Moving house and parting waters

Oh yes, we disappeared again! Littletree and I have been a little exceedingly busy moving house. In a flood.

Surprise! We have a new home. It’s still in Fern Gully, but on the far side of the caldera.

The new house is gorgeous – it’s like our dream home. We have a large block of land in the bush, rainforest, dozens of fruit trees (mangoes, guavas, rose apples, pomegranates, bananas, papayas, pears, sapotes, and loads more!), established, fenced veggie gardens, a large creek with swimming holes and stretches we can kayak on, and a small, freshwater spring that cascades down little waterfalls in the rainforest – clean sweet water we can drink!

And the house itself is so perfect for us!

The front of the house

The kitchen (all wooden – yay!)

My bedroom,

with extra awesome rainbow window

And my own little balcony to enjoy the morning sun

And a sunroom off my bedroom, that shall be my office :)

Littletree’s room

The most enormous covered deck ever!

Adorable fireplace in the funky living room

Veggie gardens

The gorgeous rainforest…

It’s honestly the most amazing place ever. I go to sleep at night hearing the burbling of the spring below my window, which cascades from one pool to the next…

The only problem is that since Cyclone Oswald, which hit us the day after I got this new house, it’s been raining heavily, and flooded here. The creek has been up over the driveway and we’ve been unable to drive in for a whole month!

At some point, it even got up to waist-deep over the causeway, with a very strong current – at that level, I didn’t even try to cross, having decided that anything over knee-deep was unsafe (and even then it was a bit iffy), and it was deemed only safe for Littletree to wade through if it was no more than halfway up her shins. Definitely not possible to drive poor Sunshine (our van) through!

So, not being able to drive in, we couldn’t move in properly – we managed to get some camp mattresses and bedding up to the house in backpacks, wading through the creek (when it was low enough to do so), and then schlepping up about 200 metres of muddy, rocky hill to get to the house.

We had a good friend come to stay who helped out a lot – she even lugged a little bar fridge through the creek and up the hill for us!

And I did about 57 trips back and forth, down to the van, fill up storage bins and a backpack with stuff, wade through the creek, put storage bins on a cart, and lug the lot up to the house, unload, return with empty bins, rinse and repeat.

We still don’t have furniture at the house, or a proper fridge, but we have what we need, and slowly, one box at a time, I’m getting stuff in. And in the meanwhile, I’m getting a LOT of exercise.

WELCOME HOME!

The housewarming party is yet to come :)

Faerie Mischief

I’m sorry to admit that Littletree has picked up some terrible habits from me. I know, I know! I should have known better than to give her such bad examples; I should have known that she would see me and want to copy.

But I was weak, and I let her see me… baking. Oh the shame! And it wasn’t just once or twice… I made cakes and muffins and cookies and puddings and pies; but I didn’t stop there! Oh no! The horror of it is that I even let Littletree help me some times.

Imagine my dismay to come into the kitchen to find her standing at the oven with a measuring cup and whisk in her hands! I rushed in to stop her, but it was too late… chocolate and butter were already melting on the stove, eggs were cracked, flour sifted.

What could I do? I figured, if she’s going to start experimenting with baking, she should at least do it with me, here in the home, where I can supervise her and answer her questions. Far better that way than to have her out in the streets, trying cakes from unknown bakeries – those places are nefarious with their free samples of sugar-coated pastries that get you hooked.

So I helped her make brownies. Don’t judge! I know there’s a lot of evidence to show brownies are a gateway cake that just leads to gateaux and tortes, but I think we can keep this under control.

And she seems so happy in the kitchen. MMMMM brownies!

Since we’ve been having trouble with pesky pixies lately hiding things about the house, and inspired by The Spiderwick Chronicles, Lady Demelza suggested we make a tea party for the faeries and give them sweet offerings of brownies and other delectable treats.

Littletree loved the idea and set about making a beautiful table setting out in the faerie garden

We made cute little offerings around the garden of brownies for the brownies and honey on crackers for the pixies

And then enjoyed a most luscious afternoon tea – brownies, fairy juice (elderflower cordial), fruit tea, ginger beer, cheese and crackers

Hopefully that will restore some order to the house, so we can get back to baking!

Plants v Zombies IRL

We’ve been getting into playing Plants v. Zombies lately, of course, zombies are all the rage.

So when Littletree was having a moment of feeling frustrated about something, I came up with an idea so inspired I can’t even take credit for it – must have been a muse: Plants versus Zombies In Real Life.

The premise is simple: I pretend to be a zombie and walk up the length of the garden while Littletree puts obstacles in my path (flowerpots, bricks, sticks, rocks), and rips weeds out of the garden and throws them at me, which is a double bonus, because the garden gets weeded at the same time!

It was great fun, especially pretending to be zombies, and even more especially being out in the winter sun. And most of all – somehow getting Littletree to weed the garden!

Then she got so excited about it, she decided we should make it into a movie… here’s the intro:

Littletree doing the intro to our Plants v Zombies game

Epic!

Love Lemons

My gorgeous little lemon tree – the first tree we planed when we bought this house, because when asked if I had to choose just one kind of tree, what would it be? I always answer: lemon!

Because lemons are awesome and so versatile and they fruit all the time and I just can’t live without them.

Lemon juice, lemonade, lemon tea, lemon meringue pie… lemons go in so many things.

