It’s coming up to Valentine’s Day.
My mama was going to come visit me this weekend, but when she realized it was Valentine’s Day, she texted me and said, “I won’t come this weekend as you should be going on a date on Valentine’s Day.” I said, “ummmm ok, suit yourself.”
I am still single, but honestly, being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t faze me… at all…. At least I’m saying that now, but ask me on the actual day, and it could be different.
I never understood the people that don’t like Valentine’s Day, boycotting it as a commercial construct, saying it’s capitalism—blah blah blah. I’m a Libran, I’m from Venus, and I love love. So any excuse to celebrate love is a bonus for me and the world. Single or not.
I remember when I was 17. I had just moved to Melbourne and was living in a tent in the backyard of a shared house. Long story short, I was living in the house, then my boyfriend came to live with me. We broke up, so he stayed in my room, and I, like some sort of Mother Teresa, volunteered myself to live in a tent in the backyard. It was before glamping and beautiful bohemian canvas tents. This was a standard orange camping tent, bright orange and glary…. But somehow, I made it home, filling it with rugs, low tables, and cushions.
Anyway, I was freshly single, my ex was already in another relationship and It was Valentine’s Day. I should of been sad and emo but I awoke to a big bunch of the brightest, most beautiful yellow sunflowers outside my front door—I mean tent door—with a card signed by my best friend telling me I was loved. And that set the standard of Bromance or Friendmance (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it). And ever since then, single or not, I’m spreading love on Valentine’s Day.
I’m an expert on romance. Ask me anything and I have the answers… Need a romantic date set up? I can organise you the most amazing date with my eyes closed. Call me old fashioned but I seem find romance in everything—The whispering of the trees, the magpie song in the morning, the glittering light upon the ocean, the slow smile of a stranger, the flirt of a barmaid, the budding of a sweet-smelling rose in my overgrown garden. If you know where to look, love is everywhere. Of course, nothing can transcend the love of two people bonded together… But us single people try, eh?!
So why am I telling you this? What has this got to do with ferments? Nothing.
But it’s coming up to Valentine’s Day. So single or not, buy your friends or lovers flowers, or steal them from the neighbours fence, romance them, read Anaïs Nin by the river, and pretend you are an artist’s muse in Paris in the ’20s, for we can all have romance regardless of whether we’re getting some in the bedroom.
And speaking of Valentine’s, if you’re in Mullumbimby this weekend, I’m playing some of my love songs at The Paddock on Sunday.
And this Saturday, I’m teaching a ferment workshop in my garden. We will be making pink kraut and pink pickled onions, for, to quote my sister Gabriella, “Pink is the colour of unconditional love.”