down to earth

It was a dark day yesterday. It had rained overnight and there were showers all morning. As I passed through the kitchen, it was too dark so I lit candles and brought some gentle light in. Breakfast was grilled cheese on toast with black tea which I enjoyed on the verandah while Gracie explored the yard. It was a good start to the day.

Then the dishwasher was emptied, sink scrubbed, the stove was wiped over and benches cleaned and dried. I had the radio on, listening to Australia All Over, and I was quite happy to discover the microwave needed cleaning - more time to be spent in the kitchen. I set a bowl of water and vinegar in there (I often use half a lemon instead of vinegar), turned it on for 10 minutes and wiped it clean again. Ready for another week of defrosting and reheating.

With the kitchen finished I made my bed, wiped the bathroom over, opened up all the windows at that end of the house, folded up a couple of quilts and put them back in their original plastic covers and stored them in the wardrobe for next winter.

Two photos above: the back garden at this time last year. Just before Hanno got sick.

All work stopped then for morning tea. I got a drink and a biscuit and went back to the front verandah. Grace and I shared a stem ginger biscuit, I turned off the radio and listened to my Sunday morning neighbourhood. I looked around the plants accumulating on the verandah and made some plans in my head for cuttings and seeds, and then had to edit my over-enthusiasm. I identified the plants that would guarantee my mental health as well as the ones that would help add beauty to this odd side-verandah garden and ditched the rest. After watering all the plants. We went inside. I'll have a post about the new garden soon.

We've been growing food here for 25 years. I think that's why I find it so difficult to give it up completely. On the verandah garden I now have roses, salvias, foxgloves, yarrow, lavender, gaura and have added more flowers and some herbs and vegetables - capsicum, tomato, chives and parsley. I have cleome and nasturtium seeds too and I doubt I'll resist the urge to plant them. 🤫

The photos above, up to the chard, are all photos of gardens in our past. We grew almost all the vegetables we ate which saved us a lot of money and gave us both wonderful hours spent in the gardens over the years.

We also kept heirloom chickens, which, like heirloom seeds need backyard gardeners to keep them alive and thriving. If you are thinking of buying chickens, check out the heirloom varieties and not just the old red hens which are bred for the caged eggs industry.

So, back to yesterday's step-by-step ... phone calls from Tricia and Kerry.

Sunday lunch was a mushroom omelette with salad. After lunch I watched an episode of Vera. I love that show. We have an older woman in her green cloth hat and overcoat overseeing a team of detectives and giving them a bit of a hurry up when they don't work as fast as she does. It's a breath of fresh air because we don't often have such a scenario. If we went on the usual TV formula, you'd be forgiven if you thought older people, men and women, were only capable of portraying victims or pensioners doing their shopping. 🙄

This is the developing garden on the front verandah.

After Vera, I picked some lemons and rearranged the outdoor furniture on the back verandah. I pulled the table and chairs back towards the house because if the weather reports are true, it will be another wet summer, with the possibility of floods ... again. While this was happening, Gracie discovered a cane toad under a sheet of metal in the old vegetable garden. She tried to get it out but luckily it was too far in. Cane toads are dangerous animals. They secrete poison on the top of their necks and if they get caught by another animal, which is usually by the neck, the dog or cat is poisoned. We had a cat in that situation years ago. She foamed at the mouth, got very ill and ended up at the vet's. I threw a ball around the backyard for Gracie to chase to get her away from the toad and when she went inside, I removed the metal, exposed the toad and saw it hop down to the creek.

Not every task I do here is rewarding or fulfilling but doing the unrewarding things gives me a feeling of achievement as well as the knowledge that I'm doing what I need to do to look after me and Gracie. I realise now that Hanno did a lot of those unpleasant tasks and I probably didn't thank him enough for what he did. I did bake a lot of his favourite cakes though and maybe that was enough. Now, each time I do something difficult or something I don't want to do, it makes it easier the next time because I know I'm stronger than I think I am.

