Some achievements

 Finished and Installed

DH and DS were able to finally install a wonderful bench in DS's Ellenbrook home this weekend. This project included revamping/upcycling an old pine buffet style cabinet to be extra storage space, and a lot of work on a unfinished Marri slab of wood to make it fit and install it into the kitchen to be a 'breakfast bar'. Both DH and DS worked long and hard on this project, and it is lovely to see it come to completion. MY DDIL is thrilled. We are proud of both of them. The quotes they got from tradesmen for a similar job were very expensive, but by doing it themselves they not only saved a lot of money but had the satisfaction of getting a big project done. 

Refinished and Hung

I am always on the lookout for art work for our home, but I have some stipulations:

• It has to be cheap (less than $50 including frame) - I often change the art in my house, as I like variety and I can't imagine being happy looking at the same thing for years. 
• It needs to be something I can connect with -some local connection, or something of our history, or someone I know made it, etc
• It has to fit and look good with my decor at the moment. 

I found this picture in an op shop this week for just $5. It had a horrible purple frame but I noticed the artist had written the description of the scene, which is of a local holiday spot just off our coast. I brought it home and DH sanded the frame back to it's natural wood. We both love it!

Planted and weeded

I have been working in my garden this week, as the feel of spring is definitely in the air. I am out in the garden for a couple of hours every fine day.

The days are lengthening and getting a bit warmer. I have been watching the sun move higher in the sky, and so the decision I made to move some roses to a tricky spot in the garden is looking less risky. The spot is in deep shade in the winter time, but hot sun in summer. I figured the roses would be dormant in winter so what do they care, but the summer would be in their element. This picture was taken at 11 am about a week ago, and the sun was just at the edge of the garden bed behind the trellis. Today it was almost in front of the trellis. The roses have new leaves on them, so that is evidence that they did not mind being moved, and I have great hopes for flowers later in spring when the sun is actually hitting the leaves. I am growing a new passionfruit on the trellis and if it is anything like one I had there earlier, it will cover a lot of it in no time. I also have a climbing rose which I hope will grow on half of the trellis. 

I am planting late winter and spring seeds -but I feel that it is a bit early for the tomatoes yet. I did find a couple of self sown volunteers which I am encouraging as an early start on the season. I have planted some Diakon Radish in places where the snow peas have finished. The chives and the parsley have come back again after their winter dormancy, and the pomegranate is just putting out new leaves. 

I leave you with some inspiration!

Read this: food plant solutions How to beat malnutrition by knowing what is edible in your area 

Listen to this Pico Iyer on Dumbo Feather

Pico Iyer is regarded as one of the best travel writers of our time, but he’s not just an explorer of the outer worlds, he writes beautifully on the inner journeys available to us, too.

Having written 14 books, travelled frequently by the side of the Dalai Lama, done four TED Talks with over 10 million views and written for Time Magazine, New York Times and many more, he is a wise voice for our times on matters of stillness, transformation and the heart.

New Stuff to DIY

We have been experimenting with some new things to make ourselves, here at home.

Soft Cheese

DH is the yoghurt maker in this house, and he makes great yoghurt. Recently he found out a friend was using similar skills and equipment to our yoghurt making, to make their own soft cheeses like cottage cheese, ricotta and even brie. 

It turned out we had some equipment that DD had brought home from an op shop, so this week he made our first batch of ricotta. It is very satisfactory and easy. That left us with 2 litres of whey, which I then used to make this loaf of sourdough bread -and it rose very well.

Diastatic Malt

I have learned that there is another additive for bread  which can be made at home from barley! After the first green shoots appear, I will dry this barley and grind it up to make diastatic malt, which I am told supports a strong rise, great texture and brown crust. As I already had a seed sprouter, a dehydrator and have a good grinder, this will be easy enough I think. I wonder if it will make a big difference? I have some 'bread improver" which does not seem as natural in its ingredients as diastatic malt, so I would be interested if I can make an additive for bread here at home which is more natural 

Instructions for making diastatic malt for bread! https://www.sourdoughbreadrecipe.com.au/slider/malt-flour-for-sourdough-diastatic-or-non-diastatic/

Grow new fruits

We have bought ourselves two trees, both of which are grafted with two varieties of fruit. One has Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples, and the other has Flavour Supreme and Maraposa plums. We planted them in two big garbage bins, as they were the largest and cheapest pots we could find. Eventually they will go in the ground here, but we wanted to test them in this spot, to see if it was too hot for them, before commiting to the digging up of the paving, etc.

