Because we live on different continents.
Yeah. Lots to work out.
It is my last few days here in Melbourne. Dog and I are spending a lot of time walking. Creating a mind map of our surroundings. Setting up a new house. Planting in the garden. Making lists. Drawing plans. Getting things ready for my next trip to Aus when I will stay longer to be my daughter’s doula and welcome her baby.
A doula provides continuous emotional, physical, and informational support to pregnant and birthing individuals, helping them feel confident, safe, and empowered throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
This is the job offered to me by my only daughter and I have accepted with great joy - of course.
The pay is shit though!! But the food will be great.
Here is TimTam the dog drooling while I eat my marmite on toast.
She watches without watching because - you know - it would be rude to stare!
Yesterday dog and I discovered we could walk to the supermarket through a new housing development. The houses are so sad. So flimsy looking. All gray and white and martha stewart beige. They go up fast and are so close to each other the gutters look like they are touching. Many of the houses are not small but they use up every inch of the property. These people have nowhere at all to sit outside, or run the dog or hang out their laundry or have a few pots of lettuce or even plant a tree. Don’t worry I will plant a tree for you.
One of the little books I am writing is: growing city gardens with country hearts. But now I find hundreds of home owners just around the corner with no grounds for a garden at all. Not a speck of soil - not a porch or balcony. So I am going to add a chapter to my little ebook called windowsill gardens! You can grow lots of herbs on windowsills.
Much to my delight these subdivisions (taking over farm land but that is another discussion) have huge modern playgrounds in a square surrounded in houses. We passed one yesterday evening heaving with shouting and laughing children. In fact you can’t throw a rock without hitting a playground around here. I am in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia. And some of these playgrounds are as old as the houses. Some have been refurbished. Some are big. A few are creaky. Some bare bones, some new and posh. But they are all designed for play; and play, like bedtime stories, is one of the pillars of a healthy life. Not just for kids either.
I still feel that frisson of delight when I see swings and slides. Do you? It is from my childhood. Tapping into that childhood joy, keeping it alive and well so we can sustain relentless adulting, is why I read children’s books to us. We need to keep that little well of innocent joy alive within us.
Sustainable lifestyles is not all about reycling you know. To maintain a fast lifestyle you have to allow yourself some slow times too.
And now I am going out the back to water the new plantings one last time. Us Granny Nannies are a busy bunch. And (if all goes well) this will be my ninth grandchild - so yeah - after five children and nine grandchildren I am fairly sure I know what I am doing now!
There are many of us Granny Nannys, are you one of those? Many men and women of a certain age are looking after grandchildren and the older generation simultaneously. Are you one of those persons, too? We should create a club. I will be writing a lot about Granny Nannies going forward.
Go HERE for all of Alice so far.
Go to my (week) daily blog the kitchens garden for the current news.
Don’t be lonely. I really mean that. This is the perfect platform to beat the loneliness.
Love Celi
PS - As you read this I am in the air - far away up in the sky in an impossible plane, once again betwixt and between. Leaving the heat of Australia for the dreadful cold of Illinois. I carry my coat and wear my converse and hope the planes all line up so I get to where I am going so I can go somewhere else again. Leave a comment for me to read in my layovers!
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