These past few mornings have been a real reminder that Winter is here and most mornings I sit at my computer in woolly slippers and at least three layers.  It's 10C now, yesterday it was 6C at this time, and when I go out to feed the animals, my breath comes streaming from my nostrils.  It's good to see your own breath before you; it's proof of life.  Not that we need such proof, we have our daily tasks to show us every day that life, and the way we have chosen to live it, is full of life affirming actions, organic growth and the constant productive forces that make up a simple life.

Back inside again and I light the heat under the soaked oats already in their pot and waiting to be cooked for breakfast.  We rarely have the same breakfast two mornings in a row.  Saturday it was bacon and eggs, yesterday we had porridge. Some mornings it will be poached eggs on toast, the next, tea and toast.  It depends on what we have too much of or what needs to be eaten.  It's cold inside now, not the coldness of outside, but cold enough to yearn for an open fire.  We have reverse cycle air-conditioning, but I'd rather freeze than use it.  I am hoping that by next Winter we'll have enough money to install a wood burning combustion stove.  In my future, I can see warm days and nights knitting in front of that fire and the thought of it warms me now, just enough.  It also makes me think of Bernadette.

As the day warms up we both move silently towards our tasks for the day.  Hanno is erecting climbing frames for the new cucumbers and beans, digging up sweet potato and fertilising the gardens with blood and bone and seaweed tea.  I am writing, cooking and knitting.  Yes, this is still the jumper I said would be ready for Hanno at the end of June.  I'm just finishing shaping the arms on the front of it, the back is done so I only have the two sleeves to go.  As soon as that is finished I'm onto some other knitting that I'm planning out now.  Actually, we have some big things happening here that I'm not quite ready to tell you about.  Be patient, my friends, all will be revealed soon.  Just know that I'm smiling almost all the time.

I forgot to take photos of the garden until late in the afternoon, so these photos are darker than usual.  You'll be able to see the three mounds where Hanno has planted three zucchinis, there are new bok choy plants as well as beans, tomatoes, lettuces, radishes and cucumbers.  The last of the cabbages was eaten this weekend and now we're getting ready for Spring and Summer.  Life goes on.

I made a loaf of bread for lunch on Saturday but yesterday it was scones - plain and with dates.  We have plenty of our backyard tomatoes for sandwiches at the moment and these simple lunches, with a cup of black tea, fill us until our evening meal.  And that reminds me, Gabrielle is sending me some of her sourdough starter and that should be in the mail today.  What a thoughtful and exciting gift!  Click here to go to her very interesting website, Beechworth Sustainability.  Thank you Gabrielle.

A few days ago Laurienna asked for the apple cake recipe I made last week.  I make up most of my recipes as I go depending on what's in the fridge and pantry, so even though I've probably shared an apple cake recipe with you before, this will be different.  Most cakes are a mixture of butter with sugar, add eggs (one at a time), and when fluffy and light, add the dry ingredients - flour and your flavourings.  I know most cook books say that baking is a science and not to stray from your recipes, but I always do and it generally gives me delicious cakes.  So reduce the sugar or eggs if you want to, add cinnamon (I didn't have any), add more apples, experiment.  Be bold!

2 granny smith apples - peeled and thinly sliced

1 teaspoon butter + cinnamon if you have it

Combine the above and cook in a small saucepan for about five minutes with the lid on.  Remove from heat and cool. When cool, cut up a small handful of pecans.

In a mixing bowl add butter and sugar and cream it.  Creaming is beating the living daylights out of the ingredients to incorporate air.  When you cream butter and sugar, it becomes lighter in colour, and fluffy.

Add vanilla, then add eggs, one at a time.

Take the bowl off the mixer, fold in the flour by hand and a little bit of the milk. When all the flour is mixed in, add more milk until you have a nice thick cake batter.  Add half the mix to a cake tin, I used a round springform tin, then sprinkle on some crushed pecans and the apples.  Cover that layer with the rest of the batter.  Sprinkle pecans on the top.

Bake on 180C/350F for about 35 - 40 minutes or until the cake is brown on the top and a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean (with no uncooked batter on it).

It seems to me that Sunday is the perfect day for baking.  When I was a girl it was common to smell the roasting legs of lamb and apple cakes wafting through the air on Sunday.  Nowadays it doesn't happen much and I wonder what our neighbours think when they smell cakes, bread and meat being cooking at our place.  Maybe they don't sense the invisible nature of it. I guess most people now aren't used to taking in the natural environment and noticing different aromas that surround them.

