simple...

cooking...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 11:07:00 +0100

To be able to cook food using ingredients that you have grown has got to be one of life most satisfying and simple pleasures. Much the same as catching your own fish for dinner.

Even just using home grown herbs in a meal. Home grown food seems to taste even better that bought food and its so cool having irregular funny shaped veg again. The best thing has been the chilli plant, so hot could only eat half a chilli diced finely in a salad.

Cooking is such an art form, but to combine growing food with creative cooking and the art of creating a dining experience means appreciating life to its fullest satisfaction. All it takes is a little time, effort and planning, with very little expense....

growing...

Wed, 1 Aug 2012 11:06:08 +0100

Growing food and gardening is such a relaxing and satisfying process. From long term crop planning and everyday nurturing.Trees & shrubs, plants that grow strong year on year and crops that need sowing each year.
Learning to live with nature and the seasons. The frustrations of weather and insects, loving the frogs that eat the slugs and the ladybirds that eat the aphids.

Growing plants certainly focusses the mind on slowness, patience and contemplation. This nurturing process gives the time to reflect on how ‘life’ is the greatest art form of all...
Sculpting plants, ‘Ikebana’ and using plants in sculpture, living or dead, is the natural progression of this particular Art form, as is garden design, creating spaces in which to live.

Blurring the edges of where the house, the garden and nature, begins and ends, also challenges how one interacts with nature and how connected to nature everyday life can become.
Connection to nature and the seasons grounds a persons spirit, giving it the roots to grow and flourish in the rest of life...

making a home...

Sun, 1 Jul 2012 11:02:22 +0100

Simply clearing out and getting rid of old stuff and layers of past life, physically, materially, mentally & spiritually... Starting again, fresh and new...

Aesthetic choices, simple, rustic and homely. A place for everything and everything in its place. Plants, candles, art, coloured cloth... Creating places to work happily, making sure the candles get lit and the music turned on. Setting lighting and creating atmosphere,
a place for the rituals of life. Sleep, read, work, a place to grow and love shadows...

Marking a welcome path, make a dinner table and hang the hammock...