New garden path! Fairy enchanted!

It was a long term plan of mine, to have an informal path under the trees in the front garden, from the letterbox, round the mulberry tree and to the steps under the pergola. The idea was that this path would give definition to the garden beds and keep our feet to the path, where we might be able to move around even in wet weather without getting too muddy. 

I wanted a path that would be relatively cheap and easy for us to put down ourselves. We are in our early 70s and so brick paving is a bit hard on the old knees and not a DIY project.

In the end, we chose a metal corrugated garden edging and a pile of woodchips which we had delivered. 

It took 4 days of activity - about an hour at a time, which was quite enough for a couple of older gardeners like us. DH laid the edging and I did the mulching. 

I have been planting volunteer plants like yarrow and pelargoniums on the garden side of the path and I expect that by next spring the place will look great. 

AND then we added lights!

I am delighted with the results! The wood chips are easy to walk on, and they keep my feet dry when the garden is wet. Each day I walk along the path and pull out any nasturtiums who want to grow in it, but that only takes a moment. The fairy lights give me a little bit of joy every evening. 

Thrifty habits vs budgetting?

 I used to be as a member of an Australian thrifty living site, and of forums to do with sharing tips on simple living. It was a result of these things and my general reading about climate change, which led us along a path of simple living, which enabled me to resign a stressful job and be confident I could retire early without putting our financial situation or lifestyle on the line. We were actually living on the amount of money we would have when I was not working, so I knew we could manage. 

Many of these practices involved learning how to be more skillful in our homemaking. If we could stop outsourcing labour to bakers, supermarkets, even farmers and shops, we could learn to make things at home which were  sturdy, wholesome, and practical. The pride of eating your own pumpkin soup, made with the stock you made from the chicken you roasted and the pumpkins you grew, is a great feeling. It is more nutritious and comes without weird ingredients and preservatives. 

Yes it was work. Work that is meaningful and enjoyable and productive! If it was too faffy - for example making cheese- we gave it a go and then gave it away. Blessed are the cheesemakers! But still there was a lot we could do with increasing skill and pride and productivity and our money went further than before. 

Thrifty living practices continue to be part of how we live:

1. Making a lot of food from scratch including bread making, jam and chutneys and yoghurt
2. Growing a proportion of our fruit and vegetables, and herbs which save us money and give us good quality food to eat. We are self sufficient in lemons! We have lots of herbs for nutrition and flavour. We pick green leaves for salad and sandwiches. 
3. Constantly learning how to avoid waste, especially in the kitchen. 
4. Maintaining and repairing our appliances where possible to keep them functional for as long as possible -for example, cleaning the dishwasher filter! 
5. Bulk grocery shopping to take advantage of cheap bulk prices and reduce the need to run to the shop too often
6. Buying second hand rather than new -includes most clothes
7. Knowing how to build entertainment around what we have rather than what we buy- reading books, playing board games, having friends over for meals, handcrafts, walking etc
8. Making our own cleaning products and laundry powder
9. My husband is our handyman and can achieve minor plumbing and house maintenance tasks, build us useful things like bread bins or picture frames and chopping boards. 

We have used a lot of budgeting methods over the years. I can remember years of using a physical cash book with ruled lines and columns. Of course we used spreadsheets from time to time. I had a subscription to MYOB but over the years they were not flexible enough for a single personal budgeter. 

We have spent years just doing no budgeting at all. If there seemed to be quite a lot of money in the bank, we would assume that we could meet our obligations and not need to worry.  After all we were thrifty people! This was not always true. It was too easy to 'feel' that we deserved another interstate holiday, and that we would be fine, but getting home to discover that we needed a new hot water system and we had used up our surplus cash, was stressful. 

Five years ago I gave YNAB a go. This is "You Need a Budget" and apart from being a happy customer I have no financial relationship with this company. They gave me a 34 day free trial, and I jumped in. It is an online software budgeting and education company and I have found it very helpful as a tool to add to our thrifty habits. I pay a subscription each year -and I find it entirely worth it. 

