The power of a good list for the garden

Rose after a wet morning

Are you a list-maker? I love a good list, it keeps me on track, reminds me of what needs to be done, and I love ticking things off when they are completed.  This week was a pretty good week for me, mainly because I came back to making a list of things I wanted to achieve, and have been reviewing the list regularly. 

Iris in bloom

One of the things I have learned about myself and lists, though, is that I often need to break down a task into some smaller bits in order to get the energy to complete it. "Make an apron" is better listed as "choose the fabric to make an apron", especially if that choice is the thing which is holding up the whole process. 

I am also a person who is quite happy doing things in stages. I had the idea that I wanted to totally revamp the garden bed which borders our patio out the back. It is in full shade in the winter, but in full sun in summer, and has a wonderful trellis which needs to be in use.

In order to get that done I had to remove some plants which were not really working there, including a gardenia which had always struggled-it was too hot for it during the summer, so I moved it under at tree.  In the course of several weeks I have removed and replanted some ground covers which were here.  I needed to weed the whole bed, to buy some plants which I hope will succeed there, and to prepare the soil. The plan is to try some roses here, as they are deciduous when it is shady but will cope with the sun. The trellis will have a passionfruit on it and possibly a climbing rose. 

 I am now keeping a sort of 'garden journal" which records what I want to do and what I have done -successfully or not-and I am finding it very helpful. It is just a spiral bound notebook, and all I do is write the date and anything else I find helpful. I stick in seed packets or draw a design for a garden bed I have in mind.

Today's citrus harvest

Today we had a good time in the garden, pruning the citrus. I like to keep my trees quite low, as I am a small person and the fruit needs to be within reach.  Next time I am in the garden I want to give all the citrus a bit of a feed and attention, as they have all given such a lovely crop of fruit this year. The grapefruit has a second crop coming, which is a surprise but very welcome. As a result of the rain we have had, everything is looking quite happy. 

rainbow chard

Yesterday I made this recipe for a chard and feta pie using my rainbow chard. It was really nice! I used fresh oregano, parsley and thyme as flavourings. Rainbow chard is a pretty vegetable -mine has lovely red stems, and it copes with our climate very well. I have had this one growing for over 12 months- I just cut it from the outside of the plant and it keeps on putting out new leaves. As a result I am always glad to get another chard recipe. 

I planted some more snow peas this week. The ones I planted a few months ago are now putting out flowers and pods. I am hoping for a good crop this year -who knows, maybe some will actually make it inside? I love to eat them right there in the garden! 

How is your garden growing? Do you keep a garden journal? 

Good times, little cost

I have been re-reading The Art of Frugal Hedonism by Annie Raiser-Rowland and Adam Grubb, so I thought I would reflect a bit on how we are finding ways to have good times with little cost. As my Dh has just two weeks of paid work to go until he joins me in the gentle art of retirement living, this is a helpful topic of conversation between us just now. By the way, I don't know the authors, and don't get any money from my blog so this is a completely honest recommendation!

The authors of this book learned to put aside the usual frenetic lifestyle of modern 21st century capitalism. and instead to priorities frugal living in order to maximise their enjoyment of life.

They found that when your life expands beyond career goals, and you live in a fortunate place like Australia, then if you are really lucky to have good health and secure housing, then your life is open and available for creative thinking: what can I do with all this lovely time when everyone else is working? 

I love the idea of learning to maximise enjoyment and keep costs down.

Many years ago, when suffering from restlessness and exhaustion from working too hard and resting too little, I thought that a trip to a nearby shopping mall would entertain me. Of course, I found it tiresome to see so many things I couldn't buy -or else I bought things I couldn't afford and didn't need. I wish I had even 20% of the money I spent on junk that later was thrown away after such trips! One of the early things I did on my path to a simple life was to put a sign on the letterbox saying "no junk mail" and so I stopped being subjected to advertising so much. We gradually stopped watching TV with any advertising included in it, and found it much more peaceful! I certainly stopped shopping for 'entertainment". 

Here are our latest activities, in no particular order.

Mind Blowing Free Art

The Art Gallery of WA has a great free exhibition on at the moment, called Desert, River, Sea. It is fabulous work by indigenous artists of the Kimberley region in WA. I visited first with a friend, then I made sure I took DH to see it too. I reckon we will get back to see it one more time before it finishes. 

Get out into nature: our national parks

We have a number of national parks within an hour or so of driving from here. I have posted before about how much we love visiting Walyunga National Park . Last Friday we went to a park we haven't visited for a long time -John Forrest National Park. It was a spectacular autumn day. It cost us $7 for a concessional entry into the park. We took a picnic and ate our lunch while being closely supervised by the local bird life.