At the end of our day we had a simple dinner of crumbed fish from the local fish co-op, coleslaw made from the last backyard cabbage and spicy potato wedges made with our home grown potatoes, still in their jackets.  A glass of water each helped wash it all down.  There was a little apple cake still there but neither of us wanted any dessert.

It still amazes and delights me, even after all this time, that our weekends, once filled with more public and expensive entertainment and leisure, now satisfy and nurture us with their productivity and involvement in ordinary activities and work.  We made a choice many years ago to leave what is superfluous to our needs behind.  We have not yet regretted that decision; I doubt we ever will.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that this week will be a good one for all of us.   Take care, friends.

A kitchen is like the engine on a car; it drives the house.  We spend a lot of time in our kitchens preparing meals, making cups of tea, baking bread and biscuits and when we invite visitors into our homes, we often sit at the kitchen table deep in conversation.  Kitchens are where a lot of our home production takes place so it makes sense to keep our kitchens working at their best.  Despite what many of you think, I am no angel. Like most other people, when I'm in a hurry I take shortcuts, I open packets and don't put them straight into a container, I don't look properly for ingredients and sometimes have two jars of the same thing and I don't put things back exactly where I took them from.  I am guessing you know where this post is going.  I'm talking about pantries and keeping them clean and tidy, but this post has an added bonus - it's also a challenge!

Before we carry on, let me say that my pantry is in my kitchen and it's where I store all food that  I am currently using that doesn't have to be refrigerated.  My stockpile cupboard is just around the corner from the pantry and it stores all unopened and unused food.  When something is taken from the stockpile and opened, it is put in a container and stored in the pantry.  I usually clean the pantry about every three months.  We have no major bugs here to worry about and since we started freezing all our dried goods when they're brought home, we've even eliminated the dreaded pantry moth and weevils.  I don't stop freezing and using containers just because I see no insects, I know that I don't see them because of the freezing and containers.

My pantry was in a really bad state.  Despite knowing I should decant everything into its own container, I had a couple of things in plastic bags held tight with a rubber band, I had two jars each of dates and dried fruit and a couple of unopened packets that should have been in the stockpile cupboard.  Overall the pantry was a disorganised mess - the result of a busy woman taking short cuts, I'm sure many of you can relate.  So I set to work.

I emptied all the shelves into the kitchen benches and wiped the cupboard down with warm soapy water to remove all traces of spilt food, and then carefully dried all the shelves.  I put back the larger items onto their shelves so I would have more room to work, then started sorting jars into categories and checking I didn't have more than one jar of everything.  I made one jar out of the two lots of dates and one of dried fruit.  Any jar that were almost empty had its contents put in a bowl while it was washed and dried then the jar was filled to the top.  The entire exercise took about an hour and now I'm back to having everything is its right place and the pantry set to help me work efficiently in the kitchen instead of hindering me.  It feels good and every time I go into the kitchen I open the pantry door and smile.

This is an easy task but its one of the important ones.  Having food organised and safely contained will not only help you work, it will keep your food safe and will help eliminate waste.  So if you haven't cleaned out your pantry recently, I challenge you to do it this weekend.  I am going to start a thread at the Down to Earth forum where we can all post our photos.  We may not live close to one another but we can still use our modern technologies to support and encourage each other to work to the best of our ability.  I know it's probably not what you want to do on the weekend, but it won't take long and what else could make you open a door and smile at the pantry?

I forget if I told you that I'm having a two week break from my voluntary job.  It's been really hectic there all year with our move to the new building, setting up new systems, volunteer training and the rest of it, so when my friend and co-worker, Fiona, said she'd cover me for a couple of weeks, I jumped at the chance. Fiona is our Community Development Worker, she watches over all the hinterland neighbourhood centres.  I really appreciate her kind gesture as she has so much other work to do. But I needed time away from there to clear my head and I decided to use the two weeks to write. I've been doing that but as you all know, life never stops and there are many home tasks that need my attention as well.

And the apple cake, which was rich and moist, was served as dessert last night.  Apple cake, when the aroma of baking apples, nuts and spices fills the house, and when it is being enjoyed, is one of those home made foods that always reminds me of the nurturing role food plays in our lives.  It can be a plate of biscuits passed over the back fence or a favourite cake made because someone saw it on TV, or even the daily bread. Taking the time to bake them, using fresh wholesome ingredients and then sharing, make us stop to appreciate what we have and brings us all together again around the kitchen table.

