Ten years ago, my life was transformed by a bullet journal.

My friend Meliors Simms is usually well ahead of me when it comes to trends. One day, she emailed: “I think you should know about this. Come over and I’ll show you.” That’s how I was introduced to the fascinating world of bullet journaling.

I’m not an early adopter, especially when it comes to planning and organising. Like many people, I carry too much in my head. I was taking copious notes, and the piles of paper under my desk were getting out of hand. I could see that keeping everything in one notebook might be a game-changer.

Bullet journalling for creatives as a metaskill

Taking charge of my organisational systems has become a practical act of personal power. I often have multiple creative projects on the go, and my bullet journal helps me co-ordinate time and energy. It’s improved my effectiveness—and reduced my stress.

Most planning apps and diaries force me into predefined categories that don’t reflect my real life. Bullet journaling is more than time management—it’s adaptable and deeply personal.

Not long after we started, Meliors invited me to contribute to a zine celebrating this low-tech, analogue metaskill for the 21st century. (By analogue, I mean it’s physical, 3-D, non-digital.) The next few paragraphs are drawn from that publication.

What is a bullet journal?

At its core, bullet journaling is a flexible system for turning a blank notebook into a combination diary, planner, and journal. Its great strength is adaptability—it can evolve to meet your changing needs.

Bullet journaling was developed by New York-based digital designer Ryder Carroll as an analogue complement to his online work. He released the system freely, with the stipulation that the name “bullet journal” not be used for profit. That’s why Meliors and I gave away our zine rather than selling it.

Buddhist Journalling? Both practical and reflective

Bullet journal is often abbreviated to “BuJo,” but Meliors dubbed it “Buddhist Journalling”—a nod to the way it can integrate both “to-do” lists and more reflective, contemplative aspects of life.

The next two sections were my original contributions to the zine. Ten years later, they still hold true.

Magic bullet? Why I BuJo

BuJo isn’t just for organisational and systems junkies. It’s a metaskill that’s a huge asset to anyone who wants to be creative and playful without abdicating or outsourcing the practicalities of everyday life. We badly need this to help us navigate the complexity, chaos and challenges of our current world. And it also helps us get free of multitasking, which is a major energy drain.

BuJo encourages us to work out our own priorities and classification systems, rather than fitting our lives into a predetermined grid. This feels incredibly empowering. BuJo helps us get off the hamster wheel and into a place where we can make new things happen.

Integrating the Dreamtime

I’m a dreamer—and also a realist. My life was too complex to keep in my head, but with traditional diaries I was leaving out all the precious, half-formed ideas that didn’t fit into tidy categories.

After a year of time management, started off with some coaching from Meliors, I had an efficient calendar—but still thirteen bulging files of notes under my desk. The “urgent/important” grid didn’t capture the dreamtime, the ideas still in gestation. Many of them lived on scraps of paper, dated and filed—but often forgotten.

BuJo changed that. I now use one notebook for everything: plans, dreams, notes, reflections. It holds more of me than ever before. I feel more integrated, more visible—and more effective. It’s messy and physical, and that’s part of the magic. Nothing gets deleted by accident.

How to start bullet journalling

All you need is a blank notebook and a ballpoint pen. But there are many BuJo accessories, including felt pens, washi tape, stickers etc.

Because I was making such a huge change to my previous way of doing things, I found a couple of initial coaching sessions from Meliors very helpful. (She’s a great coach, by the way. Her website address is at the end of this post.)

Most of the BuJos on Pinterest and Instagram are beautiful and arty. But mine isn’t. Design and appearance aren’t my strong suits. My BuJo is full of messy notes and pages of scribble. I index and colour code topics and categories. This is made easy and fun for me by washi tape.

If you haven’t yet encountered washi tape, you’re in for a treat. It’s like decorative masking tape. It’s usually near the scrapbooking section of a stationery store.

The most important feature for me is to have everything indexed and all the pages numbered, so I can find things easily, and also look for patterns and connections.

A5 bound notebooks are a good size for writing, while being small enough to carry in a bag. Spiral binding isn’t robust enough – the pages fall out. As the photo above shows, I use all kinds of notebooks. They usually cost less than $10 per book, but sometimes I run out of space and have to buy something more expensive. The “gold standard” notebook for BuJo is Leuchtturm, which is lovely, but too costly at my current rate of consumption. I get through approximately one BuJo per month. Most people probably don’t write as much as I do.

Below: A couple of the index pages from one of my BuJos: it’s not pretty, but the washi tape means I can find entries easily. 

What’s in my bullet journal

• To-do lists
• Notes and drafts (including ukulele projects)
• Article ideas
• Goal tracking
• Gardening and haircut logs
• Personal process notes
• Course notes
• Contact info
• Creative and dream content

More about bullet journalling

Ryder Carrol, the originator of bullet journalling: bulletjournal.com

Another interesting bullet journal blog: Tiny Ray of Sunshine

A shoutout

Meliors Simms is the Holistic Tooth Fairy, an international authority on alternative and holistic dental care. She’s the author of two award-winning books, The Secret Lives of Teeth, and Calm and Confident in the Dental Chair. You can find Meliors and her books at holistictoothfairy.com

Read more of my writing…

How to Start and Keep a Regular Spiritual Practice

Hands in the Dirt

The worms are turning

My friends the plants

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

 

This is the second post in a series. It’s a follow-up to My friends the plants.

You might like to read that one first, for context.

Once upon a time, I believed herbalism was a kind of alternative medicine, prescribed by a clinical herbalist.

Which it sort of is, but that’s a small part of it.

Over the years, my concept of herbalism has gradually expanded, from getting advice from a highly trained and experienced expert, to include cultivating a personal relationship with plants.

In this blog I’m sharing some of my favourite fun and fascinating ways into herbalism.

Growing into herbs

My first step was growing herbs.

That’s the part of gardening that I love most.

My garden usually has rosemary, lavender, sorrel, fennel, parsley, mint, dandelions, lemon balm and other herbs. Also, some thriving kawakawa bushes. Kawakawa, Piper excelsum, is a New Zealand native with many wonderful healing properties.

Thyme doesn’t flourish in my garden. But that’s okay, because I can borrow it from friends.

I also grow comfrey. I add it to compost and garden fertilizer.

I especially enjoy growing nettles.

I acquired a stinging nettle plant (Urtica dioica) from Kaye Baxter at Koanga Gardens, many years ago.

I keep the nettles in big pots, but they are always trying to escape into the rest of the garden.

Also, they “ping” my husband. He is not very happy about this.

Nettles aren’t common in the wild in my region of New Zealand. Some of my English cousins think it’s hilarious that I cultivate them on purpose.

Here’s a blog I wrote a while back, about my adventures with nettles. A tale of the sting: celebrating nettles 

Expert or DIY? My introduction to clinical herbalism

When my sons were small, we were often catching colds. The kids would recover quickly, but my cold would drag on for weeks.

After struggling for far too long, I went to see the local herbalist.

Suzanne Woods had a clinic down the road from my brother’s place in Auckland.

She asked me questions, used a pendulum to support her decision, and sent me home with a bottle of herbal remedy, and another bottle of Bach flower essences.

My long-lasting cold disappeared within a few days.

After Suzanne moved to the United States I went regularly to her apprentice, Anna McVey.

The science and art of herbalism

Most of my favourite clinical herbalists encompass both the science and the art of herbalism.

Herbalism intersects with western science in a complex way.

It’s not materialist, reductionist science. Some effects of herbalism can be “proved” by double-blind tests, and some is more complex than this.

Erika Galentin, of Sovereignty Herbs, teaches herbalists how to get their heads around scientific research (amongst other things).

Herbalism is intersectional. It’s a field (and/or garden) where science and traditional knowledge and ecology and agriculture and gardening and our personal, individual senses, spirituality and wellbeing and our personal relationship with nature all connect up.

Every human culture has herbal knowledge.

The cultural and scientific traditions of India and China have deep and authoritative fields of herbal expertise.

I’ve discovered that my personal affinity is mostly for the herbal traditions of northwestern Europe.

Another field where science intersects with herbalism is ethnobotany.

Ethnobotany is about the plant knowledge of different cultures.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s fascinating book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, is an example of ethnobotany.

British-Malaysian TV presenter James Wong describes himself as an ethnobotanist, but some of his popular books, e.g. Grow Your Own Drugs, are (in my opinion) herbalism. (Although many ethnobotanists definitely aren’t herbalists.) 

In New Zealand, Rongoa Maori, which includes traditional Maori herbal knowledge, is surging in popularity.

DIY ways into herbalism

Clinical herbalists fill an important role as specialist healers and teachers.

But if you’re a hands-on DIY home herbalist, there are many fascinating and fun ways into herbalism.

This personal experience gives me a renewed respect for the skills and knowledge of professional herbalists.

More is not always better

Some herb-human relationships benefit from repeated regular does. Some are just one single big dose, one visit, one conversation.

