May 2012

So here we are in May, the year is just whizzing by.

We are finally doing a "makeover" of my sons room which was a combined Christmas and birthday present and involves a major clear out of toys,  painting and some new furniture. It is really changing from a younger boys room to a teenagers hangout and will look really wonderful when it is finished. We are still waiting on a desk from Ikea and he wants to find a really cool poster to put up on the wall.

Fisherman preparing the walls for repainting...

At the same time I have been reading Simplify by Joshua Becker on my kindle. With this in mind I have been really working on clearing out from his room as much as possible, and separating things into piles to give to St Vinnie's or pass onto younger cousins or the refugee association. As the Simplify book suggests I am just planning to tackle one drawer or surface at a time and slowly keep the process going.

For Mother's Day I am going to ask for commitment and assistance to keep clearing out and getting rid of stuff we don't need. (I have tried also asking for obedient children with clean bedrooms but my daughter replied "where do you get them?")

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On the bright side Fisherman and I had a weekend away in the hills at "The Willows" a B&B in Basket Range; this was a 50th birthday present from my family for him. It was a real treat. The house is surrounded by a Cherry orchard and has a cottage garden all around it with beautiful hydrangeas, salvias, fuchsias, windflowers, roses and many other plants. Early May is spectacular in the hills with Autumn foliage, the grape vines all turning golden and cool, fresh apples, crisp clear days and cold nights.

While we were in the hills we stumbled across a international sculpture symposium at the Cedars in Hahndorf. Sculptors from Australia,  the USA, Korea, Japan, Spain and a number of other places were making large stone sculptures on site, on completion they will then be placed in towns in the hills on permanent display. i really liked a lot of it. My phone battery gave up while I was there so I was only able to capture a couple of them.

We visited Barretts winery near Uraidla. Lovely wine, beautiful gardens and views and very pleasant company

Barretts Winery

The whole thing did give rise to fantasies of living in the hills with some property, a large kitchen garden, an orchard, open fires, you know the kind of thing. At the moment we are committed to staying at the coast, close to the kids schools and work. The hills are so attractive but I know I would really miss my beach walks.


On the home front I did manage to do a little op shopping. I know, I know, it is more stuff!
I do need a little jug and some more small vases so I felt these beautiful objects were justified at $5 a pop.

I have been experimenting occasionally with some bread making. I m quite pleased with the results but really need to make it more regularly to get really good at it.

Our next door neighbours gave me some pomegranates. hopefully next year we will have our own. I went through the protracted process of seeding, juicing, squeezing, and boiling up the juice with some sugar to make pomegranate syrup. It is delicious!

I have done a few things in the garden, planted out two kinds of peas, some rainbow chard, cabbages, kale, coriander, lettuces and  a few seedlings of beetroot a friend gave me. Looking forward to be able to pick some of these greens in the coming weeks. The chooks are very happy and we have lots and lots of eggs, we are giving a lot away and still having to think about what to do with all these eggs.

I have gone vego (with fish allowed) alcohol free and chocolate free for May so I will am eating more eggs than usual. So far very easy to be meat and alcohol free but being such a chocoholic I am really struggling with that and have had a couple of minor breakouts.


Last night just before going to bed a big sigh from my son. "What's the matter?" I said. "I have to go to school tomorrow", Says he. "and I would rather be in France." (well der!)

Book Giveaway & Review: One Magic Square, by Lolo Houbein | Sustainable Suburbia

Book Giveaway & Review: One Magic Square, by Lolo Houbein | Sustainable Suburbia

Sustainable Suburbia are giving away this book and I would love to have a read of it!

March 2012

So the beginning of the year has not gone exactly to plan. I am busier than I would like and this is despite cutting back time in one of my two jobs.

Life is very full with two working adults and two teenagers in a house and the demands of work and school leave us all exhausted. We have had a round of sickness in the house; only a bad cold but enough to keep me off work today, hence the time to do some blogging.

The garden has had very sporadic attention and the only things I have grown to eat this summer are chilli's, capsicum, basil and a few zucchinis, a sad state of affairs.

On the good news front there are lemons and figs, limes on the lime tree as well as a few Persimmons on the Persimmon tree. Nothing as yet on the Pomegranate but it is growing well so it is only a matter of time.

Writers Week this week and I will make it there but have not been so far. Had a ticket for last nights special event but had to give it away to someone well and non infectious!

The Lavender has been beautiful and full of bees.

Perhaps too full of bees. We had a swarm that tried to set up house in the shed (and stung me while I was watering) and then moved to the Rosella box in one of the Casurinas out the front. We had a bee man come and take the box away and add the bees to his hives.

We did have a family of Rosellas living in the box in the spring which was a treat. Very noisy when the three young ones were learning to fly; the perils of having a native front garden just outside the bedroom windows!

