I Keep A Book of Commonplace

I was showing my husband some beautiful blank books recently, available from a UK publisher and explaining to him what was meant by a 'commonplace book.' 

A commonplace book is a blank book that you use to jot down thoughts, quotes, notes from the day, reminders, newspaper clippings, recipes, souvenirs, anything you can think of really. It is not a journal. It is not a place for introspective thoughts and minds. It is really, a personal reference book. Things you want to remember. Things that impacted your life. Things that mattered. It is a tradition that apparently goes back as far as the Middle Ages.

"I would love to have one of these and do this," when he turned to me and said, 'but you already do."

It took me a few seconds to realise that it is a habit that I've had since childhood and blank books being one of my favourite things, I have lots of them stored away or scattered about the house in bookshelves or cupboards. It's not anything I am really intentional about, it just happens. I do love the idea of being intentional with it, as my Grandmother was, which I will show you.

My latest common-purpose book is filled with study notes, recipes, Christmas shopping lists, a knitting pattern, quotes I loved and doodles and lots of other little, random things.

This red book was my first commonplace book that I had when I got married. I bought it on my honeymoon in a bookmaker's shop in Oamaru, New Zealand. It has notes from our honeymoon and the birth of our first baby.  My latest commonplace book is not so pretty to look at and it is full, so it is time to buy a new one and I might treat myself to one of the beautiful English books linked above.

My grandmother kept a commonplace book. This is one that she gave to my cousin, covered in the wallpaper of one of their bedrooms. It's full of poems, quotes, hymns, newspaper clippings and other little things. A real family treasure. It doesn't have to be a fancy book, it can be any kind of blank notebook.

A newspaper cutting taken from the local paper when my grandparents had their 65th wedding anniversary and words of advice, my mother, 'nurse Spencer' mentioned in a tiny newspaper clipping and lots of notes in my grandmother's own handwriting.

When my grandfather got awarded by the Queen, Nana has kept the instructions for those attending the Investiture in 1967 at Government House in Wellington. 

A commonplace book could be a real glimpse into someone's life from another era and insight into the personality who kept it.

Here are some entries from my commonplace books that I've kept over the years.

Death notice of a beloved work colleague from my teenage years.

Notes and doodlings from a university lecture by the late, much-esteemed Moana Jackson.

Charting a knitting pattern.

I leave you with some words from my Grandmother's commonplace book. I would love to know if this is something you do also, and if so, what do you write in?

"We do not exist to be counted. We count."

A Tiny Shift

This summer, I'm working on a book. 

Because of the nature of it, I'm finding I'm being drawn back to old arts centred around home and family. It's more of a challenge now to focus on home, because I work 4 days a week and I'm studying, but there must be something in the air that is making me turn my focus back onto this. 

I find as I get older that I take comfort in old, familiar things and old, familiar faces. It is probably because we as a family have been through so much in the past 10 years and I reach for peace and safety and familiar. It is possible to crave that and yet still have ambitions, as I do with my study and future. A check list, if you like, for the second half of my life. The things I want to do are things that I have chosen for myself and even at my age I still have dreams.

I think I know what precipitated this shift.

At the beginning of the year we visited my home province in Marlborough for a summer holiday. It was one of the loveliest holidays filled with warm, sunny days walking through old familiar streets and haunts in Picton, the seaside town and Blenheim, my hometown, where old friends I've known all my life still live, and a remnant of relatives. Once it was full of my grandparents and cousins and parents and great aunts and uncles, but we grew up and moved away and grandparents passed away, but the area holds so many dear memories for me, still full of atmosphere and fragrance and textures and sounds and somehow this year I felt like I wanted to hold onto that forever.

I'm writing a book about this very special part of New Zealand and my memories of growing up as a Marlborough girl.  A collection of recipes and stories and connection with the people and places of this province. It is a nostalgic project and I'll be invoking the food of the 1970s and 1980s that left indelible an imprint on our collective family history as well as generational food passed down from the matriarchs.

