Autumn is here?

 We haven't had much to identify our weather as autumn yet. It has been so hot and dry! This week, though, the temperatures have taken a dive toward 'mild' instead of 'hot' and I am actually wearing jeans for the first time in 6 months. On the strength of this alone, I planted today some lovely native plants which were free from the City Council. I got the 'verge pack' and planted them to fill in gaps in the verge out the front. If it ever starts to rain, they will get a good start on growing before the next hot summer, but I am prepared to water them as necessary to get them started on life. 

I gave away a grevillea to a friend because they make me very itchy, but I have planted a prostrate banksia (Banksia petiolaris), Black Kennedia (Kennedia nigricans), Woolly netbush (Calothamnus Histutus), Grey Cottonheads (Conostylis Candicans), Emu Bush (Eremophila glabra), Cushion bush (Leucophyta brownii), Ground Banksia (Banksia blechnifolia),  and a Rose Banjine (Pimelia rosea).  

Last week we had a worker build us a new retaining wall across the whole of our eastern boundary. It was a job that needed doing for a long tim. It was a mixture of jarrah sleepers and concrete blocks but it was falling down! It is so nice now it is completed. I still have to get plants and reticulation sorted along this whole length though.  The good news is that the jasmine has survived both last year's new fence and this year's retaining wall builds, and has not skipped a beat. 

The citrus trees are now ripening so here we go again with our massive harvest!

The ruby grapefruit are so yummy as a breakfast juice. We feel very luxurious having this resource to use and share.

DH is going well after last year's knee replacement surgery. We even have managed a couple of gentle beach walks. He has signed up for his other knee to be done in June and hopes that, when recovered, we can do many more. 

This gorgeous Elna Automatic was given to me by a friend, whose mother got it from her sister. Both of these ladies are in their 90s! I took it along to a retired sewing machine mechanic for a service and he was very impressed with the quality of the engineering. It is a lovely machine, and the knee lever is a joy to use. I will gradually get more familiar with the machine and its wonderful selection of stitches.

Last weekend we opened our home for the third time as part of Australia's Sustainable House Open Day.  We showed 26 people over the house and garden in the course of the day, in four time slots.  They were very appreciative of us showing how we have adapted a 1970s home -such as the ones they live in- to be as sustainable as possible.

See all the houses which were open at https://sustainablehouseday.com/

Apart from all these things, we have been busy with grandparenting duties- our son and daughter in law have moved into a shiny new house and that is quite a bit of work, to get packed up and then start unpacking at the new place. 

Midsummer update

 

Here we are still, in midsummer, and just after Christmas 2023. A lot has happened since my last post, so I thought I should do an update. 

Christmas was quite lovely. Made special by family and friends.

This little picture is of a series of fairy light strings which now grace our home. Our grapevine has these coloured LEDs, and there is a string of white solar powered ones which enchant a small area near the DDs room.

There is a new bee bath near a frangipani and Geisha Girl duranta repens which I have decorated with glass beads and stones so the bees can escape the water while drinking. 

We finally got our ugly old asbestos fence replaced with green colourbond. The workers did a great job, and I am happy to report that the large jasmine vine has had a big haircut but is very much alive at the end of the patio. This picture above was just after the fence was installed. Since then I have been decorating the space and seeing what I can do about plants. 

DH and I escaped for a week to Albany for a holiday prior to him having a knee replacement in the first week of December. He is not driving at the moment due to his pain medication, but is doing well. He can walk around inside very well, and has ditched his wheeled mobility aid for a simple walking stick. We are now in 'rehab' mode which will ramp up as his healing progresses.

We are very grateful for a modern and free health system! 

I haven't done much quilting for a while -but I hope that now the surgery and Christmas is behind us, I can get back into the several projects I have on the go! 

Thank you for visiting this site. Gosh, I hope we can all see a renewal of peace for the new year. 

New Design Wall- with how to do it yourself

 

Twelve years is a long time for a temporary design wall to work. This  design wall (above) is a piece of batting, sewn to abacking, and hung from curtain rods in my sewing room, just behind the door.

It worked pretty well, but it was small and flimsy. I often had to use pins to keep heavy pieces on to it.

