• ‘No one knew they existed’: wild heirs of lost British honeybee found at Blenheim

• Dilutions Cheat Sheet for Dr. Bronner’s Castile

• Cracks in food system driven by year-round hunger for fresh produce begin to show

• DIY How to Make Paper Christmas Ornament / Tutorial

• Helen Garner: I always liked my diary better than anything else I wrote

• Cats track their owners’ movements, research finds

• Hard graft: backyard gardener claims world record for tree bearing 10 different fruits

• Worried about waste and having too much ‘stuff’? Get rid of the fitted kitchen

• What can 1,000 Australians show us about the risks of COVID-19 infections and vaccines?

• King parrots are dying of a wasting disease that may be spreading through birdbaths

• How to convince your apartment strata to go solar

• A teenager was accidentally invited to a grandma’s Thanksgiving dinner. Six years later, he’s still going back

• 110 g soft, not melted, butter plus 110 g sugar and beat together 
• 1 egg, vanilla and mix again
• 180 g flour - I used half plain, half self-raising and a pinch of salt - mix
• 120 g chocolate - I used 200 g choc chips because I didn't want 80 grams of choc chips lurking in the fridge. True story. 😇

I am feeling better now but my arm is still swollen and bright red with peeling skin. It's like I've been badly sun burnt. I'll go back to my doctor in the morning, hopefully the last of the many visits I've made to the clinic. It's good to be back among the living. 💖

I'm not well. I was diagnosed with cellulitis of the arm yesterday and I've been told to rest and take antibiotics. The wound was inflicted by Gracie when we were playing last week. I didn't think the skin was broken, but I was wrong. The doctor said that if I get worse, I'm to go straight to the hospital 😮. I already had my list ready so I'm sending it to you and hopefully I'll be back fit and well next week.

Weekend Reading

• How to retrain your frazzled brain and find your focus again

• Indigenous Australia, holograms and the Beano

• Why we're so terrified of the unknown

• Australian supermarket tomato sauces tasted and rated – and how to cook with them

• Huge restored mosaic unveiled in Jericho desert castle

• Is my phone listening to me? We ask the expert

• How to survive a venomous snakebite — from a professional who's been bitten before

• Easy chocolate pudding

• Unpacking: the meditative puzzle game that’s all about organising

• Living Simple

• Aurora australis seen over Tasmania was 'hands-down best' lightshow in years

• Kitchen of endangered people in north Russia

This is a simple post laying bare what I do during the day. You've liked  these posts when I've done them in the past. It's my day, set out in chunks of time, so you can see not what I do every day because they're all different, but what I did on this day. I also took all of these photos yesterday so you can see some of what I'm writing about.

So what happened on THIS day?

4 - 7am 

Up early, finished off a few things on the computer left over from the day before, had breakfast while catching up on one of the previous night's TV programs, then five minutes of news. I never watch TV at night. Breakfast was baked beans with ancient grains toast and black tea. Then I unpacked the dishwasher, placed the breakfast dishes in, cleaned the microwave and tidied the kitchen.

7 - 7.30am 

While I waited for Hanno to wake up, I tidied my desk, dealt with emails and finished setting up Adguard - I just bought a lifetime membership and changed a couple of settings. When Hanno was having his breakfast, I opened the windows in the bedroom and ensuite, made the bed and put a few things away in the wardrobe.

7.30 - 10am

Put load of washing on and scrubbed the laundry sink. Made some phone calls. Cleaned and organised the kitchen and started preparing lunch - corned beef, sweet potato mash and cabbage. The corned beef cooked slowly overnight and was really tender. Then I made morning tea, we had banana cake and tea, and I sat with Hanno on the front verandah.

10am - midday

Peeled and cooked vegetables and got plates, glasses and cutlery out to set the table. Peeled and cut up mangoes for dessert. Hung washing out, put some in the dryer and continued washing during the day.  Served lunch.

12.30 - 2.20pm

Man from Airtasker came to mow our lawns and do the whipper snipping. I finished setting up Adguard on Hanno's computer and starting installing the new iOS. It took nearly four hours! Set up Adguard on our phones and iPad.

2.30 - 3pm

Hemmed some small cloths on the sewing machine.