There have been sunny days and a lot of wet days lately. The garden is showing signs of spring -the bottlebrush is coming into flower already. I have shoots on the roses, the borage is flowering, and the birds are nesting.

When I am not dodging the showers to turn compost or pull weeds, I am either cooking or reading. My latest favourite book is Rosemary Morrow's Earth Users Guide to Permaculture. I have the Kindle version. It is a fantastic resource, and I am now re-reading it and working my way though it's suggested activities. 

I leave you with this quote

Howard Zinn said, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

There is another way of doing this

Years ago, my husband was made redundant -just after we took out a mortgage to buy this house. We were without his full time income for 18 months, a scenario we had not expected at the time. Money was very tight -we had two growing children and two cars and lots of expenses. 

I remember that in those days I had no idea that we could find alternates to many of the expenses we faced week by week. I felt quite desperate because there seemed to be no way out of all of this. We were going backwards! 

The first breakthrough came when I found that instead of buying a bottle of laundry detergent every week, I could make my own,  -and that, when used at the rate of 2 tablespoons per load, it would last for months at at time. All of a sudden I had more money for food! The wash is better because it doesn't have that smell that commercial detergents have. In Perth we can hang our washing out on the washing line to dry for many months of the year, which saves on drying costs. 

I learned to make other things -for example, I have an old spray bottle with vinegar and a bit of dishwashing liquid in it, which I use as a surface spray and general cleaner. I discovered that 'soap is soap' and that I didn't need a whole bunch of different cleaners to clean various parts of my home- any leftover detergents or soaps would clean most bathroom hard surfaces.  I discovered that I could use the waste lemon peels from squeezing lemons for a recipe, soaked in vinegar and make that vinegar cleaner smell nice and be even more effective.  That was more money saved! In the process I became smarter about what care each surface actually required -wood might need wax from time to time, toilets could be cleaned with bicarb or a combination of bicarb and vinegar. I don't use my vinegar spray on the marble surface of the main bathroom cabinet, however (don't want to have the acid eat the marble!) A microfibre cloth can clean most things with no additive except water -and you don't need to buy  expensive ones either!  

My sister in law gave me an old bread maker about 10 years ago, and I started learning how to make bread. All of a sudden wonderful home made bread was available to us for much less than the bakery price. Now I have a dough hook on my kitchen stand mixer, and make sourdough loaves for about $1.50 in cost -at the bakery they are about $7.50 each. 

I love finding alternatives to expensive items! For example, it was a recipe book by Hugh Fernlea Whittingstall which alerted me to the fact that pesto can be made with almost any edible leaf -and almost any nut! He has some suggestions here -but I have made pesto with parsley and cashews, and nasturtiums and walnuts. They are all very yummy indeed, served with pasta or in a sandwich! I would like to try his suggestion of using breadcrumbs instead of nuts -I keep any old bread in the freezer and make my own breadcrumbs.  I am also going to try to make it with peanuts, as they are so cheap (cashews at nearly $12 per bag, peanuts at $3), and see if I can tell the difference in taste. 

In the wake of the Covid19 pandemic we are often facing shortages of one kind or another.  It is helpful to know alternatives to the things we normally buy -so that we can be resilient and feel confident that we can get though these times. 

At that time, I was part of an online forum where people swapped stories about finding alternatives. One person was at home with an injury, so took it on as their task to find alternative ways to save money. She would study the ingredient list of something she was used to purchasing, and then go home and try to make it from basic ingredients -and without the transport, fillers, palm oil, corn syrup and preservatives she found that they were eating better and more cheaply. I have since used that idea for myself -and found that it is quite easy to create things like 'French onion soup mix" which I once used to buy regularly. 

Of course, it is not just food  alternatives which we have found.

• I have a shopping trolley so I can walk to the shop rather than drive for any small purchases -and save on car costs
• We don't have many subscriptions to magazines or entertainment channels. Our library supplies a lot of books and magazines if we want them, and we have lots of DVDs to watch should we feel the need. We actually don't watch a lot of TV -it feels like a waste of time. I did buy myself a one year subscription to PIP magazine recently -as a bit of a luxury. 
• For most of the year, our exercise is free -we walk at the beach, or work in the garden. My DH has recently taken up walking in the local pool to strengthen his knees and back, but when the summer comes we will be back at the beach. 
• I always look for second hand or op shop or tip shop items before buying new. This morning we found a gorgeous wooden toy bus with little figures in it, for just $10 at the op shop. My grand children will enjoy this. We always are on the look out for toys and clothes in particular. 

