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We don't go away on holidays anymore but always make sure that the time between Christmas and mid-January is like a holiday.  We both do what we want to do and make sure it's different to the regular things we do during the year. I forget about routines, my meal plans loosen up and I sleep when I'm tired. My main aim is to rest and recuperate, watch Test cricket, tend the garden, read and think and as I pack away another year, I prepare for the year ahead.

Peaches were prepared in front of the TV with the cricket on.


"Why are those pots upside-down on sticks?" - that's the question I'm asked more than any other. The second most asked question is this: "How can I start to live a simple life?"  Well, that's easy - stop shopping for things you don't need.  Of course, you could also take it one step at a time and start budgeting, menu planning, cooking from scratch, batch cooking, and making your own soap and household cleaners. You could mend your clothes, plant a vegetable garden and keep chickens. You need to keep up to date with your world, I do that via crikey.com, The Guardian and by maintaining a thoughtful connection with my online tribe; and you could lobby your local MP to find out their view of climate change and what they're doing about it. But if you want to start living more sustainably in a way that will help you save money, pay off debt, cut down on paid work or retire early, don't go shopping for "stuff". You don't have to prepare in any way, you don't have to research it, you don't need any special information or skill. You just stop. And you can do that right now. Today.
One of my nephews, Charles, is a volunteer wildlife rescuer and he spends a lot of his spare time in the Blue Mountains bush rescuing native animals. We all know our precious native wildlife has been decimated in the ongoing bush fires and injured and scared animals are now coming into local properties and homes looking for water and food. In the coming days, these are the animals Charles will be helping.  When the NSW RFS give the all-clear for people to return to the burnt bushland, Charles will set off looking for injured animals.  These animals will be carefully handled and taken to either a vet for diagnosis and treatment or a wildlife carer for longer term care. To do this work, Charles supplies his own equipment but there is a chance that he won't have enough wraps and pouches to transport the animals he finds.

I suggested to him that we - you, me and the rest of the gang here - could help him by quickly making a selection of what he needs.  I wonder if you'll join in with this.  The main need is for bat wraps and he needs 60 of them, he also needs some hanging joey pouches. Bat wraps and pouches are vital to help calm animals during transportation. Both these items are essential to Charles' work.

We're happy to accept whatever you can send - one, two, six or 20. They will help in a significant number of rescues. So who is up for this?  The patterns are simple straight sewing and the links are below for you to click on and look at.  Please be guided by the suggested fabrics - most are cotton, cotton flannelette, calico or wool. No buttons or Velcro are used. All the finished wraps and pouches need to be sent to Charles in the Blue Mountains, please contact me by email: rhondahetzel@gmail.com and I'll give you his postal address.

Bat Wraps
Hanging Joey Pouches

I wonder if there is a vet who reads my blog. I'd like to introduce you to Charles so he can speak to someone about rehydrating animals and general burns first aid. At the moment, he needs some burns cream, syringes and Vet Wraps.  If you can email me, I'll give you Charles' phone number so you can talk to him directly. Thank you.

I'll be making this part of our Instagram Sewing Bee so when you finish your sewing, please send me a photo of what you made, along with your IG name, so we can link to you from the Bee.

Thank you all. I know we'll get this started quickly so we can help Charles in his important work.
As the final hours of 2019 rolled along, I sat with increasing sadness watching our country burn. Each new day revealed red landscape and sky and then news reports started trickling in of farmers, homeowners and volunteer firefighters who died protecting properties, and millions of helpless animals dying trying to escape the ferocious, unpredictable fires.  These are our unique and beautiful Australian animals - the kangaroos, koalas, wombats, echidnas, possums and bats as well as snakes, lizards, birds and insects. If you have the chance to donate to the recovery programs, please do so. Our communities and wildlife need all the help they can get. Some may never recover, the ones that might need financial assistance to start again.


You can donate to Red Cross, Salvation Army, Victoria's Country Fire Authority, NSW's Rural Fire Service,  or have a look on Instagram where there are quite a few people who have set up Go Fund Me pages to help rebuild their lost homes and farms. Also on Go Fund Me are Will Connolly (egg boy) and the wonderful Magda Szubanski who are fundraising for long term mental health care to support men, women and children traumatised by the fires. These funds will be administered by registered charities such as Beyond Blue when the short term care ends.

I have two more links for you specifically for wildlife rescue and support, courtesy of my nephew, David.  WIRES Emergency Fund for Wildlife and Wildlife Victoria.