I went inside at fiveish drank some water and thought about making toast. Instead I saw the one blood orange I bought last week and had that. I LOVE blood oranges and this one was dark red and absolutely delicious. If I see any next week I'll buy them to make blood orange marmalade.

As it was getting dark, I went around the house closing all the windows and blinds. I put some stained tea towels and dishcloths in to soak, cleaned the laundry sink and folded what was in the dryer. I watched ten minutes of news and some YouTube before having a shower and then read till I fell asleep.

Another day full of all the ordinary things that make up my life now. It's not exciting, I think those days are behind me, but it is fulfilling and meaningful. Today I've been sewing, reading and drawing and the only housework was cooking. I think that's the key really. When there is no one else to mix things up a bit, you have to make sure you don't get in a rut and just keep repeating the same thing most days. Satisfaction comes from living a life that is slow and has depth and I think I have that. The depth is provided by my ever-loving family and maintaining a level of productivity that keeps me engaged and interested. I think I'm pretty luckily actually.

Hello to all the newcomers, there are quite a few of you. Welcome. Thanks to all my readers who take the time to comment. It lets me know who is out there and while I don't answer every comment, I do read and appreciate each one. I hope you're doing well and the troubles of the world haven't caused too many problems where you live. xx

I had a lovely weekend. Jamie was here all day Saturday and there were visits from Kerry and his friend Josh. Jamie and I did some cooking, talked about Opa and acceptance, and Jamie did some drawing. I washed Gracie, changed the bedlinen, did some washing, cleaned the range hood and pottered around doing this and that. It was a wonderfully free and calm time. Not all weekends are like that so I really appreciated this one.

When I cleaned out the linen cupboard recently, I had several old sheets that I put aside to cut up for rags. On the weekend, I sat outside with the radio on and cut up two sheets. These old sheets are really absorbent and make the best rags.

For all the Gracie fans, and I know there are a lot of you, here she is on Saturday, sitting on her favourite cushion watching Jamie drive off with his dad.

Now Spring is here so are the Amazon lillies. I grow these on the front verandah.

There has been a slight change in me and in my home. I've not felt this way before and although I'm sad for the loss of Hanno every day, when I start moving and make the bed, organise lunch for Gracie and me, sweep the floor and wipe benches, I have a feeling of comfort, not just in myself but also in being here, at home. I think I've moved from intense grief to something else and I suppose when I think about it more and when time passes, I'll have a better understanding of it.

I wrote about upgrading appliances a couple of posts back but here's something I don't have to upgrade - it uses very little electricity. It's a very old radio with cassette player! The radio still works, the cassette player doesn't open. This table is next to where I sit when I'm on the front verandah. Nowadays, I light a mosquito coil and turn on the radio and I feel I've gone back in time 50 years.

There's another couple of months before I start my Home Care Plan. When that starts I'll have funds on hand for all the lawn mowing and outside maintenance here. But now I'm trying to find someone to mow the lawn. I went on airtasker and I offered $150 for the job but no one would do it at that price. Looks like the going price is $170. Anyhow, I withdrew the job and thought I might be able to get a local to do it. I'll look on the bulletin board when I go over to the shops again. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

I'm currently organising my home so I can do the work I need to do easily and efficiently. Many of you know I have a non-malignant brain tumour. The main problem I have with it is that it makes me dizzy when I walk on uneven ground (gardening), when I look up or down (hanging out the washing), or when I pick up items that are too heavy for me. I found that mopping floors and carrying a bucket of water made me really dizzy so I looked for other options. I don't want to give these jobs to someone else until I absolutely have to. I think when you stop doing something at my age, it's difficult to keep the ability to do it again.

This is the area in my laundry where I hang a few of my rags to dry.

I ended up buying a steam mop and I love it. It a Black and Decker 1300W 10 in 1 steam-mop. It does a very good job on the floor using no cleaning products, it's light and it comes with attachments so I can steam clean the venetian blinds, the oven or stove and the range hood. I wish I'd know about steam mops before.

