Rainy day work

A light rain has kept me house bound today, but no complaints as it was well overdue. I was thrilled to have accomplished two things from my list. The first was to scrub, and I do mean down on hands & knees 'scrub' my floors to remove the muddy build up that has accumulated on the painted concrete floors. The concrete floors have proved much easier to maintain then the old carpet that was there when we bought the place, however mud tracked in on wellies, and on the many childrens feet that have visited gets stuck in the grooves of the concrete left from the original trowel marks. Although I've swept regularly, and hubby has run the mop over it, it was needing a serious scrub to bring it up nicely.

We opted for the painted concrete because the very old and threadbare carpet just had to go and I really don't know what I want to replace it with yet, not to mention the cost of putting an alternative down. I had bought paving paint originally to paint over the red brick pavers in the spare room & our now properly enclosed back deck area. After living with them though for over a year & a half I've come to appreciate the simplicity of them as they were and presto, this gave me paving paint for my bare concrete. For all those wondering, yes, it's cold, but nothing slippers can't fix and some inexpensive blue & white cotton rugs from Ikea. The rugs are small enough that I can still put them in the washing machine & they come up well each time.

Last day off, I stripped the carpet from the spare room and scraped away the glue residue. Today after a good scrub, I've started painting the floor in here too.

All the while I was in my cleaning frenzy I've had brown vinegar on the stovetop. With sugar added I've slowly reduced two litres to under one, and the result is a beautiful caramelised balsamic vinegar. After one of the girls from work (ex chef) told me how easy it was, I've been dying to give it a go.

Also I'm pleased to see my chickens are also back to laying. It's been sporadic, but one or two eggs a day is a great start. I read somewhere that the chickens normally begin laying again after the winter solstice, so I guess it's true.

From the garden today:

a dozen eggs (collected over the week)

two beautiful large tomatoes

heaps of little cherry tomatoes from self seeded plants

one lone passionfruit

a handfull of small chillies

2 little gooseberries

BBQ, beach & other treats

We brought our next set of students over to our little island shack to show them a different view of Australia. These two have been an unusual pair for us to get in that they were only 10 years old, and so a much different view of what was exciting. It was a day of new things for them. I particularly loved it when Susan spotted fruit on my lemonade tree and cried out."Look, look, this one has oranges on it. This is my very favourite tree, can we eat them." Unfortunately it wasn't to be as they weren't quite ready for picking & eating yet. They had great difficutly in believing that my potatoes were in fact potatoes as they couldn't see any growing on the little bushes and immediately wanted to dig them up & find potatoes when I explained that they grew under the ground. Again timing wasn't yet right to accomodate them. However they did get to see & pick some little cherry tomatoes, and took delight in chasing my poor chickens around the yard.

I think we were all relieved when it came time to take them down to the beach. Here they seemed determined to strip the beach of any possible shells. The locals are very protective of the few shells we get on the beach here and do discourage people from removing them. To allow a little excitement I brought some prepurchased shells (please forgive me, this is before I was really aware of how enviromentally wrong it was to take away possible marine life homes, and was having a major craft session upon first moving into the shack & celebrating my seachange)

and conveniently hid them amongst the holes the girls were excavating along the tide line. I explained that because the shells were important for the health of our marine enviroment they would be limited to taking only four shells each, so 'luckily' they just happened upon four beautiful shells each and any of the 'real' ones were left to stay, except for one. Amazing how beauty is perceived. One of the girls discarded a particularly big curved shell for a broken part of a mussel shell much to my surprise.

The other big highlight of the day for them was their first Australian barbeque. As we hadn't really prepared for this in advance & the island butcher isn't open on a Sunday, we had to buy meat from the local supermarket. To my horror the girls were thrilled when they discovered some sort of 'meat sticks' (mince of some variety covered in herbs & spices that were so colorful you knew they would be full of colour & preservatives). I tried to discourage it, but they were actually labelled as ,"BBQ sticks" and as the girls were so proud of themselves for having found the 'right' thing for a barbeque I gave in & let them have them, to this we added some prepared meat patties & set off to make hamburgers, tomato sauce & all.

You'll notice their matching set of socceroo hats, bought for them, along with a set of thongs each by hubby as an "australian" gift to take home. I didn't have the heart to tell him the first thing the girls noticed was the 'made in china' labels on the inside, oh well, something rather humerous in them making a return trip to where they came from.