I started the year with great intentions of getting out on my bike more and having a couple of good rides a week. I did well in December and January but since school went back that seems to have gone by the wayside. I plan to get back to it this weekend, it is a long weekend so no excuses. We are only going to go to one day of WOMAD this year, much as I love it I think if I do the full four days again I will need a week off to recover.

I love going to our local Organic Market, check it out at www.organicsustainablemarket.com.au

have only made it there twice so far this year, that gives me some awareness of how overcommitted I have been!

The Iron horse at North Haven.

The sky at Henley.

What a joy and a privilege to live so close to the beach.

My youngest finished Vac Swim at Henley this year, the end of a great tradition of a week or so in January of lovely mornings at the beach swimming, socialising and developing skills for the kids, and swimming, walking, socialising and drinking coffee for the adults. I will miss it.

As usual we spent the last week of the school holidays at the Port Elliot Caravan Park. It was a lovely week and very social catching up with friends and family either staying at the Caravan Park or living nearby. The young people had surfing lessons at Goolwa Beach with Kingo. I would highly recommend it.

Goolwa Beach, initial instructions.

Around Christmas as had another addition to the Zoo, not one with parental sanction as we would not have chosen another cat. Despite saying no, no, no! Sebastian arrived one day and had soon wormed his way into everyone's heart. He was the runt of a litter of six left out in the hard rubbish collection to starve. He was 412 gms when he arrived. As it seems he is a good climber he will shortly have a very large and loud bell to wear around his neck.

We also had Screechy living in our birdcage for a week. S/He is a Rainbow Lorriket I found on the road with eyes glued shut. I fed him and cleaned his eyes and eventually he recovered and flew away. Sunny (the dog) was very sad about this as she spend every day that Screechy was here hanging around by the cage wagging her tail.

A Rainbow Lorriket

Sebastian making himself at home.

We have had the annual Tomato Sauce making day the Saturday just gone and it is a delicious batch. Based on the "Kathy's Tomato Relish" recipe in Stephanie Alexander, with less sugar and a few other variations. It is a great way to catch up with friends and make something delicious for the family as well. We had 20kg of tomatoes between three of us and ended up with just under 3lts of sauce each. We would have had a little more but managed to burn some.

This weekend I am hoping that everyone in the family will be fully recovered from the cold and we can have some enjoyable family time at home, get out into the garden and down to the beach, see some of WOMAD and soak up some Fringe and Festival atmosphere.....

The New Year

I want to make this year a year of being grateful for all my blessings.

France

We are currently in France enjoying a much deserved holiday. We have all had a busy and/or difficult year one way or another so we are hoping that this will be restorative, mind expanding and inspiring. We had a great week in Paris and one of the things I really enjoyed was the gardens. Below the gardens of the Palais Royal.

We were staying a very close walk to the Luxembourg gardens and this was a wonderful place to walk.

There was a lot to do before we left home, a lot of work to finish off for me, and a lot of work to do in the house to make it ready for our housesitter. So of course with this in mind I spent hours in the garden!! I prettied up the veranda

Mulched, weeded, watered, fertilised and pruned....

Did some spring planting......

Repotted a whole lot of Orchids...not this one actually

Bought an outdoor clay fire for the veranda...

Mulched some more...

And more.....
It was great to spend some time in the garden and the weather was beautiful for the few weeks before we left. The house was eventually left in a reasonable state!

Spring is here

Another season has passed by.

Spring is well and truly in the air and has been for a week or so in Adelaide despite the fact that it is still August.

The Winter sadly did not contain much in the way of gardening and my small plot has been looking quite neglected until this burst of Spring weather lured me outside to weed and feed and mulch.

All that has grown for consumption in the garden has been pretty well self sufficient; Silverbeet, Parsley, Chives, Sage, Thyme, Rosemary, Carrots, Lemons, a few Limes (exciting!)

I have been picking an occasional Capsicum and Chilli until a week or so ago and some Basil in a protected spot until really late June, so fabulous to have that fresh taste with pasta and stir fries.

I did manage to plant some Garlic so there will be a little bit of fresh Garlic come the Summer.

Four Tomatoes have come up self seeded in the vege patch so I will leave those and see how they go. Last weekend I planted some Purple climbing beans that have done very well in the past.

Other than this I'm going to have to wait to late October for planting as we are going to France for a month! I am hoping to do some blogging on our trip which will take in Paris, Provence and the Pays de Gex.

We have been greatly enjoying the home made Tomato Sauce and Passata that I made in March. Planning to make MUCH more passata this year, the flavour is so beautiful compared to the bought variety.

I have been on a frenzy of Marmalade making, I have made Grapefruit, and a batch of Orange and today I am going to make a 3 fruits batch with Orange Grapefruit and some of our Lemons.

The Hellebores are fabulous this year in the courtyard and seem to have thrived on neglect.

Good rains this winter have also helped I'm sure.