Yesterday, Hanno and I travelled down the coast to have lunch with our son Kerry and his lovely partner, Sunny.  Sunny is a chef too and she loves using our fresh garden produce, particularly cabbage.  So Hanno bundled up some fruit and vegetables for them, namely, cabbage, snow peas, turnips and lemons.  It is a real pleasure to be able to give away just picked organic produce.  It seems to me that more and more people appreciate it now.

I haven't been in our garden since this picking, but I think there are a few bare patches there.  I will be picking all the beetroot today and they all be pickled and sitting in jars before nightfall.  I know many of you are growing food in your backyards and allotments, and also in container gardens on balconies and patios, so I thought it might be timely to write about harvesting and garden maintenance today.

Before I was a gardener I thought you planted, watered and harvested.  The end.  Now I know  that in addition to those three vital actions, there is more that goes on in the garden.  I know now that if we harvest properly and keep the garden well maintained, we get better and larger crops.  Don't forget that most vegetables are better if they're not left to grow really big.  Generally smaller vegetables are sweeter, juicier and firmer.  Of course, there are always exception to that rule so be guided by your common sense.

At the moment, we have a healthy trellis full of snow peas.  We often eat these when we're out in the garden but there are so many of them now that it makes more sense to harvest them to eat later.  With vine crops that flower, like peas, beans, cucumbers and zucchini/courgettes, you get many more vegetables if you harvest continuously.  That works well if you want to eat them with your tea each evening, but if you don't, if you want to store them in the freezer to eat later in the year, pick as many as you can each day and store them in the fridge in a sealed container.  When you have enough for a batch to be frozen - which depends entirely on the size of your family, blanch them and bag them up in a freezer bag.  Don't forget to mark them with a permanent marker with name and date frozen.

Green leaves are similar and often benefit from continuous picking.  We pick  lettuce, kale, silverbeet and spinach from the outside, just taking the leaves we need for that day.  The plant will keep producing leaves and you can keep harvesting them.  However, if you want to put up some silverbeet, kale or spinach in the freezer, you can harvest the leaves from the entire plant, making sure you leave the centre in tact.  After harvesting, give the plants a drink of weak fertiliser tea such as comfrey, compost or worm juice tea and within a few weeks, you'll have full plants again.

Tomatoes may be harvested either deep red, pink or green.  You can pick them at any size if you need to clear the land or a weather event, such as a hail storm or extremely hot weather, threatens them, but it's best to let them develop to a reasonable size.  We find that if we leave tomatoes on the bush, the grubs will get to them before we do.  We wait until they're a decent size and showing just the first twinges of pink, and we pick them.  They ripen inside away from birds and insects.  Tomatoes don't ripen by sunlight, they need a warm temperature instead.  Don't store tomatoes in the fridge, they'll develop their full flavour if left on the kitchen bench.  Don't worry that they'll go off, you'll only loose those that have a grub in them, the rest will last a few weeks on the bench.

Some vegetables like pumpkins, squash, potatoes, onions can be left growing until they're ripe, and even left  there until you need them.  Naturally, you have to use your common sense when using the garden as a storage container as well.  For instance, if you have continuous rain you'd have to rescue them or they'd rot in all that water.  But if you're hoping to get a few more weeks or even a month in the garden before harvesting, most of the time, with these vegetables, that's okay.  You'll need to keep your pumpkins in check and you can do that by waiting until you see the first pumpkins growing and then nipping off the growing stems, on the same vine, around it.  You'll usually get two or three pumpkins per vine.  When you see those pumpkins have set, nip off the extra shoots. That will stop the vine from rambling all over the garden.  A good indication to pick potatoes is when you see the green tops die down but they are usually ready for picking before the tops go brown.  Be guided more by the growing times for the variety you're growing and if you're impatient for potatoes, you can put your hand into the side of the plant and pick off some small new potatoes underground.  If you're gentle it will not damage the plant at all and these small potatoes are a gift when steamed or boiled and dressed simply with butter, parsley and a bit of seasoning.  Pumpkins are ready when the vine starts dying and they feel heavy for their size.  When you harvest your pumpkins, cut them from the vine leaving about six inches of vine still attached.  If the vine comes away from the pumpkin cover the circle at the top of the pumpkin with some melted bees wax to protect it while it's ripening and drying.  Dry the pumpkins in the sun for a couple of weeks before bringing them inside to store in a cool dark place. 