My dream was to one day have one of those design walls I saw on quilter's blogs- made with some kind of insulation foam blocks covered with batting.  The love of my life (apart from my garden and quilts) Mr DH, heard my call, and started to work out how to do it. The design brief included the idea that the boards should be relatively easy to dismantle -ie no sticking the boards to the wall with glue.

He did the research. He made the plan. Five boards. Four stuck together horizontally with gorilla glue and tape. One cut down the middle and stuck vertically. 

He created a solid shelf for the bottom of the design wall to sit into. He created metal brackets for the top, to hold it in place.

We had a bit of a blip when we realised that the piece of batting which I had saved for the project was about 20 cm or 10 inches too short! Quick trip to a shop, and we were here stapling the batting to the back of the boards, and using tape to secure the corners.

Here it is in all its glory! Solid, smooth, not wobbly or flimsy.

I love it

Thank you Mr DH! 💗💗

It's working! What we chose to cool our house

 

What is that new thing on the roof? Just to the left of the solar panels is our new evaporative air conditioner, installed 2 days ago in the middle of a Perth run of hot weather, with maximum temperatures running over 34C for more than a week now. 

This post is about our decision to choose the evaporative air conditioning, after deciding that the passive heating and cooling measures we had taken already in retrofitting our house, needed amendment for the changing climate. See our post about it here 

I am not sure that everyone understands evaporative air conditioning and how it works.  An evaporative air conditioner uses the natural cooling properties of water to lower the temperature of a room through evaporation. A ducted cooling unit is installed on the roof and connected to a series of outlets throughout the home that draws in fresh air from outside. 

The hot air passes through filter pads located inside the roof unit which cools the air and then distributes it through the vents inside your house. With an evaporative air conditioner, the entire volume of air within the house is refreshed every few minutes. 
Evaporative air conditioners work best in Perth on days when the air is hot and dry. So essentially, the hotter the air, the better the cooling effect will be. We have LOTS of these. 

Benefits include the use of fresh air to cool the home, and the ability to have the windows open! It is low in energy use compared to refrigerated air conditioning. We have noticed that because it operates with open windows, the patio outside our kitchen is also feeling the benefits of the cool air. This would not happen with refrigerated air conditioners, which rely on keeping windows closed. 

Of course, if the weather is humid, the evaporative air conditioning does not provide much assistance. Compared to the east coast of Australia, where they have summer rain, Perth does has a mediterranean type climate with a summer drought, so evaporative air conditioning has more application. In fact, we estimate about one third of the houses in our suburb have evaporative air conditioners visible on their roof. 

When the water has been used for cooling, it runs down a pipe to this bin which is on the side of our house away from the entrance, and from there we run it over to our struggling lemon tree. I am hoping the extra water will cheer it up! 

Comparing the cost of a whole of house evaporative air conditioner and a whole of house  heat pump type air conditioner, the evaporative is much cheaper. We could have chosen a split system to cool the bedrooms -because being too hot overnight is a really difficult thing, if you want to sleep- or the whole of house evaporative airconditioner. We choose the option which would give more comfort for us wherever we were, for the amount of money we could afford at this time. 

What will we do if it is humid, and evaporative airconditioning is not an option? The system can be operated without the water, as a fan, but I reckon we would rever to the way we did things before -closing the house during the cool of the morning, using our ceiling fans, and waiting for cooler temperatures overnight. We still will have had many more comfortable days than we did before. 

There is still the option for a heat pump -especially a split system for the bedrooms -at some later date, if we so choose. 

How has it been so far? It has made an astonishing difference. It feels cool in here, and we have more energy for living life. I am even happy to turn on the oven and cook in the middle of the day! 

What I learned in a heat wave

 

It has been hot here, and for a long time.  Perth has broken its record for the longest stretch of days over 40 degrees Celsius, as it swelters through one of its hottest summers on record. Little over halfway through summer, Perth has also broken the record for the highest number of days over 40C between December and February.  So far, 10 days have broken that mark this summer.

Summer is only beginning- we have the months of February and March to go through yet.

The beach is a lovely way to start the day -but we don't stay after 9 am as it is too hot and too hard to stay safe from UV rays. Even though we are only 7 km from the beach, the wonderful 'sea breeze' which is so famous in Perth for racing in after a hot morning, to cool things down, has been weak and hardly made it to our place, for about a week now. 