Joining YNAB has given us clarity and reduced anxiety over our finances, and we regularly rejoice about how YNAB has meant we don't even notice when a large recurrent expense is coming up, because we have the cash flow to be sure everything is covered a month in advance. Simple living or thrifty practice helps us live cheaply and well, but without the ability we now have in YNAB  to have funds to build infrastructure or cover recurrent expenses, we found it can only cover part of the challenge of living on a small income. I noticed that thrifty advice tends to lead some people towards a fear of spending money, and that it can be a bit joyless. 

Our five years of YNAB living have enabled us to improve our house simple living infrastructure even when my husband retired too:

1. We installed air conditioning - we live in Perth Western Australia and things are getting hotter and drier here. Airconditioning is supplemented by ceiling fans and shade structures around the house, and by the quilts I make to snuggle under in the winter. 

2. We added 3500 litres of rainwater tanks. 

3. We now have an electric vehicle and home charger so we can drive per kilometer  at one third of the cost of an Internal Combustion engine and on solar power from our solar panels. 

4. We completed the removal of dangerous asbestos fencing and made new fencing around our garden There is a new retaining wall on one side of the garden, which has enabled some pretty landscaping to occur. 

5. We needed to repair our ceilings as we live in an older house and the strapping between the beams and the ceiling panels needed renewing or they would fall down- this is a very expensive exercise but we could confidently save up for it whilst still having money for fun things like live music and community theatre. 

I find great relief from anxiety with the method of budgeting I have been taught. 

How do you budget? 

In praise of baskets -and tips on how to buy them

I love to browse op shops for things that are both beautiful and practical, and none are more beautiful and practical than cane baskets. All of these have been found in op shops, and I have not spent more than about $10 on any one of them. I have quite a number now, and don't yet see the need to stop collecting them yet. Nothing screams "simple living" than a basket actually being used. If I were a social media influencer this post would contain a picture of me in a floppy hat and a frilly dress, with a basket hooked over my arm, in my garden whilst I harvest flowers or something.

Instead I use them in the following ways:

This is my library basket. It is strong and sturdy and feels great when carried. I can keep my library books near my chair and pick it up and carry it away if I want to go and get more books! 

This is the laundry recycling station. We have laundry baskets, flat baskets for drying seeds, baskets to take the recycling to the bin, and baskets to corral the scrap paper for the compost. 

There is nothing like a good sturdy basket to take to the garden to pick your own fruit. 

But if you have too much fruit, you need a basket to put some out on the verge to enable neighbours to help themselves. 

And if your seed is dry, you need a basket to hold the seed heads while you separate the seed from the husks. 

When not storing fruit,  baskets can hold dried flowers or your keys.

They hold toys for grandchildren. 

They keep spare parts for quilting.

They cover plastic plant pots. 

They fill the space at the top of bookcases in a decorative way, whilst waiting for another task. 

A few tips for buying baskets:

1. Set them on a level surface and see if they stand upright without wobbling or looking wonky. Wonky baskets are very hard to correct.

2. The handle needs to be securely attached if you might want to use it to hold heavy things. I have been able to reglue a few handles which were coming unstuck, but each basket seems to have its own way of attaching the handle to the base, and you need to look carefully to see if it is repairable. I have one basket which I repaired by wrapping with string, and it is still going strong. 

3. I can make do with a basket that has a tiny break in the cane weave, but not if it affects its ability to hold the contents securely

4. Fashion will tell you that you need your basket to have a washed out French grey look, and I have seen people spray painting them to get that look. Personally I think the golden brown shades of cane to be universally acceptable. 

