Let's hear it for house and yard work!!

It just shows the resilience of insects and birds. The garden that Hanno used to tend, which supplied 80 percent of the vegetables we consumed, was busy with wildlife. Bees buzzed, birds came for water and nectar, kookaburras mined the compost heap for the grubs they knew were in there, and reptiles drank and sunned themselves - always out of Gracie's reach. Then nothing. There were no flowers or plants to visit, no water in the bird baths, no isolated containers collecting rainwater. I sat quietly in the garden yesterday afternoon and was so happy to see how much life there was. I didn't see any reptiles but the bees and birds were in and out, swooping and dive bombing and checking out the flowers that were there. They know there are more flowers coming and they will gracefully wait for their return. I will too!

This post will be disappointing for some of you because this is not the garden update. I still haven't finished. Everything is planted but the pots are not in the places they'll sit. Placement is the hardest thing to work out, especially as this is  a flower garden and all flowers need sun.  To make it more difficult, when I move the large pots - and these are holding 90 - 100kg of potting mix plus the weight of the pot, I don't want to move them again for a few years. I have to get it right. Spring will arrive in just over four weeks time so I have to place the pots where they'll sit all summer-long. Some plants, mainly the roses, can tolerate our summer sun, some can't so I'm trying to work out which plants can sit on the shaded side of larger plants. I'll get there, I just need more time to figure it out.

I got my hair cut!  I think it's four years since it was cut and it was 11 inches below my shoulders. It feels so good to have it shorter again. It's much easier to wash and keep tidy and I don't get caught up in my ponytail when I'm asleep.

Last week I had a mobility assessment for my Home Care Plan. They sent a physiotherapist to assess me here at home. He did a range of tests such as having me stand and sit down as many times as I could in 30 seconds without holding on to anything. I did eight which he said was excellent! I also had to get in and out of bed, and stand in one spot and turn around in a circle. The only two I could not do were balancing on one foot and walking with one foot in front of the other - which required me to stand on one foot for a brief time. He asked me how I spend my days and I told him I'm baking, cooking, gardening, cleaning, playing with Gracie etc. just the normal stuff we all do, and he said I was well ahead of what he would expect of me at my age (76). I think the two I couldn't do are linked to my non-malignant brain tumour. It's always caused me to feel unbalanced and I think that will always be the case. So he scored me 90 percent which I'm happy with.  Let's hear it for house and yard work!!

A new digital electricity meter was installed on Friday so there'll be no more people coming to read the meter. The bills keep rolling in - my Council rates notice came on Thursday so I'm making sure I keep my budget on point and always save money when I have the chance.

My sister will visit from the Blue Mountains in August and my friend Nicole Lutze will visit tomorrow for morning tea. I'm making a whole orange cake with orange cream cheese frosting. I've only got a few lemons and no oranges left on my trees so with the fruit I had in the kitchen, I just made orange and lemon cordial. It is SO delicious - MUCH better than shop-bought cordial. I also have 500ml of syrup to make lemon cordial during the week - that will be the end of the lemons. We had a lot of rain earlier in the year so the fruit was large and juicy. If you live in a warm climate, or have a warm spot in your garden, I hope you'll grow a lemon or orange tree. They're easy to look after and will give you the tastiest fruit you can imagine.

LEMON AND ORANGE CORDIAL

First, juice your fruit. If you get 2 litres of juice you'll need 2 litres of syrup.

You can use sugar syrup or weak sugar syrup, depending on your taste. I used weak syrup but if I was making lemon cordial, I'd use normal sugar syrup.

Normal sugar syrup is 1 kg sugar to 1 litre of water.
Weak sugar syrup is 500 grams sugar to 1 litre of water.

To make the syrup add the sugar to the water and boil it. When the sugar has dissolved, let it cool.  Measure the amount of syrup you have and add the same amount of juice. When mixed together, bottle it and store it in the fridge. Dilute according to your taste - it will be about ¼ cordial to ¾ water.

If you end up with extra syrup, put it in a sealable jar and store it in the fridge. It will keep well and you can make your next batch of cordial with it.

You can also use honey or maple syrup but it will add that flavour to the cordial. I've never make cordial with anything but granulated sugar.

Today I'm cleaning and rearranging the back verandah. It's a real mess. It's a wonderful place to sit on a winter's afternoon and Gracie loves being out there with me. So it's a good investment of my time to make the place look and feel good. I washed the bench seat cushion covers yesterday and when they're on again, I'll finish the outdoor setting chairs, three of which still have to have their arm rests attached. Lunch will be lamb curry and rice, leftovers from the baked leg of lamb I had yesterday.  I'll end my day doing my Woolworths grocery order and sending that in so they can deliver it in the morning.

I hope you have a wonderful week and enjoy the work you do for yourself and your family. xx

ADDITIONAL READING

• Small changes to what you eat can have big benefits for the planet
• Ten effective habits to adopt if you’re an eco-enthusiast
• Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds
• A hairy caterpillar: a ginger toupee, twitching cartoonishl
• Darn it! How to mend holey socks at home

I've been gardening but I'm not finished yet

This was what my garden looked like last week, then last weekend Kerry and Jamie added the rest of the pots. I think you'll be surprised at how much is there now but you'll have to wait until next week to see it.

These are just some of the supplies I had stored in the bush house. All of them have been used now and new potting mix bought this morning.

There are two of the roses I'm growing - the pink one is called Pinky and I've forgotten the name of the other rose. I have it written down so when I present my gardening post next week, I'll have it for you along with the names of all the other roses. I have a mix of Old English roses, Floribunda bush roses and miniature roses as well as lavender, salvias, butterfly bush, gaura and pelargonium.