Cleaning the kitchen bench - a never-ending job.

3 - 3.30pm

Talked to our grandkids on the phone. Alex and Eve had just been picked up from school by Sarndra and were heading home. We talked about what they were doing at school that day, what they hoped to get for Christmas and Eve's newly pierced ears. I'm getting her some good earrings for Christmas. They were worried about Hanno's health and spoke to him but he got tired so I ended what he was saying. They said they wanted to come down soon to see him.

3.30 - 4pm

Took Gracie outside for a run around. She's still stalking lizards but happily they're much faster that she is.

4 - 6pm

Made tea and toast and watched some of the late afternoon news. Heated up a stuffed capsicum for Hanno's tea then tidied up the kitchen, packed the dishwasher and hung out sheets and towels.

6 - 7pm

Cleaned and tidied my workroom, vacuumed the floor and emptied the vacuum. I'm no angel, I hate emptying the dust from the vacuum cleaner but it was so full it stopping cleaning! It felt good that I emptied it though so maybe I am an angel. 😇

7pm

Checked on Hanno and Gracie watching TV, had a shower and went to bed. Couldn't go to sleep so I got up again and looked for cake recipes in Grandma's Cookbook. I love that site!  Also checked Grandma Donna's site. She has good, old fashioned, basic recipes, which is what I prefer to cook and eat now.

9pm

Got tired again so when Hanno went to bed, I did too. This time is was successful and I slept well.

I hang my dirty white cloths over the side of this tub and once a week soak them in oxygen-bleach. 

We have two air filters in the house now, we've had them for about six months and they're really helping Hanno with his breathing when he sleeps. They have HEPA filters so they can filter out Covid, cold and flu viruses and well as fumes from paint or carpet, outside smoke and cooking smells. It operates on a blue light most of the time but when something is in the air it goes to orange then, if necessary, red. It takes time cleaning the air then returns to blue. It's fascinating to watch because often you don't know why it changes settings. I'm grateful to have it.

Today I've just been outside to pick lemons for the slice I'll be making tomorrow. We had corned beef,  sweet potato and cabbage leftovers for lunch today. There are leftovers for tomorrow as well.

A few towels and a sheet on the line here. It doesn't take long to dry, maybe two to three hours most days.

ADDED LATER:  I'm having computer problems, I'll be back later this week or early next week.  

Melbourne comes out of lockdown today - the most locked down city in the world. I'm celebrating with you Melbourne! Stay safe everyone and have some fun, you deserve it.

With the weather moving from cool to warm during the week, I cleaned the back verandah and moved our table and chairs towards the house where it's shady 24/7. We have shade blinds that protect the verandah from the sun during the afternoon so when I moved some plants onto the verandah I pulled down one of the blinds to provide shade and a bit of protection. I love the feeling I get when I clean up a big area like that when the seasons change. I feel I'm doing the right thing and it opens new opportunities for me. When things are a mess, I don't want to do anything because I have to rearrange everything before I even start.

It's gardenia time!  Here are a couple of sprays of them with the Queen Anne's lace.

The Taproot magazine edition I'm in was published this week and that resulted in a lot of new people visiting my Instagram page and here at the blog. Hello everyone and welcome. I hope you all find inspiration here or on Heather's beautiful blog - Northridge Farm, or Alyson's at Alyson Morgan or Farai's at Farai Harreld. We all have ideas and information that will help you transition to a more sustainable and simple life.

This weeks baking was a date cake from the Grandma's Cookbook website. It's an easy to make cake, undecorated in any way and so delicious with a cup of tea.  Jens and Cathy called in during the week (they moved up the Hervey Bay two weeks ago) and I was delighted to be able to offer them some fresh date cake with their tea before they headed home, another 2.5 hours away.  Other food I served this week included mushroom omelettes, pork fillet with potatoes and red cabbage, Atlantic salmon with salad and kartoffel puffers. 

And of course you know I've been out in the garden doing this and that. Everything's growing well and it's providing a safe habitat for the wildlife that wander or fly through.

This is a tropical vine growing over the garden arbour.

These St Anne's Lace have grown to over 9 feet tall! I love picking the flowers for the house.

