Boots n Haton

Just like every, or most every Tuesday, today was garden day. We planted Old Man salt bush. I collected soil mixed with sheep dung from under a tree the sheep like to sleep under, filled these slightly decomposed boxes with the soil and gathered straw from round the farm to cover the soil. Then the chief gardener expertly planted her propagated Old Man Saltbush seedlings.

The idea here is that the saltbush should have good nutrition while it establishes itself, and won’t run into the soggy boggy salty soil too soon. It’s got a tough gig just here. It’s a salt bore that’s bursting forth and running into the creek and we’re hoping to get it to soak up some of that salt.

This past month we have seen an interesting spectrum of weather. I’ve pulled out jeans once to wear. We’ve had the longest run of 40+ °C days on record, however most nights have been pleasantly cool. We just got a major storm on the weekend that saw 4 fires spark in our district because of lightning. We got 0.25 mm of rain. We’ve also had a couple of days of Smokey air as fires in other districts drift over us.

We survived another summer month and look forward to the easing of the season.

Last Friday, just as the afternoon radio show was finishing, I sent a photo of me milk my cow. The lovely team rang me back wanting to chat.

Some background on me milking my cow: The cow is called Cowpurnia. She is named such because of the beautiful house keeping woman, Calpurnia, in ‘to kill a mockingbird’. Turns out she’s not much of a housekeeper but very much the matriarch of my 3 full grown cattle herd. I have a bull, but she is boss.

There’s a mask mandate in Perth and I have a doctors appointment. So I mask up. Then I mask my eyes from the sun, my hair from the dust (or perhaps the world from my frizzy locks) and my ears from all of the noises of the town.

The sun is shining for a brief moment. It has been a wet July and another long COVID year. So I have set my my sweet little outdoor table in the direct sunlight, filled my big thermal mug with loose leaf earl grey tea, chosen clothes that utilise the powerful heat absorption potentials of a navy and wool. Mmmm I’m cosy and outside (and dry for a change).

I went down to Perth this week to get a vaccine in my arm. I Was standing in a big but weirdly moving line for a Pfizer jab. The opportunity was made available 7 weeks ago, and 5 hours into the opening, the earliest available option I could get was July 22. I booked in at 2:55 but have to be prescreened first at the mass vac centre down near the airport. It is chockers. Not too mush social distancing either. As a human who had been quite happy with this community effort, I find rooms full I’d people a little untasteful to my personal self.

I’m calling another break day. It would appear that my Mondays are so big that my resolve to conduct this challenge is rocked for the Monday Tuesday and possibly a bit of the Wednesday night as well.

Unfortunately I have had three rather large days two of which have been at the Roadhouse. Couple with the large days throw in some very hot Australian summer days and me being tired and the farmer been insanely busy I find myself struggling to donate 10 minutes even of my time to the creative business pursuits. I have had some very big ideas that I’m exploring and some very big compliments that point to myself being a very responsible adult. I am a reliable team member, I am helping to build up all the team members. Those two tasks require lots of social energy from me. And my brain is working incredibly hard on processing numbers and data that it does not need to process like; of all things, the Covid numbers coming out of America. Why? Because my brain likes numbers. The question that I then have to ask myself is am I feeding my brain well enough? Should I go and get more education? And why not?

This week, I went to work, and Parker had help in to shear the sheep. We also had 29mm at the beginning of the week so there a few green tinges about the farm.

Ok. I’m using my get out of jail free card for the week. Every week, I set aside just a small bit of money as savings for buying the items/gear/stuff for my hopeful business. I’m saving for way too many things on this particular tiny savings fund: a shipping container, office space on the farm, printers, fabrics and shirts. Way too many things.

So why am I not blogging over on paperthumbtack today? I record it here cos it’s not really art stuff but it still counts as part of the challenge. 100 days of trying to progress my business dreams. I have a few ideas.