We took a gentle walk along a 2 km bush track after lunch.

We have other outdoor locations which are great for some exercise as well as fresh air and nature study: our beloved beaches, and the two lakes we live nearby all have excellent walking tracks.

Read lots of free books: join a library! 

Many people love to read, but if you are a fast reader like me, it can be very expensive to keep the supply of reading material going if everything you buy is new. The library is a fun place to get books -and the joy is that if the book you select to bring home turns out to be a dud, you can just go back and get a better one. I have had excellent service through inter-library loans and reserving popular books, so that new books can be read almost as soon as they hit the shops!

I also like a good second-hand book store. You can browse for hours and come away with a treasure! I have got some classic cook books from second hand stores and op shops.

In this regard I want to let you know about the wonderful Better World Books, which is an online book seller which raises money for literacy projects around the world. They sell books which are discards from libraries, to raise money for libraries. They also keep books from landfill. You can find great books cheap on this site. Again, this is a completely honest recommendation -no financial interest involved.

Become an Expert at something
With time and practice it is possible to become an expert at something, even if you start with not much of a clue. Whether it is the naming of native species of trees or bees, or making pastry from scratch, or learning a language, there are plenty of opportunities to discover your inner learner. Do you remember when you went to school for fun? No, just me then?

Well anyway, learning in your own way and your own pace is different from being part of a class. The wonderful thing about the internet is just how freely people share information and how-to videos with each other. DD has learned how to bind books from online tutorials. I have a wonderful group of quilters who share freely all their tips and techniques. DH learns a language from a free app, and studies woodworking videos. DS is developing his own skills in woodworking from these places.

You can often find online groups of people who also are into your area of interest -this becomes even more fun as you catch up with people around the world.

Grow a garden

Of course you can spend a lot of money growing a garden, if you head out to the nurseries and hardware stores, or get expert landscaping advice.

I am talking the OTHER kind of garden. The one which you grow in a styrofoam box you got from the supermarket where it had been  a broccoli shipping box, or in a pot you picked up at the tip shop.  You have to buy some potting mix, but after that you bug in a cheap packet of seeds or maybe a cutting which you begged from a friend or neighbour. You give it some light and water and each day it rewards you with growth! The fun you have in seeing things grow!

The celery in this pot was the bottom end of a bunch I bought from a greengrocer. I bunged it in next to the basil and the root end of a spring onion I had also grown from a shop bought item.

You can grow things to eat, as I do, or things which are just pretty and colourful.

Our suburb has a 'buy nothing' Facebook group where people regularly offer cuttings and divisions of perennial plants -for free! I often offer plants and cuttings through this site, and enjoy meeting the neighours this way. I guess our daisies, cannas, frangipanis and pelargoniums are spread throughout this area now!

My garden gives me hours of activity and pleasure each week.

Free and Cheap Music

DH and I love live music, but tickets to gigs are expensive unless you know where to look. We have a couple of conservatory-type music colleges in Perth, where the students often put on free or cheap concerts to gain experience. Music societies also have regular events for their members and others. DH and I sing in a choir -and for the price of our membership we not only get the fun of learning to sing together, but we are actually in the performance too! We have one coming up on Good Friday and have been learning to sing some lovely music for it. 

Our local city councils regularly put on cheap and free live events -especially during the summer, in parks around Perth.

                                     

Other places for music include our wonderful ABC radio -we love Classic FM and the Jazz channel too. It has introduced us to fabulous music over the years. 

Now that many people are moving to only listening to digital music, there are many CDs in op shops. We have an extensive collection of CDs and a CD player which we enjoy very much, everything from World Music like guitar from Argentina or Fado from Spain, or jazz from Mali, to classical music and popular artists. 

I guess this post is now long enough. I don't think I have exhausted the topic, however. I would love to hear from you about your good times for little cost activities too. 

Construction -deconstruction-reconstruction

One week left at work. These lovely flowers were presented to me by one of the Commissions I work with. In my working life there is now a bit of deconstruction, as I cut loose from the roles I have had for the last 5 years. It is an emotional time for some of the people I have known in these roles, and for me too. Even my DH, who is totally supportive of the changes, confesses his mind is busy with adapting to the changes.

There is obviously some construction too -I am building new roles for my future post-employment life. Some opportunities are calling me -for volunteer work in particular. I am also planning for changes around the house -jobs we  have wanted to get to for some time, but have been prevented by circumstances. We want to renovate the kitchen and freshen up the dining room for starters. I can hardly wait to get started.

We want to build more activity into our lives. At one point we used to walk every day for an hour -lately we have managed one walk per week, and possibly an hour and a half in the garden. We are both looking forward to making this a priority.


