it's here, summer

~ being by the side of the sea











No front teeth!



Best friends.







She was a blur of excitement-by-the-sea







~ celebrating a man we all love

He held hands, procured ice cream, spades, hats, dandled toes and wondered why we live away from the sea. Why indeed?





~ lamenting freak brief flooding; water swept down the lane and into the garden and washed away a lot of the veggie stuff and paths (farmers this year plowed their fields in furrows for potatoes and now the water channels direct to lucky-us). Thank goodness for raised beds. Poor (quite literally) people who live downhill from deforestation. I have Sainsbury's and Mrs Organic Veg, so perspective is all. I spent the whole morning munching my way through a mega bag of peas so delicious I will have to flinch when buying store bought come winter. Gratitude that most veg is intact, although goodbye strawberry bed.



~ joy in the kitchen: nettle and comfrey ointment making whereby a foolish woman stuffed her hand into the jar to pack it down. I am cured for rheumatism for life if sting-cure really works.



My mind is racing ahead with ointment and balms and massage oil recipes I shall try, some new (st.johns wort oil) some tried and tested (calendula and chamomile). I'm ahead of the game in pickings, having decided months ago a good few crops would go towards the medicine chest, I've planted many wondrous herbs and flowers just for this, but chamomile in it's star-burst glory grows at every field edge here, so little effort on my part for that. Elderflower cordial was made, Isaac is the sous chef, it's his calling I think to spend much time in the kitchen (or are all nine year old boys in love with re-runs of River Cottage?). Wonderfully shaped old olive oil bottles get another use and with so much lemon; pureed, grated, peeled, squeezed the infusing cordial wafted through the house like the sweet summer it is. I used the recipe from this book.



~ Isaac and I get lost in our badminton 'battles' each day (I don't like to keep score, he does - mainly because he beats me:) ). Green shady light, chickens underfoot and Esmé using her racket to chink with ours, or flicking away chook poop in the long grass. Lovely. It is actually. Summer reigns and I am glad to be in it's hold.

toothpaste free

I have recently discovered how glycerin in natural toothpastes is not a good ingredient. I have not used the fluoride-poison stuff in about a decade and switch between any of the natural ones that take my fancy, usually the fennel Toms' of Maine.



Supposedly glycerin coats the teeth so that saliva (which should be bathing the teeth constantly and remineralising) cannot do it's job. Teeth are alive. Isn't that cool? And can easily repair themselves given the right tools and environment. The right tools? I'll come to that in a minute - environment well that's an easy one. Alkaline. Our bodies should be alkaline and eating a whole food diet that supports this is essential (generally sugar and grain free). Just that step alone may mean no more cavities as saliva is the right pH to repair and heal. Fat soluble vitamins as maintained by Weston Price; A, D and K are essential in creating the internal environment that supports tooth repair and regeneration. Now onto the tools *rubbing hands together*! No need to ever buy toothpaste again. As a person who eats pretty well I do still get decay. I have put this down to a decade of breastfeeding and maybe lacking various minerals. But perhaps there's more to it. The glycerin obviously has not been helping. Remineralisation can happen, that much is true. I have been inspired by Nadine Artemis, natural tooth care expert but can't justify buying her Gum Drops or Yogi Tooth Serum from half a world away. They are concentrates of anti bacterial and anti fungal/microbial blends of essential oils. Mainly neem, tea tree, clove, peppermint and such in a jojoba base. One drop on a dry toothbrush (better than wet at feeling around teeth) and gentle downward only brushing is her protocol along with a drop of oil rubbed along a length of floss (non waxed variety). Using tooth powders can be a good option too, based on powdered Himalayan rock salt and bicarbonate of soda with a drop or two of the above oil. This can also be massaged into the gums or diluted in water for a mouth wash. Being gentle and repetitive seems to yield better results than pressing hard with an electric brush. The essential oils seem to work at keeping the mouth free from bacterias that are harmful to tooth health whilst not destroying the balance of micro ecosystem that is mouth health (remembering all the while the remarkable healing effects of alkaline favoured saliva). Rubbing a tooth brush over a large piece of pink rock salt and brushing is also recommended.



I have been making this, which is zingy and keeps my teeth feeling pretty clean and smooth for ages afterwards:

Toothclean Powder

1 tbsp of Himalayan rock salt powdered as fine as can be in a pestle and mortar

A good pinch of aluminium free bicarb. soda

In a lid or something small (old clean glass lip balm jar maybe?) mix one table spoon of jojoba with two drops of tea tree essential oil and 1-2 drops of neem (or peppermint or clove, whatever you have or enjoy the taste of). Mix and then add a couple of drops into the powder. Mix really well with something dry like the handle of a spoon. Sprinkle onto to a dry soft bristled brush and use as a toothpaste. Or add a bit more oil for a paste as use in the same way.

