Hello everyone! I've had a good break and although we've been going through a heatwave, that will end today and the weather will be cooler for a few weeks. It's a lovely time of year now, the spring flowers are blooming, birds are visiting from far off places and from the look of the rose leaves, the leaf-eater bees are happily munching away. It’s the ideal time for sitting on the verandah with a lemon cordial and letting the world pass by. I am happy here, I feel as much a part of this place as all the trees deeply rooted in our dry soil. We all get our strength and nourishment from being here and I can't imagine being anywhere else.

Out in the garden, I've been focusing on my citrus trees. I have two Eureka lemons, a Washington navel orange and a Lane's Late orange. In  this area, the lemons fruit most of the year, the Washington navel from early June to mid July and the Lane's Late oranges from July to late August. Right now, both  orange trees are full of flowers and the two lemons are flowering on new growth. Of course, spring time is the best time of the year for growing most plants. It’s the time when plants naturally put on new growth and produce flowers, vegetables and nuts. If you’re able to give them some help, with good soil, manure, compost, the right growing conditions and water, the warmer weather and sunshine will do the rest. So if you’re thinking about growing food, spring is the time to get started.

Here is a post I wrote that might help beginner gardeners start spring gardens

Another post of mine about growing your own food

When grown in the right climate, citrus are really tough plants. Mine were able to survive nearly two years of neglect when Hanno was sick and I had no time for gardening. I have almost no memory of those first 18 months without Hanno. I know I made food for myself and got a basic grocery delivery of milk, eggs, butter, tea, salt, flour, fruit and vegetables but I don’t think I made my bed everyday. I looked after Gracie with her food and grooming but most of the time we were two sad sacks sitting on the front verandah - me staring into the bush and her watching the front gate expecting Hanno to walk in. Grief is such a powerful force. I underestimated its emotional intensity and the power is has to change us. It took me a long time to work out the best way to keeping living true to my values and not become someone I didn’t recognise.

The flowers are growing very well and have brought a huge number of various bees, mostly native bees, to the garden.

Here is the herb garden as it is now. In here I'm growing two chillies, parsley, perpetual spinach, rainbow chard, apple cucumbers, French radishes and green onions. I've left one green onion to produce seeds and when that flower blooms and develops seeds, I'll collect the seeds to grow in future years.

After a few years of no sewing, I’m delighted to be back at my machine. I’m just finishing a half apron of blue gingham linen and I have green gingham linen that I’ll use to make a full apron. I’ll also make a summer nightie but I don’t have the fabric for that yet. Of course, there’s always mending to do so I’ve adjusted a couple of skirts and fixed hems too.

One thing that always surprises me are the scraps, thread and general rubbish that is generated by sewing. It’s not a huge amount but the accumulation of all those tiny scraps and threads that spread out over the sewing table and floor. After I publish this post, I’ll be cleaning the entire room.

There have been so many new readers here and on IG. I’m not sure why these sudden streams of new readers happen, I guess it’s other writers sharing a post or something from my blog. I hope you find what you’re looking for, especially information to help you live a more sustainable life. And to all my long-term readers, thanks for staying with me over the years offering support and friendship along the way. I appreciate you being here.

I was going to write about food today, the cost of living crisis, ways of saving when buying food and the different forms of protein but this post is getting too long so it will have to wait. I hope to get that written and on your screens asap - it will be this week. Take care, everyone. ♥️ 

ADDITIONAL READING

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Just a quick blog to let you know about these oranges and to show some recent photos.  I hope you’re having a good week.

I bought a 3 kg bag of “half time” oranges at Woolworths this week, they were $6.95. Their oranges are usually pretty average but these are the best oranges I’ve bought from any supermarket. Get some if you can. I doubt you’ll have any left after a few days. Shane and his kids are visiting on Saturday so I think I’ll pop over to Woolies to get another bag for them to take home.  I mainly used mine for cordial and I’ve eaten a couple. They’re really delicious!

There are a lot of kookaburras calling the backyard their home. I think there are two families of them in this area. They all seem to get on well and they’re a fantastic bird for eating mice, small snakes and lizards <— not so good. This young pair, probably brothers, visited me during the week and sat in the tree for a couple of hours.

I made soy and honey pork with vegetables the other day for lunch. I wish I’d made rice to go with it but when I thought of it, it was too late.  Next time …

This is the You Tube guide I followed for the pork dish. I also used the vegetables I had in the fridge.

And last, this little vase of hawthorn flowers which grow in my front garden. They last a couple of weeks in a vase and I always like having them in the house. Simple pleasures. 

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.

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

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

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