This week I have been trying to find a way of adding a couple of raised garden beds to the back garden. I want to make use of every available space, and my garden is certainly not full! Whilst we can grow straight in the ground, I like the raised garden beds as they define where it is safe to walk for our grand children, and I can concentrate soil building to those areas.I want to get more organised as to crop rotations. 

I took the dimensions but was having trouble finding anything which would fit -in size and also fit with my other raised garden beds in terms of colour and materials. There is a local business which could make me the ones I wanted -but this was quite a lot of money. We tried the tip shop for several weeks without success, we tried online markets, still nothing right. Eventually my DH sold two gas heaters we have no more use for -and suddenly we can get the raised garden beds we want! I have ordered them and they will be delivered in a couple of weeks. All part of the way we are building resilience in our food chain.  

If you have any ideas about alternative ways of doing things, please let me know! 

Here are some links for further reading

Our Power comes from acting without escape from our pain

Keeping tastes simple -Josh Becker https://www.becomingminimalist.com/simple-tastes/

Djilba is here -how do we adapt to the seasons?

Djilba is the Noongar word for one of the six seasons they knew in our climate here in South West Western Australia. It is a season in which the yellow and white flowers bloom in profusion, and consists of clear sunny days and cold wet days too. We notice the birds starting to build nests and some of them get a bit stressed and swoop anything they feel is a threat to them. 

We have had some lovely days this week -the grandchildren and their parents came over on Saturday which some home made treats for our afternoon tea, and we were able to sit outside at the patio table to enjoy it. Today however is COLD and WET by our standards (max predicted 15C!) and we are snuggled inside. I have a quilt on my lap as I am writing this post. I am  a bit of a sook (an Aussie term for someone who is easily upset) about wet and cold days -I love the sunshine- but gosh, the rain is wonderful. The garden is showing lots of nice growth as a result.

Recently we started watching a TV program from the BBC called "Tales from the Green Valley" about a reconstruction of a year on a farm from 1620 in Wales. What is quite obvious is that the seasons each brought its own tasks and rhythms. In our modern world, of course, we have the technology to ignore seasons if we wish -we can turn the lights on when shorter days arrive, we can continue to eat summer fruits imported from overseas during our winters, some of us don't even have to get wet when we move from the house to the car. I once had a friend who was diagnosed as being low in Vitamin D -the vitamin which is made by our bodies after we spend about 10 minutes a day outside in summer and about 30 minutes in winter (in my climate, anyway). She was shocked to realise that from her house to the car to the garage at work to her office -meant she did not go outside at all, for whole days at a time.   

What would happen if we lived more in tune with the seasons? I am convinced that we would have more variety, not less in our lives! 

There is a website I found which tells me which varieties of fresh food are in season and on the market now where I live.    This page has separate advice for other Australian capital cities. I  have also learned, over the years of growing some of my own food on my suburban plot, that I can expect to see the blueberries and mulberries over the next few months, and the strawberries, and perhaps, one day those annoying avocado trees I have had for more than 6 years, will one day flower at this time and set fruit! I have a variety of green leaves -sorrel, nasturtiums, sweet potato leaves, fennel, dill, coriander and rocket which I can put in my salad.  We were very excited to see the first asparagus spear come up last week. The time to enjoy these things is now because when summer comes the nasturtiums are gone, the coriander has gone to seed and the blueberries and strawberries have finished fruiting.

Variety like this is also cheaper -even when buying our food -because food which is local and in season is cheaper. 

I subscribe to a free service which tells me what I can plant at this time of the year.  This means that I can think about sowing those chilli seeds I saved from my son's plant, last summer, as soon as the rain stops for a while! I can order some eggplant seeds now, to plant soon. 

The changes which have been forced on us by the global pandemic is another of those 'seasons' in life. We have to adapt, and try to find the tasks and joys of these times. My heart goes out to those in Melbourne who are now in Stage 4 lockdown -and I know there are other states and other nations which are also suffering. 

In WA we are still enjoying quite a lot of freedom compared to other places, as the measures our government took in March and April have kept things pretty stable so far, although we know that it only takes one person to change that! This disease is very contagious! We have had a few dinners with friends recently, and we know that is a real luxury, because there were weeks and weeks when we could only meet via videoconferencing. Maybe this will change -we know that things change quickly, which is why we want to enjoy this season now, as much as we possibly can. 

I hope your season, whatever it is, is bringing you good things, and that if things are difficult now, that the season will change soon. 

Learn more about the six seasons on the Bureau of Meteorology's website: https://bit.ly/2rP5zbx