I had a lovely afternoon tea with most of my Neighbourhood Centre volunteers yesterday.  The one day of the year when we get together to socialise rather than to work.  I took the opportunity to stand before them and speak about every person, thanking them for the individual jobs they do at the Centre, then gave everyone a stainless steel water bottle as a small token of gratitude.  After that we relaxed and enjoyed strawberry and mango ice  cream cake from the local ice-creamery, little quiches, local cheese, crackers and drinks.  It was a nice way to bring the working year to a close.  We have one more week, then we close for the holidays.

One of my wonderful volunteers brought me in this spectacular bunch of fragrant roses from her garden yesterday.

Today I have a day of catchup at home.  Soon the sun will be up, I'll check the chooks, feed the animals and start my day's work.  I'm saddened to tell you that we lost a chook, probably to the snake, yesterday.  Hanno phoned me at work to say that Quince, our little half blind buff Sussex girl was missing.  She always stayed by Quentin's side, and Quentin is still there, safe and sound, so we're guessing the snake came back late last night and took Quince.

When Hanno gets up we'll have breakfast, I'll wash up and make the bed.  Hanno is doing some errands for the Centre so he'll be out most of the morning while I bake bread and tidy up here.  I want to clean out my work room again, get it organised in there so my work is easier to get to, and joyful.  I love working in a clean and organised space.  I also love messing it up again by working on  simple domestic projects that help us live without buying commercial versions of items easily made with my own hands. At some time during the day I'll also bottle up some pineapple vinegar, sweep, dust and clean out the fridge ready for Christmas food and cold drinks for the visitors we're expecting.  And I know at times I'll just sit and knit, or do nothing but watch the dogs or the landscape, and breathe it all in.

I have two Down to Earth forum prize parcels to pack up and send - one to Canada and one to West Australia, and a small collection of Christmas gifts to wrap.  And Sarndra emailed last night to say they have a home line connected again so I'll phone her and catch up on their news.  I brought home my 2010 work diary yesterday and want to write it up to make sure I'm organised before the new year. There are writing deadlines as well as birthdays and special days to enter. I'm really pleased that this year's diary has monthly planners as well as a fold out yearly one. I find I can't get by without a diary now - there was a time though when I kept it all in my head.

I can hear birds squawking outside so I know the sun has risen.  Time to get to and start with this day's work.  I wonder what you're up to today.

And what is this, you ask?  It's Alice poking her nose through the bedroom curtains while she watched Koda.

Hanno and I both love animals and we care for those we've brought here to live with us, as well as those that have always been here.  Our family has only lived on this land for 12 years, our backyard wildlife has been here much longer.  It's sometimes a balancing act to keep both the domestic and feral living in harmony because usually when a native species makes itself know to us, it's here for a feed.

Last night Hanno went out to put the chooks to bed before it got too dark. All of a sudden, he was back in the house looking for the camera.  There was another python there, a big one this time.  Again, not after the chooks but looking to clean up a few rats for us.  Hanno locked the door to the chook house, the snake came out to the vegetable garden and there we left her.

We'll have to think about breaking that food chain.  The rats come at night to eat the chicken feed in the hopper, the snakes come to eat the rats.  When the snakes are big enough, they will come to eat the chooks as well. I think we'll have to take the food source away at night so there won't be a reason for the rats to be there.


I love how Hanno is with animals.  He's quiet and gentle and they seem to respond to that by  slowing down and being responsive.  In this photo here he's training Koda, our visiting Airedale, to walk steadily with the chooks and not to rush at them.  Koda has just recently had chooks introduced at her own home and she's always wanted to chase them.  By the time Jens and Cathy come back in January, I'm sure Koda will be a reliable guardian of the chooks and not a potential predator.

The other wildlife we've had the pleasure to see lately are the birds that come to eat the sunflowers.  The first of these photos was taken last Friday.  It's the very shy blue rozella (above).  It had a nice feed of seeds and then flew off when I went too close.  The next bird is a King Parrot (below) - another one of the four Gubi Gubi totems.  The other two are the wedge tail eagle and the sand goanna (lizard). 