We have signed up for Sustainable House Day again this year, which will mean a bit of focus to our gardening as we prepare for it  on Sunday 17 September 2017. The website says "This unique peer to peer education is a valuable resource for anyone looking for inspiration, ideas and the key to sustainable living". We are not one of those newly constructed architect designed homes, with double glazing and insulated walls, or made of entirely recycled materials. Ours is a typical 1970s brick and tile house which we are retrofitting to make more sustainable and grow more of our own food. We hope we can inspire others to have a go even if they have an older existing dwelling.


In the middle of this, I have been constructing a quilt for our expected 3rd grandchild. The photo below is a picture of what I thought was a finished top. If you look closely you will see that the second row is wrong! The alphabet blocks are in the wrong order! One of my friends was brave enough to ask if it was what I had intended...umm ..no.

So I had to do some deconstruction, to unpick part of the borders and the whole of the second row, and then carefully try to get them back together again (reconstruction)  It went pretty well and I am happy I did it. 

Every quilt needs a back. In looking for a fun fabric for a the Aussie alphabet baby quilt I found this piece with Welsh pictures on it. Not quite big enough so framed it in green and white like the Welsh flag. Should be a fun thing for baby to look at during tummy time. Who doesn't love castles and dragons?

So I am hoping to that I can get the quilt sandwich pinned together today, and get some quilting done this week, which is my last week in the office.  

Doing things that are proven to make you happier!

There is quite a bit of stress around in the lead up to Christmas. Often we women feel this the most -as 'everybody's happiness' is dependent upon OUR efforts at gift buying, card writing, food preparation and home decorating. I can remember when DH and I had both our parents still with us and there was a LOT of Christmas partying to get through, just at the time when our young adult children were also busy too. In Australia the Christmas season coincides with the end of the school year and the end of most other community activities so there are lots of  parties and graduations and things added to the season.

Times have changed. It would be wonderful now to be able to fuss over our parents, but they went to God many years ago. We left school years behind some time ago now.  One of our young people now has a home and family of his own, but my DD is still here and a willing ally in all things Christmas.

Whilst people marvel at the way we decorate for Christmas - it is not at all 'minimalist" to have 5 Christmas trees- it does make us happier to do it. Christmas decorating seems to awaken our childhood memories. We enjoy the whole ritual of getting down the boxes, opening them up and being reminded of our favourite things.

One of our trees is the main tree, decorated in a very strict theme of gold decorations and musical items -drums, trumpets, etc -and NO TINSEL.  I hate tinsel!

We also have a kitschy jokey tree in the family room -where all the decorations the kids made when they were young reside -including a dinasaur hatching out of an egg (?) and the First Dog on the Moon christmas decorations. (A satirical cartoonist in Australia with the whole family enjoying it).

In the next few days we will go about getting a simple meal ready for Christmas day -with the things we enjoy to eat. I don't quite know what that will be but with the weather at the moment looking like a fairly mild 32 degrees C (about 90 F) I imagine we will eat on the patio. We might have grilled salmon and salad, with a special desert afterwards. We don't like turkey so we won't eat any.

Our son and daughter in law and grandchildren in Victoria have presents from us under their tree.

We have bought each other presents -and as two of us have birthdays as well, there is quite a pile of them! We have to make sure December birthdays get their own attention.

Each year we enjoy making donations to our favourite charities at this time.

I read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belle-beth-cooper/10-simple-things-to-be-happy_b_4241824.html and thought it would be interesting to see if I could do all ten things:

1. Exercise More
I have been a little sporadic in my exercise of late, so I am making more of an effort.  We had a lovely bracing walk down at the beach yesterday, and a walk around the park last weekend. DH walks with me on the weekends.

2. Sleep more

This is hard for me: I am often awake for several hours at night. This article suggests I shouldn't be concerned about it- I know I will get a few long sleeps per week and the rest of the time I am OK.

3. Move closer to work

When I was driving for over 80 minutes each way to work, it was a struggle. Now I can get the bus and train, and then have a 20 minute walk to work, I am much happier.Not that I need to worry for the next few weeks as I am on leave!

4. Spend time with family and friends-this is a great time of the year to do that.

5. Go outside-this always makes me happier. As I am on leave until late January I can walk on the beach nearly every morning, and spend time in my garden.

6. Help others- our charity and volunteering continues

7. Smile. I read somewhere that if we smile, our brain is tricked into thinking we are happy and therefore releases endorphins to make us happier!

8. Plan a trip -we have an overnight stay planned in early January.

9. Meditate- we do this every morning for 10 minutes

10. Practice gratitude. This is a great idea -we regularly do this as we walk on the beach. There is so much to be grateful for.

