17 August 2018

Weekend reading

 Garden working bee.



It's been a gardening week for me here. My knee is much better so I've been out there planting what I bought on the trip back from Armidale. I'll do a gardening post this week because I have a few things to show you.  Now I'm going out there again to plant up some lettuce and parsley seedlings and radish seeds. I also have bee and butterfly mix seeds and good old nasturtium seeds to fill in some gaps.  Then it's the hardest part for me - waiting until it all grows and blooms.

It's beautiful weather here, 28C today with cool nights down to 7 or 8. There's no humidity yet so the warmer days are really pleasant and ideal for working outside.  

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I'll see you again next week. 😊

Roundup found in popular oatmeal, granola and kids' cereals
A beginner's guide to plastic-free living
Tasha (Tudor) as a young mother
Great ideas for hanging clothes out to dry
How to turn off Google's location tracking  I found this article during the week and decided to include it here, thinking that I had nothing to worry about because my location service was turned off.  I was shocked a couple of days later when I found info on my phone which listed where Tricia and I had breakfast on the way back from Armidale, where I bought petrol and later some fruit and vegetables. It also recorded our visit to a nursery near Gatton. EVERY place I used my debit card was on that list !! And that list is probably part of a huge list of similar info that will be sold to unknown commercial interests. If you have an iphone, check your location services on that too.
Quick and easy cake recipes
Just like grandma used to make
Video Clump
7 Myths About Housewives, Debunked
Bread: What went wrong
Homemade bread sticks
Growing raspberries and brambleberries
Homemade quark
Off the Grid News

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15 comments

  1. Hi Rhonda, I'm so glad to hear that your knee is feeling better; I was worried. Your garden looks wonderful, as always. I've got some Cinderella pumpkin seeds pushing their way through the soil. I hope they will have enough time to mature. I always think of you when I collect eggs from my Silkies, or harvest zucchini from the potager garden. It's all the little things that make a cottage feel like home. I don't have a smart phone. I wouldn't want all that tracking, either. I have a senior phone from Jitterbug. It works perfectly for me, and is only $35.00 a month.

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  2. The last line of “I didn’t know any different so it didn’t seem like a hardship to me.” In the Tasha (Tudor) piece. So much truth i it.

    In todays modern world it is such a blessing to have a rich online community....but it can so easily lead to dissatisfaction and feelings of in-adequacy for so many. To look at others lives and think they have it better, or others are managing to keep it all togeather better then ourselves.... I know many women feel this way. But to look at what we are doing and to appreciate what we have for the very sake of it, without looking outside to compare....Well perhaps thats a muscle many of us need to strengthen more. To learn to be satisfied and content with what we have is such an undervalued gift.

    Xx

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  3. Pleased to hear your knee has improved and you can get back to gardening.
    Interested in the plastic free living article - I realise how lucky we are to still have milk delivered to our door by an old fashioned milkman. We have deliveries three times a week and empty bottles are washed by us and collected by the milkman next time for reuse. The milk is more expensive than supermarket milk but we pay the extra because its important to us to keep milk deliveries and local dairies going and its environmentally sounder.

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  4. The RoundUp Issue infuriated my husband and I. Just because there is a "legal" limit does not make it safe. Ugh!

    I am glad your knee is getting better! The garden looks great.

    As always thank you for all the thoughtful links. :)

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  5. I have found that I have to keep an eye on the Google tracking because I think I have it turned off and then it is back on again. We don't have a debit card so that is not the reason here. I suspect that some sites have an embedded permission that turns it back on by using the site. I do not like being watched so I will keep on it.

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  6. Glad your knee is progressing, Rhonda. The garden looks lovely; and the list of weekend sites to peruse is delightful! There is a plethora of information there; and I cannot wait to get to it.

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  7. So pleased your out enjoying gardening again and the knee is playing nicely.
    Rhonda, after we worked to eliminate all our debts we have saved and saved and saved solid for two years and now have a good deposit for our very first home (we've been house hunting since February). Many of the houses on 1/4 acre - 1 acre of land have no gardens apart from palm trees and I feel a bit overwhelmed with 'where to start' if we purchase one of them. I want to grow as much as we can and we also need/want shade trees and fruit trees. At sometime in the future would you possibly be able to share some pointers on starting from scratch with a home produce garden, please?
    We're heading off right now to look at two properties with solid block homes on an acre, with sheds but no gardens...and wondering if we should stay with 1/4 acre blocks at our age. ;-)
    Bless you heaps!