When I finish this post I'll peel some vegetables, feed Gracie and start cooking my lunch. It's meatballs with coleslaw and salad today. Thank you for your visit here today. I send my thanks and appreciation to everyone who comments here. I don't often have time to answer but I do try. I hope everything is going well for you and that the rest of the week is smooth sailing. xx

I usually don't look forward to the electricity bill arriving, especially since the prices have gone up so much and look like increasing even more. However, I wanted to see what my bill was because over the past months I made a few choices to lower it. I knew it would be lower and I wanted to see how much I'd saved.

This is the new solar unit - 18 panels.

There's a bit of a story behind this so let me start at the beginning. Our old solar system stopped working in September last year. It was installed 11 years ago and when I finally got a technician to check it, 3 months later, he said the solar panels were corroded and the system was a fire hazard. So instead of the expected repair job, everything was removed. I was so busy looking after Hanno, I didn't even think about it again for a few months and after weighing up the pros and cons of solar and the certainty of increased electricity rates in the future, I had a new 6.66 kW system installed at the end of February. The bill I've just received is the first bill which is fully covered by the new solar system. We also have a solar hot water system. We've used these for almost 50 years and one of the first things we did when we moved to this home was install solar hot water. If you can't afford to get solar panels, go for a solar hot water system instead. If you live in Victoria or South Australia, there are government rebates.

This is the old solar unit - 7 panels. In the background is the solar hot water unit.

Of course solar energy helped lower this current bill and in December, when Hanno was still at home we replaced our 10 year old fridge. New appliances are much more efficient than older ones so that was another reason our bill started to decrease. When an appliance we own starts getting old or shows signs of problems, we usually update it with an energy efficient model because it does help with energy costs. We have a dishwasher, oven, toaster, food processor, mixer, iron, computers, sewing machine and overlocker/edger, washing machine and dryer - most with energy efficient technology. Our air conditioners have inverter/heat pump technology which cuts the cost of electricity. All our lights have LED globes, I turn off TVs at the wall so they're not running on standby and often I don't turn on the TV or lights at night because I prefer it that way. I have to say though, it's much easier to do that when there's no one else here. Over the years, Hanno thought I was crazy for wanting to do it. 😵‍💫

You'll notice on my bill there are a couple of government rebates. One is the $175 cost of living rebate that most of us got and the other is the pensioner discount. But I'm looking at the electricity usage rather than the dollar cost here. I'm celebrating decreasing my usage from 300 kWh to 5 kWh.

I knew, on average, air conditioning/heating and cooling consumed about 40 percent of each electricity bill, so when I was here alone over winter, I chose to not use the air conditioning. I made myself comfortable with an extra layer of clothes, an over the knees electric blanket and an electric blanket on my bed. But it's not always the appliances you have in your home, it's how you use them that makes the difference. All the little things like turning off lights when not in use, washing up by hand when there are only a few dishes, not having appliances on standby, always washing a full load in the dishwasher and washing machine - all this became part of my normal housework. One other change was I went from using our appliances at night on the old solar system because our feed-in tariff was 44 cents and it was cheaper for us to sell to the grid during the day. Now I use our appliances as soon as the sun hits the roof and I'm using solar energy generated here instead of energy from the grid. When the sun goes down all my cooking, sewing and cleaning have been done and I might just have a solo light or the radio on. My choices have made an impact on what I pay for electricity and saved a lot of carbon emissions.

I hope you to see that there are things you can do to decrease costs at home and all it takes is for you to make your particular choice and stick to it. I know many of you won't be able to do it even if you want to because you have family members who come home late and need to eat dinner, children who have to do homework and those who relax in front of the TV for entertainment. But if you can't do it now, you can do it when your family grows older and you're in a new season of life.

For every thing there is a season.

This is the Australian Government's Guide to Sustainable Homes. Lots of good information here.

There are probably a few things I've forgotten to write about here but one thing I want to add is to wash all your clothes in cold water. If you have greasy work clothes or badly stained items, wash in cold water, don't overload the machine and add a scoop of oxybleach to the wash. (I think the Vanish Oxy Advance brand is the best for this). I always keep an eye open for their half price specials at Woolworths and only buy it then.