Over near the neighbour's fence is this scene - comfrey, foxgloves, a bee a hotel, mauve trumpet creeper and a huge pink salvia.

Weekend Reading

• Easy recipe with frozen croissant dough

• Making jackets from a thrifted quilt and curtains

• How to understand sewing patterns (for beginners!)

• Spätis: The convenience stores that rule Berlin

• ‘Locals love us’: country Australia’s general stores come into their own during Covid

• Ivory poaching has led to evolution of tuskless elephants, study finds

• Something good every day and Hungry Hungry Pippo are two newsletters my friend Pip Lincoln is writing. If you know Pip's books you'll know what a fabulous writer she is. Check out her newsletters - the first is free, the second with a small fee. Both are interesting and entertaining!

• 12 gifts  and Making my own sewing tools by the ever wonderful DinLife

• ‘Overlooked’: 14,000 invertebrate species lost habitat in Black Summer bushfires, study finds

• Jean therapy: putting them in the freezer doesn’t work – so how do you make jeans last?

• Household dust is being put under the microscope as scientists seek to better understand it

• Lillördag: Sweden's workers de-stress with 'Little Saturday'

• Is modern life poisoning me? I took the tests to find out

I don't work nearly as hard as my mother or grandma, or, no doubt, their grandmothers. I'm fortunate to have appliances that make housework easier so because I know that and always have a fragment of it in my mind, I don't complain about housework. But I don't go overboard with appliances either. I don't have an air fryer or coffee machine or thermomix, I have a good fridge and freezer, both ten years old but energy efficient and still working well. I have an excellent self-cleaning oven, an induction cook top, a microwave, stick blender, hand beater, food processor, mini processor for processing nuts and small vegetables, stick vacuum cleaner, excellent washing machine and dryer. All these appliances are the best quality we could afford at the time, they were bought with cash, are energy efficient and they give me the extraordinary gift of time. Time to do what I want to do instead of house work.

This week, premium flannelette 147 cm is six dollars a metre at Spotlight. That is what I used and it's working better than I thought it would. If you're not in Australia, just buy lightweight cotton flannel from your local fabric shop. If you decide to try this, cut your cloths to the size you want and either hem them on the sewing machine or overlock them if you have an overlocker. As a guide, my cloths are 35cm x 35cm and the paper towels are 45cm x 35 cm.

I don't remember if I told you about the American magazine Taproot's latest edition. The current edition features four simple living and minimalist bloggers and I'm one of the bloggers 🤔.  It's a truly lovely magazine that focuses on family, food, crafts and the values we hold dear. Welcome Taproot readers as you come through. I hope you look through my older posts too as there's a ton of information there that will help you simplify and live well. Taproot is available in Australia from Lauren and Oberon at Spiral Garden.

It's been a busy week here but it's moved along calmly with most things falling into place. I always get more done when I work slowly. I drove Hanno over to see his eye specialist on Monday. He had another bleed into his eye recently and although it required a minor op, during Covid, the doctor is well set up in his rooms to perform these small operations. Hanno's eyes are still not right so I'm hoping another day or so will see improvements.

In my home I've been baking, cooking, putting up a single batch of lemons and making more 'paper' flannel towels, more on that in a few days. Readers sometimes comment that I do a lot of work in my home and I guess I do.  I want to live simply and that, to me, means doing most things from scratch.  I work to my routine, it all flows smoothly and the work is done without resentment. I'm in my mid-70s now and housework gives structure to my days while creating a warm and comfortable home that is a joy to live in. The alternatives for my age group of travelling around in a caravan, shopping and joining clubs I did when I was younger. Now I want to enjoy what I worked all those years for - my simple home at the end of a dead-end street, with chickens and a creek in the backyard. Bliss!

I also made up a jar of preserved sweet lemons to add to drinks over summer.  Generally one jar does us the whole season. It's a quick and easy job that takes about 15 minutes. I used four sliced lemons, scrubbed clean with bicarb water. When I added them to a sterilised jar I poured hot simple sugar syrup over them and sealed the jar. They sat on the kitchen bench overnight and are now in the fridge. If you make them, when the lemons are all gone, use the lemony syrup in icy water for another refreshing drink. With the addition of lemon to the syrup, this lasts at least six months in the fridge.