DH and I have been remembering how things were when we were kids -in those days people had no insulation in their houses. They used to sleep outside on hot nights, or just put the sprinklers on and let the kids run around in their bathers all day. Some people who live in rentals are still in houses that are poorly set up for hot weather, and that makes it very hard.

Here are some things I have learned during this heat wave: 

1.. Most of the garden has survived on it's regular watering, but you get some emergencies. There is one chilli plant in full sun which got very shrivelled, but a couple of days or watering has brought it back. Please note -chilli won't germinate unless it is over 30C, and it generally looks fabulous in hot weather, but this is weather is extreme.   Roses are pretty cheery too, even if the flower crisps and dries in one day. The grapes are fine with the hot weather. I have been giving the eureka lemon some extra water because it really was stressed. Don't know if it is going to pull through.

We are still harvesting blueberries, and some eggplants, and herbs, grapes and rhubarb. 

The little pond in the wine barrel, tucked in shade under the patio, still loses a lot of water through evaporation! I am topping it up every 2 days. 

WORMS - I nearly lost all of the worm farm, but read about a technique of putting bottles of frozen water in the farm to cool things down and so far they are still alive. I also throw a wet hessian coffee sack over them to try to keep them cool. 

We have had tiny ants trying to get in the house -and anywhere else they might find moisture and coolness. It takes a bit extra diligence to make sure there are no places they can make ingress.

The local birds are heat stressed! We have a lot of water bowls out for them, and in this weather we need to refresh them in the middle of the day. Birds I don't normally see are now coming into the garden for water. These big trees to the west of us, in the Council owned walkway, are wonderful! In the late afternoon, from about 4:30pm, they cast a shade over the house and bring the temperature down immediately. Mature trees and green spaces help to cool communities by as much as 10 degrees and the shade they provide cools our homes and streets. 

Our older cat is not really interested in eating much at the moment. I guess I understand that! She is sleeping in the coolest place she can find. 

2. We probably will need a RCAC  or some other kind of air conditioning soon. Up till now, with Perth's usual pattern of just a day or two of extreme heat before a cool change, the passive cooling strategies we have taken have kept us pretty comfortable. In a week of hot weather, however, the house just heats up, and it doesn't get cool if the overnight temperature doesn't drop very much. We have shade sails, we have a grape pergola on the north side, we have extra insulation, we have thermal curtains. We operate this house like a yacht- we open to the breeze, we close against the heat, but it isn't enough.  

This may in fact be the new normal for Perth- climate change is making every extreme 'more extreme'. Cold is colder, hotter is hotter and for longer. Drought goes on and on, or rain brings floods. 

Of course the very worst time to try to buy airconditioning is during a heat wave! There are no stocks in the shops, due to transport problems due to COVID, and the installers are flat out. We are thinking of installing a split system to service just our bedroom and our daughter's bedroom, as it is the heat overnight which is really debilitiating. If we can do that, then a "swampy" - an evaporative air conditioner- would be something we would add to the rest of the house at a later date. I am swinging wildly in opinions about the best options here, and continue to do research. I need some quotes for installing systems which will work here before I decide. 

3. It is better to stay busy than think about the heat! I have a new book about preserving the italian way, and have made some pickled onions as one of the first things to try. I am also working on my quilt.  Reading is a way of escaping into another world, and my local library is a treasure! 

4. When it is hot it is OK to cut yourself some slack. I allow myself to buy bread rather than making it (I just feed the starter and hope for the best). We sometimes have sandwiches for dinner! I cook a roast chicken in the slow cooker to avoid heating up the house with the oven. We want salads, watermelon, icecream. Sometimes a risotto or a quick pasta is OK but no-one has much energy or desire for hot food. I have read that heat kills more Australians than any natural disaster, so it is important to take hydration seriously. 

5. Respite can be lovely -we went to the local pool today, and the other day we took Mr 7 to the local cinema. A few hours in airconditioning is a lovely thing, to escape the hottest time of the day -our son and daughter in law invited us over to their place last night, where the evaporative ducted air conditioner was working to perfection. 

Escaping to a library, shopping centre or museum is a bit more complicated as our COVID situation makes some indoor settings problematic, but so far it has been OK. We got our third vaccine shot -the booster recently. 

