Love language

Here's a banquet of beauty that has been brought to my door by people over the last couple of months who want to tell me they love me in the rough times. I like photographing flowers almost as much as I like having them on my table, and think a few waifs and strays in small vases are always worth looking after.

This is life

I played the game and won the other day.

We were recently at a delightful park just up the road from our house, and, gazing at the stream in early summer, I decided we needed to do something with that stream. Get in there and get the most out of it. Out of life. So on a sunny new year day, happily joined by friends, we went paddling.

Christmas Day 2014

I am pleased to report, and you lovely lot will be pleased to hear, that we had a very good Christmas Day. As the cliche goes, the kids really did make it wonderful. We were a fairly small family, but that never dampens the kids' party spirit. We had a few hiccups along the way, and always a big gap at our table.

A change is as good as a holiday

I've been getting a bit bored with dinner lately. You know the balance of trying to keep everyone in the family happy. Finding what you all like, finding healthy meals, a good range of food, all that sort of thing. I miss cooking for someone who eats with enthusiasm (well, some nights they do) and smiles in appreciation down the table. So I decided recently it's time to shake things up a little.

Foraging

I quite like this flower foraging idea. The kids and I are walking home through some playing grounds on the way home from school these days - well - back to the car via a long route. It feels good to just take some time and let them race across the grass and clamber up the banks.

Today they found all kinds of flowers to pick for me, some growing wildly and others escaping over fences from neighbouring properties. The days have been hard this last week and I'm trying to look for some bright spots along the way - these are definitely one of them.

Down the road

I see the world, the physical, natural world, a little differently these days. I am both more and less fond of it. I think more is winning out. There is an intensity, a clarity, and an understanding of the passing of time that I had only briefly glimpsed before.

Eggs in (Italian) tomatoes

I was waxing lyrical to a friend recently about the food in Italy and how fantastic it tasted. Everything. Even the tinned tomatoes. He suggested in his devil's advocate kind of a way that perhaps, given Italy's reputation, you couldn't help but think the food tasted good. No, I said, it really did.

A rainy Saturday and sweet pastry pies

Gosh I don't know what came over me. Well, OK, maybe I do. I've been eating extra carefully lately, and have started missing baking - the soothing activity of baking at least as much as the eating. So on a quiet and wet Saturday afternoon, when I couldn't not bake anymore, I decided to do something I haven't done for a while, and bake something I haven't baked before. If you follow me.

Why

A friend has asked me if I would like to be the next in a line of bloggers who are writing posts about why they write. It's a topic that I often consider, and have briefly tried to explain before, and so I was very keen. There was a list of questions, which I'm afraid I have taken very little notice of, but essentially, here is my answer. Much of it is also based on my writing on my other blog, Griefprint:

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  A portrait of my children every week for a year.