The day was completed with a dog walk at the other beach joined by my mum and a play in the park. In all I guess a pretty perfect day for your average 10 year old, and not an altogether bad one for us either.

Movement in the garden

Another great day off, and in the garden. It's been a long week and today was time for action, plus a little time off. During the week Hubby picked up a dozen bales of sugar cane mulch. Not the fine stuff you buy hygenically packed in plastic, but real, off the farm stuff. No plastic waste, and a lot cheaper too. So first task to do today was to empty the bales of sugar can mulch from the back of the ute. These will be used around the garden beds to minimise the weeds, both sides of the fences to minimise the grass and around the little murrayas that will eventually (fingers crossed here) become a hedge. For those not in the know, the mulch is used to help hold moisture & warmth, and again control the weeds. Ran out of time to get to that part today, but they are now stacked up with a tarp covering (wet, mouldy sugar cane bales are heavy & not so much fun to play with).

Todays big job was to move the chook pen. I guess at this point I should explain our system. Hubby built a chook pen based on an idea from a permaculture book, except rather than the usual dome design, ours is an 'A' frame made just slightly larger than our gardens. It's made from PVC piping covered with wire fencing, and then a tarp thrown over for a little shelter from the elements. It's been made light enough that I can move it on my own pretty easily. Todays move however was back to the first garden bed, involving trudging it across the yard & removing/moving fences as well. I'll post some details and picks at a later time on how I use the chickens to do the hard work for me in the garden.

I also needed to remove the couple of capsicum and eggplants that were in this bed to a more permanent site. I found that the eggplants & capsicums I put in last season, were duds then, but produced better this time around. They have gotten stronger & bigger which obviously must help. The ones in this garden (see image above) only went in this season, and again were hopeless, (it looks alright, but that eggplant is only about the size of my little finger) so lets hope the next season theory works for these ones too. Below is a 'second' season eggplant, these were massive when they finished growing. I then ripped the remaining heads of basil off the bushes left. Ideally I'd like to turn this into my own home made pesto, but we'll see what time & my energy allows.

During the process of moving the chook pen I tripped over a sweet potato vine & ripped the poor thing right out of the ground. This meant I needed to dig up any sweet potatoes that might be ready (its a little early, I would have liked to have waited a few more weeks). I got a crop of about 4 decent sized sweet potatoes, and a few small undersized ones. This current crop of sweet potatoes came from last year's undersized ones, so I'll keep these to one side & wait for them to sprout.

Ginger

I've been patiently waiting for what seemed to be the appropriate time to harvest my ginger. I bought a Thai ginger plant some time last year & following the instructions stuck it somewhere where it wouldn't hurt for it to become prolific, sat back & Googled some directions on what to do with it. According to one source (I'm sorry I can't quote it as it was some time ago now, and at the time I never dreamed I would be writing about it) I could "harvest" it anytime from about April through till almost September, but leaving it longer apparently results in the ginger being hotter. The tell tale sign of when to dig up the fragrant roots coincides with the leaves yellowing off & turning brown. I'm not one for overly 'hot' dishes, so I didn't want to wait too long, but my leaves didn't seem to want to change colour either. So I've been waiting & waiting for a sign. Today was the day! Yellow leaves from the tips. And then, it poured rain!!!!Not one to be detered, especially after waiting forever, I took the opportunity presented by a break in the downpour & off I went.

Wow, nothing could have prepared me for the amount of roots I got from my one little plant, all hidden under a canopy of leaf fall, & just waiting to be snapped freshly off. I washed the excess dirt off, and ideally would have liked to dry them out in the sun, but it's not to be today, so instead I brought them inside to rest on a teatowel & dry out.

In addition, today was special as we had our new home stay daughter (high school children who come to study english from overseas) and her sister come to stay at the shack overnight. Today, regardless of the rain, we went for a walk along the beaches, and had a pasta for lunch topped with fabulous tomato & herb mixture(basil, parsley, rocket, garlic chives) picked fresh straight out of the garden. It's moments like these I feel rewarded for the work that has gone in and look forward to making it a larger part of my everyday life.

