Here are some good things that are happening today: 1. Artichokes as big as trees growing happily in my friend's garden.  2. A bit of drawing/painting while waiting for something. 3. Vegetable pie made from our first crop of silverbeet here in the new house. (Quickly and easily made, by cooking and chopping silverbeet and…

Shown above is the very first rose I've ever grown: this little bud broke off in the wind so has been slowly opening from the shelter of the kitchen windowsill. I've always loved roses but assumed they were beyond my skills to grow. But then I was kindly given a rose plant for my garden…

I found an old map of the lower North Island of NZ in the paper bin when I was doing some recycling at our local depot. It was printed in 1974. Something about the colours of the map made me pick it out and it waited on my desk for a few weeks until I…

I've been collecting these pieces of old linen for a while now, from junk shops and our local recycling centre. They're cream and crisp in texture, and were printed with embroidery transfers- probably a long time ago. I washed them a couple of times to check the transfers were permanent, and they were, along with…

Hellebore flowers are not in season here at all but the other day i came across this photo of a hellebore that i must have taken last winter. I love those dark pink hellebores, and the greeny/cream ones too, that are sometimes tinged with red like flushed cheeks.  Anyway, I got my watercolour paints out…

Back when i was in primary school, I remember getting a book out of the library about making skincare products at home and triumphantly finding, amongst its pages, a cure for my freckles. (As far as I remember, that involved painting my face with lemon juice. I thought the freckles were slightly faded after that…

A kind friend, Susie, brought me some herb plants the other day, including this chamomile. I had to capture the way it was shining in the sun before I planted it into the garden. Chamomile always makes me think of Scandinavia, and also those Timotei ads from the 1980's. But I love drinking chamomile tea,…

On the weekend, we held a little concert for the children to perform some of the music they've learned this year in their piano and violin lessons with my Mum. All the cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents came along to listen. And then after all the hard work of playing, we ate some sweet things to…