I know about these totems because my good friend Beverly, elder of the Gubi Gubi, told me about them.  She has such a wealth of knowledge and I always learn something from her every time we meet.  Yesterday Beverly came to visit me at the Centre.  She brough some bunya nuts with her.  Bunyas are the native nut from one of the pine trees here.  And as we sat under the tree at the front of the building, with her shelling the hard nuts with her hands, we both had a nice feed of the high protein nuts and talked about several projects we have planned for our community next year.  It was a beautiful and relaxing break from an otherwise hectic day.

We are all connected on this land - humans, birds, wildlife and all the domestic animals.  I have always respected and cared for the animals that surrounds us, both seen and useen, feral and domestic. Over time, Beverly is slowly teaching me the real significance of those connections.

Hanno and I had a lovely weekend.  Cricket was being played in Adelaide so I knitted while watching it in bits and pieces, and Hanno came in and took a break every so often.  It's great to be in this stage of life when we can do what we like.  It brings peace along with the relaxation to know that our time is our own now.

I thought some of my readers outside Australia might like to see inside one of our shopping centres, although I'm pretty sure these places are much the same the world over.

We went shopping on Friday!  It was our one day for Christmas shopping and we drove into the south side of Brisbane.  We thought we'd discovered a new shopping centre but when we went inside we realised it was just an extension of the already huge Chermside mall.  We decided we'd have a good look around when we walked inside but all we did was walk into Target (and bought nothing) then down to Myer (and bought one thing) and back to David Jones, stopping for a cup of tea along the way.  I love David Jones, even now it's like the British Country Living magazine to me.  I don't go there any more but I still love the look of the shop.  We bought what we needed there and had a look upstairs and down, but we were out of the shopping centre in less than two hours.  We only bought what we needed and we started and finished our Christmas shopping in that short period.

A blue Christmas tree!

Then we went to our real target for the day  - the American Yarn store at Grovely.  Now theoretically, that should only be a short drive from the shopping centre; I'm guessing maybe 20 minutes in city traffic.  Well, one hour later, after completely frustrating Hanno with the Google map I printed out (I insisted we didn't need our city map book which we left at home),  we arrived.  Gabrielle, the owner of the shop, is a lovely woman and the walls of her shop are packed with all sorts of cotton, wool, soy, bamboo and mixtures of those fibres with acrylic.  She even had stretch sock yarn which I'd never heard of before.

A wall of yarn.

Other yarns of interest were my favourite Lions brand cotton, Sugar n Cream, Debbie Bliss and many luxury yarns that felt wonderful to the touch.  Gabrielle also has a lot of multicoloured yarns that make up into interesting socks, bags and shrugs.  There are plenty of knitting needles and crochet hooks to buy, bags, handles for bags, pattern books, looms, and much more.  Free project sheets for the little bags on the side are available at Gabrielles online store.  It's a small shop but it's stocked by someone who knows her crafts and graciously shares what she knows.  There are yarns in this shop I doubt you'd find anywhere else in Australia.  I loved it and will definitely buy from her again, although maybe next time it will be from her online store.  I ended up buying a huge ball of Bernat 100% cotton and two balls of pale blue and pale pink cotton.  The cost?  Under $25.  I keep looking at the big pale yellow cotton and smiling.  It's really lovely.  I'll start working with it over Christmas.

Another thing I really liked about American Yarns was that Gabrielle was crocheting a pair of shoes!  She's using hemp for the soles and cotton for the tops.  Amazing!

 

Have a look for yourself because there is so much to see at her online shop and also her blog.  If you're on the brink of learning how to crochet or knit, this will tip you over the edge into the wonderful world of yarn, and if you're already there, you'll probably love this place as much as I did.

All those sheets hanging at the front of the yarns are free project sheets.

Generally I'm hesitant to buy online from small stores but I can recommend American Yarns to you.  Gabrielle knows her yarns and will give you good advice.  She has also generoslly offered a 10% discount to all Down to Earth readers when buying from her store.  Please use the code: "Down2Earth" to get your discount. Thanks Gabrielle!