But mostly it’s small doses, gentle, subtle. A relationship nurtured over time.

Many herbal creations work on the “less is more” principle. Flower essences for example.

Here are some of my favourite herbal concoctions:

Herb infusions and tisanes

Also known as herb teas.

Some people say infusions and tisanes are the same thing. But they’re not quite the same, in my experience. (Although maybe this is about definitions.)

Tisanes and infusions both involve steeping herbs (usually dried) in boiling water.

This is very different from dipping a peppermint tea bag from the supermarket into a cup of hot water. Supermarket tea bags do not usually contain quality herbs. Although they’re better than nothing.

Tisanes

A tisane can be an aesthetic experience. There’s the aroma and the heat, as well as the flavour.

A tea cup with a lid is ideal for brewing a tisane.

A high-quality tisane can be as effective as a bottle of tincture, for some medicinal purposes. A New Zealand example

is clinical herbalist Sandra Clair’s Artemis brand. This is a range of carefully blended high quality dried herbal tisanes.

Herbal infusions

Herbal infusions (e.g. as taught by US herbalist by Susun Weed) are for regular consumption, for nutritional support.

The one I’ve used most often is nettle infusion.

Here’s the method: Place half a cup of dried nettle leaves in a 1 litre jar. Fill the jar with boiling water. Cover and leave for a few hours before drinking.

Nettle infusion is high in minerals and other nutrients.

The taste is “interesting”. Not conventionally appealing to the taste buds, but not particularly medicinal. It tastes green! You get used to it.

Flower essences

Flower essences are at the intersection between herbal remedies and energy medicine. Magic, too.

They’ve also been called “plant spirit medicine”.

Welsh doctor Edward Bach is credited with inventing flower essences in the early 20^th century. But I’m pretty sure they must have been known before that.

Bach’s Rescue Remedy blend is deservedly famous and should be in every emergency kit.

But the wider field of flower essences is as beautiful and charismatic as flowers themselves.

DIY flower essences

Flower essences can be easily made at home. Although home-made essences won’t have the longevity (and possibly not the potency) of specialist products.

Making a flower essence can be as simple as placing a flower in a bowl of water, and leaving it overnight, outside, under the moon.

It’s best to make a ritual of it, since a flower essence is a magical-spiritual thing.

Use the best water you can source. From a local spring, or fresh rainwater.

Jenny McGruther of Nourished Kitchen has pretty good instructions for how to make flower essences.

And here’s another take on DIY flower essences from herbalist Alexis J Cunningfolk.

Two different kinds of herbal oils

There are two very different kinds of oils commonly used in herbalism. These are: Essential oils; and herbal infused oils.

Herbal infused oils

Herbal infused oils are not as well known in the mainstream as essential oils. But they’re useful and powerful in their own right.

Infused oils are made by placing plant material in a food-grade oil, and leaving to infuse. Either dry or fresh plants are used, depending on the herb. How long the process takes also depends on the herb.

Infused oils are used directly on the skin, e.g. in massage. They can be included in healing salves and moisturisers and balms.

Some infused oils make food ingredients, e.g. rosemary oil.

The method may seem simple, but there are skills and principles to this herbal art form. If you’re drawn to this, I suggest taking a course.

Kami McBride is a well-known teacher of the techniques of making herbal infused oils.

She says herbal oils are a direct way to revive the hands-on home healing arts. “Herbal oils require us to tend to ourselves and others with touch.”

Herbal infused oils also work on the principle that we absorb the beneficial properties of herbs through our skin.

Some commonly used herbal infused oils aren’t particularly aromatic, e.g. St John’s Wort infused oil. (But it is such a beautiful red colour!)

 

Essential oils

Essential oils are a very different plant-based entity from infused oils.

They are powerful, usually highly aromatic. Essential oils belong mostly in the healing fields of aromatics, aromatherapy and aroma gnosis.

Aromatics are used in herbalism to support the psyche, the emotional body, and to build empathy towards the body. They work on the principle that the olfactory sense (smell) bypasses rational analysis.

Essential oils are not gentle in their impact on human bodies.

Also, there are ethical and sustainability issues to consider with essential oils. Producing essential oils uses a huge amount of plant material.

Traditionally and sustainably produced essential oils are expensive and powerful.

The cheaper, mass-produced essential oils are made using chemical manufacturing processes. Also, they’re not an environmentally sustainable and respectful use of the plants.

Erika Galentin is a US-based clinical herbalist with a particular interest in essential oils.

I highly recommend Erika’s book on essential oils, The Family Guide to Aromatherapy: A Safe Approach to Essential Oils for the Holistic Home. It has been described by other clinical herbalists as “the essential book on essential oils”.

Erika also facilitates distilling workshops using a beautiful copper still. 

She Is particularly interested in the ways herbs connect us up with archetypal energies.

Erika says essential oils carry the sacred archetypal energies of the plant.

Here’s where you can find out how to source traditionally and sustainably produced essential oils. 

Fun and fizzy beverages

The really fun part of the herbalism spectrum, for me, is home-brewed beverages. This combines herbalism and fermentation with micro-organisms – two topics close to my heart!

One of my all-time favourite herbalist books is Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

I prefer beverages that are made quickly. A few days or a few weeks, rather than months. This means they are on the soft drinks end of the spectrum.

But there are plenty of herbal recipes that involve alcohol, if you’re motivated that way.

Here are some of my favourite herbal brews (and I’ve linked to some of my recipes)

Elderflower champagne

Nettle beers

Ginger beers

Lemonade

Apple cider vinegar beverages – honeygar and switchels

Gratitude to the herbalists and the plants

Here are some of the herbalists who have rocked my world, who have opened my eyes and my brain and heart to the possibilities of plants.

Elisabeth Brooke, Isla Burgess, Erika Galentin, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Rosalee de la Foret, Kiva Rose Hardin, Leila Lees. And fermentation enthusiast Sandor Ellix Katz. Special thanks to Suzanne Woods and Anna McVey, for getting me started.

And gratitude to the plants, especially nettle and rosemary.

More reading…

The worms are turning

My friends the plants

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

 

This is my personal take on plant-human relationships.

I think having a relationship with plants is crucially important to help each of us navigate through challenging times.

In our broccoli-hating culture, I’m speaking up for the plants.

Everything from green salad to a huge, 1500 year old kauri tree.

That doesn’t mean I’m a great gardener or a skilled botanist or a professional herbalist. Or even particularly good at communicating with plants. 

I don’t love all plants.

But I care about them and respect them and appreciate them.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, says: “In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us’.”

Five important things that plants do for us humans

1. They feed us.

Plants take the energy of the sun and turn it into nutrients that we can use. All of us are eating a diet that’s plant based, even the meat we eat is plant-fed.

 

2. They delight our senses

Flowers make it particularly easy for us to notice this. For example, the beautiful colour, scent and texture of a rose.

But there are many other plant-based sensory pleasures, from the delicious flavours and textures and aromas of a well-composed plant-based meal, to the aromas of tree resins and leaves.

 

3. Plants support human nervous systems

Plants help us ground and regulate our nervous systems.

Spending time in nature, alongside plants (including trees) is great for co-regulating human nervous systems and helping us experience connection to the earth.

This isn’t necessarily about getting calmer, it’s also about capacity building, helping our nervous system become steady, wider, deeper.

 

4. Plants help expand human consciousness

This is important and under-estimated. Plants can help us access spiritual experience.

A few plants have strong psychedelic properties. Their mind-expanding abilities are well known.

But, many herbalists say that all plants have this ability. It’s just that most plants are more subtle about it.

There’s more about this further on.

 

5. Plants help us cope with climate change.

Following on from the first four points, I think having a personal, lived connection with plants can help us humans live with the grief and fear of climate change.

It is painful and confusing and disempowering to care about the environment. And Plants have plenty of support to offer.

So, what do I mean by “personal, lived relationship with plants”?

I’ll start by introducing some of my plant friends.

Here are some plants that I am particularly fond of.

In herbalism and animism, a term for this is “plant allies”.

Parsley

Apple

Rosemary

Silverbeet (also called Chard), Beta vulgaris var cicla

European stinging nettle

Manuka, Leptospermum scoparium – this is a New Zealand native bush with aromatic resin and white-pink flowers. Bees produce superb honey from the nectar of the flowers.

New Zealand flax, harakeke, Phormium tenax

The New Zealand “cabbage tree”, Cordyline australis, Ti kouka.

I also have an affinity for many of the sacred and magical trees of my Celtic ancestors. Birch, willow, elder, oak, hawthorn, etc. The Ogham rune alphabet is based on these trees.

Being interested in plants is just how I’m wired, I think.

Soon after I learned to talk, I was given some alyssum seeds, Sweet Alice.

There was no picture on the packet. I planted the seeds, but I had no idea what kind of plant would come up.

I asked my mother, and she said “Oh, I think it’s some kind of daisy.”