I found some good stories here, that you may wish to check out

Self seeding plants -they come up by themselves! 

A lovely story of permaculture in indigenous communities in our North West of WA Here 

Surving in the heat -don't make these mistakes 

We upgraded our roof insulation

What is in your roof in the way of insulation?

Our brick and tile house 

When we bought this house about 25 years ago, it already had blown in recycled paper insulation. This was pretty standard for the time, and was usually installed to the R2 specification.  Over the years, this kind of insulation can become compacted and lose a bit of its insulating properties. It still works though as an insulating layer, and we have not been in any hurry to think of a replacement project until we had done every other possible thing we could think of to improve the thermal properties of our brick and tile home. 

We installed a north facing pergola with a grapevine for summer shade and winter warmth, we shaded our only west facing window, we improved the curtains and blinds. DH recently also went around sealing lots of gaps around doors, and those wall vents which let so much cold air in during the winter time. 

The old insulation

   

We decided that this was the season we would upgrade our insulation. A local family owned business came with a huge vacuum and sucked up all the old insulation, and replaced it with "EarthWool" batts at the now recommended rate of R4. "Earthwool" batts are over 80% recycled glass  and use no added formaldehyde in their production.  

The team also installed special covers over the exhaust fans, so that they are sealed when not in use. 

The new insulation and a cap sealing the vent on the exhaust fan

Why did we do this?

This diagram of the temperatures for our city will explain.

Like many places Perth's climate is getting a lot hotter. We wanted to see if we could improve the temperatures inside our home without resorting to the use of air conditioning (this is a last resort for us, but we may have to do it at some point in the future).  Last year the lowest temperature we recorded inside was 14C and the highest was 30C. We wanted to see if better insulation could bring those extremes back a bit-we want to be comfortable. It is early days yet, but even though the past week had outside temperatures down to 4C we did not get lower than 17C inside. We have also not used much heating in the evening. 

Would I recommend this to others?

I think that we need more data to be completely certain we have a Return on Investment  recommendation, though initial results look promising - I will keep you posted! 

Meanwhile I encourage you to watch a blogger named Nev talk about the measures he has taken to improve his place in Western Sydney -also visit his blog Under the Choko Tree 

Watch the talk here 

Mother Earth

On Mother's Day we often forget that the great Mother of us all, the Earth herself, needs a little care and respect, too.

I hope you are all going well and staying safe. In the slow down that is the result of this pandemic, many of us are finding ways to reconnect with the natural world, even if it is only our houseplants or the street trees we see from our windows.

We had some really marvellous rain last week. It was such a boost to the garden, and as it has been followed by sunshine and warmer temperatures, a lot of my seeds and seedlings are looking happy. This is our planting time, and now I have the garlic coming up I am moving on to broccoli and dill and anemones. I have been feeding the avocado which is still, after all these years, refusing to fruit. I have given it a companion tree to provide extra shade, and it has all sorts of compost and stuff in a deep collar around its trunk -but set back so that it does not get too wet. Oh, I love avocados, but this tree surely is going to have to reward my efforts at some stage or it will lose its place in the garden to something else. 

We were able, for the first time EVER, to enjoy our son, daughter in law and three grandchildren having lunch with us on Mother's  Day. It was mild and sunny and we ate outside. DH made a huge batch of sausage rolls, coleslaw and potato salad. I was given a SHREDDER for my garden, to assist in the big 2020 goal of making better compost. 

We have a local group on FaceBook which endeavours to build community and subvert the capitalist system at the same time by helping us give things to each other free of charge. That was how I got a sturdy bird bath support for the bird bath I had, whose base was crumbling. The magpies and wattle birds love this dish. 

I am scattering flowers around the garden, to keep the bees happy. These marigolds seed readily and when they grow it is often a surprise to see just what colours come up. 

DH tidied the garden shed and found a paper bag with some seeds which were labelled 'hollyhock'. He thinks we collected them about a decade ago, at a holiday house we were renting in Albany. Having seen a helpful online tutorial about checking seed viability, I soaked some paper and distributed about a dozen seeds. After a few days I was surprised to see at least a 50% germination rate -these seeds were not kept in ideal conditions at all -that metal shed gets very hot in summer. Anyway, feeling encouraged, I recycled an egg carton into a seed raising container and look what has happened so far:

Life wants to grow and continue to develop. If we stop getting in it's way it will reward us! 