My poor tree suffered from a wasp blight a while back and needed to be massively pruned, but it’s recovered nicely. We also had problem with bugs munching the poor dear down to a twig, I make up batches of really strong chilli tea from my chilli bush, and spray the leaves with that to keep the insects away.

So the little lemon tree is about three years old now, and it’s finally given its first real crop!

In it’s denuded state the tree barely able to support the weight of half a dozen lemons. Propped up with bamboo stakes, she does alright, and YAY!

Lemons!

The first harvest is always so much awesome! When life gives you lemons… be thankful!

Welcome to our Island Home

We finally made ready to get out of Bali, after two hectic days we were more than happy to be on a boat to somewhere tranquil!

AquaCat managed to get us a good deal on boat tickets direct to Gili Air, including transfers from our hotel. We were pretty lucky to get a good spot at the back of the boat and the sea was pretty calm – Littletree had a ball, watching out for dolphins and mermaids and seeing the little islands go by.

We had a quick stop at Lombok

(photo by Littletree)

And then it was on to Gili! Bella and Anasho were there at the dock to meet us coming off the boat and walk us over to Villa Kompok - the bungalows they organised for us to stay in.

What a paradise! We’ve taken over a whole compound for the unschooling families; everyone gets their own little bungalow, each with it’s own cute balcony and flower garden.

There’s also a kitchen we can use so we can cook (of course, we still eat a lot in the local restaurants, but believe it or not, fried rice and gado gado can get boring after a while!) and it’s all in a gorgeous enclosed garden with a view of the ocean.

Naturally, we dumped our bags in the room and ran off to the beach to laze around and drink a cocktail in celebration of our arrival while the kids swam!

People keep telling me homeschooling must be such hard work… I’m sure that’s gonna kick in any minute now!

Equinox

At this moment, the Autumnal Equinox is upon us (Vernal Equinox for those in the northern hemisphere).

Mabon. The celebration of harvest, the coming of cooler days.
In this moment I am observant, the length of days and nights in balance. I honour the Green goddess of the forest, I offer libations to the trees, and to the faeries.

And this is the view from my hammock.

Water Dragon

Happy New Year of the Water Dragon

There has been such a constant stream of so many beautiful people flowing through my house recently, with Wind and Coola living in the flat downstairs, and our good friends Belle and Anasho have been staying, since they are temporarily homeless, as well as frequent visits from an assortment of random hippies and my beloved Ocean.

As group of us got together yesterday for a sacred ceremony to honour the new moon and the start of the Chinese New Year.

We all wrote out pages of our intentions and manifestations for the coming year, I chopped some wood,

We lit a sacred fire, ringed with the surprise rose apples we found growing in the back of our rainforest.

Then we said some prayers and set our intentions before giving the pages to the fire

Then we sat around playing music and dancing and singing before having a yummy feast.

Awesome start to the year!

Snakes in the Night

Late the other night, I keep hearing odd clattering noises... on investigation, we discovered a smallish carpet python knocking stuff off my bathroom vanity. The shock! The horror! My bathroom vanity is cluttered, and the mirror needs cleaning! [gasp]

And what does any warrior goddess do when there's a snake upsetting order on her bathroom vanity? go for the broom, pick up the snake, and take it outside!

I was even clever enough to put on my knee-high boots, just for safety's sake... but in my hurry, I didn't shake my boots out first - I always shake out my boots, and nothing ever falls out - this time, I didn't, and lo! A great big spider crawled out and up my leg! Eeep!

No problems, all in the line of duty for a majik faerie.
(and yes, I do hang around the house late at night dressed like that – thanks to Purple for taking photos!)

The snake was released outside, hopefully the little guy is now cavorting freely with other snakes, and eating mice from around the house.

Homemade Harvest

The past month has been such a frenzy of homemade awesomeness. Harvesting yummy veggies from our garden

Including cassava so we can make our own cassava chips (as well as so many amazing delicacies)

Amazing, delectable, organic, home made cherry liqueur, which tastes like an explosion of fluffy bliss bubbles in your brain

Hannukah Sufganiot

Homemade Bailey’s Irish Cream made from local, raw, organic cream, and served with my organic, raw macadamia and honey ice cream

Gingerbread yoni cookies made by my neighbour

And last, but not least, a local farm stall gave us a massive box of “seconds” tomatoes for only $2! What to do with such a tomatoey abundance?

Tomato Chutney!

In between the moments of madness, there’s been SO MUCH AWESOME!

I love eating locally, I love eating food that we grew ourselves, I love making from scratch all the things that even our grandmothers have forgotten how to make :)

Change of Plans–it’s a Wild Life!

Majikfaerie to the rescue! Just when we decided to change our tickets and go home early, a good friend contacted me asking if I can come to Phuket and help her out. Littletree was really happy at the prospect of spending a week or so in Thailand, especially since we’ll be staying at a house with a private swimming pool. So off we go!

Last night Wasabi, the civet cat – which Littletree, who has been avidly studying a book on South East Asian Mammals, informs me isn’t a true cat – came to visit in our room

She’s such a sweet little critter; apparently it’s really rare to see them as they’re very shy of humans, but Wasabi was rescued as a baby and hand-raised by the owner of this resort, She’s returned to the wild now, but still pops in for visits.

We also had another surprise guest – a massive scorpion!

Here it is next to my size 39 shoe for size comparison

So glad not to accidentally step on that one in the night!