I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart if you can help us rebuild our burnt country. ♥️




I've just come in from the garden on this humid morning and want to pass on a few tips for hot and dry summer gardening. I know there are a lot of new gardeners out there so I hope what I share helps you get your garden through these harsh conditions. I was out in my garden filling up the bird baths, watering a few pots that looked parched and I also discovered a paper wasp nest right next to where I was standing.  Usually we leave the insects to do their thing, as they leave us to do ours, but with children visiting over the holidays this wasp nest is just too close to where they'll be playing so it has to go. I passed that job over to Hanno who will deal with it later today.  



The tree is one of our orange trees. We're watching it like a hawk because it's full of small oranges and if it gets heat stressed, it will drop the fruit.
A couple of weeks ago I was asked on Instagram what my connection to Clare Bowditch was because she'd thanked me, as one of many, in her wonderful book, Your Own Kind of Girl. I explained that I met Clare a few years earlier when I was on a book tour for The Simple Home. Clare greeted me like a long-lost friend in the ABC studios in Melbourne and after her interview, she told me that Down to Earth sat on her bedside table as one of her favourite books. Thank you, Clare.


This is my knitting station. I have my wool and cotton basket on the table - and it's just had its annual clean out.
Two books I'm reviewing for new recipes to add to what I already cook, and my washcloths so far this year. There are seven in all, I have three more on needles and I'll probably do 12 - 15 all up. That will give me a new baby gift, our dishcloths for the year and a couple of other small gifts.

This is our new cottage garden. I started it in August and it's growing well but it's not quite finished. We've gone from tending a very productive vegetable garden for about 30 years, to a small cottage garden that fits into a third of the old garden. We've taken out some gardens, they're lawn now, the rest are flowers, herbs and fruit.


This is our winter garden in 2006. Now the garden closest to the camera and the middle garden are  gone, and the cottage garden is growing in the two gardens closest to the picket fence.


And this is today's garden taken from a different angle. The picket fence in the last photo is on the left of this garden.

Today, I've written about our Bosch induction stove top, Bosch heat pump clothes dryer and Miele dishwasher. Water and energy efficiency is the most important thing to me when I buy a new appliance. I searched through our old water and electricity accounts yesterday and discovered that there has been no increase in our water or electricity consumption since we bought these appliances. For years we've used between 150 and 200 litres of water per day and between 140 and 200 kWh of electricity. Both those figures are under the average usage for a two person household in Australia.

Bosch PIJ611BB1E 60cm induction cooktop

Earlier this year we replaced our gas cooktop with a Bosch PIJ611BB1E, 60cm, induction, three burner cooktop. We paid $999 for ours but I notice they're currently listed on the Bosch Australian site $1699 and on Appliances Online for $1265. It always pays to look around for the best price.  I'm very happy with the stove.  We chose the three burner because we're past the stage of needing more burners to cook meals. So far I haven't regretted that choice.


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I'm Rhonda Hetzel and I've been writing my Down to Earth blog since 2007. Although I write the occasional philosophical post, my main topics include home cooking, happiness and gardening as well as budgeting, baking, ageing, generosity, mending and handmade crafts. I hope you enjoy your time here.

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Popular posts last year

Making ginger beer from scratch

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Every morning at home

Every morning when I walk into my kitchen it looks tidy and ready for a day's work. Not so on this morning (above), I saw this when I walked in. Late the previous afternoon when I was looking for something, I came across my rolled up Zwilling vacuum bags and decided they had to be washed and dried. So I did that and although I usually put them outside on the verandah to dry it was dark by then. I turned the just-washed bags inside out and left them like this on a towel. It worked well and now the bags are ready to use when I bring home root vegetables, cabbages or whatever I buy that I want to last four or five weeks.
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You’ll save money by going back to basics

When I was doing the workshops and solo sessions, I had a couple of people whose main focus was on creating the fastest way to set up a simple life. You can't create a simple life fast, it's the opposite of that It's not one single thing either - it's a number of smaller, simpler activities that combine to create a life that reflects your values; and that takes a long to come together. When I first started living simply I took an entire year to work out our food - buying it, storing it, cooking it, preserving, baking, freezing, and growing it in the backyard. This is change that will transform how you live and it can't be rushed.  
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Trending Articles

NOT the last post

This will be my last post here.  I've been writing my blog for 18 years and now is the time to step back. I’ve stopped writing the blog and come back a couple of times because so many people wanted it, but that won’t happen again, I won’t be back.  I’ll continue on instagram to remain connected but I don’t know how frequent that will be. I know some of you will be interested to know the blog's statistics. 
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Every morning at home

