After a strenuous and stressful week of an excessive workload, coming to the realisation that I have to sell everything and my boys on school holidays (which didn't help when the wettest September day hit Melbourne in almost a century), it was time to have some very quiet 'me' time.
To balance out the stress, I've booked myself into Yoga classes for the next few weeks and a fortnightly massage with the lovely Jennifer Berridge at Karma Studio. Karma Studio is a place I observed from afar for eight years, always intriguing me by it's busy corner position and it's calming garden charm. Once inside, the outside noise dissipates and the aromatic smells within, the lush garden views and the instant feeling of feeling like you're 'spiritually' home is just mesmerising. It's definitely something to look forward to being in that presence every week...
As for today, I rose out of bed at 7.45am (6.45am pre-daylight savings time) to start mulching my garden and planting some plants. I had 3.5 cubic metres of mulch to cart around and disperse throughout my garden to tidy it up to sell. I planted some herbs in a boxed off garden bed, and some blue native grasses to offset my blue/grey fence. I put some decked steppers in and mulched away. I'd almost finished at 10am when my boys woke up - just the top garden to go. I was pleasantly surprised at my achievement with my $10 bucket from Bunnings (a wheelbarrow wouldn't have done because I had a couple of steps to deal with). It was nice working at that time of the morning when the air was still crisp and the sun hadn't touched that side of my house yet. The surrounding sounds were a few fleeting birds flying by and the mulch entering the plastic bucket as I raked it in with my hands. The garden was covered by 11am (as my sons' attempts to help slowed the process down), but I still had half the mulch left and it had to go, due to it being dumped in a public laneway. So after a small break, oiling the deck and getting my boys ready to see their father, I spent the next two hours moving the remaining mulch around the garden to create more cushioning and reducing the chances of weeds to poke their heads through. By 1.30pm I had finished... and that's when my simple pleasures began.
I was filthy, so I jumped in the bath and started reading a book I was approximately half way through. I added some bath salts and had the temperature just right. I could feel my body starting to ache from being physical, but it was an exhilarating ache, which always made me feel good. After about half an hour, I jumped out of the bath, grabbed something to eat, and felt the urge to keep reading. I couldn't do it on the back deck, something I always liked to do in the sun, because it was newly oiled, so I found the next best place... my son's west-facing bedroom lying on his bed with the sun streaming through the window.
It brought me back... to my childhood, where the two bedrooms I had growing up where both west facing. Where I always had the hottest room in the house and my bed was always up against the window so I could lie on it reading, listening to music, writing to friends, whatever it was, in the warmth of the sun. So today, I read.... indulging in a hot chocolate and a bowl of M&Ms (I was allowed to, because I'd worked so hard in the garden!) reading the remaining 190 pages to finish my book, in a quiet house with no one interrupting. It was nice, and just what I needed to regain my inner being.
The boys are now home, ready to do their school holiday thing in sleeping on the couch watching television till they pass out, and I'm in the quiet of my own room ready to indulge in some more escapism, this time on the small screen. Sometimes, you just need days like this...
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