We’re having the most spectacular weather at the moment with endless sunshine and wonderfully cool breezes sending the gum trees dancing. The drought continues unabated as we return to severe water restrictions and hope, hope, hope for rain, but outside my office is a stretch of green, my green patch that I water faithfully when the wind turns the windmill and fills our bore water tanks.

This green patch kept our geese, chickens, and the wild birds healthy and strong through last year’s hellish season of drought and bushfires, so I’m determined to keep it going again this year. While everything dries up around us after a brief flush of green from a couple of winter rains, this oasis cheers us no end. We love sitting on the back verandah and watching the life that is drawn like a magnet to this verdant patch. From tiny finches and fairy wrens to magpies, cockatoos, grass parrots, and rainbow lorikeets, they all take turns foraging through the grass to find food for themselves and their babies.

We keep troughs of water filled around our property so there is always water available for our animals, our neighbors’ sheep and horses, and the kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, echidnas, goannas, and other species that call our farm home. We can’t do much about growing the wild grasses, flowers, and herbs they need to thrive until the rains come, but at least they won’t go thirsty.

While we hope for rain, we prepare for drought and the brutal summer heat. I’ve been working hard making our gardens and orchards as resilient as possible by installing drip water systems, thick layers of mulch, and covering the fences with shade cloth to protect them from wind and heat.

And I’ve been planting. So much. It may sound silly to plant things during a drought, but if there’s one major thing I’ve learned through this drought, it’s this: the land thrives longer and bounces back quicker if it has things growing in it.

So I’ve filled my gardens with a mix of trees, bushes, leafy plants, vines, and root vegetables and herbs. The trees provide shelter for the smaller plants, while the leafy plants work as mulch to keep the roots of the trees cool and damp. The deep rooted plants keep the soil loose and friable and herbs like comfrey and yarrow provide endless fodder for the compost bin and compost tea so I can keep feeding the soil. And they all provide food for us, our animals, local wildlife, and bees while making the land stronger, healthier, and more resilient.

It’s hard work but good work and I love it so much.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve planted lilly pilly bushes that are already starting to produce the purple and magenta fruits that I’ll turn into cordials, liqueurs, teas, and preserves, blueberry bushes that are covered with pale green berries, and elderberry bushes that are festooned with frothy white blooms. The apple, pomegranate, and citrus trees are flowering beautifully and we’re so hopeful that we’ll get a good harvest this year. The mulberry trees have new black berries for us every day and the feijoas, jaboticabas, and plum trees are sprouting vibrant new leaves and getting taller and stronger.

My friend Stacey and I have been studying about native bush tucker foods this past year, and we’re planting as many varieties as we can source. This week I put in a native currant bush, a native apple tree, several sea asparagus, and warrigal greens. Next up are native capers, Tasmanian mountain pepper, and native elderberry that produces bright yellow berries instead of the dark purple variety. I love learning about these plants and the ways they are used in food and medicine by the Aboriginal tribes that have managed this land for millennia.

My other great joy these days is my medieval herb garden. I love seeing the bare earth dotted with seedlings of motherwort, tansy, mugwort, rue, tulsi, calendula, chamomile, horseradish, galangal, turmeric, rose geranium, spearmint, marshmallow, burdock, peppermint, wormwood, lemon balm, yarrow, comfrey, and so many others. It’s even more fun harvesting them, drying them, and using them in all sorts of foods and herbal medicines. This week I’ve been making herbal tea mixtures, stirring together various combinations in big bowls before storing them in glass jars to use as the need arises. Yesterday I made one that relieves allergy and headache symptoms, one that strengthens the heart, and another that soothes the nervous system. In winter I like them hot, but in spring and summer, Bear and I prefer them iced and sweetened with honey or maple syrup.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices I make each day. Choices that either support the things I value or distract from them. I’ve been learning to get up each day, evaluate how I’m doing in mind, body, and spirit, and plan my day accordingly, doing what is good for me and the people and things I care about. It has really become that simple, just asking myself, “What is good for me today?”

My life doesn’t look like most lives, and that’s OK. It is good for me, good for Bear, good for the life we are building together. I’m finding new freedom and peace in making my good choices whether others understand or approve of them or not. I love that we can all have different passions, different cares, different things that drive, delight, and fulfill us. We need these differences to make the world a more balanced and loving and interesting place. It is comforting to know I can cheer on the passions of my loves without embracing them myself, to fully support their right to engage in what matters to them without taking it on and distracting myself from the life I am building. I read a phrase this week that thrilled me: “breathe in your trueness“. I love the picture those words create. I clarify my values, confirm my next good steps, then close my eyes, hang onto those thoughts and breathe them in, deep and sure, letting them filter down into my whole being so my path is clear. It makes it so much easier to say no and yes when opportunities present themselves because I’m not responding out of guilt or shame, but out of clarity of purpose. I love it.

What good things are you doing these days? xo