Embrace the unexpected
Explore the side roads that meander away from the wide main road
Listen to the suggestions the universe whispers in your ear
Deviate from your plan and discover a better one.
Detail of a decorative ceramic plate by Rodney Blumenfeld
Today ordinarily I would have reckoned I was too busy to post, but with NaBloPoMo looking over my shoulder I must write something, so it will be a snippets from my day kind of a post:
It’s a damp overcast morning. Without the bright spokes of sunshine tickling their eyelids my children have slept in for once. Youngest is the first to wake as I go in to their room after my shower. Sleepily she lies against me.
“God isn’t a person, he’s a spirit” are her first words of the morning.
“Mmm” I say, my brain not in gear for any more thought out response.
“He was here before houses. Before there were people. Before dinosaurs.”
“Mmm”
“He’s just ONE spirit, not one..two..three”as she points around the room.
I’m keeping quiet now, what could I possibly add..
“He’s everywhere but he lives up there.”
My brain now reeling as I try to take in this most concise summing up of complex theological issues, I allow myself to wonder if my child is a genius. But then having got to the bottom of this subject to her satisfaction she moves on to complaining that her new pink sandals have already got dirty and in fact are too tight after all, so I know that she is actually a very normal four year old exploring the relevant issues in her life.
We get visitors quite often ringing up out of the blue to come and look at our straw bale house. Sometimes, as we start the conducted tour one more time, we wonder silently to ourselves whether we should be charging an entrance fee, or selling souvenirs and home-made fudge at the door. Here in South Africa using straw bales to build with is a new innovation, greeted with amazement and polite enquiries about fire-risk, planning permission and the like. Gradually more people are getting interested and drag their architects along to our house to see how it works in practice.
“Yes” we say, “it is amazingly cool in summer and warm in winter, as long as you keep doors and windows closed, there can be as much as 10 degrees C difference between outside and in.”
One of the best things for me though is that our new house immediately had the atmosphere of an old house, that solid sense of having sheltered the family for years and absorbed its history into its walls. Its thick walls give you a feeling of being protected from the outside world and a quality of stillness. The house has its own persona. It keeps us cosy and warm and also firmly tied to its apron strings. It is hard to leave and always welcoming to come back to.
Its generous rooms expect us to offer hospitality to all comers. Our seasonal festivals are ever growing and our house seems to expand to accommodate all our friends, family and acquaintances, over forty people at our last one including the children. The house likes children too, they feel safe here, free to charge around on bikes and scooters, spread toys all around the playroom in the centre of the house, climb through the windows, even deal out knocks to the walls.
If a chunk of the clay plaster comes off to reveal straw underneath, when someone charges against it with their sword, we can just mix it up again with some water and slap it back on. When this occasionally happens the straw shows itself to be still golden and sweet smelling, after four years as a wall.
The whole experience of building and living in a straw house has been a positive one, I can't imagine ever moving away from it, we'd have to take it with us somehow! One thing we did have to do though was add a line into the tale of the three little pigs: "the first little pig built a house of straw, but he didn't make proper foundations, tie down the bales or plaster it, so it wasn't strong enough..."
So do come and visit, I’ve been baking mulberry muffins, with the berries from my new young tree just outside, which has been prolific, though it was only planted just over a year ago. I won’t charge an entrance fee really, just bring your stories to share.
Children outfitted by Granny who is visiting us
Afternoons are now for swimming and the children, after an uncertain first few days, have remembered the skills acquired last summer. The older ones are swimming underwater, as long as they have goggles, and youngest is now confident in the deep end with her arm bands. So now I am wrested away from my computer for the complicated expedition down to the pool. The collection of all the necessary accoutrements: hats, flip flops, towels, swimming costumes, cellphone, book, drinks, snacks, the thorough application of suncream to all four of us seems to take at least half an hour, the impatience of the older ones as finally we are ready and then youngest needs to go to the loo. She then walks extremely slowly, firmly holding onto my hand. down to the pool, as the others jump up and down screeching with frustration at the gate, forbidden to enter without an adult. Eventually we are all there. The water is still fresh this early in the season 74F/23C, but later in the summer it will be bath like, over 80F/30C as the charcoal colour absorbs the sun’s heat.
The pool is our essential luxury. The only way of surviving a summer here in the Swartland. Several degrees hotter than Cape Town (which has ocean breezes to cool it), and dry, dry, dry with a hot wind sucking the moisture from everything it meets. We close all the doors and windows at nine in the morning to retain the cool of the night in our straw bale house, then throw them open again once evening brings a slight cooling down to entice a breeze and the odd mosquito into the house. The mosquito nets envelop our beds like grand palaquin tents and the children sleep under sarongs. We’ll have two or three months of this once mid-summer hits us. Now we know that spring will make a come back soon and bring a little more rain and cool fronts, fighting off full summer for a bit. This is just a taster to remind us of the heat in store, get us in survivor mode and wake us from our winter slumber.
I need to make the mental switch over on the food front too: stop planning Sunday Roasts and stock up for Saturday evening braais instead – spicy chicken wings and lemon sausage cooked by my master braai chef husband over wood embers, with the sprinkler going nearby to prevent sparks setting off a bush fire. Butternut squash foil-wrapped on the coals and baby potatoes boiled with mint. Stir fries, pastas and salad take over from stews and casseroles – no more cottage pie comfort food till next winter. I still have to bake bread though, trying to time it so the oven is on in the evenings, not in the heat of the day.
The sprinklers have plenty of alternative uses too!
