I Have Always Aspired To Be....

A hippie! Right from when I was a teenager, but not your weed smoking type out of the 70's. I just wanted to live in the country, grow things, make things and not have to go to work. Tick.

So this week as I was out working in the garden on yet another beautiful morning, I reflected on how perfect it all is. I'm out there in my swimsuit top and shorts, working gently on a healthy tan to suit my outfit for this weekend coming, when our band will play at a wine and food festival in the Bay of Islands - for about 2,000 people. 

I'm not the young thing I once was however, and was thinking I need a better swimsuit - one with a bit more, ahem, support.
I found this idea somewhere under refashioned clothes, and it has worked perfectly. I've just sewn a previously unused strapless bra to the lining. Huge improvement!

Sorry, not modelling this one - too shy

Back to the garden - I love how the flowers work in there. I've grown alssyum and lavender, calendulars and geranium, and they bring in the bees. 
We had visitors from Auckland last week, and I'm proud to say the 14 year old boy got his first ever bee sting here. It looked really red, and I wondered out loud if maybe he was allergic to bees, but he said it was because his Dad told him to slap it, it would help. I've never heard of that before (chuckles to self), so I got out the lavender oil, which takes the sting away almost immediately.

The rhubarb and peas have grown back nicely since we caught all the possums, and there is barely any evidence of other pests in there at the moment.

I'm about to be feeding courgettes to hundreds of people soon as all four plants start producing - but I am prepared. I've bought myself one of those gizmos that turn courgettes into healthy spaghetti - will keep you posted. 

This is our other overflow garden - not so pretty and needs more work on the soil, but it's getting there. That's my garlic crop.
Thanks for visiting.

Makin' Bacon - Vegan Style

 Some posts back, I shared the recipe for this Raw Broccoli Salad which is totally delicious. I am always looking for ways to make recipes healthier, and in this instance cheaper and better for the environment too.
One of the changes I now make to that recipe is to leave the sugar out of the dressing altogether. The other change is using ....

Vegan Bacon

Crispy and bacon-tasting! Made from coconut.

This is simple to make, and there are a few different recipes around - some using maple syrup, oils, and others with smoke flavouring, but mine just uses

1 cup of coconut flakes
1 tsp of tamari soy
1/2 tsp of smoked paprika
salt to taste

Mix these ingredients together, spread it on a tray and bake at 180 Celsius for approx 10 minutes.
Watch that it doesn't burn!
Cool and store in a glass jar. 
Add to salads, sandwiches, and other places where you would use some crispy bacon. 


And a shot of our apple tree - so hoping for another good crop in autumn.

Apple blossom - love Spring!

Last year's apples lasted for months and months, individually wrapped in paper and stored in the studio fridge.

Reuse, Reuse, Reuse!

As I mentioned in my last post, Derek's work has moved office and has cast out lots of old office equipment, which they have auctioned off to staff, or donated to charities, and then what was left unwanted has gone to the dump.
We have scored several new shelves, which has finally prompted a tidy up of the studio store room. Bliss, I can find things again. I have a lot of art and sewing supplies in there!

The little paintings? - the old house is a copy of one done by Derek, the other is one of mine

As someone who has pledged not to buy more giftwrap, I badly needed a place to sort all of my collected paper. I now have this really ugly pigeon-hole cabinet, which I will be covering up with a vintage tablecloth.

Organization of sorts for my stash of papers

The new paper section is for those among us who struggle to use recycled paper and were freebies from magazines.

One of the stranger things to come home was this out of date surveyors instrument. Derek has great vision for such things, and one day in the future this will become part of a sculpture of some sort. (Hopefully). Along with a big pile of the bits of ply, which are great for painting on, or making signs.

And my latest find, from the Habitat for Humanity shop - a great little stainless steel container with lid for $5 - perfect for storing leftovers in the fridge.

Reuse, reuse, reuse - it's actually much more fun don't you think? I think it requires far more creativity.