We have had a busy chook winter. Sylvia was broody and we brought in some day old chicks to put under her. Sadly she rejected them so I have been a chook mother for months. The first few days they were in a bad way as they had become very cold and infested with mites in the chook run. This meant intensive care for the wee things and I was very pleased that they all survived, even "Lazarus" who spend a good 12 hours lying on her side with her eyes closed, only twitching when I suggested to my son that she was dead!

They then spent weeks in a cardboard box in the laundry with a light and have only graduated to the chook run in the last week.

We all ended up with mite bites from handling the chicks, these are horrible and stay itchy for days. In the end it was a positive experience as we really cleaned out the chook run well, spread a lot of the compost throughout the garden and sprayed with a an insecticide. I don't really like spraying with chemicals but we really needed to get rid of the mites!

Here they are in recovery from their traumatic early experience, they seemed quite happy on the lounge room floor:

Even now they have to be fenced off from the large chooks who are very mean. You can see that they are adolescent chickens now.

The front yard always looks nice in the winter the Banksia is getting big and the Eremophila below it is in flower.
The lemon tree is healthy and very prolific, time to make more preserved lemons. We made some last year and we did use them all up, I love middle eastern cooking.
Winter is still a great time for walking along the beautiful Henley Beach with the added advantage that it is mostly left to locals and dedicated beach walkers rather than the noisy hoards who come in the Summer and leave their rubbish all over the beach.
One of the other joys for locals is the Grange Organic and Sustainable Market held fortnightly at the Fulham Gardens Primary School. If you have not been to the Market come along and check it out it is well worth it, just don't come and buy all the good bread before I get out of bed!!

www.organicsustainablemarket.com.au

As Spring really gets going there is a range of seedlings from the Henley Community Garden in addition to all the yummy organic goodies.

Also look out for the Vanilla Mossie range of natural organic insect repellant sold by my good friend Catherine Carroll, this really works, smells divine and is moisturising for your skin. Good eh?

While I am in the product placement mode please check out my family Olive Oil production in the Willunga hills.

http://mccaulsoliveoil.com.au

This is handpicked extra virgin cold pressed oil which is local and organic. It is very, very good.

Strange that the cats preferred sleeping place is a basket full of clean washing. I have arranged for him a variety of sleeping options over his long life (13 years) but none is so popular as one of the washing baskets-never with dirty washing, clean washing only.

Now it is Autumn

I really would like to be able to post at least once a month but it is very telling that the last time I managed to do this was the January school holidays and here we are again, it is now Autumn and the first school term is behind us and a quarter of the year has been swallowed up.

Life has been very busy.

Mothering two teenagers is challenging and it reminds me of the very early days of motherhood feeling at sea and having no idea if anything I am doing is Ok or completely wrong.

We have been having some lovely times in amongst all the busyness.

We had the great privilege to make greek biscuits at home with Yai Yai and although I am sure we would never be able to make them without her up to her high standard we now have some idea of the process.

They are super delicious.

It being Greek Easter as well we have a house full of other delicious Greek treats as well and lots of chocolate.

Last weekend I picked some of the last of Summers bounty from the Garden. We still have a few tomatoes producing and some capsicums and chilli, basil and zucchini.

We have had a great crop of quinces this year, at least 30. I made some quince paste over Easter. Looking forward to having some of it when it has dried out a little.

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A few weekends ago we spend a morning using up 3 dozen eggs from the chookies making pasta for drying, it's hard to keep up with all 4 producing, having looked at some pictures of custom made pasta drying racks I decided the small clothes line would do the same job.

I also had a lovely day with two good friends and 25 kilos of tomatoes making beautiful tomato sauce to a Stephanie Alexander recipe. We had a fun day. The next day being quite inspired on the tomato front I made a small amount of passata. Next year I would really like to made a large quantity.

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We had 4 day tickets for WOMAdelaide this year. As usual it was a beautiful experience, the atmosphere is wonderful, so many delights for all the senses. There were many highlights. Asa was a delight, such great energy and a fab band. It was great to see Martha Wainwright in the flesh,I love her voice and her sassy personality. It was very special for me to see Luka Bloom again after many years. His music seems to really be in my bones and blood somehow....also great to see the Alan Kelly Quartet, great traditional Irish music. There was a lot of other wonderful music.

WOMAD is one of the great things about living in Adelaide, of which there are very many. Sometimes just walking along the beach at Henley on a beautiful day I get a glimpse of how very, very privileged I am to live in such a beautiful and peaceful place.

I went for an early walk this morning, and at 7am there were dolphins swimming in the shallows and mutton birds flying over the water.....and the coffee was hot and strong at Joes.

I have been playing around with different lens on my camera, it makes the garden look interesting.

I had the water lilies flowering in the pond in the late summer.

Here is Sylvia, she finally stopped escaping from the chook run and has settled in with the others but it took a long time!

More fun with the camera
I seem to have worked backwards from Autumn into Summer!

The weather is glorious now and it is nice to have an Easter at home, we nearly always go away. The garden is looking neglected so I will spend some time this week weeding and planting, as well as having a bike ride and relaxing.