Leeks, radish, carrots, turnips and parsnips are best picked on the smaller rather than larger size but if they're left a little bit longer in the ground, they don't suffer much from.  You'll notice the sweetness and tenderness more if they're picked younger.

All through the growing season, no matter what you're growing, keep the garden beds weeds-free, pick off every dead leaf you see and watch for wilt in your tomatoes, potatoes, capsicums/peppers and eggplant.  If you see diseased leaves on any of these plants, pick off all the dead leaves and put them in a plastic bag and leave in the sun to completely kill off everything.  Then dispose of the bag in the rubbish bin.  Watch out for caterpillars, grasshoppers, slugs and snails and if you find any, pick them off and give them to the chooks.  Try to get into the habit of inspecting your plants early in the morning or late in the afternoon because that is when most insects will be feeding.


Keep your green leaves growing well with some sort of fertiliser tea - they're easily made at home and cost very little.  If you see any plant that is stressed or being attacked my insects, apply a feeding of seaweed tea to it.  It is a great plant tonic and can help plants survive harsh conditions.  Don't apply too much nitrogen to fruiting plants like tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, beans etc because you'll make the plant grow all leaves and no fruit.  If your fruiting vegetables aren't producing flowers, apply sulphate of potash  (according to the directions on the pack) around the base of the plant and water it in.  BTW, all the applications I've recommended here are organic. 

Make sure you tie up your tomatoes before they become too unruly and keep all your climbing plants attached to their supports.  It only takes a few minutes a week to do this and it makes all the difference.  Vines that are allowed to fly around in the wind will break or at the very least become damaged. Mulch around your vegetables with straw, particularly the tomatoes, as it will help them keep their roots at a even temperature and will help retain water in the soil.  Tomatoes are one of very few vegetables that like the mulch touching their stems - they will grow extra roots into the mulch if you pack it up around them and that will give you better crops.  All the other vegetables should have their stems kept free of mulch, it just needs to cover the soil they're growing in.  Keep applying the mulch through the season as it breaks down.  When it does break down it adds organic matter to your soil, which is always a good thing.


As you clear an area after harvesting, apply some compost, dig it in, and start another crop.  Even if it's just two or three plants.  Gardening this way will give you the best return on the work you put in and it uses the soil productively and sustainably.

It sounds like a lot of work but if you get into a routine with your gardening, it only requires observation and fixing problems as soon as you see them.  There will always be something to fix, adjust, tie back, prune or move.  The rest of it is pure enjoyment - both in the gardening and in the eating.   And you will probably find that you're at your best in the garden, many of us are.  Happy gardening everyone!

Today we travel across the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand to visit Amy and see where she works.

I have been secretly savouring a cookbook that I thought would not only be a rich addition to my recipe collection but also help us all get back to real cooking.  I found this treasure when visiting my son Shane on his birthday.  He always shows me his new cook books and there it was, looking very much like an ordinary book.  Do not judge a book by its cover.  (Although this cover is special with a scarecrow and love heart. I should have known.) Hanno bought it for me the next day.  Well, the first week came and went with many opportunities to tell you but this book is so special and I love it so much, I had to keep the love affair quiet for a while.  Now my heart is overflowing and I have to let it all out and tell you all about this most fabulous of books; to do otherwise would be shameful.  The icing on the cake is that it's Australian and it's not written by a celebrity chef.  This, my friends, is the real deal.  This book is about real food.

The Real Food Companion by Matthew Evans.

This is my kind of book.  He uses full cream milk and loves raw milk, butter and cream and makes no apologies for it.  If you want a low fat cook book, and I'm not sure why anyone would, this is not for you.  This has recipes for  yoghurt, ricotta,  marscapone, chicken stock, lemon curd, asparagus with poached egg and cheddar, slow roasted pork belly, homemade baked beans and bacon, rosewater, braised red cabbage, gooseberry fool and many other delicious foods.

There is intelligent information explaining the gassing of tomatoes; that tomatoes don't ripen best on the vine; that Delicious apples are in season for about two weeks each Autumn, yet are available all year round in the shops; the difference between single herd milk and mass produced milk; what buttermilk is; and how to prepare pulses; as well as many good wholesome recipes.  But overall, in addition to the recipes, it speaks on the ethics of the food we eat in an intelligent and non-political way that I found very appealing.  This is not preaching.