As part of the writing and creative process, I have decided to incorporate weekly videos for my youtube channel. I plan on doing this every Sunday. Food is such an intrinsic part of who we are and is intertwined with the stories of our lives, so while I am more of a writer than I am an orator or camera person, I felt it was important to record the process of creating a book about life and memories and connection. These videos will reflect the person I am - the introvert and lover of quiet in a world that clamours for attention and noise. It's a place for other introverts - to slow life down and enjoy the beauty around us and to remember and reflect on what is important - connection with people and with places.

I would be interested to know what you think and your own thoughts around this subject.

A Day Off

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847).

Have a look at my rainy backyard winter garden.

Every week I get the gift of a day off from work.

As well as studying at my local university, I also have a day job four days a week. I usually plan to cram as much as I can into my day off, but when I woke this morning to the sound of rain on the window, those plans are quite easily shafted to another day in the hazy, far away future. Procrastination is easier on rainy days because I like to stay home and enjoy those feelings of being sheltered safely and warm and cosy in my house while the weather is grim. Hot drinks, comfortable clothes, a little moment for reading and watercolours in my journal and the ever present need for study and online zoom tutorials. 

There were plans in my day to take the dog for a walk around the neighbourhood nature reserve but those have been quashed by the weather. Instead she lies contentedly at my feet. My dog does not like the rain so she won't mind missing her walk today. 

Zoom meetings can be problematic, but my Linguistics class is one I look forward to every week. The content is challenging me enormously, but our lecturer makes the class so interesting it's quite fun. It continues to amaze me how the limitations of language influences our culture. 

Plum Tree sprouting pre-Spring buds.

I made lemon muffins for the kids when they got home from school and sat down with a latte to do a little nature journalling which has been sadly lacking from my life lately. The little rosebush outside my bedroom window grew rosehips this year and I always think they're so cheerful in the winter. I recently learned that during the Second World War when Germany cut off England from food imports, and unable to grow their own citrus, rosehips were gathered and made into  rosehip syrup which is very high in Vitamin C. I remember my grandmother making Rosehip Jelly and it has a lovely flavour.

Now that the evening is drawing in and the children are home from school, with dinner out of the way, I'll work a little on my assignment and then I will settle down to do some more of my jigsaw. Jigsaws are so relaxing to me and I often put something on to watch or listen to while I'm doing it. 

At the moment my newest entertainment obsession is Mudlarking.

If you haven't heard about this before it is an old, old profession that goes hundreds of years back in London where people made a living off finding valuable items in the mud along the River Thames. Nowadays of course, it is just a hobby but it's so interesting the things that people find. Some things date back to Roman times. If you're curious about it, here's a little introduction video. In a couple of months I hope to review the book mentioned in the video. One day I hope to try it out for myself in London!

Narratives in a Garden

 Generations pass while some tree stands. 

Sir Thomas Brown 

Recently while visiting my Aunt she took me on a tour of her garden. Just a little retirement garden now, but I recall the expansive country gardens my Aunt once commanded, but it wasn't the size of the garden that struck me.

What struck me was the familiarity of the garden. When I say familiar I don't mean that it looked or seemed the same as her other gardens, but because it is a garden built around connections with other people. 

A cutting taken from my grandparents' garden, a garden ornament gifted by a daughter, a river stone from the farm. It's the same in my mother's garden. Every time we go there she has to show me the rose bush cutting she took from the gift given to me by a friend when my second child was born, or the raspberry bushes that flourish in the corner of the garden that came from my childhood home in Marlborough, or the bean plants from Beryl next door. Every plant has a story. Every plant has a connection with the narrative of life.

It got me thinking about my own garden and the treasured plants I have managed to save as we have moved around the country so much over the past 20 years. A hydrangea cutting from my cherished childhood holiday place in the Marlborough Sounds, or roses gifted by friends. Let me show you a few.