American Yarns online

Gabrielle's Have a  Yarn blog

Oh my, in two weeks time it will be Christmas Eve. It's been a really busy month for me with hardly a spare minute to sit and think about what needs to be done. The year just got busier as it progressed and now, when we're almost at the end, one major thing has been removed from the list of things to do. Our new Centre won't be ready to move into until mid-January. It's very disappointing, but at least we won't have to pack up and move in the middle of preparations for Christmas and our big breakfast on Christmas morning.

Today, Hanno and I will do our one and only Christmas shop. We have the family coming for a celebration lunch the Sunday before Christmas and it will be the first year that Shane and Sarndra celebrate as a married couple and Kerry will be here with his special girl, Sunny. It's a bonus having Kerry here because he travelled to Canada and the US in July, supposedly to be away for a year or so, but he came back home after a few weeks because he missed Sunny so much.
:- )


So this is my plan. We leave here this morning, early, Hanno has a haircut first, then we drive into Brisbane to pick up a few things and go to a shop I've wanted to visit for a long time. It's a little shop in the suburbs, I'm taking my camera and hope to have photos to share next week. I hope I find what I'm looking for because I have no patience for shopping now and I know I'll want to come home if things get too difficult. But I also know this will be the only time I go to the shops before Christmas. Our summer school holidays start on Friday and I'm not going back to the shops again for a long time. I remember back to a time when I had several day long shopping trips to gather Christmas gifts and food. I am totally beyond that now. Now it's much more simple ... and enjoyable.


Over the weekend I'll have a chance to catch my breath and do some chores here at home. The garden is winding down nicely but there are still quite a few vegetables to pick. Hopefully we'll have potato salad for our Christmas lunch made with potatoes that are still in the ground. There are a lot of eggplant and a few cucumbers to pick and a nice stand of corn growing well. There is a small amount of fruit - a few blueberries and some mangoes. We haven't had much luck with the bananas and passion fruit recently but as they produce most of the year, hopefully, if we're patient, we'll get some crops in the near future. I still have 10 litres/quarts of lemon juice in the freezer, more lemons are ready to pick every day, with half grown green lemons coming on for the coming months. The garden might be winding down, but there's nothing to complain about here. We have more than enough for ourselves and to share.



I hope your Christmas shopping and gift making is coming along well. Thank you for your visits this week and for the comments you make. It's always very interesting and comforting reading your comments. It's the one way I have to know who is out there and that we are not alone in the desire to live a simple life.

Our first peek into our readers' kitchens is from Myra in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thanks for sharing your kitchen with us, Myra!

Myra writes: "Attached are two photos of my kitchen sink. Nothing special except that it's near midnight and it's clean!! Usually there is a sink full of dirty dishes but I try to go to bed with a clean kitchen. I have made two waffle weave dishcloths which I have enjoyed knitting. I have my kleen kanteen which I take everywhere with me. I have a water filter attached to the faucet to filter out lead and pharmaceuticals. I keep a water glass beside it to drink from frequently. I spend a lot of time here. I recently quit my job downtown at a law firm in order to live a more simple life. My days are spent taking care of my new puppy, planning my spring garden and organizing my new relaxed and simple life."

After two days of being away from home and working in my voluntary job, I'm back home in my haven today. I really do feel this is my haven here - every home should feel like that. When I talk with the people who come into our Centre for help, I silently wish I could place everyone of them into a warm and loving home. Such homes can heal and provide not only a safe haven from the outside world but also give significant emotional comfort. Early on in my journey towards a simpler life, being at the Centre help me understand the true value of my home. Seeing people who had no home, and those who live in dysfunctional homes, gave me a very clear understanding of how I wanted my home to be. I wanted a home that sustained us and everyone who visited us.