I have not been paid for this post, nor am I attached to this writer in any way, except emotionally now because of his book. The only down side of this book is the price - the recomended retail price is $89.95 but I've done a bit of searching and found it here at Fishpond for $60.00, with free postage if you're in Australia, or better still it's 15 pounds (AU$26), plus postage on the UK Amazon.  I have added the UK Amazon box in my right column if you would like to buy it via my blog.

The Real Food Companion is not a guide to producing restaurant-style food  for your kitchen table, it is a nurturer's book that will aim you gently towards more ethical food choices and wholesome home food.  It will help you with the small and simple things like making yoghurt, washing pulses and selecting eggs but it will also be your guide to improving the food you put on the table everyday.  This book is a real winner.

I received the following comment during the week from Monique who wrote:

... we want to sell our place and search for a new home we can make our home. We both know this is not our place to be. So Rhonda, would you recommend us to make our place a home right now or save our love for the next place?
We are afraid that if we are going to love this house, we never, ever could sell it. Do you know what I mean?The only thing what's in our heart is the great desire to sell this place. That's our dream, that's our greatest wish. Won't we stop this feeling if we are going to love this place?
By the way: our place right now is an building of ten floors in the middle of a city and many factories. Our dream is an old tiny, little farm or cottage in the middle of nowhere.

We have a tomato bush growing in the grass, next to the hard surface of our back verandah.  It came up out of no where, was not planned nor planted by either of us, it just arrived.  The bush is held up with sticks and a couple of pieces of metal from an old card rack.  It's huge and healthy and much bigger than our planned and carefully planted tomatoes; it's taller than I am.  Last night, along with whiting cooked with lemon and olive oil, home grown lettuce, raw, shredded beetroot and carrot and potato salad, we had some of those tomatoes.  They were delicious.

Bloom where you are planted.

I have written about this in a different way here but I wanted to address a certain issue with you, Monique. When you're older and look back on your life, although it will feel like one long, unbroken thread, you'll see it's fragmented with times when you were perfectly happy doing what you were doing and other times when you did something that might not have seemed right at the time but lead you on to something better.  ALL of it is your life.  ALL of it should be made the most of.


Do you know there are only 9,000 hours in a year and that if you live to 80, you'll only have 720,000 hours to live.  Life is short.

Everyone of those hours is precious so don't waste too many of them wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else.  Make the most of every hour.  You don't have to live in the country to live simply.  Right here, right now you can be preparing for your country life while you make your city life and your city home productive, comfortable and beautiful. So when you ask "would you recommend us to make our place a home right now or save our love for the next place?"  I recommend both to you.  It is possible to love where you live right now, to make it a safe and comfortable haven for you both, and still love where you will move to in the future.  I believe that if you decide to make the house you are living in now a warm and nourishing home, if you use that space to teach yourself all the life skills you need, both now and later, if you dive into your simple life right now, you will be living to your true potential and it will prepare you for the move to the country when you are ready for it.

No one knows how their life will unfold.  We can only deal with the times we live in and hope that our plans for the future work out the way we hope.  But I will tell you this, if you don't take your life by the throat this very day and live like it really matters, you will have wasted a lot of your hours.  What you're living now is not a wedge of life that doesn't matter.  It all matters. Try to love your whole life, not just the parts of it you yearn for.  You heart is capable of non-stop love, if you love you home now, you will still have the capacity to love your future home.  So talk to your husband, work out what you both want, now and in the future, and make your current circumstances part of your simple life.  And do it today.  You might not have a huge back garden where you are now, but you can still find a space to produce food and learn the ins and outs of it.  You can cut down on chemicals in your life, stop using plastics, learn to sew and knit, learn how to cook from scratch, produce your own bread, jams, sauces, learn how to make sauerkraut and herrings in brine.  It is up to you to make the life you want to live. There is so much to be done.  Your time starts NOW.

Today we're travelling to a Canadian dairy farm.  Look at all those cute cow bottoms waiting patiently.  I love this workplace and I'm sure Marlyn, whose home we are visiting, enjoys her work very much.  

She writes:

"I wish to share with you my favourite work spaces. I would love to say I have just one, but rather I enjoy two.