Finally I leave you with a couple of things to read.

Thanks for reading this blog this far and thanks to all those who leave a comment. I enjoy our connections in this way. 

Reading time!

Deep thoughts about a quiet boycott of an unsustainable system from David Holmgren here 

Enjoy the pictures and the story about an Australian wilderness here 

"One day, the seeds may be reintroduced back into the landscape to flourish again which, for Wood, is a comforting thought. It will be nice if we can leave those who come after us with more than just a glimpse of what the world was in the beginning," he says.

Draught proofing for winter, and compost awareness week

DH was busy this week doing a project on improving the energy efficiency of our house.

His study is also our TV room, and used to be heated with an unflued gas heater, which required two vents to the outside and to the roof space, to protect us from poisonous gas fumes. The problem was, these vents were there all the time, but we used the gas heater only occasionally. On even mild evenings there was a noticeable draught in that room. 

Draughty buildings (energy assessors call them ‘leaky’ buildings, because they leak air) drive up energy bills. In winter they lose warm inside air, and in summer they let the heat creep in, pushing up energy consumption in both extremes. The more airtight your home, the easier it is to stabilise and control the indoor temperature.

We were guided by this website with lots of helpful tips: Green It Yourself 

DH used weather strips to seal cracks around the window in his study. It is a cheap and easy fix.

He also did a cheap, quick fix on those annoying air vents -simply covering them with sticky plastic 'contact' -the stuff we cover school books with! 

The biggest part of the project was to make a DIY 'double glazing' effect on the glass panel in the study door. We have good quality roller blinds on the windows, but the door has been hard to find a solution for. DH had already done this once on the main bathroom's toilet window, which had a permanent vent in it, so he was confident to tackle this one. Here is how he described the process:

"Using the same materials with which you make an aluminium fly-screen for your windows, I made a white frame to cover the whole glass section of the door. Then, instead of flyscreen I used light-weight clear tablecloth plastic to make a tight pane of plastic. Then with mounting tape on the frame I stuck it onto the wooden part of the door frame - thus creating a cavity of air as a barrier to heat-loss through the glass.

"This method is well know among retro-fitters and helps reduce the energy requirements of your house. We have good barrier blinds for the other windows in the room but it is hard to cover a door with a blind".

The weather is settling more into an autumn pattern and the nights are cooler now. We will have a good test of the improvements this week, with cooler daytime and night time temperatures.

How much? 

The whole project for the room was under $100. The plastic tablecloth is about $50 per metre, and he bought half a metre. The aluminium frame was about $25, with the corner brackets which keep it together. There was a flexible strip which holds the plastic in the frame and some double sided sticky mounting tape to hold it to the door. The weather strip for the windows was under $10 for the roll. We already had a bottle of isopropol alcohol to prepare the surfaces for the glue. DH has a well stocked workshop with various tape measures, levels, saws and stuff as required. 

What we hope to achieve

This is part of a continuing project to improve the energy efficiency of our home. It goes with our 'solar pergola" of grapevines on the north side of the house, which are now shedding their protective leaves and letting in winter sun. It goes with our substantial, block out, thermal quality curtains and blinds -we have single pane windows. It goes with our active building management -letting cool breezes in during summer, closing up the house on very hot or very cold days.

We want to see how close we can get to having a comfortable house without air-conditioning. 

We want to save our cash for other things than giving it to energy supply companies! 

We will review the comfort of the room and give ourselves permission to buy a small electric heater if required, after the usual first steps of putting on a jumper (sweater) or wrapping up in a quilt (see here for my quilts) 

In other news! This week is International Compost Awareness Week! Oh, yes we know how to party around here!

It was one of my two goals for this year for the garden -to improve my composting and to save and grow more seeds.

I have been moving to a 4 compost bin system -two in the front yard and two in the back. Each set has one to fill and one to stir. I am working harder at the balance between wet and dry, green and brown material in the bins. 

About composting 

Finally, a bit of reading for you:

Here is some helpful advice about ventiliation in our homes

The myth about 'safe plastic" 

Peace at last

Stormy clouds above the city this week

The last of the tradies left at 3pm on Friday, and we are gradually recovering.  Both bathrooms are back to 'hotel sparkle", and look great. Now we have water resistant grout hopefully it will be easier to keep them looking like this! 