If you have the cash and inclination you can try the excellent and glycerin free tooth soaps and powders from red23.co.uk. As I have searched I have yet to find Nadine's blends in the UK for sale. She does a little YouTube clip here on her methods, and also spoke at the recent Longevity conference which is easily googled for additional info.

If anyone reading this has other similar toothpaste-free teeth cleaning recipes or similar information I'd love to hear them.

as close as it gets

... to being jungle-like.



I love the garden. I post too much about it, but when you love something that's what happens.



I like wildness (like the way the house almost disappears from view at some points) but we try to keep some bits very well maintained and 'neat' so that the rest of it (90+ %) looks wild on purpose, and not just (more honestly) neglected. Like our very well to-do neighbours who have this lovely shaggy wildflower meadow and a neatly winding shorn path through the middle to a sculpture and many beautiful overhanging trees. Ok, I am no where near having that sort of garden but what I take from it is the notion of cultivating the bit of neatness to emphasis the glorious unkempt wildness. The ragged beauty in the life beside the stream is breathtaking in it's hugeness. To shear it back would be criminal.



To let the weeds take over the vegetable plot would sap my dear tended plants of nutrients from soil competition and also looks unruly and half hearted in effort. I love it that allotments have that cobbled together and yet well looked after and loved feel. It is exactly how I feel about my own little plot. We use bits of offcuts and old logs to make beds and fill them with our own compost (really, I could go on boringly in raptures for a good while about my love of our compost: chicken and guinea pig manure and bedding, grass trimmings, raw kitchen waste, leaf mold, wood ash = nothing short of the most wonderfully crumbly oxo cube style compost I have ever seen or felt).





The greenhouse was made by my dh and scraps of plastic he bought on ebay, the tools odds and ends of found and given. The plants, all from seed, some shared, others much poured over and bought from The Real Seed Company. A big sandpit dug and assembled from logs and layers of grit and sand by my dh to trap/entertain The Beauty. The constant background white noise of the waterfall and gurgling stream, the birds, the overhang of a million trees. The bark chippings we sparingly spread to cover paths and weeds. It's great. Not fancy, there are no railway sleeper beds nor woven willow planters, just what we can do with what we have (resources, money, time). I love it more for that.



There are several pine trees over there, one for the Den, two which support the hammock. I never much liked pine trees, thinking them inferior the leafy sort, only good for Christmas (horrid in their planted acres of mono-culture that fosters no undergrowth or further life), but I have grown to see they have their place. Enjoy and appreciate the sticky sappy trunks, the changing and spreading fingers of growth of the needles; actually soft and brush like, the sweet fresh scent and the beautiful way beads of water cling after rainfall, like balls of water suspended for passing fairies to drink or play-pop balloon like.



My new favourite salad leaf - sorrel



This one time listening to a guided meditation CD it asked that I picture myself somewhere 'safe' some where I felt totally relaxed and without pause I thought of this little tiny place, hidden from the rest of the world by a thick hedge, quiet from busy life and yet so full to the brim with the life of a micro world within this huge big world we share. Right now it feels it's at it's peak, pregnant and full, not yet sharing it's fruit, hesitant but on the edge, teetering into fullness and giving. I love this time of year, still full of anticipation, no hint of decay or spoil or running to seed.

It's a miniature jungle, in that it inspires as much wonder and reverence as if it were truly one.

the mind numb and it's relief

A mind numbing conversation with The Beauty may go something like this:



Whilst driving:

her - what's that car doing?
me- driving
her - why?
me - I guess it's going somewhere like us...
her - what's that car doing?
me - driving
her - why?
me - I suppose it's going somewhere
her - what's that car doing?
me - driving
her - why?

Sometimes to amuse myself and to vary the routine (I am very childish) I affect utter enthusiasm and surprise after say the 32rd rendition - What? A car! On the road here with us? Where? Where's it going? Oh, to the seaside? The moon!



