CIDER WAR’S and singing your own song

Blog posts are perfect for tiny portions of ‘language meets living’. For a writer, deep- headed in constructing a novel, this feels light and breezy; to speak of little wonders in life and, as comes naturally, write about them.

My wonders today include 3 things:

1.  Apples

2. Organised Events

3. Making up songs

Firstly, my fruit bowls, and the beer fridge are packed with gorgeous home- grown apples.  Red ones, cooking ones; apples that have little worms inside.  Leo and I made apple cakes for morning tea, like the ones from the bakery with thick shortbread pastry edging and a pocket of stewed apple in the middle- so great for your middle too.  The little boy version, was bright yellow play dough cut, rolled, shaped and eaten.

The apple recipe book, left at our home, when we arrive early spring 2013 is an absolute beauty.  I’ve added to the hand- written notes this summer; feeling grateful to the woman before me who did the same.  We’ve inherited a well cared for orchard.  I have cider in the making and bags of apples leaving in every visitors car.  I wonder about the past owner’s apple habits, and the future of our orchard.  Mostly I just enjoy the wonder of having boxes of fruit and being able to try new recipes with it.

The second wonderful thing of note is organised events.  Sounds dull as a way of wording something that can be so full of life.  My recent wonder was a writers festival in Beaconsfield,Tasmania last weekend, with some Australian legends chatting on stage about their published writing and ideas about, everything you could imagine being spoken of.  A memorable session and there were many, was about the ‘Black War’ in Tasmania at the time of colonisation, a hugely monumental period in Tasmania history that is hidden so cleverly behind other more recent wars.  Some really nice ideas came from this talk regarding living ‘in’ the land, as Aboriginals have done for many thousands of years ‘in’ our island, as opposed to living ‘on’ the land as us immigrants have referred to as our place in the Australian landscape.  Are you ‘in’ or ‘on’ the land right now?  How do you perceive this?

There were also stories read out loud.  It’s so nice to be read to as an adult, especially when it is normally you, as a parent perhaps, reading for young children.  Moments of hilarity came thick and fast with some comedians in the line up and even tears and much tragedy which is so often the impetus behind some great published tales.

Another local event, saw hundreds of women at our local surf club, gather with their bra’s on the outside.  Many fringed, tousled and flung into baskets that were to be shipped to Africa to women in need.  Bra’s are a remarkable decorating spectacle, so colourful and diverse these days.  The company of the local women is something fun in itself.  Many like minded sorts seeking a dose of good fun.   So this was both good looking and an enriching experience, which can sometimes be missing in the fly about catch up’s.  Another super gal, has done something similar hosting an event at her home to raise enough for a water pump in a village.

There are the everyday organised events, that sometimes we take for granted but are like food for our souls.  It is good to be involved with these things, appreciate and support what some clever people have the foresight to arrange.  Organised events bring people together which is the best bit, sharing lives and opening ourselves to new wonders, that can fill us up.

A thought…

Anyone let me know (local larrikins, I’m writing to you), if you want to try and make some apple cider with our apples.  I can do you up a cider kit (there’s not much to it, says the inexperienced one) and we can have a CIDER WAR event, sharing booze to see who’s cider turned out the best?

On a new note, making up songs is the third wonder today.  A wonder in my opinion that never loses it’s wonderfulness.  I can imagine this apple frenzy is going to rot by the turn of the season, but singing and letting words spontaneously come together with a tuneful voice wins hearts.  Sometimes the words just come out that way when you are feeling a bit soulful or sparkly.  Mostly I find it is spurred on by a child.  When you have some fresh minds trying our their vocab by your side it might get the ball rolling.  It’s awesome to see how children put words and sounds together (so quickly learning to rhyme), to make a new song.

I think as a parent, you really know you’re doing a good job when your child, singing their own made up song, also sings an instrumental solo that might otherwise be a complex drumming part or guitar riff.  Sometimes our trips to town in the car are made up of wonders like this.

Its’ a wonder-ful life when you think about it.