DH worked on removing the water scale and soap scum from our ensuite bathroom shower screen, and did a great job. He took the doors off and removed all the fittings before treating everything and them re-installing them. (I have mentioned earlier that we had found that soap used in the shower eventually coated everything -the tiles and the screens -with a scum which needed to be scraped off with a scraper made for ceramic cook tops. Maybe this is just a Perth thing -we have hard water here.) DH also painted the ceiling after the plasterer had left. It is looking so nice in there!

We found that after the plasterer had put the new water resistant ceiling into the main bathroom, and sealed it with special water resistant paint(one of the most stinky things possible -he wore a respirator and we all went outside!), that the exhaust fan was not working. This required us to get an electrician in to install a new one. Now, as you know, getting an electrician onsite means that you have to pay a 'standard call out fee' of about $150, before the clock starts ticking on the cost of their labour. We tend, as a result, to save up jobs which require an electrician until we have one on site. The extra jobs we got this one to do involved replacing the ceiling fan in DD's bedroom -it had started to make a weird sort of thumping noise which freaked out the cat. The best thing for me, however, is that I now have a downlight over my sewing machine, and it is such a great thing! The downlight had been surplus to the kitchen renovation, and I had saved it up for my sewing room, having found that task lighting in the kitchen was a life changing thing! My whole sewing experience will be improved in this clear bright but soft LED light.

Dora hates having strangers in the house, and any kind of noise. One day I found her squeezed into quite a tiny space under a bookshelf, as the only safe space she could find. In the evenings however, she would emerge and enjoy our quiet reading, whilst she cuddled up to DH's legs whilst resting on her favourite quilt .

I spent a day in the State Library doing more research on the CARAD history project. While I waited for the library to open I took some photos of the old buildings around the Arts Precinct. This is one of my favourite buildings -the golden stone work and the arches are great. It is used as the administration centre for the museum, I think. I met an old school friend for lunch and a walk around the Botanica exhibition at the Art Gallery.

We spent Saturday in a giant rehearsal for the special 3 choir performance in which we are taking part. The rehearsal was at UWA, the university I was very lucky to have studied in, and I loved being back there. The gardens are just lovely at this time of the year.

As if we were not busy enough, we are all three of us, doing Nanowrimo, where the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November!

I have still been working on my quilt though, and am now sewing the borders together. It seems to be turning into a 'Christmas Quilt" with its green and red and gold colour scheme, which wasn't in my head when I started it! This is a happy surprise, and given that it is now November, I can see I have a deadline for this quilt -to hang by Advent 1 which is December 1 this year. With choir, Nanowrimo and all, it will be a busy month!

A big thank you to all who visit my blog, and especially my online friends who leave comments. Each one is read and treasured! I love visiting your blogs too.

The tradies are back, and other improvements

We have been making small improvements in our house, which has meant some work for DH and also an invasion of tradies.

First DH put up a utensil rack above my stove, which I absolutely love. When we renovated, the old utensil rack came down under the baleful eye of the kitchen designer, who seemed to have a very negative opinion of such things. Six months later, and none of us can find where to put our most used tools, and the constant searching between drawers was an obstacle to effectiveness. Time to take back the space and use it the way we want to! We went to IKEA and saw this black metal one, which would be just right for our lovely new space. DH put it up and we all love it.

Both bathrooms were looking tired even though they were renovated not too long ago. The main bathroom had a ceiling which had peeling paint -the bathroom renovator had not managed to solve this problem, so we got a plasterer in and he has made us a new ceiling out of special waterproof boards. We are waiting for him to come back to paint it with special waterproof paint.  We got another  tradie in to clean the grout in both the main bathroom and the en suite. He removed the grout and replaced it with water repellent stuff which is guaranteed for 15 years.

The decision to take on these projects was made because we want to have a home which is easy to maintain in our older years, and we are not now in the position where we can do some of these jobs ourselves.  You have to know where to spend and where to save. We feel this is a good investment.

