Today has been a perfect, rainy day. The rain started yesterday, and has carried on through the night, and all of today so far. It is nearing sunset, and bedtimes for the kids, then the adults, with tomorrow meant to be partly cloudy and a bit warmer. But today, glorious day! I put a fire in, though it was not cold, and I had two cups of tea this morning, black first, then lemmon grass and mint, both sweetened with honey, the black dulled with a bit of milk.
The school reports are turned in, and almost all of the business of the home school acedmy is done for the year, testing, financials, and all but a month of course work.
I am eagerly awaiting the arrival later this week of a new computer for me to play a game that Missus and I like to relax to. It is a laptop, which is not really my first choice of computer, but it is time to get something both powerful and portable, so this time around, it is to be this. I will use it for the blog, and for my media production, whatever that may be, especially when I am away from the home computer. I got al the accessories that I think I will need, too, like a bag and port replicator, as well as an external hard drive to back things up onto. But mostly, I am eager to play our game, sit in the same room, and not have the lagging that my weather station computer gives playing from it. That will return to being a dedicated machine.
So far our new chicks have been growing just fine, and adapting to their new home in the floorspace of the coop with the peacocks and chuckar. I am ready to pick up some meat chickens next, and raise them up, then butcher and serve them, sharingh the boys to see how they take to home grown chickens. I need to perfect my butchering skills, too. Hopefully they will be large enough to more easily clean out, as the last time I butchered, the birds were not a meat breed, and the cavity too small to remove everything without squeezing too tightly on my hand. I know it is a silly complaint from me, given what the birds had just gone through. But it is what it is to be a living being, myself.
A pot of coffee is just finished, and so are the cinnamon rolls! That will be the start of a relaxing period for the evening, then bed soon after. Life could be worse!
I watched a video today by a young English lady called Ruby Granger, who talked about Cottagecore aesthetic, and went into some detail on how to achieve it. As someone who is what many Americans now call a ‘homesteader,’ and as someone who has spent a great deal of time in the English countryside, I must say I found the whole aesthetic very appealing. I liked many of the suggestions Ruby made about things like decorating with flowers around the house, the books she suggested, the idea of picnics, and walks in the country, and doing things deliberately, not for a higher purpose but to do well at what is in front of you. Bake things for people you love, press flowers and include them in handwritten notes to others, and so on.
The thing about it that took me was not just the idea of living some provincial life, but the ideas of being close to nature, using less plastics, growing own food, and what she most seemed to be conveying was not just stopping in life to smell the roses, but to be a rose.
I think I am pretty close in my own life to living this aesthetic, and to being the person who does more than smell roses. There are some new habits I need to form, and there is a bit of cleaning and organizing that still needs my attention, but it is not for a lack of what I own, or the environment I have created here at our little farmhouse.
Smell the roses, be a rose, and sieze the moment. Learn, and dedicate self to the things I do. That’s where I see myself right now. While I am so close o having everything I need, I must continue to seek for the things I want, and be there for the people I adore.