A sustainable home is not necessarily the biggest and best house in the street; this kind of home is not identified by the look of it. To me, the worth of this home is judged by the way people live in their homes, how they share their lives, by what they give importance to, by the way they model behaviour to the members of their clan, by the boundaries they set, by the work they do to provide that nurturing space and possibly by a hundred other things that are more difficult to define, but responsibility, respect, warmth, generosity, kindness and care need to be in the mix.

One thing is for sure, sustainable homes are not created by filling them with expensive appliances, furniture and other symbols of material "success". Their character is much more complex. The chief ingredients for making a home that sustains and nurtures are the people who live there, the feelings they have for each other and the way they express those feelings. I wish that every home was a sustainable one but sadly that is not the case. It's not even close to it.

I am sure that many people who start out on life with a partner think the hard part will be working to equip and furnish their home and being able to buy the things that will make them happy. I believe that is a shallow kind of happiness, if it is happiness at all. The really difficult part of life with a partner, setting up home and being a parent is to provide a decent home that provides support, nourishment, protection and security. It should be the one place where the family know with absolute certainty that they are loved, where they can be their true selves, can recuperate from being at school or at work, and have fun, help, be productive and creative and learn how to live. The home is where children should learn their values and where parents should always strive to live by theirs. It's complex, is not just bricks and mortar.

It doesn't matter what stage of life you're at, keep your eye on the prize. The prize is not an having an outstanding house, it's having an outstanding family and home. And it's tough to juggle life, family, home, money, friends, hopes and wishes, and sometimes you fail. But in those times when it comes together, when you look and see what you hope to see, when you realise that repeating that suggestion over and over has finally paid off, when you hear a quiet "I love you" and know it is meant in its truest sense, when you want to announce to the world what a wonderful family you have but instead keep it inside you to nourish and grow, when you think you've failed but realise you haven't, when you put the family to bed at night and sit, content, those are the times that will make up for the uncertainty and toughness of it all. And as I look back on my life of family and home building I know for sure that it was not just the good times that made us what we are today, it was the hard times too.

I know we don't get a lot of encouragement to build stable and happy families. The encouragement seems to be focused on success, creating wealth, spending to help the nation and acquisition, and while those elements may have some importance, they are secondary. Our real mission is to build productive and healthy families, that will create productive and healthy communities, that combined together build the nation. I am here to gently encourage and remind you that what you do at home is significant and meaningful, and that creating a sustainable home provides the ideal environment for your family to thrive in.

Spaces are opening up in the vegetable garden after harvesting all those ripe vegetables. Hanno and I talked about it on the weekend and we've decided to rest the garden over summer. We used to always do this. Summer always brings with it very hot and humid weather and thousands of bugs so it's a battle to keep everything productive and healthy. In the past couple of months we've noticed our tomatoes haven't been producing well and there have been a few fruit fly strikes. That's not a good sign and it convinced up to stop producing for all of summer and let the soil rejuvenate.

Our plan is to harvest almost everything that is growing now. That includes cucumbers, tomatoes, sunflowers, silverbeet, beetroot, eggplant, potatoes, celery, zucchinis, capsicums, leeks, beans and corn. We also have various herbs, ginger, sweet potato and green onions growing, they'll all stay in and shouldn't have too much of a problem growing over summer. When we harvest those vegetables, we'll let the chickens in for a couple of days to clean up the bugs and insect eggs in the soil, then we'll plant green manures.


Green manure will keep the garden productive over the hot months, enrich the soil and make the worms happy. I'll go to Green Harvest for the seeds - they have a big range of green manures, we'll go for some kind of a legume and grass mix. You can read about green manures here.


Soon the bright yellow of the sunflowers will be gone and it will be all green out there. I'm actually looking forward to having the summer off and not worrying about whether our tank water will stretch or if they'll be more rain. We will use the valuable water we do have in the tanks to keep our fruit going and we will concentrate on making our fruit vines and trees productive and healthy.

So, it's back to the vegetable market for us soon. I know the vegetables won't taste as good, I know they'll not be as fresh and who knows what sprays will hide in what we buy but for now this is what we have to do. Our next planting will be in March.