There is nothing more joyful then to arrive in the barn at 5am to the sounds of sheep calling you by name "MaaaMaaa" and cattle waiting to be milked. Animals unlike humans know patience. The cows come in one at a time know exactly which stall is theirs and start to munch on their morning feed waiting to be milked. They also enjoy a human hand on their flank and kind words. Sheep are noisy critters in the morning. They seem to want your attention all at once. They can't go out of the barn yard to pasture until all dangers that lurk in  the dawn is gone. On 250 acres of Canadian farmland there are many dangers of coyotes and wolves. They too, even though in  hurry to get to the green grass, leave the barn one at a time with some of the little ones jumping all over the place once they are free to roam.

My sewing & craft room is my love of heart. I have only had my own room for a year now, as we are slowly becoming empty nesters. My sewingroom is my Eldest daughters old bedroom, which I now on occasion need to share with grandbabies. I have always had a passion for sewing, mostly heirloom and smocking. Lately I have taken to stitching cards instead of purchasing them. These cards have become an encouragement for friends needing a smile. I also love knitting, making socks, and sweaters. And quilting of which there is always one in a frame. I was taught to sew, knit and quilt from my mother. A typical Memnnonite mom, she can do everything that needs doing ,at just the right time. She has been an huge encoragement to me as she taught me all the wonderful skills of homemaking. My sewingroom has a lovely large closet in it. I can actually fit the crib in it, but rather have wooden shelves in there to hold sewing projects and stamping/card making supplies, my ironing board. It also has a clothes rack to hang working on projects like quilt tops. I have a large cutting table and a small childs table for my grandchild to work on their artwork and sewing while Oma works on her projects.

Come visit us at Sweet Locus Lane Farm as sweetlocuslane.blogspot.com. You are always Welcomed."

The last of the first crop of cabbages.  A new batch was planted two weeks ago.

This is the lettuce and bok choy again but here you can also see the garlics planted a couple of months back and the last of the potatoes.  They are flopped over and waiting to be dug up, there are still a lot of them inside waiting to be eaten.

We used to grow blueberries here but they never really did very well so we dig them up and planted tomatoes.  Tomatoes are something we eat almost every day.  We need a lot of them.  Whatever excess we have I turn into tomato chutney and sauce. 

This sorry sight is what is left of a crop of tomatoes planted about four months ago.  You can see the brown leaves - that's tomato wilt.  It doesn't affect the tomatoes at all but it weakens the plant a lot.  We aim to get about four kilos (9lbs) from each bush and then we pull them out.  Tomatoes are always a difficult crop for us to find new space for.  Once we've grown a crop we like to leave that spot for a few years before planting tomatoes - or potatoes, capsicum (peppers) or eggplant - there again.

And this is what we did with our blueberries.  They are planted up in my antique baby bath and bread bin.  :- )  I've just noticed that Hanno's planted a couple of marigolds in there too.  We'll watch them in this space and if they fail to thrive, we'll find a better home for them.

I suppose many of my northern hemisphere friends will be up to their necks in vegetables and fruits right now.  I hope you're enjoying your gardens and learning the things that will help you next year and 30 years from now.  Once gardening gets you, you're in it for life.

I am often overwhelmed by the generous nature of the comments left behind like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs in the woods. Those breadcrumbs can be followed and at times  they lead to the most wonderful places.  Sometimes, someone picks up on a tiny thing and that makes me smile, knowing they know what I know. Stephanie and notesfromthefrugaltrenches both noted my reference to Doc Martin.  For those of you who don't know, this is a UK TV program about a disagreeable and socially unaware doctor in a small village and, I guess, about village life.  I don't watch a lot of television and I rarely watch anything as it goes to air, I prefer to record and watch when I feel like it.  That has the added benefit of me being able to whiz through the advertisements.  Stephanie, what is Hulu?  I think there are Doc Martin DVDs, you might find the full series somewhere, or might be able to hire them.  Notes, my sister and I were talking about this the other day.  Where is it filmed?

Monique, I will think about your comment and answer later in the week.

French Knots, Hanno is safely home, thank you.  I struggle with some repetitive tasks but I have found that by accepting them as being part of this life I have chosen, and knowing that if I was working in a boring  paid job the repetition would be absolutely mind-numbing.  At least at home you can mix jobs around and do things according to your own timetable. You have control. I think we've been lead to believe we should never be bored when the reality is that most of our lives are filled with mundane tasks that fill up very ordinary days.  It is up to you to accept that, look at it in another way and mix the tasks you love doing with those you don't. You are at the time of life when these things you do for your family are part of it.  It won't be like that forever.  I wrote a blog about this a couple of years ago that might help you: The Familiar Rhythm of the Unremarkable.