I thought I'd be writing about gardening in this post but I'm not ready to present the garden to you yet. It's taken me much longer than I thought it would because I've lost a lot of my strength. After I do a couple of things, I have to sit down. I'm using a walking stick when I'm walking on the grass now ☹️ and that's slowing down much of what I'm doing. I ran out of potting mix yesterday so this morning I went to the local farmers' co-op to pick up another six 30 kg bags. They were loaded into my car and after driving home, I've only managed to get two of them out. I'm using my trusty green plastic trolley that I used to declutter the house last year. I can lift a bag out of the boot and let it fall into the trolley (difficult), then wheel the trolley through the garage to the clothes line (easy), then wheel it over the grass to where all the pots are (difficult). And the icing on the cake is then I have to sit down for ten minutes to recover! grrrr. Apart from all of that, I'm enjoying the process and I only have the smaller pots to deal with now. I think it'll look lovely when it's finished.

She's watching her bedding dry.

Gracie and I are doing well. I've just brought her bedding and blankets in after washing them so she'll be wrapped up warmly tonight. The temperatures have dropped and although it's not as cold here as it is in southern Australia, it's dropping to 6 or 7 or 8 every night this week.  I'm warm in my bed because I have an electric blanket and two doonas!  LOL yes, two, otherwise my feet get cold.

I did my fruit and vegetable shopping at the local roadside stall this week. I love it there. They sell produce from local growers and backyards, much of it is organic or chemical-free and all of it is fresher than the fare at Woolworths.

I made a madeira cake, aka pound cake,  through the week. I used my little bread loaf tin and baked a really tasty cake.  Here is the recipe I used. If you haven't made one of these cakes before, it's a different texture to a normal cake or a sponge, it's heavier than both of them but it moist and full of flavour.  I used a light icing made with plain icing sugar and orange juice. It would be a good cake for lunchboxes.

I've heard terrible things about the weather across the US, I hope you've not been in the areas of extreme heat, storms or floods. I hope the time you've had at home has been comforting and productive. Have you baked a cake this week? Or maybe you've been sewing or preserving. Let me know what you're up to. 

❤️ 😊 ❤️

ADDITIONAL READING

A week in wildlife

‘Africa’s most resilient lion’ and his brother filmed making 1.5km swim across dangerous African river

Self sufficiency vlog

Rose syrup and garden vegies

I've been cooking and gardening - what's new!

I've been enjoying winter meals over the past couple of weeks - pea and ham soup, Swedish meatballs with cabbage and potatoes, curried chicken and others winter warmers.   One of the meals I still enjoy is a Sunday roast lunch. I grew up eating them, yes, EVERY week, but when I had my own family, it was more like twice a month. However, I did want to continue eating roast pork, chicken or roast lamb after Hanno died but initially I couldn't work out how to get around the large pieces of meat. I'd never eat it all even if I made a second meal of curry or a pie. But now, I buy pork belly and cut it into four pieces before I freeze it. A quarter of pork belly does me well for two meals, one roasted and one cut up in bite sized pieces, salted and served with a little leftover gravy the next day. The beef roast I do now is beef fillet. It is expensive but I like how there absolutely no waste. I carefully cut my fillet into four pieces between 2½ and 3 inches long, freeze three of them and roast the first one. Delicious! I usually have some left over for the following day which I slice thinly and have as a roast beef, mustard and lettuce sandwich.

This is what the garden looks like now. 

My main task has been to get my garden growing. I've had all the old vegetable gardens removed but I just can't give up gardening so I'm creating a floral container garden. I'm mainly growing roses with a couple of foxgloves, a new double lavender recently bred in Australia, buddleia - the butterfly bush, Texmax pelargonium which I'm growing for the colour, two blueberry bushes, Johnny Jump ups (violets), alyssum and several old English roses. I have climbing roses on the lattice and fence behind the containers and I think it will look lovely when they're all growing well.  Kerry and Jamie came over yesterday and helped me move pots, potting mix, mulch, pine bark and odd and ends to the garden so it would be easier for me to set everything up. I'm so lucky to have the family I have.

These are some of the old rose pots and new plants just bought.

The new outdoor setting waiting for their armrests.

I bought a small outdoor setting because the old table collapsed after 30 years on the job. It looks good but it came as a flat pack and I had to put it together.  🤨  I'd never done that before but I got through most of it and now I only have to add the arm rests to the last three chairs and it will be done. I'll enjoy sitting out there in the afternoons tending the garden and enjoying time outdoors in the fresh air.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, I prefer premium YouTube where I watch a variety of interesting programs with no advertising. Bliss! Lately I've been watching Wocomocook - a wonderful program about food and people all over the European countryside. It’s encouraging and inspiring to see people living lives connected to each other and the land. They milk cows, make ice cream with the milk and the cloudberries growing in the forests; they make bread, jam and chutney, pancakes, and cheese. I watched cakes, stews and drinks being made that I’ve never seen before. It shows a lifestyle of productivity and optimism, something similar to the way Hanno used to live. I’m continuing on with a small snippet of what I used to do but watching Wocomocook is enough to keep me interested in a productive life and moving forward.

Thank you for visiting me here today. I'll be back in a week or two with photos of the new garden.  Take care of yourself and take care.  xx

ADDITIONAL READING

A loan until death: what happens when your mortgage outlives your career?

Big Scioty, with clogging

Almost 2,000 children die every day from air pollution, report finds

On winter solstice the oranges on my tree reach their peak

My neurotic dog Tully doesn’t like change. This reminded me of Gracie.

The brown bears are back at Brooks Falls. Many of you know I love watching the brown bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls in Alaska. They came back this week and will continue eating until it's time to hibernate later in the year. If you haven't seen them, it's worth a click.