I got the impression that my parents weren’t interested, so I stopped asking questions.

Tane Mahuta and friends

In Aotearoa-NZ, where I live, there are particular trees which demand to be seen as beings. It’s hard not to take them seriously.

These are the giant kauri trees in the forests of the far North. People visit them to behold them with respect and reverence. They are living examples of Tolkien’s Ents. (Although they don’t walk around.)

Some of these trees have personal names. Tane Mahuta, the “old man of the forest”, is 1500 years old.

Two hundred years ago, the land was covered with forests filled with these giant beings. The English colonists spent 150 years chopping them down as fast as possible.

This was going on right up to the 1970s. Environmental activists managed to save some scraps of ancient forest.

But the pressure to log the remaining pockets of native forest continues in the 21^st century. 

Plant blindness and beyond

Plants are greatly under-rated in western culture. “Plant blindness” is a kind of cognitive bias, where people ignore the plants in their everyday life. It’s pretty common.

Plant blindness also refers to not recognizing the role of plants on earth. And having an attitude that plants are somehow inferior to animals.

It also means seeing plants as existing only for the benefit of human beings. And also, something that doesn’t have any intelligence or personhood of its own.

Herbalist Kami McBride says part of the problem is hierarchical thinking.

“We think we’re top of the food chain, and that means we don’t have to pay attention to living organisms further down the chain.

“If we reorganize our thinking into seeing ourselves as part of a huge ecological web of relationships, that makes it easier to adjust our thinking.”

No clear line between plants and animals

Philosopher Henri Bergson says it’s impossible to draw a clear line between plants and animals.

In Creative Evolution he writes:

“no definite characteristic distinguishes the plant from the animal.
Attempts to define the two kingdoms strictly have always come to
naught. There is not a single property of vegetable life that is not
found, in some degree, in certain animals; not a single characteristic
feature of the animal that has not been seen in certain species or at
certain moments in the vegetable world.”

Plants and colonial migration

It took precisely one generation for my ancestors to lose the practical, lived experience of connection with the plants of their homelands.

My parents were both first-generation migrants to New Zealand, a country far from the land of their birth.

My father, Ralph, was steeped in the natural history of the British Isles, via his father, Kenneth. Ralph’s particular interest was birds.

And his research passion and his life’s work took him to the New Guinea highlands, where he was mentored by men with deep, lived experience of the natural world.

Ralph’s colleague and co-author, the late Ian Saem Majnep, is famous for his contribution to indigenous science. Here’s a blog I wrote about Ralph: My father the giant

Ralph and Saem co-wrote two books about the natural world of Saem’s homeland: Birds of My Kalam Country and Animals the Ancestors Hunted.

The book they never finished was about plants, its working title was Kalam Plant Lore.

But in New Zealand, where I was born, my father behaved like a very reluctant exile.

I think he had a lot of unprocessed grief for his homeland.

My mother, Sue, was even more dislocated from anything like an ancestral homeland.

Sue was from three successive generations of migrants: from the far north of Sweden, to the northeastern United States, to Southern California. And then to New Zealand.

Also, she was an archaeologist. Sue could get pretty excited about plants people had used 50,000 years in the past.

Not so much about the present! Here’s a blog I wrote about Sue. 

Hero plants and enemy plants

New Zealand, as a mostly settler country, plus the indigenous Maori people, has complicated relationships with plants.

Plant crops that can be grown for commercial profit are valued. There’s been a series of “hero” crops touted as the latest route to economic prosperity. Kiwifruit, Pinus radiata and others.

Native plants are seen by some as cultural and ecological treasures, and by others as unproductive land use. Native forests are alternately revered and neglected/ exploited/ cleared to make space for profitable crops.

Weeds – meaning, any non-native plant that’s not grown on purpose  – are regarded as enemies, to be dealt with by herbicide sprays. 

Radiata pines – both heroes and enemies 

My brief career as a teenage scientist featured the New Zealand hero plant of the 1970s: Pinus radiata.

In my first year of high school, my friend Penny and I entered the local high school science fair. Our project topic was Pinus radiata.

Our timing was perfect. We won.

The Minister of Education in Norman Kirk’s Third Labour Government, Phil Amos, gave out the prizes.

The radiata pine is an American tree that grows much faster in New Zealand than in its native land.

Pinus radiata seemed such a great idea at the time. It provided regional jobs for timber workers that didn’t involve logging the last remnants of native forests.

Fifty years later, pine trees are still being planted, but the fallout from the pine industry is causing many kinds of havoc in New Zealand’s ecology and economy.

I could say a lot more about this, but I’m trying to stay on my topic.

Paying attention to plants

Plant communication is actually not difficult, but it’s easier said than done.

You just have to slow down and get out of your head.

Herbalists have a lot to say about the rewards of paying attention to plants, and how to start doing it.

Kami McBride says listening to plants is a piece of our human heritage, that’s been dormant in our current culture.

In an interview on the podcast For the Wild, herbalist Rosemary Gladstar said that plants thrive on human attention – and not just because we’ll water or fertilise them.

Many plants put a lot of effort into attracting our attention.

Some obvious ways plants communicate to humans is through our senses: sight, sound, taste, touch and other body responses.

Many flowers make it easy for us.

My stinging nettle plants also make less comfortable, but equally obvious, efforts to connect. They “ping” me. Literally.

But plants are also reaching across to our consciousness.

If you think a plant is calling out to you, that’s because it probably is.

Some plants have strong, unmissable psychedelic properties. Jimson weed, datura, various cacti, etc.

But many herbalists say that all plants have this ability. It’s just that most are more subtle.

The first person I heard say this was the late Stephen Harrod Buhner.

He was a US-based herbalist and the author of one of my favourite herbal books, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. (It’s a delicious and entertaining combination of herbalism and recipes.)

Strongly psychedelic plants are notorious for causing unpleasant physical symptoms in humans. As well as their mind-expanding properties, that get across to even the most plant-blind human, given half a chance.

But other plants can expand our consciousness and help us access spiritual experience in much gentler and enjoyable ways.

I know which I prefer.  

Living at different speeds

Plants have plenty of intelligence. It’s just not like human intelligence.

They exist at different speeds, different states of consciousness to humans.

Humans can only experience plants by slowing down and listening with more than our ears.

We won’t hear plants if we run through a park with headphones on, listening to a podcast.

Or if we’re intent on a conversation with a friend while we’re walking.

Another way to listen to plants is to ingest them. This could mean eating or drinking.

Or putting plants on our skin, in the form of infused herbal oils.

Or via our sense of smell, through essential oils.

When we take a plant into our body, or put it on our body, the plants help us know ourselves, says herbalist Robin Rose Bennett.

Mindful gardening is another opportunity to experience plants. 

Playing with plants

You can see from my list of plant friends that eating plants is a big priority for me.

But I’ve been collecting other playful and interesting ways to interact with plants.

The fascinating and diverse field of herbalism has many enjoyable ways to connect with plants.

My next post is about DIY approaches to herbalism.

If you’ve read this far, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy that one too. 

Here it is: Fun and fizzy ways into herbalism

More reading…

The worms are turning

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

 

You want to start a regular spiritual practice—but somehow, it just doesn’t happen.

Your good intentions fade after the course ends. Or once the retreat glow wears off. Life gets busy, and your practice slips to the side.

I’ve been there too. It took me many years to find a spiritual rhythm that worked for me. That’s why I’m sharing what helped—so your journey can be a little smoother, a little sooner.

What is spiritual practice – really?

Spiritual practice is something you do. Not something you believe, understand, or study. It’s a daily act of connection—to yourself, to the world, and to something greater.

By “regular,” I mean most days—as part of your self-care rituals and routines. It’s not about following a specific religion or joining a group. It’s a personal commitment. One you make for yourself, on your own terms.

Practicing with others is wonderful, but your own private practice is foundational. It gives you something to return to—something steady, nourishing, and yours.

I’m not a spiritual teacher. I don’t follow one tradition or doctrine. What I share here comes from lived experience, and from the teachers and paths I’ve learned along the way.

Why it matters

Spiritual practice helps us connect to something beyond ourselves. It reminds us where we belong in the world—and what is ours to do, especially in these complex times.

Joanna Macy, a writer and activist from the Deep Ecology tradition, beautifully connects spirituality with the earth. Many people experience spiritual connection through nature. Others use the word God. I don’t. You don’t have to either.

We each have to find our own way in. What matters is the practice—not the label.

Spiritual practice builds deep inner resources: strength, resilience, self-trust, and emotional clarity. It nourishes us.

As Sufi teacher Mark Silver says:

“When things are busiest, most stressful, most chaotic… in other words, when we are at our most hungry, our most thirsty… that’s when we need to nourish ourselves, no matter how urgent it seems to be in the moment.”

