This season we are all reimagining our concepts of gratitude and abundance. What is resonating for you this year? Have you noticed any shifts in perspective?
Ophelia: Our garden is bursting right now, this, for me, brings such joy! The ocean is warming up too which I am grateful for.
Ryder: I’m grateful to the country we live in, Aotearoa, its land and oceans.
Freedom was a great gift I was given, an essential ingredient in my life growing up, and it is one of the things that draw Ophelia and I together now, in the family we are creating.
What are your thoughts on ritual? How is that similar or different than your thoughts on tradition?
Ophelia: To me they are very linked and interwoven and always connected to nature, cooking, and song.
Ryder: Rituals, to me, are actions ingrained and braided into the changeable rhythms of everyday life. Constants among change. Traditions, to me, are landmarks in time. Moments to re-enter each year.
Many people equate "living simply/with intention" with "minimalism". How do you reconcile the two?
Ophelia: I think we have the living simply part pretty handled, but the minimalism part is something we need to work on... It is an interesting combination, as people that make and collect things, that we are trying to balance better.
Ryder: There are seasons in our house. Storms of activity, and times that are mellow.
We are not minimalists, there are times of abundance and times of bare essentials.
But often the mess is beautiful and odd. Shells and knives and cut-open lemons, one thousand mugs, and paintings hovering between. But sometimes you step on things in the night.