Have you had a good week too? I hope you enjoy the reading list this week. xx

Weekend Reading

• Chemicals used in packaging may play role in 100,000 US deaths a year

• Household dust is being put under the microscope 

• Japan's independent kids

• The climate disaster is here

• The five biggest threats to our natural world … and how we can stop them

• ‘Waiting for a ghost’: the search for dark matter 1km under an Australian town

• Folding and storing blankets and quilts - Don't forget to turn on the captions

• Alzheimer's: The heretical and hopeful role of infection

• Lördagsgodis: Sweden’s Saturday-only candy tradition

• ‘I’ve learned to see beauty instead of a beast’: the house pests we’ve grown to love

• Taking care of home - I love how Donna modifies her housework to make it meaningful to her

• Why do humans speak 7000 different languages?

• Ten Simple Microgreens & Sprouts Recipes 🤤 | Seed to Table - Don't forget to turn on the captions

It's been a good week for me working at home, with a trip out and mostly lovely weather. I'm not doing more than I usually do, I'm just slower than I used to be so it all takes longer.  At the moment I'm taking a break from reorganising the back verandah. We move the table and chairs closer to the house in summer to keep most things in the shade but as it's not had a deep clean out there for a while, I'm cleaning as I go. I'm also keeping an eye open for snakes as we had a brown snake on the front verandah a few days ago. Gracie saw it first and ran at it but as most Australians know, brown snakes are aggressive and one of our most dangerous snakes so we called her back and went inside so the snake could move on at its own pace. The same day Hanno found a large python skin in the flower garden so they're on the move again. I'm not scared of snakes and I respect their right to live here as we do but I have to train Gracie to stay clear of them because if she's bitten by a brown snake she'll die and I think a large python could swallow her.

Earlier in the week, Hanno was assessed by a woman from My Aged Care, a government department who help older people live in their own homes. We're already getting a few of their services and this assessment was to see if Hanno needed further help. We'd already talked about him getting a walker to move around and we eventually found an all terrain, lightweight walker, so yesterday, we went out and bought one. So far, it's been a great help to Hanno, both in and outside. He's still walking around and doing many of his jobs but with the dizziness, the walker ensures he doesn't fall.

I've cleaned and reorganised a few more drawers this week and my next job it to tidy up my work room. It's not my favourite job but I know that when I finish, I'll love working there and when I look at it, I'll feel like an angel. 😇. I have a few more plants to go into the back garden which I ordered online. They are hardy geranium Roxanne, a penstemon, a couple of salvias and a Japanese anemone. I'm pleased to tell you the citrus trees are currently growing tiny oranges and lemons for our next harvest and the roses and foxgloves continue to be truly beautiful.

You can subscribe to my blog by email again. The area is in the side bar. When you subscribe, each new post will be automatically emailed to you. And if you're looking around for Christmas gifts which they say are going to be scarce and slow on delivery this year, on Amazon (Australia) my books are on special!  Down to Earth paperback is $26.94, the hardcover is $33.50 and the hardcover of The Simple Home is $34.66. Both books have 4.5 star ratings and both are available as ebooks as well.

I hope you're well and happy and doing things that make your days joyous and satisfying. If you haven't been vaccinated yet, please do it soon and stay safe in these troubled times. We don't hear about the Covid figures much now, it's more about vaccinations, but I just looked it up and so far there have been almost 240 million Covid-19 cases reported officially world-wide and sadly, 4.8 million deaths.

Stay safe and well, everyone. xx

Weekend Reading

• Female scientists strike success at the Australian Museum's 2021 Eureka prizes

• 'Genius dogs' can learn names of more than 100 toys

• How to fix a zipper

• Nippers training made his kids confident in the water and out. He wondered if he could follow their lead

• BTS and Chris Martin (Coldplay) recording My Universe

• Magpie starts barking after being adopted by pooch

• And the winning bird is ...

• Lemons over the fence: how to go urban foraging safely, respectfully and cleverly

• The 49 coolest neighbourhoods in the world

• Purl Solo - If your creative juices are flowing but you don't have a project in mind, here is the beautiful Purl Solo page full of knitting, sewing, patchwork and small works.

• 'Sleep should be prescribed' what those late nights out could be costing you