Our Living Smart Course has been quite a joy. Last week I wrote about the water savings were were able to make as a result. This week we visited the home of one of our lecturers -and you can read about it here. Ecoburbia is a innovative retrofitted home which is  an "alternative urban infill development, housing cooperative, community garden, model sustainable house and benevolent dictatorship".  DH and I enjoyed seeing lots of the ideas we have been trying to incorporate into our place -and others we have not yet tried -in  a real life situation.

It has also been great to be with like-minded people. We have one of the people we met in our course coming over tomorrow to look at our garden.  Community is important for resilience -we can support one another in our simple living journeys.

Another community event that gave us much joy was when we travelled to a country town to spend a day learning about Benedictine Spirituality. I took this picture inside a newly renovated heritage farm shed where we met. They had used the old roof corrugated iron as lining in the shed, and put up some lovely art works around the walls. This picture of a tree has the motto "We all draw from the same ground water, we all reach to the same light." The lotus flowers were from the farm dam.

Another source of inspiration this week has been this book:

I borrowed it from the library, but I am putting it on my Christmas list because it is really so, so good! If you find yourself feeling hope is waning about the state of our world, this is the book for you!

Finally I have been making progress on my house quilt.

I am now working on a scrappy checked 4 patch border.

All in all, it was a very good week, but I am ready I think to release the sharks into the moat and put up the drawbridge! I am an introvert who needs recovery time from each adventure into society!

We painted a wall!

Last week DH and I painted this wall on the left.

It is not easy to paint brick -especially bark faced brick. We put on two coats of undercoat before the top coat of premium outdoor paint. Our hands were sore from all the pushing of the paint into the grooves of the bricks, but no lasting damage was done -and we were very pleased with how a couple like us with hand and joint issues, were able to get this job done together.

The reason we painted this wall is that it faces west -and gets a lot of afternoon sun in the summer. The room behind is my sewing room -and I spend a lot of time in there during the day. I felt as though the room was significantly hotter than the rest of the house, and we had thought about installing an insulated false wall of light coloured colourbond in front of it. Someone at the Sustainable House Open Day suggested trying the paint first -turning a dark and heat absorbing wall into one which will reflect light and heat.

As soon as the fairly thin first undercoat went on you could tell the difference -light was bouncing off the wall and into our little 'French cafe' space and the lounge room beyond. The cafe is just tucked in to the right of the picture above near the carport door. You can see that we have a colourbond wall here -which is the same colour as the carport door and the same colour of our newly painted wall.

At the same time we moved the pot plants which we had here -and we haven't moved them back. We are thinking of creating a water feature for this newly painted wall...with some 'Moroccan' inspired tiles as a backsplash.

This is the kind of thing we are thinking of



We already have the plinth and a similar sort of bowl, but we are thinking of putting it up against the wall, with some kind of decorative tiles behind. We already have outdoor lighting and water nearby.

Meanwhile I can see that I need to improve the weeding of the bricks in front of the wall here! The solution to every problem creates another problem!

I am also wondering if we will get to the point of painting the whole of the house this way...but I think we will get a tradie in to do it! 

Such a good day! Sustainable House Open Day 2019

We are recovering with a quiet day today, after welcoming 72 people through our place yesterday for Sustainable House Open Day.

There were 45 homes open here in WA, some purpose built and new with fabulous sustainable features. Many of them are 'south of the river'- a smaller number open here in the northern suburbs, which is one of the reasons we wanted to open our home, along with showing people what can be done with the kind of homes most of us live  in. 

We enjoyed sharing our home, and getting such positive feedback from people. Many came to look at the garden: just what can grow in a suburban backyard, how do you do it in our sandy Perth soils, what can I do to make my home more sustainable? There was talk of whether is it worth while to replace single pane windows with double glazing, and how big a solar array to buy. We discussed solar hot water, and if the 'tank runs out". 

A volunteer from the Electric Vehicle Association brought his car and parked it in our driveway -charging up from our domestic supply. It was a great feature, and he was a lovely guy- we ended up swapping marmalade and he gave us a dragon fruit plant! 

We prepared a pamphlet for people to take with them, called "Retrofitting a 1973 Suburban House"

1 Heating & Cooling

What we have done: 

A. Basic level of insulation in roof.

B. Shade-cloth Blinds on external side of  West-facing windows.

C. Pergolas and deciduous vines for shade on North and East (pictured above with winter sun coming in -in summer the vines cover the pergola and we get great shade ...and fruit!)