Every morning when I walk into my kitchen it looks tidy and ready for a day's work. Not so on this morning (above), I saw this when I walked in. Late the previous afternoon when I was looking for something, I came across my rolled up Zwilling vacuum bags and decided they had to be washed and dried. So I did that and although I usually put them outside on the verandah to dry it was dark by then. I turned the just-washed bags inside out and left them like this on a towel. It worked well and now the bags are ready to use when I bring home root vegetables, cabbages or whatever I buy that I want to last four or five weeks.
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You’ll save money by going back to basics

When I was doing the workshops and solo sessions, I had a couple of people whose main focus was on creating the fastest way to set up a simple life. You can't create a simple life fast, it's the opposite of that It's not one single thing either - it's a number of smaller, simpler activities that combine to create a life that reflects your values; and that takes a long to come together. When I first started living simply I took an entire year to work out our food - buying it, storing it, cooking it, preserving, baking, freezing, and growing it in the backyard. This is change that will transform how you live and it can't be rushed.  
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Creating a home you'll love forever

Living simply is the answer to just about everything. It reduces the cost of living; it keeps you focused on being careful with resources such as water and electricity; it reminds you to not waste food; it encourages you to store food so you don't waste it and doing all those things brings routine and rhythm to your daily life. Consciously connecting every day with the activities and tasks that create simple life reminds you to look for the meaning and beauty that normal daily life holds.  It's all there in your home if you look for it. Seemingly mundane tasks like cleaning and cooking help you with that connection for without those tasks, the home you want to live in won't exist in the way you want it to.  Creating a home you love will make you happy and satisfied.
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Time changes everything

I've been spending time in the backyard lately creating a contained herb and vegetable garden. My aim is to develop a comfortable place to spend time, relax, increase biodiversity and encourage more animals, birds and insects to live here or visit. Of course I'd prefer my old garden which was put together by Hanno with ease and German precision. Together, we created a space bursting at the seams with herbs, vegetables and fruity goodness ready to eat and share throughout the year. But time changes everything. What I'm planning on doing now, is a brilliant opportunity for an almost 80 year old with balance issues. In my new garden I'll be able to do a wide range of challenging or easy work, depending on how I feel each day. It’s a daily opportunity to push myself or sit back, watch what's happening around me and be captivated by memories or the scope of what's yet to come.
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It's the old ways I love the most

I'm a practical woman who lives in a 1980’s brick slab house. There are verandahs front and back so I have places to sit outside when it's hot or cold. Those verandahs tend to make the house darker than it would be but they're been a great investment over time because they made the house more liveable. My home is not a romantic cottage, nor a minimalist modern home, it's a 1980’s brick slab house. And yet when people visit me here they tell me how warm and cosy my home is and that they feel comforted by being here. I've thought about that over the years and I'm convinced now that the style of a home isn't what appeals to people. What they love is the feeling within that home and whether it's nurturing the people who live there.
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Making ginger beer from scratch

We had a nice supply of ginger beer going over Christmas. It's a delicious soft drink for young and old, although there is an alcoholic version that can be made with a slight variation on the recipe. Ginger beer is a naturally fermented drink that is easy to make - with ginger beer you make a starter called a ginger beer plant and after it has fermented, you add that to sweet water and lemon juice. Like sourdough, it must ferment to give it that sharp fizz. To make a ginger beer plant you'll need ginger - either the powdered dry variety or fresh ginger, sugar, rainwater or tap water that has stood for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to evaporate off. You'll also need clean plastic bottles that have been scrubbed with soap, hot water and a bottle brush and then rinsed with hot water. I never sterilise my bottles and I haven't had any problems. If you intend to keep the ginger beer for a long time, I'd suggest you sterilise your bottles. MAKING THE STARTER In a...
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An authentic look at daily life here — unstaged and real

Most days Hanno was outside happily working in the fresh air. It may surprise you to know that I started reading my book,  Down to Earth , yesterday - the first time since I wrote it 13 years ago.  I had lent it to my neighbor, and when she returned it, I started reading, expecting to find surprises. Instead, I realised the words were still familiar—as if they were etched into my memory. As I flipped through the pages, I was reminded of how important it was for me to share that knowledge with others. The principles in Down to Earth changed my life, and I truly believed they could do the same for others. After just 30 minutes of reading, I put the book down, reassured that its message still holds true: we can slow down and reshape our lives, one step at a time.
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