The level of interesting and high brow conversation in the house is such that by the time my dh gets home from work often I too have sunk to a the depths of shallow stilted language that would suit a slightly trained chimp. There's only so many times I can feign interest in Didier Drogba. Perhaps I should try to spin out a project based on his home country (the Ivory Coast if your interested) or something similar in a typical-book-example-fun-home-educating way. Only the mind numb creeps up on me and all I want to do is knit in the sun or get back to my current read (S. Faulks, A week in December). I am truly amazed (and it's nice to have the mental enthusiasm that being amazed brings out) at the capacity for my son's joint abilities to remember inane facts about their favourite players and also amazed at why certain players are their favourites (Drogba because he has hair like Bob Marley: Felix loves the Buffalo Soldier YouTube film with rastas in military uniforms). I wonder at the lack of ability say in remembering times tables or how to tell the time, but very clearly knowing how many goals Milner scored last season or who won the Barclay's Premier League is far far more interesting. To them. I think we should study the Bible (not that I am religious, just beacuse it's a historically/culturally intertesting book), or some classical literature (does reading the Usborne version or Hercules count?) Or wonder vaguely if they ought to be able to tell Brahms from Beethoven after the first twelve bars by now.... Only I can't muster the enthusiasm to contemplate teaching myself this stuff first off in order to pass off as being reasonably well versed.



They can recite The Owl and the Pussycat. They know how to light fires and play cards. Isaac knows how to bake about ten different types of cakes, Esmé can work a camera and programme the washing machine to the precise setting I request. Felix draws, and draws and draws. I don't know about balance. I don't know anyone who does receive a balanced education. They love each other, they annoy each other. We do very random things, repetative things. Boring or 'pointless' things. We sat today and made daisy caterpillars (you know, where you find a nice long sturdy daisy and then snap the stalks off many others and thread them onto the one first stalk), spent a good half hour searching for four leaf clovers (found none). Even though I teetered on the edge of madness with a headache and feverish chills I was battered by Esmé 's fog-horn voice into making play dough, and then glad too when it was played with for a couple of hours by all. (I recite these things to make myself feel better of course) It's mind numb and amazement in almost equal doses, very rarely interspersed with some relaxation and plenty of tidying up. Right now I am amazed at the number of jigsaws on the floor.. what, 17? And mind numbed by the idea of tidying them up.. who me? Perhaps the relaxation will occur when my dh gets home (after he does the shop in Sainsbury's I just phoned him with and after the 13 hr day he has already worked.... I can't quite see that he'll be wanting to assemble dinner and look after children while I take a bath.



I'm not exactly moaning, here, more musing the workings of a day and how women (ok, and some men) cope. Often they, we, don't, very well. I did ten minutes of yoga outside on the platform surrounded by leaves and green and the cluckings of a broody hen. It was pretty nice. The green moss under my bare feet went a long way in discharging some negative energy I accumulated. Looking around at my garden and picking some tangy lemony sorrel to eat was satisfying. Re-arranging my sitting room, lugging sofa's and cleaning long forgotten places helped put me back in my home after time away from it. Picking out balls of wool from my stash and spending a while with it on the side in the kitchen looking at it now and again wondering what it shall become in my hands later is very pleasing. There are ways, quiet ways, to relive and escape and recharge. I just hope in his own way my dh finds these moments in his very different days too.



Thanks Kat, for your inspsiring photo's and post that inspired this similar post :)

wordless wednesday ~ goose, duck, regular hen and ours (the meagre sized offering)

circus fun

We went to see this lovely little traditional circus. Such an antidote to the mass Uncle Sam variety, which is the only sort I have ever seen before, you know the ones, where the interval is longer than the show so that severe boredom and child persuasion means you buy all sorts of over priced junk, including having a £5 photo taken with a guy dressed as Spiderman. And so this show was such a lovely lovely difference. A tiny tent, with a tiny ring and a massively entertaining show. A proper instrumental opera singing band, wonderful costumes (1920's French theme) and every adult in the show was a proper artist or street performer. Right at the start they had a dressed up performer strolling two real live dressed up old fashioned babies around in an old-old Silver Cross pram with double hoods. Isaac and I had eyes popping out of our heads - are they Real babies??? Very funny. The caravans were all olde worlde maroon ones, the snack tent featured huge polka dot teapots and china. It was pretty cute. And just to top off the excitement - guess who sat behind me? Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall! Really. But this is because he is here for the Hay Festival (perhaps he has a new book out? I don't know.....) Quite exciting to be sleeve to sleeve with a star (he looks rather older in the flesh than on the screen but his kids were all shiny happy blond things), and I saw him eat cake from the cake tent and I doubt it was organic *gasp* :)





Anyway, I highly recommend the Gifford Circus, if it comes near you be sure to go. My boys thought it was the best they had ever been to and I totally agreed (we have been to loads as Isaac dreams of becoming a clown one day). Can't fathom ever wanting to go to a regular circus again. Check out the Gallery link on the website for some really amazing pictures of the performance my dh took the boys to the previous time it visited us (I was at home with the baby that year:) )