D. Water Tank also provides shade on west (as well as water storage)

E. Heat-block blinds and heavy fabric curtains for interior windows.

F. Ceiling fans in every room.

G. Outside kitchen to keep cooking heat from house.

H. Shaded screens on outdoor kitchen make a cooler alternative living space

I. Shade from trees.

Other possibilities being considered:

1. Pelmets over the curtain rails

2. Extra layer of insulation on top of ceiling

3. Insulated timber-frame cladding on front western wall (or should we paint in a light colour?)

4. Lift paving from front nature strip and replace with garden/vegetation

5. Seal the gaps – windows, doors, vents, exhaust-fan venting

6. DIY Double Glazing using Aluminium fly wire frame to seal door and toilet window.

2 Reduced Water Consumption

What we have done: 

A. No lawn.

B. Sub-surface drip-irrigation for garden

C. Water Tank – carries some winter rain into Summer.

D. Water-saving front-loader washing machine

E. Water-saving devices in bathroom renovations

a. Low capacity cisterns for toilets

b. Low flow shower heads

c. No bath

Other possibilities being considered:
1. Would eventually like to harvest grey water for loos and some gardening-council permissions required and are a barrier

2. Additional water storage tanks for the front garden

3 Renewable Energy & Reduced Consumption

What we have done: 

A. One car and we actively try to reduce kilometres in that car – using public transport as well.

B. 2.5kw Solar PVC system – which exports more energy than we use over many months. We bought this 7 years ago, so it has paid for itself now. Many people are putting in much bigger systems now, but our energy use is pretty low and we don't need more at the moment.

C. Solar hot water system  (Electric Boost on timer to use PVC power if available during winter)

D. Bigger windows in Kitchen and Bathrooms.

E. Solar Tubes – skylights – in lounge room. One visitor commented "you don't have any lights on here...our lights are always on!" 

F. LED globes into all old light fittings

G. Kitchen renovation included LED lighting, induction cooktop (replaced gas), energy efficient appliances

H. Growing food – preserving, freezing and drying to extend harvest. Eat locally!

Other possibilities being considered:

1. We probably need to eventually replace gas heating with R/C Air Conditioning -not in a hurry to do this.

2. Electricity storage batteries for Solar Power

3. Fully Electric car – or maybe a hybrid as a transition to fully electric.

4 Reducing Waste

What we have done: 

A. Composting Bins – four around the garden

B. Worm Farm and Worm Towers

C. Separating Waste Streams (batteries, bottle tops, crunchable plastics)

D. Refusing plastics where possible.

E. Re-purposed furniture – coffee table in lounge from Tip Shop for $25 plus a lot of work

F. Buying in bulk – refillable dispensers  for washing up liquid, conditioner, oil for cooking

G. Homemade Washing Powder – 2pts Lux Flakes + 1pt each Borax and Lectric Soda – 2 tbs/load for washing (front or top loader)

Urban Orchard

Our house is on a 600m2 block. The gardens around it are not large.

Here’s a bit of a check list of what we currently have in place:

Front garden:

quince, grapes, fennel,  onions

olive, mulberry, parsley nasturtiums

pomegranate, blueberries, rosemary avocado

lemon, goji berries, tomatoes basil

Side garden:

nectarine, kumquat, fennel, silverbeet,

mint, rhubarb, rocket, elderflower,

celery, tomatoes, onions, parsley,

curry leaf, spring onions, grapes, nasturtiums

Back garden:

grapefruit, tangelo, fig, lemon,

mandarin, lime, bay, kaffir lime,

peas, beans, dill, mint,

mizuna, rosemary, tomatoes, sage,

silverbeet, garlic, Vietnamese mint, thyme,

lemon grass, sorrel, warrigal greens, parsley,

borage, sweet potato, nasturtiums, broccoli,



We have not weighed our crops, but we use a lot in our daily diet – greens and herbs. We preserve the harvest in jams, chutneys, dried produce, and the freezer. We buy in produce at their seasonal peak when it is cheapest to make bottles of preserved fruit as well as jams. We share our harvest with friends, neighbours and the Buy Nothing Greenwood Facebook page.

It was a good day...and the place is looking pretty amazing just now! We are having a 'recovery day" today.