Change on the horizon

My treat this morning, on my day off, has been to lay in bed reading wonderful blogs that have been an inspiration to me since I first began my "new life". I have indulged myself with their tales of gardening success, home cooked meals, and crafty endeavors. But I have also taken on a small sense of guilt. For all these sites I visited & lived vicariously through, I've not taken the time to leave a message or to sign in & let these fabulous people know how important they are in my life and how they have helped to motivate a change in it for the better. I formally apologise now & will make an effort to give you the feedback & recognition you deserve going forward.

This morning, unable to access my "favourites" (a whole other story there) I did a Google search on one of my regular reads "Down to Earth" and found an interview with Rhonda on Chic Blogs. As one of Australia's top Chic Blogs she shared some good advice on creating a successful blog that I will now try very very hard to take on..... post every day. As simple as that, yet not something I've been very good at. Let me see, I've managed... two blogs in 6 months!!!
Ok, in summary, time for a couple of changes!

Gardening Update

So part of the reason for this blog is to help keep track of everything I'm trying to do, and you get to learn with me, share my successes, and hopefully guide me through the mistakes. To understand what brought me to this point I need to take you back to the beginning of it, just over two years ago when I started gardening for the first time.


I'd never felt the 'call' to be a gardener, I was happy with a tree or two and vast areas of lawn, or maybe yard is the better description (lawn conjours images of manicured greeness, which I've never had). When we first came here I fell in love with the block, the slope of the land, the big trees, and a nice yard. All was well with it as it just seemed to self maintain with enough rain & sun to require nothing of me, except to dig out the occassional plant that broke up my 'yard' or chop back something impedeing a view out the windows. And then the sad day came when I was advised I would need a new septic tank. In a moment of insanity I decided to move it from it's original location and needed to put in 64 metres of trenches to go with it. (My inexperience discounted the idea of a biocycle unit, which in hindsight would have been a much better thing to do). To cut a long story short, in came the giant Tonka toys, and when they left there was not a blade of green left anywhere. After spending an inordinate amount of money on this folly, and ending up with what looked like first images of Mars (yes, red clay everywhere & no visible signs of life) I didn't have the option of 'instant' buy it in & roll it out lawn. Never to be outdone I figured I'd just grow my own.
Nothing can prepare the non gardener for the joy of seeing those first few tentative green sprouts. We'd sprinkled lawn seed down at the first sign of showers & within days the red took on a greenish hue. Day by day you could see those first little signs of life getting bigger, greener, until the red of the clay was hidden, and my green paradise was returned, better than ever.
I was hooked! The satisfaction I got from watching something I'd planted grow and develop was like nothing I'd experienced before. I figured if grass worked, what about vegies? And so began my journey...

Life's too short for the red silk dress

The morning of my Christmas lunch saw me in a panic as I gazed at my red silk dress I had planned to wear (and look effortlessly fantastic in). There, right on the front, in the middle of the stomach area, was a stain! I immediately doused said mark with water in an attempt to remove, only making the problem worse by ending up with a new, even more noticable watermark, which surrounded the stain like a target highlighting a bullseye. With no alternative option prepared I had to improvise, so, my Christmas vest (a brightly sequinned little number) that only comes out Christmas eve, was used to cover the whole torso area, target, stain & all. All day I shone like a giant christmas ornament, not quite the elegant & effortless look I'd hoped for.
Later reading another blog, about another special dress that had a mishap & was then relegated to the "home" wear pile, I wondered about how many well loved clothes out there have had short lived wear due to a drop or two of red wine, a deliciously saucy spaghetti bolognese, sticky drops of mango nectar, or an errant run away baby beet.
I've become a little less ruthless with these pieces, now recycling them as gardening outfits, but a designer red bias cut silk dress, I can't see it living up to the strains a mornings gardening would demand of it.
As I dwell on it's future, I wonder, why is it we don't celebrate these little marks, why we don't see it not as an ending for a fabulous dress, but as a celebration of occassion. Lets embrace the stains in our lives. Each stain could tell of a life enjoyed & experienced in it's fullness, moments to treasure or even to be envious of, rather than embarassed about. Just imagine how much more we'd wear that outfit we keep for special, and when wearing it, how much less we'd worry about those prospective little accidents, how we would order crab and crack it with enthusiasm, how we'd clink glasses with cheers, and play on the grass with the children. Life could come back to living beautifully if only we could live with our little stains.