knee dep in the mud and sinking

A strange thing you get to understand is that no matter how well you can bootstrap yourself there are times that you rapidly move from being in ankle deep mud to suddenly realizing believing (i am still bootstrapping) you cannot walk on mud. One moment we feel the wind through our hair, we smell the roses the next we smell the cattle manure under the roots of the rose petals. But strangely everything is just seasons and we have to understand that change does not come without its own burdens. Sometimes those shoelaces get real slippery.

But more on the changes of seasons and times, thinking back over the last few days it is hard to imagine why I suddenly find myself neck deep in the mud.. We are all entitled to our moments in the shade, a simple thing as looking at old photographs, go figure. I am busy compiling all the better pics from the first year in kiwilandia. One would imagine looking and reliving all those experiences could tip you over the edge again. But I still have those laces firmly in hand and can almost feel my shoulders breaking through the dirt.

It is time to pick up the pieces and not to be afraid ;-)

Change is good, but looking back at some things in the past is also good to keep reference and reverence. Strange now looking back at how much things have changed, we have changed. I was just looking at a fantastic website by a photographer in South America that took a series of then and now pics .. absolutely love them. Her name is Irna werning, just love this series and the second one. Somehow there are those who can create out of nothing and then we have the others, or should I say us or we that watch in awe at these simple manifestations.

To get back to the veggies, I need to find the recipe for a mini-hothouse? You may say I should have said plan, but I suppose if it is food we are talking about it must be talking about a recipe and not a plan. But let us stop being illy and get back to reality.  On the gardening note, we discovered a number of things, among them that our whippet is to big, but more importantly that whippets are know for eating expensive things.. Who would have known that? so we have to start planing again soon, we have a basic crop in, but nothing really established yet, hopefully we will get some peas and broad beans first, I am currently teraforming certain sections of our Plot into productive agricultural zones ;-) Next I suppose are the chickens, then the lean-to frames and then the tomato zones. This brought up some discussion with a friend of ours with whom i was raising the point of sustainability and survivability post an apocalyptic event. He questioned if he needed to get heirloom or other seeds in stock, but it struck me that it would not really be possible to actually prepare in  manner like this. I do not think we will be able to simply survive without being more than prepared, we should also be practiced. I think this is very akin to the 10000 hours we need to be able to do anything well, do we not also have to spend at least 10000 hours or so thinking and actually surviving and preparing for the unfortunate eventuality? It may be a dark and somber thought, but it might just be necessary? I do not think that we have to dig deep into the depths of depression and post apocalyptic preparedness. I just beleive we have to understand where we are, what we can do, what we cannot do and what we have to do to be able to survive if something does happen.

Enough melodrama and sadness for now, the days are getting longer the sun is getting brighter, soon within the next few months the seasons will change. How fragile the African heart is, yearning for the sun and the endless summer days. I have managed to move beyond shedding a tear every time i hear tambotie boom by die heuwels fantasties.  It is not unlike us to question our impact or mortality, we are a fragile being.  But soon the searun will chase the whitebait freely in the shallows of the lowland rivers, this year I hope to be ready and capture some of the beasts. 

Through all of this, there is a whole lot of silliness, but to be human is to be silly. How fragile we are and how we change over time, sometimes vulnerable others strong, at times we are brave, other times we cower like small fluffy animals sitting in cave grooving with a pict. I view with interest a whole lot of peoples Flickr accounts, not only because of the pictures they take, but rather the progression of their pictures over time. Some of the people become bold, very bold, others tend to remain the same. It is interesting taking a temporal view over peoples lives through their photographs and postings. I suppose my postings in flickr are relatively  tame and stationary in terms of dramatic changes and trends. Yet I cannot say I am unaffected by trends and things I see, granted I cannot replicate those things as that in my mind would make me a facsimile and not me, but I suppose we are just facsimiles of our environment.