Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same. There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same. (Malvina Reynolds, 1900-1978) This song,…
Tag: Authentic Living
Back to the drawing board… or is it the dot-grid notebook???
Now that NaNoWriMo is done and dusted, I can bring my thoughts back to my backyard farm somewhere in Europe. It’s actually much less of a hassle than people think it is, but the one thing that I have since learned is that “doing it myself” is not only a myth but a sin, straight…
Life is weird… and then I blog about it!
I don’t frequently visit my stats page, because I find it rather depressing being the only one to ever visit my blog site, but when I do – like tonight – I find some interesting peculiarities. One is that the bot that is in charge of the stats puts this computer in Pretoria, a city…
Yesterday, I was all for giving up… but then I tried once more.
Sometimes, a goal simply seems to be too big to handle. When you’re a do-it-yourselfer like me, it’s challenging to delegate work. The mantra “if it’s to be, it’s up to me” has been pounded into my mind from a very early age. Yes, that’s a good thing, but it has its detriments as well….
Brick walls and severely lacking Parkour skills
Time for an update, methinks. I have come to the realization that all of the house restoration and backyard farming videos and blogs that I have been following were made by people coming from G8 countries. Maybe they weren’t rich themselves, but their backgrounds gave them access that I – coming from a country in…
Cutting the Italian Elephant into Bite-Sized Portions
With the “Botswana Idea” now well and truly in the circular file, I have decided to revisit my original plan to take my dream to Italy. It’s still a massive elephant, in many respects. Imagine discovering that your dream house has half its back wall and a big chunk of its roof missing! To…
A twist, a translation and an energy boost in (what I feel is) the right direction
First, the background. I am a 44-year-old Afrikaner woman, currently working for the local government in Rustenburg, South Africa. I would like to start a small Permaculture-based homestead/backyard farm, and as South Africa has become increasingly hostile to farmers and smallholders alike, I am seriously considering bringing my energy and resources, such as they are,…
Too big for the box
Let’s start off with some good news. I have found out today that I should have more than adequate funds to launch my backyard farmstead IF I take it slowly and not splurge on wants before I can safely afford them. I won’t be rich by any conventional definition of the word, but I won’t…
Damaged People
In 1992, the movie Damaged came out, starring Juliette Binoche and Jeremy Irons. It was a heavy movie, with dark themes, including incest. The movie was based on a similarly-titled book, by Josephine Hart, and there is a quote from the book (and the movie) that I have come across quite often: “All damaged people…
Getting out of my head, into myself and into the moment!
Don’t tell anyone I said this because I shall deny it in the highest courts of law, but my life isn’t altogether happy. It’s not particularly sad, either. It’s just… blah! Or meh… or whatever the word is these days to describe something that’s truly boring and unsatisfying. Yes, that word. That is how my…