The tangible benefits

While the spiritual benefits are often hard to quantify—peace, intuition, feeling held—there’s plenty of research showing the physical and mental benefits of regular practice:

• Reduced stress
• Improved emotional wellbeing
• Better sleep
• Enhanced digestion
• Pain relief (for some)
• Stronger connection to self and nature

Many practices like meditation and gratitude journaling have been widely studied. But those studies often leave out the spiritual dimension—which is where the deepest transformation often lives.

Twelve-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, ACoA and sister organisations, offer another example: they’re spiritual, non-denominational, and based in consistent personal practice—not belief.

Six spiritual practices to try

Here are six practices that have made a real difference for me. Try the ones that speak to you, and adapt as needed. This is about what works for you.

1. Compassionate mindfulness meditation

This gentle practice begins with just one breath of self-warmth. I learned it from Sarah Peyton, neuroscience educator and author of Your Resonant Self.

Many of us struggle with meditation because our inner critics hijack the silence. Sarah teaches ways to meet those inner voices with kindness and safety. Her website SarahPeyton.com has free guided meditations, and her Compassionate Mindfulness course is excellent.

As she says:

“We don’t want to beat ourselves up for not being able to relax.”

2. Walking meditation

This is my favourite style of meditation—because sitting still isn’t required!

I walk a simple circuit among the trees in my backyard. It’s become my own suburban labyrinth. No teacher, no rules. Just rhythm, presence, and nature.

Walking meditation works best with space. Outdoors is ideal, but indoors can work too if you have room to move. Being among plants and trees is especially calming—what somatic healing calls “co-regulation” with the natural world.

3. Remembrance – a Sufi practice

Remembrance is a heart-centered practice from the Sufi tradition—an awareness of divine presence, not through emptying the mind, but filling the heart.

I was introduced to it by spiritual business teacher Mark Silver, author of Heart Centred Business. He has some guided Remembrance practice recordings on the Heart of Business website and on Insight Timer.  

Music in spiritual practice

Music is essential in spiritual traditions worldwide.

Here are two of my favourite musical spiritual practices:

4. Toning: sacred sound

Toning involves sounding long vowel sounds—not singing, not performing. It’s a powerful spiritual and healing practice that rebalances the body and mind.

I learned about toning from sound healer Dominique Oyston, whose book Goddess Archetypes: Empowering the Feminine Voice (on Amazon Kindle) is a great resource. I usually tone alone, in a quiet room, especially if others are home. It’s not about being heard—it’s about being in resonance.

5. Chants and mantras

Simple, repetitive songs or phrases can quiet the mind and uplift the spirit. I love pairing chants with my ukulele—singing becomes spiritual practice.

I’ve shared tutorials for some of my favourite chants on my YouTube channel, including the Green Tara Mantra.

6. Places of beauty and nature

Spiritual connection often comes more easily in beautiful surroundings—a forest, the sea, a cathedral, a Zen garden.

Even in a busy city or bland suburb, you can find or create moments of beauty. I often visit a nearby riverside park for a dose of wildness.

Australian permaculture designer Cecilia Macaulay teaches how to design beauty into everyday home spaces—a practice in itself.

Other practices I love

There are many more spiritual practices I return to regularly:

• A personal altar
• A daily gratitude journal
• Yoga
• Tracking my cycles (monthly, seasonal, and life-phase)
• Creative practices like The Artist’s Way
• Grief work—especially through the teachings of Joanna Macy and Francis Weller

Grief, in fact, may be one of the most sacred and necessary spiritual practices of our time. For more about grief work, check out Joanna Macy’s work around the Great Turning and The Wild Edge of Sorrow, by Francis Weller.

It’s not a luxury

Spiritual practice is not a luxury. It’s a gift—to yourself, and to the world.

It helps you meet life with strength and clarity. It nourishes your resilience. It deepens your sense of self and belonging.

If you’ve been wanting to begin a practice—or return to one—I hope something here has sparked inspiration.

Spiritual practice pays off over time. But only if you do it. Regularly. Not just when you feel like it.

If you would like some help, I’d love to support you to find your own practice. 

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This blog post is the story of my spiritual experiences—in a world where “soul” and “spirit” are often unspeakable.

Spirituality is usually seen as subjective and deeply personal—something you keep to yourself. (Still with me? Thank you!)

This isn’t a theoretical discussion. It’s a personal account of where I’ve got to so far in coming to terms with what soul and spirit mean to me.

It’s less about belief, and more about how I experience being in the world.

If you read on, you’ll learn things about me that I don’t usually talk about. This is the first step toward writing about music and soul. (Watch this space!)

Knocking on the door

People usually talk about spirituality when they’re trying to convert someone. Like the three friendly evangelists from a mainstream Protestant sect who knocked on our door this morning.

“Why don’t you want to talk to them?” my husband asked. “You’re looking for people to talk about spirituality—and they want to talk to you.”

I’ve had plenty of experience with missionaries. I don’t think they’d be telling me anything new.

I’m not here to convert anyone to my way of thinking. But I no longer want to stay silent about my spiritual experiences.

Growing up without sacred rituals

I spent my childhood attending the sacred ceremonies of other cultures, because my father was a social anthropologist.

It took me a while to realise that my family had no sacred ceremonies of our own. My parents didn’t even do Christmas with any real enthusiasm.

My parents—Ralph and Sue Bulmer—were 20th-century scientists. Creative, radical, big-picture thinkers. (I’ve written separate posts about my mum and my dad.)

But I can’t remember a single conversation with either of them that included the words “soul” or “spirit.” They simply didn’t exist in our family system.

Soul was the elephant in the room—tucked under the carpet, unseen but it was still there.

The unspeakable

If you can’t talk about something, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But it’s hard to make sense of it when it stays unspoken.

And because spiritual experience—especially of the mystical kind—exists beyond intellect, it’s hard to put into words.

Still, I believe that’s no excuse not to try. Like any difficult skill, it takes practice.

In my family, it was considered rude to talk about religion or spirituality. The assumption was that it would cause offense or discomfort. It was, quite literally, unspeakable.

And this discomfort isn’t unique to my family. People who aren’t part of a church often don’t want to think about spirituality at all. Many dismiss it with Karl Marx’s line: “Religion is the opium of the masses.”

But spirituality isn’t the same as religion.

What do we mean by “spirituality”?

Even defining these terms isn’t straightforward. But here are a few working definitions:

• Soul: “The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being.”
• Spirit: “The non-physical part of a person, the seat of emotions and character; the soul.”
• Sacred (Cambridge Dictionary): “Considered holy and worthy of respect, especially because of a connection with a god.”
• Holy: “Dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.”

And religion? It’s the organized, communal form of spirituality. Spirituality gives the individual autonomy to interpret soul and spirit, while religion offers communal structure, tradition, and worship.

Trouble arises when any belief system—religious or secular—claims to be the only right one, leaving no space for diversity or respectful disagreement.

I’ve heard words like “new age psycho-babble,” “deluded,” “ignorant,” “primitive,” “charlatan”—and of course, “crazy.”

In the 20th century, talking about spiritual experiences outside religion was a fast track to being labelled mentally ill.

Even speaking or writing openly about mental illness was risky. It’s a little safer now. I think.

Courageous voices

I owe a debt of gratitude to women like Gloria Steinem, who not only stood tall as a feminist icon but also wrote Revolution from Within, and Brené Brown, whose The Gifts of Imperfection and The Power of Vulnerability openly wove spiritual awakening into conversations about mental health.

Brené talks about her own “breakdown-slash-spiritual awakening.” (More on the spiritual/mental health connection later.)

No churches, no creed

Both my parents came from Protestant backgrounds, but they kept their children well away from the church. Occasionally, we visited ancient cathedrals—for historical interest, not spiritual formation.

My father, Ralph, descended from a long line of Anglo-Welsh Anglican ministers, ending with his great-grandfather. A huge oil painting of the Archdeacon John Hughes—my father’s illustrious ancestor—hung in my grandmother’s house. His eyes followed you around the room like a Hogwarts portrait.

Dad stopped attending church the moment he left boarding school. But when he was dying of cancer in 1988, he joined his local Anglican parish.

My mother, Sue, grew up in Pasadena, California—rational, secular, raised in the shadow of Caltech. In her teens, she and her older sister explored churches and joined the Pasadena Presbyterian Church. The minister was youthful, politically active, and the choir was lively. But when Sue left Pasadena, she also left Christianity behind, permanently.

Science and the sacred

In our family, science came closest to being sacred. So did social justice—especially showing respect to folks of other cultures, skin colours and beliefs.

Given this background, it wasn’t surprising when at least one of my brothers declared himself a staunch atheist. At six years old, he applied to join the Cub Scouts.

“Do you believe in God, boy?” asked the Scoutmaster.

“No,” he replied.

“I’m sorry—you can’t join.”

The Brownies never asked those questions. They just assumed we’d fall into line.

Surprisingly, I’ve never been an atheist. I’ve always had a quiet sense of the divine—something larger than myself. I wouldn’t call it a belief. It’s more of a knowing.

