Just a short note on the War on Waste post. There is no radio program, it's an online digital program as well as a downloadable podcast. I hope you have the time to listen. It is relevant to all of us.
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- Ireland - 68%
- Europe West - 16% - primarily located in Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
- Great Britain - 8%
- Scandinavia - 6%
- Iberian Peninsula - less than 1% - primarily Spain and Portugal
- West Asia - less than 1% - this is the Caucasus region which is Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey
It's pretty much what I expected although, even though I "feel" very Irish, I didn't expect my Irishness to be 68 percent. Win/win, Australian AND Irish. My main cultural group is Munster Irish, which is the southern parts of Ireland - Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Clare and Kerry. I had often wondered why I'd been compelled to name one of my sons Kerry, and maybe there is a reason. Maybe I have a significant but forgotten link to County Kerry.
Since receiving my DNA profile, I've been contacted by a cousin I'd never heard of. Our great grandmothers were sisters. When we were on the book tour, Tricia and I took advantage of our visit to Wagga and visited the house our mother was born in. This "new" cousin was born in Wagga too, so knowing my DNA profile connected me with a place and a time and through that, a relative. The past is such an intriguing, engaging and endlessly interesting place and having done this research I'm very comfortable with my own history.
Hanno and I had an easy Monday. Most of our days are easy now, I think it's the payoff for growing old. We had our breakfast and were at Aldi when the doors opened at 8.30am. We had a moderate amount of shopping to do - vegetables, fruit, groceries and meat, and we were home again with everything packed away by 9.30am. It's easier and faster when we shop together. Our local Aldi was refurbished recently and reopened in April. It's made the store easier to shop in and the products seem to be in a logical place now. It still has that big area in the centre with all the cheap specials, which I'm not a fan of, but the rest of the store flows well and the displays and frozen goods are easier to access. Has your local Aldi been transformed too?
Clearing the mulch to add more fertiliser. The soil here, once heavy clay, is now fertile, friable and full of worms.
The garden is growing really well this year. All the turnips and bok choy have been harvested and the lettuce and daikon will be finished next week. We've been drinking fresh orange juice every day for the past couple of week so the oranges will be finished soon too. Tomatoes are flowering and the first tomatoes are hanging like green jewels on the plants. I am really looking forward to having home -grown tomatoes once again. The chickens have lifted their game too and yesterday we got eight eggs. Looks like a spinach and cheese pie will be on the menu next week. Hanno removed the mulch where the turnips had been yesterday and added more organic fertiliser. Today we'll plant sprouting broccoli there.
I've been moving pots around again and brought in an old bird bath and filled it with smooth pebbles so the birds and insects have access to clean water and a safe place from which to drink. It's always a work in progress, things change all the time in vegetables gardens and with care and work, we can keep ours productive and beautiful well into November. It seems that 2017 is a good year for gardening. How is your garden going?