Aunty Marjorie's Plant

Just a few months before my husband Rob's Aunty Marj left her home in Auckland to go into a rest home we visited her one afternoon at her house. As we were heading out the door she gave us a cutting of this plant growing at her front door and thrust it into our hands telling us it was given to her by a friend and she's always had it in her garden, that it wasn't very pretty and tended to take over, but she wanted us to have it. Now it flourishes in our garden and she was right - it does tend to take over.

You can just make out the plant behind Rob and Aunty Marjorie in this photo. This was the day she gave the cutting to us. I have no idea what it's called - it's just called Aunty Marjorie's plant.

Diane's Lemon

In my garden I have a lemon tree gifted by my sister in law when we moved into the house we built. When we had to leave there, we transplanted it to the new place and it's flourishing nicely.

A plant is always such a nice gift. We call it Diane's Lemon Tree.

Nana's Pig

Nana Spencer's terracotta pig. Nana always had this either at her front door or her back door with a succulent growing in it. In my memory it is always there in the garden as we left Nana and Grandad's place and they'd come to the fence and wave us off - always waving until the turn in the road when we were out of sight. 

The Life Tree

After Rob survived his cardiac arrest in 2017 we wanted to mark this second chance at life by planting a tree. One of his favourites is the Gingko tree, so when we moved to the house we are currently in, we planted one in a corner of the garden. Right now, in the middle of winter it is bare but in the summer it is a beautiful green and Autumn turns it into a bright gold.

Roses

Then there are all the beautiful roses we have planted around the house. Roses have a special significance for us - from the Sally Holmes that was gifted when our daughter was born, to the Birthday rose, to Blackberry Nip gifted by cousin Grace.

I recently learned that a garden with connections to people and places and events is very cultural to the Maori side of my heritage. When I heard that, it made so much sense to me. That's why my Mother and Aunt and Grandmother always tell stories around plants in the garden. It's built into our culture, an inherent part of who we are as people.

Maybe it's built into yours too. I'd love to hear if you have stories with plants.

A corner of my winter garden at home.

Lockdown Soda Bread

A three day weekend, combined with lockdown and my university mid-semester break has been wonderful to take some time to focus on other pursuits.

To accompany our homemade chicken soup for lunch today, I thought I'd try making some soda bread. The good thing about soda bread is that it's very quick to make - no long hours waiting for it to rise, because it doesn't have yeast in it.

This one was done within an hour. It looks good and smells great, but still a little dense to my liking, so further experimentation must be done to perfect it.

Tips:

• Because you don't use yeast it's important that the lemon juice reacts with the milk. So leave it long enough to curdle.

• You only need to knead it a few times. It doesn't need a bashing.

• It's important to flatten the bread before baking, and it's important to cut the cross deep, as this lets in the heat to cook the middle as soda bread is a quick cooking, quick rising bread.

China teacup: Spode "Spode's Aster"

Butter plate: Ascot (found in a charity store)

Vase: Cabbages and Kings, Tauranga

China dogs salt and pepper: Kmart, New Zealand

Tiny Ordinary Days

 I'm not new to blogging but I've missed having a place I can come to and write about life.

The name of my blog; tiny ordinary days, reflects where I am in life at the moment. I'm a mother to four children - two at university, two at home. I work 4 days a week to support them. I study part-time at my local university towards a Bachelor of Social Science, which I'm very passionate about, but I miss having a place to write just for the fun of it.

In this busy season of life it is hard to find the time to do the things that bring me happiness. So this is what this new blog is about. Recording the little, ordinary things of my life that make me happy.

Writing is part of that happy. So is dabbling in watercolours. Nature journaling. Gardening in my small suburban garden where I am trying to cultivate edible plants to sustain my family and so I can make my favourite recipes, like lemonade and elderflower syrup. Rhubarb pies and Feijoa ice cream and a good supply of my own garlic, tomatoes, lettuces and cucumbers, herbs and berries. 

Sometimes I make things on a sewing machine. Sometimes I like to try out making breads and cakes. Sometimes I go to pottery class. This is going to be my place to journal about all this. Just tiny, ordinary things that fill my days off and my seasons of life.