But I couldn’t reconcile that knowing with anything I learned about Christianity.

I wasn’t a Christian. But I wasn’t an atheist or an agnostic either.

There didn’t seem to be a category for what I was.

Into the mystic

As a child, I had moments of joy and bliss that didn’t make logical sense.

I remember one vividly: I was six, sitting with my mother, singing the three ukulele songs she’d just taught me. I was overwhelmed by a wave of joy. I thought, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

But the moment passed. Mum stopped making music soon after, and I was sent to violin lessons, which were more painful than joyful.

Later, I joined a junior orchestra, and while the violins were probably out of tune and scratchy, playing Bizet’s Farandole felt exhilarating. Something lit up inside me.

There were other moments, often in nature—sitting on a mountain in the Kaironk Valley of Papua New Guinea, or picking my way across a tropical reef at low tide. Joy, peace, connectedness.

But there were darker moments too: sudden, inexplicable fear. A creeping sense that something wasn’t right. Premonitions, nightmares, sensations that made my skin crawl. I didn’t talk about any of it. I thought I was weird—or possibly crazy.

Years later, I discovered two terms that made sense of these experiences: mysticism and peak experiences.

Maslow, James, and the mystic mind

The psychologist Abraham Maslow put “peak experiences” at the top of his famous hierarchy of needs. He described them as:

“… rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect …”

Mysticism, I learned, is more than isolated moments of bliss—it’s a worldview. A way of being.

According to William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience:

“In mystic states, we both become one with the Absolute and become aware of our oneness.”

Mysticism shows up in every major religion. In Christianity, you’ll find it in the writings of St. Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich. Sufism is a form of Islamic mysticism.

But for me, mysticism isn’t a belief or a choice—it’s simply how I’m wired.

Nature mysticism and yearning for apples

Some people arrive at mysticism through meditation, or psychedelics. (LSD and meditation famously turned the Beatles into mystics.)

Martha Beck, in Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, suggests that more people are being born as mystics in Western culture—perhaps because their insights are needed in a time of ecological and social crisis.

I came to understand myself as a nature mystic. I feel deeply connected to animals, plants, landscapes. I have an affinity for apple trees, European herbs, and foxes.

If I’d grown up in the UK, this might’ve felt straightforward. But I spent much of my childhood in Papua New Guinea, where the intense tropical climate pushed me inward. I loved the vivid colours and exotic fruits—but I longed for apples and parsley.

Family ghosts and hidden power

Though my mother was thoroughly secular, she had an uncanny streak in her scientific work. She could look at a landscape and see invisible human patterns from the past. She had an instinct for chosing excavation sites that bordered on the mystical – but was proved accurate, time and time again.

My father’s side had its own mystical lineage. My grandmother had books like The Power of the Pendulum. My grandfather’s Welsh aunties reportedly saw nature spirits. Dad himself claimed to have once seen a ghost at his Cambridge college.

And yet, they lived in Papua New Guinea—a country where sorcery and magic are traditional power structures—and managed to act like it didn’t have anything to do with us.

My father’s mentor in the Eastern Highlands was a community leader and a practicing sorcerer.

Looking back, I believe sorcery was sometimes directed at our family. A few personal experiences lead me to this conclusion, though they still sit in the “unspeakable” category.

Even though my father was doing work he loved in a country he cherished, he was plagued by stress, depression, and chronic back pain. (There are rational explanations—but not always sufficient ones.)

Once, when we lived in Port Moresby, he found a strange pile of objects—including what might have been human bones—hidden in his office. His office was messy enough to conceal anything.

I don’t believe you need to believe in something for it to affect you.

Prayers, hymns and silent resistance

After we left New Guinea, I went to two all-girls’ schools—both steeped in Christian tradition.

At the English grammar school, we had compulsory Religious Instruction (basically Bible Studies), regular hymns, and school prayers. It was a state-mandated requirement. Belief wasn’t expected. But as with everything about that excellent school, the Religious Instruction classes were taught well and I found them interesting.

At the New Zealand girls’ grammar school, there was regular prayer and hymn singing in the school assemblies, but no formal religious education. Just the assumption that you’d go along with it.

Then I moved to a co-ed high school in Mt Roskill. Assemblies were secular—no hymns, no prayers.

Instead, the prayers took place in lunchtime Bible study meetings. I soon discovered that half the students were born-again fundamentalist Christians. Their religion wasn’t just about believing in God—it was about being “reborn,” accepting Jesus as your personal saviour… preferably in Classroom T2.

This brand of Christianity was foreign to me, despite my wide exposure to other worldviews.
In Biology, I was taught Darwin’s theory of evolution—science, sacred to my parents. But for my classmates, it was heresy.

Nothing made sense. (But that was pretty usual in my teenage years.) I kept quiet and spent my lunchtimes in the music room, where nobody mentioned Jesus.

The limits of reason

I began to understand something that stayed with me: rational thought has limits.

Even people who claim to value reason don’t want their belief systems dismantled by it.

Not even me.

At university, I encountered even more evangelical Christians (and, interestingly, neo-liberals—but that’s another story). I seemed to attract them.

I flatted with two friendly guys who later revealed themselves to be born-again Christians. The flat disbanded when they realised my boyfriend—decidedly not a Christian—was staying overnight. It wasn’t about what the Bible said; it just broke their rules.

Church, music and disenchantment

Fast-forward twenty years: my husband and I joined a local church when our kids were small. Our eldest had started asking about churches, so we thought we’d let him see what happened inside one.

At first, it felt good. A sense of community. I enjoyed the singing, and more than that, I was welcomed as a musician—finally in a place where music was essential, not just entertainment.

But cracks began to appear.

The minister asked the musicians—including us—to perform for a Mother’s Day event. I took home a pile of hymnbooks, new and old, and started looking for songs about mothers.

There weren’t any. Almost all the hymns focused on fathers and sons. In the end, we suggested “Let It Be” by Paul McCartney.

The minister was fine with it. The congregation, less so. A few people commented that the Beatles weren’t Christian, so the song wasn’t appropriate.

That’s when I realised I didn’t resonate with the sermons either. I often disagreed—or just felt indifferent.

Our kids grew bored of Sunday School, especially after the appeal of cakes and orange cordial wore off.

Then came the push to recruit new members. We were told to go out and bring more people in.

That crossed a line for me. I’m firmly against proselytising—about religion, politics, anything. I’m happy to share my views, but not to claim they’re the only right ones. Especially when I wasn’t even sure I agreed with the church’s teachings.

So we stopped going.

The minister noticed. She sent a kind note asking whether someone had offended us.

I wrote back: “No, my beliefs just don’t sit well with Presbyterian doctrine.”

She replied, “Your beliefs are probably not very different from mine.”

In other words, she stood in the pulpit every week saying things she didn’t believe.

From soul to psyche: spirituality and mental health

I eventually found spiritual grounding through my efforts to care for my emotional wellbeing.

Mental health—now there’s another unspeakable topic.

Interestingly, the word “psyche” (as in psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry) literally means “soul.” But Sigmund Freud worked hard to strip any spiritual meaning from his field, to keep it “scientific.”

Behavioural psychology, in particular, focuses more on studying rats and conditioning responses than the human soul. Today’s medical model often defines mental illness as a chemical imbalance—something to be medicated.

But many strands of psychology connect with spiritual experience—especially humanistic and depth psychology. Thinkers like Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Roberto Assagioli, and others draw clear links between psyche and spirit.

Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his wife Christina Grof argue that some mental illness may actually be a kind of spiritual awakening.

Healing, learning, and speaking freely

Over the years, I’ve worked with counsellors and psychotherapists to stave off depression.

I found safe spaces in self-development groups—places where I could talk about my spiritual ideas without being converted.

That said, I don’t think most mental health professionals are equipped to be spiritual teachers. They’ve just ended up in that role by default.

Deep Ecology, feminism, and the Divine Feminine

I devoured the self-help shelves at the library. Feminist spirituality pioneers like Carol P. Christ and Merlin Stone (author of Beyond God the Father) lit the way.

Then I discovered Marija Gimbutas, the archaeologist who unearthed evidence of pre-monotheistic spirituality centred on the divine feminine.

I found myself drawn to eco-spirituality, Deep Ecology, and neo-paganism. Writers like Starhawk, Joanna Macy, Neale Donald Walsch, Eckhart Tolle, and magazines like Resurgence (founded by Satish Kumar) were deeply nourishing.

I read widely: Arne Naess, James Hillman, Thomas Moore, Arnold Mindell, Jean Houston, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson, Matthew Fox, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and neo-Celtic mystics John and Caitlin Matthews.

One day, I heard Ursula K. Le Guin on the radio, talking to Kim Hill about Taoism.

I was elated.

If this wise, brilliant writer—beloved by critics and fantasy fans alike—could call herself a Taoist, maybe I could too.

