10 Good Things #2
Spring seedlings, pottery classes and candy floss ice cream
Happy October, friends! Can you believe we are here already!?
While in other parts of the world some of you are snuggling in for quieter, darker days, and my social feeds are bursting with pumpkin spice lattes and cozy quilts, here in Australia it is spring and our days are getting longer and warmer. I have been spending lots of time in the garden, planting out veggies for summer and trying (fairly unsuccessfully) to keep up with the explosion of weeds. The mornings are crisp, the days are sunny, the bees are buzzing and everything blooming.
In the last few weeks I’ve seen a few posts on social media about “glimmers” and they have made me think about my 10 Good Things posts, like this one. Glimmers are the opposite of triggers - small, simple moments of pleasure that that spark feelings of joy, peace and comfort. Glimmers can help regulate our nervous systems and improve mental health. And though I haven’t used the word “glimmers” as such, I have been writing gratitude lists to help me better notice these little moments for years. I first starting writing 10 Good Things posts when I was blogging more than a decade ago and I know for certain that writing these lists has helped me to find pockets of joy during hard chapters and to view my everyday life with more wonder and gratitude.
Here are 10 good things, or glimmers, I have experienced lately.
Apple blossoms. Our peach and apricot trees’ blossoms have finished (and now have teeny, tiny baby fruits on them!) so now it is our little apple tree’s time to shine. I am so excited to think we might get a few homegrown apples this year! We’ve never had a proper apple tree until now. At our previous house we did have an old crabapple tree but the birds got most of the fruit and I never did anything much with the few crabapples that survived.
A rainy day. We have had a dreadfully dry winter, but we finally had a gorgeous rainy day last Sunday, so the garden had a lovely soak and I got to snuggle up on the couch with my kindle. Delightful.
Taking a pottery class. I told myself I would do two things this year - start writing again and take a pottery class. I am so pleased to say I have done both! My partner and our son actually took the pottery class with me and we have all loved it so much. It was wonderful to spend time learning something new and doing something creative together. We are all very creative, crafty souls but tend to choose different mediums and outlets, so it was brilliant to find something we all enjoyed. We are seriously considering investing in a pottery wheel!
My little one’s handwritten notes. His handwriting has improved so much this year and he has recently started joining his letters. Nothing brings me more joy than finding a little list of invented mythical creatures or facts about yeti crabs, written in his new curly script.
The Wild Robot. It is school holidays here in Australia and a trip to the cinema is a school holiday tradition for our family. This week we saw The Wild Robot and it was absolutely beautiful. I cried through at least half of it, but it was the good kind of crying. We’re reading the Harry Potter books together at the moment but once we’ve finished them, I think The Wild Robot books will have to be next.
A visit to the ice cream shop. This is another little school holiday tradition. Biscoff flavour for me, cotton candy flavour for my kiddo.
Freshly planted seedlings in pretty little rows. The veggie beds look neat and tidy so fleetingly! Soon enough the garden will be a mess of crawling zucchini vines and rambly tomatoes, but it is a lovely kind of chaos. This week we have planted out tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, lettuces, beans and squash, and we have another bed we need to clear out this weekend to make space for corn.
Spring cleaning. I love a good Spring clean! Over the school holidays I have been sorting out our spare bedroom as it tends to be the spot where we dump all the things we’re not sure what to do with or need to sort out “another day”. Today is that day!
Reading every night. I often complain I don’t have enough time to read but the truth is, after our son goes to bed, my partner and I have fallen into the habit of flopping on the couch to watch something on Brit Box or Netflix, and I could be using that time to read. I have promised myself I will read instead of watching TV every night of October, so I am very curious to see how many books I get through and how the experiment makes me feel. I’ll keep you posted!
Watching the sunset from our trampoline. One of the things I love most about our little house, is that our backyard backs onto farmland. Last night we were gardening until dusk and as the sun began to set, I climbed onto the trampoline to watch it sinking behind the paddock of contented cows grazing over our back fence. It was a moment of blissful calm after a happy, busy day.
I hope you are having a wonderful week. I’d love to hear some of your recent glimmers.
Katie xx
I strongly believe that there is no feeling in the world greater than cuddling up with a book when it's cold and rainy outside. We got bi-fold doors put into our sitting room last year for the sole reason of being able to sit and watch the weather outside from the sofa — bliss! 👏
Your comment about watching the sunset from the trampoline transported me right back to my childhood. I used to love to do that 🧡 sometimes with a pillow and quilt too.