Plans afoot

When you colour coordinate the books in your reading nook without realising...

It’s been a quiet and fruitful time here as we move from winter to spring. My poetry collection has been signed off by my editor and is now being typeset. 

Meanwhile, on another project, I’ve been playing with letterpress, setting type by hand, letter by tiny letter, printing pages using a foot-powered machine. I love that juxtaposition of the two projects.

There are many plans afoot here on our land. Inspired by the ‘We are the Ark’ movement (‘ark’ in this case stands for Acts of Regenerative Kindness), we are viewing our place in terms of degrees of intervention. The kindest thing of all being to leave the land to its own devices.

On one end of the intervention scale is our food forest and vegetable garden which, at first, will require high maintenance. On the other end is a paddock which will be left to regenerate with almost no intervention at all. There are many spaces in between which I hope will become wildlife havens and insect larders.

The project I’m most excited about right now is the transformation of our large circular lawn into a labyrinth. Last year our ride-on mower broke and took a while to fix. Watching the lawn flourish and transform into a habitat for flying insects was a revelation. 

So this summer, we will be mowing a labyrinth path, allowing the many plants in our lawn to grow and flower, creating a living, buzzing wall. I plan to walk the labyrinth each morning as a peaceful, quiet way to start the day. I can’t wait to share our progress ☺️💚

Mary
p.s as it turns out, that stack of books is a pretty good representation of what I’ve been up to lately!