(And she was the daughter of two anthropologists!)

Skills for mystics

Through all this reading, exploring, and reflecting, I gradually began to shape my own spiritual framework. Maybe not a straight line—but definitely a pattern.

But shaping ideas wasn’t enough. I needed tools—skills—to live as a mystic in the modern world.

For Christians, the tools are scripture, sermons, and prayer. In Indian and Chinese traditions, there are deep, embodied practices: breathing techniques, yoga, meditation, martial arts. Indigenous traditions offer rich spiritual technologies like shamanism—or more inclusively, animism.

As a mystic, I felt a strong pull toward shamanic journeying. I found my way to it through books by Sandra Ingerman, Michael Harner, and Arnold Mindell. But it took me years to gather the courage to experience it first-hand.

Why? Because of my family’s unspoken taboos. Both my parents would have been wary of cultural appropriation—and so was I.

When I finally booked a session with a Siberian-trained shaman based on Waiheke Island, it felt like sneaking out through a hidden door in the back of the wardrobe. Like crossing into the Forbidden Forest.

There’s more I want to say about shamanism, animism, and their intersection with music—but that will be a future post.

And so, back to the doorstep

So where does this leave me?

Back on my front step, saying “No thanks, have a nice day,” to the three kind and well-meaning evangelists who rang my doorbell.

They were offering something simple and sure: a single path, clear answers, shared certainty.

But I’ve been walking a different road. One that’s less certain, more winding, but deeply alive.

My spiritual world is wider, stranger, and much more interesting than anything that fits inside a tract or a sermon.

It’s not a belief—it’s a way of being.

And finally, I’m ready to talk about it.

More reading

How to start – and stick with – a personal spiritual practice

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On Saturday afternoons, you’ll find me making music with my friends.

Our group is collectively known as the Strumbles.

The group has been going for more than ten years.

Most of us play ukulele and sing, with the addition of various other instruments: double bass, cajon, guitar, fiddle, piano, accordion, kazoo…

It’s much more than a ukulele group. It’s musical play, friendship, a chance to use our voices collaboratively. Just for a start.

This is my version of the Strumbles story.

It started almost accidentally.

Three ukuleles and a bottle of wine

One Friday evening my friends Jane and Paula said, “Let’s play ukulele!”

I said, “Okay, sure!”

We had three ukuleles and a bottle of wine.

We asked my husband Matthew (who’s a multi-skilled musician) to stay away until we’d learned three chords. We didn’t want to feel too self-conscious about being beginners.

Jane had some songs she’d photocopied from a book.

By the time Matthew showed up, an hour later, the bottle was empty and we could play three songs.

We had fun. So the next week we did it again. We hadn’t touched our ukuleles during the week, so we had to learn everything again from scratch.

Matthew joined us, playing upside down left-handed ukulele.

It was still lots of fun. It was way better than just drinking wine on a Friday evening.

After a few weeks, we could remember the chords.

We all started finding more songs to play. And more people came to join us.

After six months there were eight or nine of us regularly meeting on Saturday afternoon to play ukulele. That was about as many as could fit in a living room.

That’s how the Strumbles got started.

The sweetness of jamming

The name showed up after a couple of years.

We were invited to play at an Environment Centre pot-luck. We called ourselves the Apple Strumbles for this food-related occasion. The name stuck, long after the delicious desserts had been consumed

To me, this feels like musical play.

Our sweet spot is jamming together, in someone’s living room, on the back porch or at a party.

It’s not the same as a singalong.

We can try out different strums, vocal harmonies, picking patterns, instrumental breaks.

Sonya sometimes plays accordion or piano. I play fiddle. Matthew sometimes plays guitar, but more often he plays bass and cajon.

Anna is a creatively soulful kazoo player. I love her instrumental break on our Strumbles version of “Silly Love Songs”!

Gradually over time, a song settles into a unique arrangement, which sometimes bears little resemblance to the original recording. This has become known as “strumbling” a song.  

Strumbling Downtown

We perform occasionally when we’re invited.

I think our first official gig was at an exhibition of Anna’s paintings.

Since then, we’ve played at birthday parties, weddings, memorials, book launches, record releases, climate change events and more.

In 2020 the Strumbles supported New Zealand band Sneaky Feelings at the release of their last CD. The Waikato Times gave us a great review. (Thanks, Richard Swainson.)

We’re at our best completely acoustic, without having to worry about microphones or amplifiers or sound engineers. Okay, that is my personal opinion. Others may disagree.

A few years ago we got ourself a Myrtle Eartrumpet condenser microphone.

Myrtle looks very cool, but she didn’t solve all our amplification requirements.

We’ve sung on the Waikato riverbank, at the zoo, in Hamilton Gardens, at the public library, school fairs and in downtown Hamilton.

We played “Downtown” for that occasion: “Downtown, Things will be great when you’re downtown, No finer place for sure, downtown…” etc, etc. (If you know Hamilton, this makes sense.)

One of our dreams is to play on Te Huia, the commuter train between Hamilton and Auckland.

If you know who we should talk to, please let me know. We have plenty of train-themed songs.  

Learning song by song

None of the Strumbles were current ukulele players when the group started. We were all learning, song by song.

Some of us (including me) can play many instruments.

Others had some musical background, e.g. Jane learned guitar at teachers’ college. Melissa started from scratch, never having played an instrument  – and discovered in midlife that she has a gift for music.

I came to the Strumbles after spending many decades playing in a wide range of musical groups, from symphony orchestras to rock bands to folk dance combos to a capella singing groups.

This is the musical form that best feeds my musical heart and soul.

Making music with people I love is the most fun thing in the world for me.

We didn’t have a bass player at the beginning. That all changed when I brought home a double bass (also called an upright bass) for Matthew on his birthday.

Having a bass makes a huge difference to our group sound. Everyone can hear the rhythm much better.

Matthew is a skilled guitarist who plays many instruments, including bass guitar. He’d never played an upright bass before. But he had a lot of fun learning. He combines the bass with a cajon box drum for a stronger beat.

In ten years we’ve had a few members come and go, and occasional drop-ins.

We lost one of our beloved ukulele sisters, Suzanne Weiss, to cancer in 2021, during a national Covid lockdown. Other members have lost loved ones. Children have grown up, health challenges have been faced, marriages and partnerships have ended and started and ended… 

The songs you love

Playing ukulele is the easiest happy high I’ve ever found.

When we make music together, we get in sync with the other musicians. This is called entrainment, and it’s one of the great pleasures of group music making.

It’s exponentially better when it’s music you love.

We take turns bringing music to the group.

Sometimes a new song turns out to be surprisingly easy – three chords and a simple strum.

Sometimes it might be trickier. Like “Peace Train”, by Cat Stevens. That one took us a couple of years, but we got there.

“Life on Mars”, by David Bowie, has so many chords that we won’t be performing it any time soon. But it’s fun to play.

It’s such joy to be able to play a song that lights you up.

I love playing Beatles. “Drive My Car”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Here Comes The Sun” and much more.

I‘ve come to appreciate Abba through playing “Fernando” and “Waterloo” on ukulele.

I love Gillian Welch’s “Miss Ohio”, a deadpan ballad about a badly behaved woman. “She says ‘I wanna do right, but not right now.’ ”

And David Bowie’s “Heroes”.

But the song that’s been giving me a buzz recently is “Closer to Fine”, by the Indigo Girls. (It’s in the Barbie movie.) 

The sound of my voice

Another blessing I’ve received from the Strumbles has been singing regularly, which has helped me get into better relationship with my voice.

I’ve always loved singing. But it’s been a long journey for me to get used to singing in front of people. There has been so much judgement and shame; critics inside and out.

The ukulele has been an important part of this process for me.

While I’m playing, there are so many other things to think about that my inner critic gets distracted.

For me, the ukulele works better than the guitar for learning to sing. A guitar is louder, so it’s more likely to drown my voice out. And, with a guitar there’s more external expectation that you will be at a particular level of skill.

Whereas the ukulele is so small and not-serious that it slips under the ego radar for me. I can lose my self-consciousness.  

Worlds of songs

There’s no end to the music. Every couple of weeks someone will bring along a great new song or two.

We don’t know what will work until we try it.

Early in the first year, Jane brought along “Teardrops”, by Womack & Womack. On paper it seems like a most unlikely song for a ukulele group, but it’s become one of our favourites.

That’s when I knew we really had something special going on.

We have a tendency towards 1980s music, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.

Organising the music is an art form. Everyone has a different way of doing this. But we’re all currently using paper and folders.

 I spend enough of my life on screen; I appreciate a space where I’m offline.

I have five ring binders full of songs. One is for Beatles, one is New Zealand songs, and two are A-Z general folders.