5. If a basket has been damp and has a mouldy look or smell , you may be able to resurrect it (non-food storage only) by spraying it with a teaspoon of clove oil mixed with a litre of water, and sprayed on the can very thoroughly, then dried in the sun. I have one that I gave this treatment to, and it is still very useful to take Nanna's supplies of games and toys when I go babysitting. Note: our grandchildren are too old to put things in their mouths! 

6. Always buy them second hand or in charity shops! The price is very much discounted there. 

7. Consider picnic baskets - but take out the inner loops which were made to hold utensils- you will then have a very sturdy basket for other purposes.

8. Don't carry a basket close to your clothes if you are wearing a loose weave fabric which may snag on a bit of cane which is sticking out a tiny bit. 

Do you love baskets too? 

 

A couple of quilt finishes

I have completed a couple of scrappy baby quilts recently. They are both finished at 45 inches square and will be given to the guild's Community Quilt programme which gives quilts to hospitals, nursing homes, hostels and shelters. I hope that the babies who get to snuggle in these find them bright and happy.

Both of them were completed on my Singer 306 machine, a workhorse which is the same age as myself! The top quilt was started on my 401 but the bobbin winding mechanism stopped working after a while so I swapped it over to the older machine. I hope I can get the 401 to work again because it is a lovely machine too.

 Now that I am done with these, I am thinking of 'using the good fabric" for a sampler quilt which I will do as a 'quilt as you go" quilt. Right now I am falling down internet rabbit holes, finding inspiration and ideas about how to make a sampler quilt, which I have never actually done before. 

Is that rain? and other adventures

Apparently Western Australia was in a 'heat bubble" with unseasonably warm temperatures in late April and early May. We had had lovely warm days of about 25C with cooler nights, but worryingly, very little rain at all. Finally about a week ago, the rain started to fall!

I was harvesting limes, grapefruit, tangelos and limes, and still hand watering the snow peas and garlic I planted expecting winter rains. I still have so much citrus at this time of the year, and often I offer it to neighbours for their use. 

DH made a lime chutney but was disappointed in it -he thought the skins should have been softer after cooking. We left it in the jar for several months, and have discovered that now it is exceptionally yummy! 

Our 3 year old passionfruit vine has finally started fruiting. I grew it up over the dead lemon in the front garden, bordering our neighbours' driveway, so we are all getting excited to see the large round fruit appear. I check it every day to see the fruits change from green to yellow, when they will be ripe. It has been too many years since we had our own fresh passionfruit. 

This beautiful view of King George Sound's entrance is from nearly a week we had away in Kinjarling Albany -our favourite place for a holiday, 5 hours south of Perth. We had a really really good time. Due to the late winter, it was warm and sunny most days and while it is a worry for farmers, I have to admit it was a lovely time for us. 

I found this original watercolour of a beach shack on Wadjemup Rottnest island, in the op shop. I really love it!  We are gradually filling up the wall space over the sofa bed with a gallery of original paintings.

The autumn weather has brought seasonal flowers in our native vegetation: banksia and eucalypts in particular. 

I have been pleased with the roses in my garden which have enjoyed the autumn weather and put on a nice show of blooms, too. I am trying to put more perennials in my front garden so that there is a more full, abundant look out there. 

So glad to have a warm and comfortable home for the winter season, so grateful to have some rain at last! This is Dora who loves to sit on quilts, and will seek them out if they are available anywhere in the house. 

Thanks for visiting! 

One more turn of the summer merry-go-round

We are all done with summer, at least emotionally, but summer is keeping on keeping on. Just when I was all inspired to get into autumn planting, the hot weather came back for one more go. It was all I could do to keep up with the watering and keeping things alive! 

Mind you,there have been a few showers, and the temperatures have slowly started to go back into temperate temperatures. 

While I am waiting  I got this lovely book by Huw Richards called The Permaculture Garden, with lots of lovely ideas for me to be thinking through. 

He has a very clear and concise way of explaining things, and the diagrams are beautiful. His Welsh garden is so lush! I thought I might find it too Northern Hemisphere to be of much use, but really there is so much that is relevant here. 

