A realisation has swum into my reality; that the idea of a prolongued state of balance is quite simply, bollocks.

This idea hit, as so many good ideas (in my life anyway) do, during a conversation with a smart woman by a river watching children play.

All of nature is constantly striving for balance, we concurred. The trees drop leaves when they are stressed to retain energy, the horses sip at the brackish creek water when they are a bit low in salts, the river itself flows up and down, tide going in and out and rests for the briefest of moments at 'full high' and 'full low'. And their in lies the tantalising truth.... 'Balance' is like 'Happiness' - it is not a destination to reach or a state to dwell in. It is a moment of glorious knowing that everything is exactly as it should be, that right now, all is well.

And just like all things and states of being;

'this too shall pass'.

So next time I hear the words 'achieving balance' there will be a big, fat grain of that river salt to go along with them.

The circus performer we enjoyed yesterday illustrated this idea pefectly. He threw balls in the air (they came down), he spun Diablo around his legs (they were in constant flux for the tricks to work), he balanced pins on his chin...but just like the gorgeous birthday boy holding the spinning plates in the pic at the start of this post, the moment of perfect balance was brief and marvellous and applause inspiring...and then over.

Today the heavens smiled on Farmschool...lightning lit and thunder punctuated a heavy storm which kindly abated to become a mild and gorgeous day. I'm not surprised as there were a few new families here and this valley is quite a show off ;).

The sense we were studying today was 'smell' and we had fun carrying out blindfolded smelling tests which showed off some people's super noses. From raspberry flavoured panadol to a five dollar note, it was so interesting to look at who recognised what! Took the saying 'smell the money' to a whole new level...

Then it was time for Ashers birthday party with a delicious feast and as usual all the mums pitched in to help set up. You gotta just love women! (To be fair, there were no men here but still, you gotta love women!)

After hoeing into the food the kids all swam and played their little bums off until the classic birthday cry of 'cake time'!

Then Andy, whom we had met at Burning Seed) did a great mash up of circus stuff...

...and then let all the kids (and several of the grown ups) have a play!

What a great day. Now everyone has left, and yes it's raining again. But my heart is full of sunshine!

A beautiful wet day of creating colourful art overlooking sodden paddocks.