The fifth folder is the current playlist. It includes “Tuesday Afternoon” by the Moody Blues, “The Be All and End All” by Bic Runga (both contributed by Tangi), “Body Below” by Emily Fairlight and “Halo” by Beyonce (from Matthew), “Across the Borderline”, by Ry Cooder, “Blue”, by Lucinda Williams (both from Jane), the Mingulay Boat Song (from Melissa), “If I Fell”, by The Beatles (Sonya), and a beautiful Tongan song, “Katinia” (from Elly).

And that’s just the first few pages.

Coming back home

Last year we had fun and challenge learning songs by New Zealand 1980s music/ comedy group The Front Lawn, to celebrate the release of Matthew’s book Songs From The Front Lawn (Bloomsbury, 2023. You can buy it from most booksellers).

“When they all want to turn you down
Like the sound on their TV set
There’s one place that you’re welcome to
Where everything you say, well, it’s all up to you…”

“When You Come Back Home,” The Front Lawn

A few weeks ago Melissa brought along “Stumblin’ In”, with Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman.

Bullseye. Our theme song!

“Our love is alive

And so we begin

Foolishly laying our hearts on the table

Strumbling in…”

“The life I love is making music with my friends.” – Willie Nelson 

In gratitude to all Strumbles, past and present:

Jane Carmichael Matthew Bannister Tangi Habib Anna Fairley Melissa Hackell Elly Latu Sonya Mitchell Alice Bulmer Bethwyn Littler, Paula Law

and Suzanne Weiss RIP 

 

More reading…

The worms are turning

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

 

 

It’s a weird time of year, here in Aotearoa-NZ.

The last days of October and the beginning of November.

In the Southern Hemisphere it’s simultaneously spring and Hallowe’en.

We have kids dressed as ghosts and goblins, walking the streets in the evening sun, trick or treating.

We also have trees laden with apple blossom, and tomato seedlings ready to plant out in the garden. And birds building nests. And spring lambs frisking in the fields.

Last summer’s pumpkins were eaten months ago.

Just to make things even weirder, on November 5 we have Guy Fawkes Night. That’s a British thing, where we celebrate a terrorist who was apprehended in 1605, trying to blow up the British Houses of Parliament.

Seasonal explosions

We celebrate Guy Fawkes in Aotearoa-NZ by exploding vast quantities of noisy, smelly fireworks (and a few pretty ones) in random and dangerous places. Despite the distress of pets, farm animals and humans with traumatized nervous systems.

This is the only week that fireworks can be sold in New Zealand. Many people stockpile for the rest of the year. They’re not supposed to do this, but it’s not enforced.

Yeah, seriously crazy.

Three reasons for Hallowe’en

In the Southern Hemisphere, this is the absolute wrong time of year for Hallowe’en/ Samhain/ Day of the Dead.

We “should” be celebrating spring this week!

But, three reasons for Hallowe’en:

1. Hallowe’en is fun, especially the dressing up.
2. It’s here to stay, no matter what anyone thinks. (We can’t eradicate it by spraying pesticide.)
3. It’s a festival that celebrates and honours the dead. In our death defying, death-denying culture, this is important and worth noticing

My weird childhood

I come to the supernatural/ spiritual, the unseen, the weird and spooky, with lived experience that this can be real.

In my childhood in Papua New Guinea I had experiences that I can only describe as supernatural. I remember what it was like to be blown around by this stuff, not understanding what it was and not having anyone I could talk to about it.

Spooky isn’t necessarily fun or entertaining for me.

My secular scientist parents both, in different ways, believed that these things could be real, in some circumstances. But not for people like us.

I needed training in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Two Hallowe’ens

New Zealanders and Australians complain that Hallowe’en is from the USA; that it has illicitly migrated to our shores in the last 30 years.

Maybe so. But some Scottish people have told me it’s theirs.

I’ve experienced two very different Hallowe’ens in the USA, one in 1985 and another in 2014.

My mother, Sue, was born in the USA. But she was pretty un-American. We didn’t celebrate American holidays. No Thanksgiving either.

Actually, both my parents were pretty disillusioned and cynical about the rituals and celebrations of their cultures (US and British respectively). As a child, I found it pretty confusing. My parents didn’t behave like New Zealanders, but we weren’t British and we certainly weren’t American.

And, we spent a lot of time respectfully witnessing ceremonies and rituals that belonged to other cultures. Because my dad, Ralph Bulmer, was an anthropologist.

The bone collector’s daughter

The human skeletons of Hallowe’en didn’t hold much mystery for me.

My mother, Sue, was an archaeologist. You can read more about Sue here. And here.

Western archaeologists of the 20^th century had a peculiar, kinky fascination for excavating human remains.

Fairly early in her career, my mother realised the monstrous cultural insensitivity/ racism of this practice. (How would you feel if someone 1. dug up your great-grandmother’s bones and 2. exhibited them in a museum?)

However, my brothers and I spent a lot of time hanging about in the dusty back rooms of museums, while our mother talked shop.

I could always feel the wrongness of the shelves of stored scalps, bones and other human body parts, prisoners of Western science.

Hallowe’en at Terre Haute

In 1985 I was in the USA. I was a lost soul, looking for a place that felt like home, but I didn’t find it. My step-grandmother, Grandma Mary’s cabin on Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, came closest.

I spent the summer working in a hotel in Glacier National Park, Montana, and playing fiddle in the hotel bar. It was a wonderful season for me.

When the summer ended, I hitched a ride east with a friend, Terri, who I had met at the hotel.

After adventures in the Grand Canyon and Oklahoma City, and places in between, we showed up at her brother’s place in Terre Haute, Indiana, in time for Hallowe’en.

Terri’s brother was a senior staff member at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary. After getting security checked, we were allowed into the prison as visitors.

I remember the heavy, sad atmosphere, and the multi-storey rows of what looked like cages, along the walls of a big chamber. It was very silent. It’s the only prison I have visited so far.

I didn’t see any of the inmates. I think they may have been out at lunch.

In the evening, the low-security inmates organized a Hallowe’en Haunted House experience for the prison staff and their families, and I was included.

A series of rooms featuring grisly scenarios were presented with great relish. Murder scenes, beheadings etc.

Much later I learned that Terre Haute is where death sentences are carried out in the USA.

More life and death, 1985

That year I spent Christmas in Wales with my aunt Rosemary, my father’s sister, and her family.

My beloved aunt had just received a death sentence of a different kind. Terminal stomach cancer at the age of 50. The doctors weren’t going to tell her, but her husband, Ross, insisted.

Rosie actually lived really well for more than ten years before the cancer caught up with her. She died at age 63, too soon to meet her grandchildren.

Rosie was the main mother figure of my life, although I only saw her a handful of times. She always had time for me, when I showed up on her front porch with a backpack.

My own amazing, infuriating mother wasn’t what I’d describe as a good maternal role model. I realized this when I became a mother of two sons.

Rosie was there almost at my beginning. In 1961 she was working as a midwife for the Flying Doctor service in the Australian outback. (More life/ death.)

She arrived in Auckland to stay with my parents about the same time I did. But not long after that, she returned to England to accept a marriage proposal and have her own daughters, my cousins Ruth and Rachel.

Hallowe’en in Zion

My second US Hallowe’en experience was in 2014, in Zion Canyon, Utah.

It’s a place of jaw dropping beauty, majesty and awe. We have places with that kind of “feel” in New Zealand too. Numinous is one word for it. But we don’t have canyons.

I was taking part in a retreat hosted by my first life coach, Scout Wilkins, who’s also a wilderness guide.

In the afternoon we visited the Mormon settler ghost town at Grafton, down the road from Zion National Park. There were rows of empty cottages in the silent canyon. Scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were filmed there.

Later, in the small community of Springdale, kids in monster costumes flitted around in the twilight like moths and bats, trick or treating.

The atmosphere was simultaneously otherworldly, gentle and playful.

Two seasons in one day

The deliberate, and necessary, chaos of the death festivals (Hallow’en, Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, etc) can disrupt the vibrant new season growth energies of spring celebrations.

New Zealand writer Juliet Batten, author of Celebrating the Southern Seasons, and many other interesting books, proposes a creative solution to these seemingly incompatible celebrations.

One magical day, 31st October, that encompasses two seasons and two hemispheres.

The day starts with clusters of spring maidens laying flowers on doorsteps at dawn.
Then at dusk, gaggles of ghosts and goblins prowl the darkening streets with bags of tricks and treats.

Juliet writes: “Not just the Hallowe’en takeover, but space for flowers, maypoles, and maidens as well. Two hemispheres in one day, a kind of reconciliation.”

Embracing the multitudes

In permaculture there are usually multiple solutions to any problem.
In Aotearoa-NZ we’re already accustomed to dealing with multiple time zones and seasons, in the media, our economy and cultures.

This morning I was in a video call with a colleague in France. Our room encompassed 12 hours and more than 19,000km.

It doesn’t feel like a huge shift to embrace multiple celebrations, rather than having to choose between opposing forces.

More reading…

The worms are turning

About Alice

I’m a life coach and musician. Find out more here: About Alice.