Thanks for stopping by to read this blog. I wish you a happy holiday season and a Merry Christmas.

The Larder

I have been stockpiling groceries for a few years.

My stockpile consists of those things which are staples in our home, and mean that we always have a spare or three of anything when in the past we were often running out. This gives me time to go to the shop and buy it -hopefully when it is cheaper than normal. In Australia our supermarkets seem to cycle through high prices and then lower prices to entice shoppers back into the store. If I can time it properly, I can, for example, buy 1 kilo bags of our favourite coffee for less than $20 each, rather than the $25 they are at the high end of the price cycle. The way I do this is to buy enough when  it is cheap to last us to the next cheaper offer.

My stockpile includes UHT milk -I use this to make yoghurt and it also saves us from a rush trip to the shop if we run out of fresh milk.

I keep the ingredients for my home made washing powder in the stockpile -borax, washing soda and lux flakes.

I always have tinned fruit and some kind of tinned vegetables, along with tinned tomatoes and tomato concentrate, anchovies and cat food.

I always have shampoo, conditioner and liquid soap in bulk supplies, along with toothpaste,  deodorant and toilet paper.

Recently I cleared several cupboards to create this Larder for the stockpile -it is in the laundry and is extra to the pantry in my kitchen.

In the last 12 months or so I have extended my stockpiling by using the facility provided to me by our RACWA membership, to shop at a bulk grocery store usually selling to catering companies and other shops. This huge warehouse is close to my home so it is easy for me to access it. Once a month I buy cartons of the things I usually use -I don't buy everything every month, but over a period of 12 months I have built quite a nice array of things we use most.

Now, I know that this bulk buying is working for us as a strategy for several reasons, because I have noticed our spending on groceries has dropped by over $50 a week.

The prices are not always as cheap as the cheapest prices in the supermarkets, for any individual item, but I am not one to travel about looking for 50c off this or that. 

The way it works is:

1. Having the basics in the house, we never have to go to the shop for ingredients to make dinner in a hurry. We also don't buy take away food -almost never in the past 12 months!

2. Shopping monthly for the basics means weekly shopping trips are just for milk, meat and fresh fruit and vegetables -this keeps me out of the stores. If I am not shopping, I am not spending-you know how hard it is to go in for 'just one thing" and to actually stick to your resolve!

3. I think the prices of the cartons -which is always cheaper than buying individual items -averages out to make the overall cost cheaper too.

I also use a local supplier of bulk dried goods who deliver by Australia Post, to buy the flour and other needs for baking that I use a lot -I am very happy with the quality and service of this company. With the right ingredients my bread has become a firm favourite at home -we pity those who must eat 'plastic bread' from a plastic wrapper instead of a firm, fresh LSA sourdough or a Russian Black bread loaf or a white rosemary scented, crisp crusted home baked loaf. 

I am really happy with my new larder and the skills I am learning about stockpiling and feeding my family better food for less. 

To read more about Five Star Frugal Living follow the link to my friend's link up party. 

Routines for life

I have been thinking about what I love about my home, and what that means for my weekly routines.

For example, I love this hall stand which now has an arrangement of silk flowers in a white cast iron urn on it, along with my 'French' market basket and my DH's straw hat. It gives me pleasure every time I go past it, so it is no problem at all for me to take a moment each Monday to give it a bit of a dusting as I go through my weekly 'house blessing".

Similarly, now we have renovated our bathroom, it is no problem to give it a good clean, too.I usually do that on Mondays too -my aim being to get a basic house clean done by lunchtime. In the afternoon I plan the week's menus and go shopping for any supplies we will need. I also pay any bills that are due.

I like having routines because they give me structure to my week, and mean that I can do some work on my days off, and also have some time to enjoy reading or sewing. When the routine tasks are done, I am free to play!

At this time of year our patio becomes an important place for entertaining friends. Recently we bought a new table and chair setting, and it has been great to have people over every Friday night in February for a meal and sharing our lives together.

This routine has been important to us over the years. We have several couples who come together to start the weekend this way. We take turns being the hosts. It helps us really STOP for a while on a Friday night and relax into the weekend. If we need to 'de-brief" from our working week, this is the place we can do it, so that we are freer to go into the weekend with a lighter heart.

Each Tuesday I give myself permission to sew all day. Today I progressed on my quilt -which I showed you all last week. I am really enjoying the Quilt as You Go method.

On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays I am at work. I really love the three-day per week work schedule that I now have.

My routines are pretty simple, but they are grounded in making life easier and calmer. If you would like to find out some ideas for a pretty good routine for life, follow the link to the Flylady website.