Christa, thank you so much for your warm and generous comment.  The fact is that I am a very ordinary woman who makes mistakes, is forgetful and impatient.  The good part is that I make a good cup of tea and I can hold my own in most decent conversations.  Ironically, I don't mix well with others and prefer to be alone or with people I know, except when I'm at my voluntary job. Then I turn into everyone's mother.  ;- )

And finally, when I looked up the definition of "house-proud" the other day I came across this article in the Sydney Morning Herald that I want to bring to your attention.  This is an extract: "Scientists found significant links between the disease [breast cancer] and women's use of cleaning products, air fresheners and mould removers. General use of cleaners doubled the risk of breast cancer in women who used them the most, experts found."  It confirms my suspicions about air fresheners and breathing in chemicals we spray around our homes.  If you're still buying commercially made cleansers and sprays, you might find some cleaners you can make at home here. They're healthier and a lot cheaper. I've never used air fresheners. I believe the smell of a clean home is the best scent possible.

I feel strongly about the health risks some cleaning chemicals pose to us homemakers.  We need to stop using products we don't know about and get back to basics to discover that the old methods of cleaning with moist rags, vinegar, homemade soap and bicarb really do work.  Supermarkets and manufacturers will only disclose the information they're legally obliged to.  It is up to us to alert other homemakers and support them in the transition to gentler ways of cleaning.  Let's all get back to the tried and true ways and turn our backs on products that might compromise our health.

I had a wonderful weekend pottering around doing this and that, and I even had a sleep in my chair, wrapped in a blanket, after watching Doc Martin that I'd recorded the night before.  Hanno has been away this past week and will fly home today.  He went back to Sydney to help my sister, Tricia, deal with the realities and the real estate agents as she put her house on the market to sell it.  It's a big step for her.  A huge move, both physically and emotionally, to sell after the death of her husband a few years ago and her children making lives for themselves.  It was good that Hanno could be with her and help her through some of it.

So back at the ranch here, it's been just me and the animals and yesterday I thought I'd stop reading for a while and get stuck into some housework.  I vacuumed and washed the floors, did some laundry, cleaned benches, changed table and bed linen and made a big pot of food for Alice.  When I finished, I stood back to appreciate my hard work and a really old fashioned term popped into my head for the first time in years.  House-proud.   That was the term used in the 40s and 50s to describe a housewife who kept a tidy house.

I do feel it you know - proud, although it's not at all arrogant, it's more restrained and unpretentious.   House-proud doesn't quite get to the real essence of it either. I'm not so much proud of my house but proud of the way my home works its magic way on me, my family and others who visit us.  The work I do in my home changed  my unrealistic perception of the spray and wipe advertised version of housework and instead of trying to make everything easier, I tried to make it safer and more satisfying.  Speed is overrated. Satisfaction and comfort are more enduring and meaningful.  

I discovered, once I dived right into this way of living, that making my way through housework helped me make my way through life. Working away slowly at home calmed me down and showed me a different way of living.  It prepared me, in many ways, for what I needed to do when I went to my voluntary job and I'm sure that if I took on full-time work again, it would also help me with that as well.  You require an extraordinary number of skills to run a home, raise children, grow a garden and look after pets and chooks.  So it is not surprising that when I was out, doing all those things we all do in our daily lives, that thinking of home, and the fact that I would be going home soon, returned a calmness to me that helped me complete my tasks.

If you really do become what you do, then I am a plain and simple woman who tries to make as much at home as possible.  My home has become a centre point that has helped me live true to my values, to open up to a creative energy that provides exciting possibilities every day and to be sure that here at home is where I really want to be.  Right here is where I help feed and clothes us, I write here, I create, think and learn and I find a steadfast inspiration every day to keep doing those things. This is where I reclaim my independence and discover the contentment of living well and to my true potential.  It may not be everyone's choice to work at home doing household chores but I have been enriched by it and I doubt I would be as happy as I am without meaningful work to do every day.  I don't want to live a life where I don't have to do any work at home, and I don't want to be dragged down by it either.  I have found a good balance that requires of me that I plan, work and put in the time and in return I get this feeling of satisfaction and contentment. And yes, I guess I am house-proud.  I am proud and thankful for what looking after my home has helped me do and become.  And I am pretty sure many of you feel the same way.