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

 

There’s a small worm farm tucked away under a tree in my back garden.

It’s not a fancy worm bin. Just some stacked plastic boxes with lids and dividers.

At any time of the year, it contains thousands of wriggly creatures. Willingly consuming potato peels, apple cores, banana skins and other kitchen scraps.

Myco, eco, mytho, domestico

We can’t opt out of being part of the cycles of life and death, says writer and poet Sophie Strand.

Sophie advocates finding ways to be at home in the landscape of our local environment.

For me, my worm bin is part of how I do this.

It’s a small, hands-on gesture towards rewilding my kitchen, my household and my garden.

Sophie describes herself as an “animist troubadour and a huge pile of composting leaves”. We all have our different ways of infusing animacy and sacredness into our world, she says. She feels like a younger sister or niece to me.

“Ooh, witchy!” commented my friend Gina, when she saw me with handfuls of worms. NB worms don’t appreciate being handled, but sometimes hands-on is the best way to deal with the worm bin contents.

“That’s just seriously gross,” said my husband Matthew, who is usually pretty tolerant with creepy-crawlies. His mother was a science teacher, who used to breed locusts in the garage.

Admittedly I did ask him to take some photos for this post. Which I decided not to use, because I don’t want to trigger “yuck” responses. (Thanks, Matthew.)

Worms bring to mind Medusa, Eve, and other transgressive and/or scary female icons.

But they’re also, simultaneously, humble and domestic

The win-win of worm farming

Worm farming is the kind of composting that works for me.

I can do it little by little, over time. When a lot of other things feel too big, or too hard.

There isn’t a huge amount of energy involved.

The worms eat up small amounts of household food scraps easily.

I get nutrients to return to the garden – worm castings and worm liquid.

And it’s interesting – well, I think so.

Worm farming is an intriguing combination of grounding and humble and weird.

What’s a worm farm?

A worm farm, also known as a worm bin, is a very small-scale variety of composting.

It’s a set of boxes or a container in which compost worms (often called tiger worms) consume household food scraps and paper and transform them into useful garden fertilizer.

A worm farm can be very tidy if that’s what you prefer.

Women and worm farming

Mary Appelhof popularized home-scale worm farming in the 1970s and 1980s. A high school biology teacher from Kalamazoo, Michigan, she taught the process of using compost worms to recycle household food scraps, in a container system that can be kept indoors in all seasons.

Mary’s worm farming manifesto, Worms Eat My Garbage, was first published in 1982 and is still in print.

However, my aunt, Rosemary Pownall, was worm farming in Gloucestershire in the 1970s. So there may also have been European pioneers of this domestic art.

There are other female leaders in this field. Soil scientist Elaine Ingham is one of the best-known theorists and teachers of the soil food web.

This is the soil science paradigm in which soil is seen as a living medium. It’s the science underpinning organic and regenerative agriculture.  

Confessions of a worm farmer

One day I bought myself a basic cheap worm farm kit and followed the instructions on the box.

I dug some worms from the bottom layers of our backyard compost pile and introduced them into their new habitat.

It all worked just fine.

That was many years ago. The worms and I have been collaborating ever since.

Every week I feed the worms a layer of food scraps from the kitchen. For more details, see later in this post.

For a few years I even had a micro-business, supplying tiger worms to people who were starting up worm bins.

I looked into expanding it, but I couldn’t figure out a sustainable business model that would work for me.

Also, some of my clients would kill off their worms and shamelessly come back for more. Others were buying the worms for fishing, which didn’t feel quite right either. I don’t have anything against fishing, but I didn’t want to breed worms so that they could be gobbled up off a hook.

Easier than compost

I’m a much more confident worm farmer than compost heap builder.

I am hugely respectful of people who are skilled compost builders.

I have taken part in many composting workshops over the years. I’ve come to understand that good backyard composting needs more skill, attention, resources and physical energy than is often assumed.

Also, you need much more than household food waste and lawn clippings. A compost heap is carefully curated and combined to a good balance of carbon and nitrogen.

A yucky old compost heap

When I was a kid, my mother, Sue Bulmer, always had a compost heap in our back garden.

But I now understand that Sue was a very negligent composter. We used to just throw our food scraps onto the compost heap and leave them there.

Composting needs to be done mindfully. But Sue’s mind was always on her current archaeological project, twenty thousand years in the past.

A compost heap is not a mini-landfill into which we dump any food waste. It’s also not a rat feeding station.

Given enough time, even the grossest compost heap – anaerobic, slimy, smelly, etc – will become compost eventually.

But before that happens, most of the food scraps will be eaten by rats. I’m assuming that this is not your intention.

Starting a worm bin

Here are some suggestions on stepping into worm farming, based on my experience. You can also find plenty of contradictory instructions online. 

You can either buy a worm bin or build one yourself.

A third option is hiring a bin. If you’re in Aotearoa-NZ, Why Waste have a subscription package that includes a monthly visit for advice and TLC. That’s great value if you want some help to get started, or if you think you won’t have enough time to look after the worm bin. 

There are many kinds of worm bins, for a range of prices.

My cheap model works okay. But the boxes are heavy when they’re full of worm castings. Many of the new-tech worm bins don’t have heavy parts to lift.

If you and/or your family care about aesthetics and/or tidiness, one of the newer designs would be a good investment.

You can also make your own worm bin. My friends Anna and Chris Fairley have a large worm bin built from a repurposed bathtub. That’s a classic permaculture model. It works really well, but takes up space.

Not all DIY models work equally well.

Early in my worm farming career I made a worm bin from a repurposed wheelie rubbish bin. It looked impressive. But it was too deep. Worm bins need to be wide and fairly shallow.

What kinds of worms?

You’ll need a small supply of compost worms – purchased from a worm bin supplier, donated by a friend who has a worm bin, or dug out of the bottom of your compost heap.

Only a few kinds of earthworm will be suitable for your worm bin.

The main worm bin species is the tiger worm, Eisenia foetida. There are a few other species that are sometimes found in worm bins, e.g. red worms, Lumbricus rubellus.

But other common earthworms, e.g. the big night crawlers, Lumbricus terrestris, won’t appreciate the conditions in a compost heap or worm bin. They have other roles in soil creation.

Feeding your worms

Once your worm bin is started, the worms will take a few weeks to get used to their new home, before they start eating good quantities of scraps.

Check the bin every few days. When you can see the scraps are being eaten – don’t wait till they’re all gone – give the worms some more.

Most kinds of fruit or vegetable scraps and crushed eggshells are good worm food.

The worms also enjoy eating paper scraps, tissues and damp cardboard. Pizza boxes are ideal, but soak them till soft before adding to the worm bin. If you have old towels with holes in them, add a layer to your worm bin.

However, a worm bin isn’t the solution to every kind of kitchen food waste.

In general, don’t feed them high-carb leftovers, like bread, cake, pasta, rice. Very small amounts are okay.

Also, don’t put meat, bones and fat into a worm bin. Give these to someone with a backyard chicken coop.

Anything in large quantities will overwhelm a small worm bin. Keep it varied.

People are often told not to put citrus peels in the worm bin. But Anna and Chris Fairley say their worms will happily eat citrus, as long as it’s not huge amounts.

Give them shelter

Keep your worm bin in a sheltered place. Worms don’t like extremes of temperature. If the bin is in full sunlight the worms will get cooked and die.

They can drown if heavy rain pelts directly on the worm bin. Also, make sure the worm bin doesn’t dry out. A piece of old carpet on the top layer will help keep the contents damp.

If you notice fruit flies, it’s getting too acid. Sprinkle a small amount of lime and cut back on acid fruit.

A worm bin can be kept in a garage, or on a back porch.

Some people keep their bins indoors. Worm bin pioneer Mary Appelhof kept hers in the basement.

The many benefits of worm farming

Worm farming is a hands-on way to contribute to some really big issues.

Like, recycling kitchen waste, so it doesn’t go into a landfill.

And engaging with the cycles of nature. Like other kinds of composting, a worm bin is a constant process of living and dying. When we successfully compost, we’re collaborating and co-creating with soil creatures, micro-organisms, fungi and more.

If you have small children in your life – your own children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, neighbours – a worm farm is very educational in a hands-on way.

When you have a worm farm, you’ll get used to having your hands in the dirt every so often.

The worm castings/ garden fertiliser that the worms produce are made only from food scraps and paper.

It looks like rich soil and doesn’t contain any weed seeds, unlike most backyard compost.

There’s nothing yucky that you don’t know about.

You know exactly what ingredients went into your worm bin.

Like a home-made soup. Or a baby!

More reading…

Hands in the Dirt

About Alice

I’m a life coach and musician. Find out more here: About Alice.

Would you like to hear more from me?

Join my email list and I’ll send you a copy of my ebook, 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.

It’s full of my favourite tips for regaining your feeling of playfulness.

Here’s where you sign up: 12 Creativity Hacks for Musicians.