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    1. Hi Jenny. Congratulations on saving for your house deposit. That is a major achievement. From memory, you're in Townsville, right? I don't know how old you are and I don't need to know but are you heading towards retirement or are you still in your middle years? Just you and your husband or are there children? Maybe they've already left? I'm just trying to get an idea on how many people you need to grow for and what outdoor areas, apart from a garden, you need.

      Do you know anyone with a good garden who lives close to you? If so, talk to them about sun and shade, growing seasons (I think it's May - September there), what grows well, the best plant supplier and if you can get anything free from the council. Sometimes councils give worm farms and free workshops to rate payers. Then work out what you eat, and therefore will need to grow.

      And yes, I'll do a post on this. When you go to look at properties, check the soil and the orientation of the block. Many phones have a compass app so you could check when you look at the properties. Look at the fences, water taps in the yards, sheds and soil quality. Find out the annual rainfall. Write down all those things for each property. Send me an email with your collected details and we'll see what we can do to set you on the right path.

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    2. Thank you very much for that checklist and things to consider, Rhonda...shall do that. We are late 50's, I work from home, and all the children have left. We'll be buying a cheaper home/land as our mortgage time will be shorter than younger folk and we hope to kick it over within 10 years. Yes, we're in Townsville so need to work with the seasons here (and we plan to build a shade-cloth covered area for some summer planting). When I have specifics I'll email. You're amazing, thank you.

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  8. Location data is the single biggest issue we will discover to intrude our personal lives.
    Soon it will rule our every move.
    The only way to avoid it is to turn your phone OFF and leave it off until you are in a nondescript place, not using wifi or cards. Then you can turn it on to read your messages etc.
    Traffic lights in main cities have an inbuilt wifi that talks to your phone and in the 3 seconds it takes you to drive through that intersection, it uploads all your activity to the big brother in the sky!
    The only way to prevent your card usage not being stolen from you is to go into your bank accounts and untick the box regarding how your personal data can be used.
    All of this also applies to any other device such as a tablet you may carry where it has its own Sim card or you leave the hotspot live to your phone.
    Many apps will have asked for permission to access your photos, etc when they were installed. Part of that permission is that they can turn your GPS, wifi or location on to do their dirty work.
    You have to go back into each app and revoke all those permissions. It means many apps won't work properly and they will annoy the crap out of you as they keep asking for permission, but that is where we are at now.
    Our take-up and enthusiastic use of all stuff digital has allowed anyone to enter our lives without our permission or knowledge and steal whatever they want and use it however they want forever and a day.
    We have no consumer protection at all.

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  9. Lovely to hear your knee is feeling better. I always loved this time of year in FNQ when you could cosy up at night, and yet have perfectly warm days. It is absolutely freezing down here in SA - I have just given the chickens some oats to see them through the cold night. Thank you for the weekend links - always love your choices. Enjoy your lovely weather.

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  10. Thanks for sharing these, especially the Tasha Tudor article--she's one of my favorite illustrators and children's authors, and I find the way she lived her life on her farm fascinating.

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  11. Hi Rhonda,
    glad that you managed to get some gardening in. Most of my gardening has been trying to keep out the bandicoots who come in every night and dig up what I have planted. so frustrating. Could you tell us how you replant parsley seedlings? I buy the growing blocks from coles and then separate them out. sometimes they grow well and sometimes not. I find I have to cut off all the long shoots and just leave a few tiny stalks. They tend to flop over a bit so I have been mulching quite well.

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    Replies
    1. Down here, and I expect in most places, parsley hates being transplanted. If it's been growing in one place for a couple of months, it will usually die if you try to move it. I only ever transplant from a punnet of seedlings straight into the ground. If parsley is growing in a pot, I leave it there. If you have to move it, I'd try to cut back the top growth a bit and soak it in a weak solution of seaweed solution before transplanting - then water it in with a drink from the hose, followed by about a litre of seaweed solution. After that, let it sit for 3- 4 days before watering again. Up there I'd give it some shade for the first week too. It might help it settle in. Good luck!

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