Its serenely quiet and the gate has started to shimmer in the heat of the day by the time I take this shot. Through the gate I see grass turning golden and as the land dries out we start to watch the horizon for tell tale smoke plumes – where is it, how far away, which way is it headed; and welcome rain clouds – how far away are they, which way is it headed, will we be lucky?

Oooooh I am starting to see some design influence coming out in our build. To be honest we are totally rubbish at interior design, we build and create spaces, filling and decorating them is far from our fun zone. These doors represent weeks of thinking, discussion and learning a new craft. This is the fun part of building our own place, we can take the time to work things out and adapt ideas to our skill set. And for the first time I’m getting a glimpse of an end picture pieced together from years of scrounging ideas from magazines, tv shows and online pics; of a large kitchen with deep colours and blended materials where no one thing stands out and the light does not hurt your eyes pre morning coffee.

This is one of the 2 trees on our place when we purchased. We have since planted about 250 and could easily plant that number again. The sheep are fantasitcally undiscerning between native v exotic in their inquisitive tasting of the leaves. We are becoming masters of building tree guards and sadly only by trial and error. At this stage I’m grateful they have not resorted to climbing (a la Shaun the Sheep pyramid) to gain a leafy morsel.

You know when you start playing with something and its good, then an idea sprouts… and then you realise you could make it happen you just have to start. Beginning is all it takes.  I have no idea of the outcome, it will be imperfect as odds always are.    This is Longview Garlic. Not only did I grow it, its edible and I can grow more.  I’m a producer of garlic.  Now that was not in the original game plan.

Number 1 on the 100GoodThings list

Books.

“Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad”

Seneca, On the Tranquility of Mind, 12.5 Source: The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman