New garden bed arrives!

I was very excited this week when this new raised garden bed arrived!
This is on the west side of our house and will be close to the first water tank we own. We are now investigating the best tank for us.
There will be a shade sail over the area in the summer.
We plan to grow asparagus and strawberries, celery and lettuce in the raised bed.
At the back you can see the snow peas which are now growing along the fence.
My Darling man spend a few hours yesterday wheelbarrowing some soil into a heap, which is now in the bottom of the raised bed.
the soil is coming from a heap which has been made by scooping out some soil from the front of our house, where we are going to pave.

Politeness in live concerts -where has it gone?

I have just been to see a wonderful young orchestra play some amazing orchestral pieces in the Perth Concert Hall, conducted by a virtuoso, world class conductor.
The music was fabulous, and the young people played with distinction. I happen to know they have practiced all week last week, more than 5 hours a day, perfecting their performance.

In the final piece, after the interval, a woman two rows from the front started eating from a foil wrapped bag of potato crisps! The cellists were distracted, and even the conductor turned around twice to see what was making the racket. Then she burped ( I kid you not!) and then when the crisps were finished, she rummaged in her bag (still rustling the foil) until she found her hand cream and then proceeded to noisily slap the cream on her hands!

I really think most people do not know how to distinguish between sitting in your loungeroom watching a DVD, and making comments as you like, and a live performance in which the players are with you, sometimes only metres away.

So, here is my "audience guide" to how to conduct yourself at live performances:
1. Get there on time. If you are late and your seat is at the front, ask the staff to put you at the back (if they let you in at all) until a suitable break.
2. Don't eat in the middle of a performance, especially in a 'quite bit"
3. Don't text people on your mobile phone in the middle of the performance. Even if your keys ar soundless, the light disturbs others. Some sound systems will be disturbed by your activity.
4. If you bring your baby and he or she begins to cry, please take them out.
5. If you are in a classical music performance, look at the programme and work out how many movements you are listening to. It is expected that each movement will proceed without applause between them. Let there be a quiet moment, so that the music can flow from one mood to the next without interruption.

Drying in the winter -our latest technology

We wanted to reduce our reliance on electricity for clothes drying in the winter.

My darling man made me a clothes line which hangs under the eaves on the side of the house away from the weather.
As you can see about 2/3rds of it is under the eaves. Darling Man will add a short roof from the eave to the fence so that it can be completely dry.
He even put down 24 bags of blue metal, so that the ground drains any water away and keeps the feet dry while we hang out the washing.
Already we have reduced the need for the use of an electric dryer for hours every week, to less than 1 hour per fortnight ( sometimes we just need a quick 'whoosh' to completely dry something which has hung outside in damp weather.

Climate change evidence in my garden?

In the summer I could not keep the tomatoes alive. The hot winds and scorching heat dessicated them.
Unknown to me, one poor plant survived and in late Autumn I found this tomato plant. It is the best looking tomato I have grown for years, but it should not be flourishing at all. This is winter in Perth, Western Australia and everyone knows tomatoes grow in summer.
Pundits have said that Western Australia's south west is one of the first places to show effects of climate change. Our rainfall has declined by nearly 40% in the last 40 years. Our summers are hotter, and as this tomato shows, our winters are milder.
I wonder if the tomatoes which are now hanging in large green bunches on this plant, will actually get enough sunlight to ripen? It will be interesting to see.
If so, I might need to adjust my whole planting schedule.
I am also thinking of making permanent shade structures for the whole garden for summer, a concept we would not have had to contemplate years ago.
These are worrying times for those of us who care for the earth, and my tomato might just be giving me proof of a generalised climate change. Of course I know that it is too early to tell -but if this were to be repeated over several years, then we would know that our Perth climate more closely resembled that of Geraldton, some 400 km north of us, where tomatoes are grown in winter to supply the demands of southern cities.

Baking Day

It is the last day of my holiday, and I celebrated by getting into the kitchen to bake a loaf of bread from scratch, using the very helpful tutorial from the ALS website (http://aussieslivingsimply.com.au) .

In the picture you can see the last slice of my Lemon and Poppyseed cake.

There is a chicken roasting in the oven right now, and as soon as it is done, I will be putting another cake in. I am planning a date loaf to use up some dates etc that I have in the kitchen at the moment.

I am sorry my holiday is almost over. I get such joy out of the simple things I do at home, that I wish I could afford to cut back to half time and spend more time doing these sorts of things.

My working life is very challenging and it takes up so much of my time, but at the moment, with my two adult children still at home and still students, I don't think we can afford for me to cut back yet. It is part of the plan, however and one of the reasons I work so hard on living simply and watching our spending is to prove that we could live on less cash.

So I need to keep on making sure that when I do have time for simple things, I make the most of it.

I am determined this winter to do more of:

• scrapbooking
• sewing
• reading
• gardening (well, it needs to be done and the weather is not so bad here that you can't spend some time out of doors)
• exercising (same as last point)
  

I am going to spend less time doing:

• watching TV
• eating the wrong things
• shopping

I will use this blog to keep myself on track!

Lemon and Poppyseed cake

I am on holiday this week. Whenever I am on holiday, I turn into a 1950s housewife! I don my apron and I get into the kitchen and enjoy myself enormously cooking up a storm.

I love my kitchen. It is very highly decorated with my favourite things. There are, as you can see, lots of plates on the wall. I collect decorative china plates and a lot of them are from Australian Fine China.

There are my collections of favourite tea caddies and Arnotts biscuit tins.

This week I have made one of my all favourite cakes: Lemon and Poppyseed! I took it to morning tea for my elderly relatives and found that they loved it!

I think I got the recipe from one of john's cousins. The hand-me-down recipes are best, don't you think?

Lemon and Poppy Seed cake

125 g butter, softened
grated rind 1 lemon
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups dessicated coconut
2 tblspns poppy seeds
1 1/4 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup Greek Yoghurt

Lemon syrup: 1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup sugar, zest of one lemon, juice 2 lemons

Method:
Preheat oven 160 degrees C. Grease a 20 com tin, line with paper or use springform.
Beat butter and sugar until light, add lemon peel gradually.
Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended.
Stir in coconut and poppy seeds.
Fold in sifted flour alternatively with greek yoghurt.
Spread in prepared tin.
Cook 1 hour or until cake pulls from side of tin and skewer inserted into centre comes out clean.

Make the syrup by stirring sugar and water , peel and juice over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase the heat and simmer 5 minutes.

Pour hot syrup over hot cake. Cool in the tin.

This is even better the next day!

The Book Club reads "Affluenza"

It was my turn to choose a book, so I chose "Affluenza". The Book Group usually reads novels, so I was a bit unsure about how they would take to it.

One of our group was very unhappy as she felt the book was somehow offensive to her lifestyle. "I have a big house, so shoot me!" she said. The chapter on how much Australians spend on pets upset her too, as she has a dog which has cost a great deal of money recently.

In the hurly burly of the book club I did not know how to respond to her. I could tell she was angry buy a discussion about her personal choices and how to evaluate them was beyond me.

Another couple have recently planned an overseas holiday, and seemed to feel as though they needed to justify that.

Several others, however, were really excited about the insights into how advertisers manipulate us into buying things we don't need. One person declared "I am an impulsive shopper!" and recognised that she often buys craft items in excess of what she can use. This woman has a daughter who lives in the country, grows vegetables and scrimps on electricity use. I think the book helped the mother understand her daughter more, and she promised to pass the book on to her. I hope that the book brings them together more into a more simple lifestyle.

One of the things I tried to explain was, even if people are not worried about climate change and its links to our excessive lifestyle, that being aware of the pressures to spend, spend, spend can help them use their hard earned money better.

All in all I feel it was worth the risk of making the choice to read this book with my book group. I took a risk of seeming to be pushing a barrow, but I think we had a good discussion.