by Mara | Jan 3, 2025 | Gardeners & Farmers, In the Garden, In the kitchen, Preserving
The best gift is your listening, your attentive active listening. Your inquisitive questions, not rushing to interrupt. Your present presence, your engagement and your thoughtful gentle affirmations of what is being shared. The Best Gift – Holly, effervescent...
by Mara | Sep 2, 2024 | Design, Fauna & Flora, In the Garden
This article was first published in The Diggers Club Magazine I truly, deeply love my garden. I love it as much as I love people and that’s because gardens are powerful healers and essential to our wellbeing. In their absence urban & rural towns become...
by Mara | Jul 22, 2024 | Fauna & Flora, In the Garden
This article was first published in Sanctuary Magazine Issue 67 Words and photography: Mara Ripani There’s nothing lovelier than a bouquet of blooms, except perhaps one picked fresh from your own garden. Expert gardenerMara Ripani sings the praises of good...
by Mara | May 31, 2024 | Baking, In the kitchen, Uncategorized
I love to teach the Bake’s Percentage. A simple set of parameters that allow you to free form the bread making process. The Baker’s Percentage states that every ingredient is a % of the total flour amount. If I am making 3 loaves of bread and each loaf...
by Mara | Dec 31, 2023 | In the Garden, In the kitchen
I met my first best gift in year ten. A girl called Sam. Then along the way I met other gifts, Kulja, Jane, Lise, Amber. All of them great listeners, open, vulnerable, authentic, real, and all of them made me feel needed. Twenty five years later they are still with me...
