like if I exposed it to those nasty uncultured Australian sun rays. “You’ll regret it. Take care of yourself. ” he intoned ominously.

Another one came to visit and said “Well, you see The Good Life, and all I see is “lack of domestic help”’.

Anyway after nearly more than 3 years of surviving in the countryside and seeing me covered in everything from drake blood to chicken shit, I think they’ve finally accepted my crazy decision and every conversation with a Singaporean friend doesn’t need to be tinged with faint pity and concern on their part and a mild prickly defensiveness on mine.

It’s good because for the first time I’m anticipating going back to Singapore for a trip and just being happy to be myself without having to explain my choices.

Charlie Chaplin wrote “The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.” And we do get used to it if we don’t watch out.

When I was a Singaporean I used to grumble all the time about petty little inconveniences. I come from a nation where your plane touches the tarmac at 12.01 a.m. and you can walk out of the sparkling clean airport bags in hand 8 minutes later. If real life dares to interfere with your plans, there’s hell to pay.

Now I may not have the freshly squeezed fruit juice and steaming fresh nasi lemak in the mornings, but I drink my homemade soup barefooted on our stone terrace looking out over the sea to Phillip Island. My home smells of fresh eucalyptus in the rain.

We don’t have a swimming pool in the countryside, but the other day Mark put the garden hose sprinkler on and Dylan shouted “This is the LIFE!” and the trees in the bush echoed “..life…”

True luxury is an inner sense of calm and being at one with the world. This I know we have. And we are privileged and lucky for it.

Tonight I fly to Singapore and around the world for nearly 6 weeks, but what I’m most looking forward to are the dinners with my family, good unpretentious home cooked food, trolling my younger brothers with annoying questions about their personal life, Mum holding my hand when we walk together just like when I was a little girl. And of course the nasi lemak. We can’t not have that.

(This post originally appeared on my business blog Thoughts of Legacy http://www.thoughtsoflegacy.com)

Six weeks ago, I set off by myself on an adventure. I flew to the deep, lush heart of one of the last Stone Age civilisations on Earth, to Sumba, Indonesia, an island twice the size of Bali, just south of Komodo island.  More Africa than Asia, Sumba is a wild place that time has forgotten and nature has claimed as her own.

Pure chromatic turquoise waters surround the island, itself a haven of emerald green terraced fields and unruly jungle. I learned to surf on one of the best breaks in the world with USA pro big wave surfer Mark Healey and felt alive from an infusion of pure salt water and sun.

I walked through forests full of buffalo, goats and ponies and met villagers on their way to the beach, their long ceremonial kris knives dangling from their waists casually.

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I had breakfast of scrambled eggs, sambal and tropical fruit on a bamboo platform festooned with palm fronds, over looking a deserted stretch of beach. I drank many many gallons of fresh coconut juice and buried my feet in the baking hot sand.

Not bad for a business trip. See you at Legacy Nihiwatu this November!

And then I flew from this enchanted tropical forest, through fog and mist-shrouded mountain ranges to land in another magical land, Paro, Bhutan, where we were holding our latest Legacy Bhutan retreat. Spring was slowly creeping in and bursts of cherry blossoms punctuated the stark landscape.

Our new Legacy Retreat guests were beautiful people. There are no accidents in life, everyone was meant to be there. It was a week of transformation, laughter, profound learning and adventure.

I ate red rice porridge with a numbingly hot chilli paste every morning, and spicy sweet potato momo dumplings for lunch, washed down with nettle soup or a healing hot pot of glass noodles and vegetable broth. Simple but healthy mountain food.

Oh, and I’m proud to say I conquered my fear of cycling and went downhill bike riding from the highest point in Paro, 3988 metres above sea level, from Che Le La mountain pass, down the icy slopes, past pine forests and stunning, panoramic views of terraced rice fields and fluttering prayer flags.

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And then, I flew back to Singapore, reunited with the Irishman and we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in style at our friends, the Hardings’ glamorous beach front villa, with a few of our closest friends and family.

The kids insisted on holding a mock wedding ceremony and spent the afternoon gathering frangipani flowers from the lawn. So when Mark gave his speech, we were resoundingly pelted with handfuls of tropical flowers by our little ones, who relished their chance to recreate the wedding they had heard so much about and had so very annoyingly taken place before they were born.

And then, onwards we flew. Something old, something new. Something old was Rome, where we fell in love and where so many of our unforgettable moments were forged.

It was a real treat to have this time together, our first real holiday together, just the two of us, for more than two years. Life in the countryside is beautiful but it’s so hard to get away when you have kids, greyhounds, alpacas, sheep, chickens, ducks, fish and one grumpy peacock!

We went to our favourite haunts, spend lots of time just reading, lying around, soaking it all in. No pressure to rush or discover new things. They call it the Eternal City for a reason. Nothing ever changes, every restaurant, every ruin, every hat shop was exactly as we remembered it. Rome was about remembering our own little history and celebrating how we’ve changed and grown together.

And then, Marrakech! We had never been to North Africa before, and what a sensory overload it was! The riot of colours, of smells, of unbelievable sights. The layer upon layer of flavours in curries, lemon infused tagines and endless cups of mint tea. The majesty of gilded minarets and profuse tumbling walls of bougainvillea, and the rough tumble of wheeling and dealing in the souks, of nearly being run over a hundred times a day by donkey carts, horse carriages, snake charmers and old men waving big sticks!

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When it all got too much, we escaped to high up to the Atlas mountains and reoxygenated our lungs in the clean mountain air. I rode on a mule into an unspoilt Berber village and had lunch on a bed of carpets at the highest point in the village, a simple chicken and vegetable tagine with home made cous cous and local olives. Simply delightful.

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There’s so much to write about, my head is positively spilling over with ideas, vignettes, anecdotes, but I am terribly jet lagged. My body still thinks its in glorious sun infused Marrakech, though the reality is that the bracing Mornington Peninsula air is all of 3 degrees outside.

I write this sitting amongst mounds and mounds of boxes, unwashed clothes and unanswered letters, in a house which is three weeks away from having a complete kitchen, with a sink that is being held together by bits of duct tape and a temporary tap that looks like a sad droopy plastic willy. But I had an amazing time away and I’m so glad to be home, in my own bed, with my own very very exhausted, dizzy and happy family. Once I figure out how to make myself a cup of tea, it’ll be perfect.

Lots of love,
Crystal