The hoya was moved to a slightly sunnier spot and immediately celebrated with lots of buds. 

We took a little trip to Bunbury to see the wonderful Gregorian Brothers in concert, which was sooo, sooo beautiful.

On the way there and back we had a chance for a some sightseeing in Mandurah and Pinjarra. 

Having had a lovely lunch with a friend in Pinjarra, we visited a favourite op shop there and found a treasure: an original oil painting for $15. The frame was in need of some repairs, but DH was able to fix it in about 10 minutes or so. We really like it. 

Sometimes the weather turns into autumn properly in Perth at Easter, so I have my fingers crossed for next week. 

 

Gardening after a long dry summer -inspiration!

Well, the big news is that it RAINED! So yes, it is officially 'autumn" or actually it is bunuru, the Noongar name for the season where the storms begin and the weather gets a bit cooler - low 30C rather than high 30s-40C-  and the Marri trees are in bloom. We had a fabulous thunderstorm this week and it has made everything greener and more refreshed. 

I harvested the pomegranates, to save what I can of the crop because various birds or rats have been eating them. I took a few to a local food pantry, along with some fresh limes from our tree, and they were well received. Now I need to get the kernels out of these in the bowl, so we can freee them for salads later in the year.

A bit of rain makes Perth gardeners think of planting things! I went to a garden cntre and bought a new hibiscus, some herbs and a salvia for the front garden, which I have been renovating. I have scattered calendula and marigold seeds in there as well. Our rear garden is pretty much given over to the fruit trees and productive raised beds.  The front garden, however, whilst it is wonderful with both fruit and flowers for much of the year, looks pretty drab at the end of summer, as very few plants flower in the heat, and everything is a bit stressed. 

I want to plant things closer together and have more foliage, at the very least.

This is a rose called glamis castle, I think. It is never very abundant in summer, but the spring and autumn suit it better. 

The plants that can take the heat in this climate -frangipani and hibiscus - are going to be featured more. My two white roses are survivors, but they have shown that they just need more water than our drip irrigation, 2 mornings per week as allowed, can deliver if they are going to flower consistently. I have changed the watering delivery method to help support them, along with a bit of handwatering too. 

I have planted an apple blossom hibiscus and a purple one called Hawaiian Skies.

Everyone says that salvia are tough and long-flowering, but I have tried two before, which died. I have a new one, and will take special care of it and hope it becomes established. 

I have put another frangipani in the ground -it was a cutting which I grew on in a pot since last year- and also a lemon verbena which I also had in a pot. 

There will be some lower storey plants -yarrow, iris, pelargoniums, daisies, along with some herbs like thai basil and parsley. I have scattered marigold and calendula seeds.

 

Getting Inspired

There are a couple of places I have found real inspiration recently. One is the wonderful Regenerative Skills podcast, which connects me with a community of permaculturists around the world, who are working in hard conditions, and who often have very few resources.  It is a source of hope.  

Hugh Edward's You Tube channel is also a fantastic resource. I loved the 9 tips one which helped me get on to the job of processing my seed for storage. This picture below is fennel which I had been drying in the laundry. It smells amazing! I have come to really think that fennel is an under appreciated herb. It grows as a perennial, has tall ferny fronds and is so useful in salads and for creating a bed for your roast to sit on in the roasting pan. You can eat the seeds and they germinate well in the garden and will grow without much water. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIyoaLX5LQs&ab_channel=HuwRichards

I have been letting these self-sown pumpkins run under the citrus trees. There are about 5 which have survived and grown well, but they do try to take over!

The limes are gowing fresh and juicy at the moment. We have mandarins and lemons ripening up too. 

I have some elephant garlic to grow, when the temperatures drop a bit more, and I need to decide on other winter vegetables - we love snow peas so I want a lot of them!

It feels so good to be energised after the hot summer, and I am looking forward to seeing my garden green up soon.