A Great Freebie and Why I'm Not Composting Kitchen Scraps

Strange Coincidence?
Last week as I was making my cold frames I thought - what I need is perspex to cover them. Well Derek arrived home from work that night with 6 sheets of perspex! His whole office has just moved and he has come home with a few things that were about to be thrown out.

The vege garden is full of constructions using free materials. Not pretty, but well, free.

The perspex had been covering some posters and was a bit scratched - but perfect for covering my plants. I'm saving one sheet to make a solar dehydrator like the one below for the abundant tomatoes I'm hoping to grow. 

Eschewing the compost bin with the kitchen scraps
I remember when I was young that we always dug the kitchen scraps into a trench in the garden. So when I discovered that we had rodents in our compost bins again, I decided burying it all was the way to go. Since then I have read, in "Organic NZ" magazine, that it is far better to bury scraps than to compost them. The scraps break down much quicker, and "much more fixed carbon stays fixed, incorporated directly into live cells and bodies that will become food for other life forms in the web of soil life".
The garden soil is looking great and is full of worms. I usually throw a handful of sheep pellets in with the scraps as that encourages those worms to get in there.

So here's where that compost went...

Before and after

.. because I couldn't stand the thought of using it around the food crops. It made an instant garden, along with free driftwood from the river, and free plants that I split up from the garden. 
So now I just use the compost bins for lawn clippings and garden waste and use the contents on the ornamentals.

A Seed Raising Tip and Some Upcycling in the Garden

The blog posts are a bit infrequent at the moment as I find myself settling into making the same things that I have already posted about. That's a good thing - it means that those things have become habits that I can sustain.
Last week I whipped up a batch of dog food, using up some items from the pantry and fridge that were past their best. I described my process for ecofriendly dogfood here, but I have yet to get the cat to eat anything that doesn't come with too much packaging.

Batch of dog food

but he's gorgeous, my old Cinderpuss

Acting like a kitten

I've been out in the garden too. My seedlings have just taken off - I think thanks to a tip I read from Lynda Hallinan who experimented with seed raising techniques and discovered that those that did best were the ones watered with warm water. Good enough for me, and I would have to agree - best ever growth.

Those are all recycled pots and tags -I haven't had to buy any plants this year.

In fact so good that my courgettes and cucumbers are of a size ready to plant out, but the weather is still a bit cool here. Today I fossicked around (as gardeners do) to find materials to make protective tents for those plants. I came up with these old beehive boxes, which are just perfect. One has a plastic lid that we found in the mangroves, the other I have stapled recycled plastic to.

I'm feeling more confident about the survival of my plants  - although you can spot some Quash (eco friendly) snail and slug bait in there. Quash is an iron compound, beneficial to plants but toxic to slugs and snails. However our personal tally from wandering about at night with torches and boiling water, is now over 3,000 slugs and snails. 
Lastly, a shot of our lime tree which is just thriving. It gets mulched with seaweed and lawn clippings, fed with citrus fertilizer 3 -4 times/ year.

The Tahitian lime tree - covered in blossom, little fruit and ready to pick fruit

Thanks for visiting

If You Hate to Throw Old Photos Away - Ideas.

I've just been sorting a box of old photos that I have had since the pre-digital age.
Among them were photos that were terrible - you know the ones - arty shots that didn't work, boring ones you took as a tourist, photos with your ex in them...but I have trouble throwing them out.
Yesterday I scrutinized them with an artists eye to see if there was anything I could salvage from them...and this is what I came up with....

A  mosaic of cut up photos on a theme

First up I cut several summer photos into squares (uneven of course, I don't do straight lines). They became a mosaic. What I noticed was that each little square became an artwork in itself. I have put them into the upcycled book that I nabbed to make into an art journal. Every so often it has a quote, and these blue half pages, which are a great feature.

Next I cut out anything redeemable in a photo - such as the next two pictures. 

A lizard we saw in Australia - now an interesting feature in my art journal

My daughter in a tinsel wig when she was little - released from a bad photo

Sometimes there is a feature that can be enhanced - like these belly dancers. Using a blade to scratch away the background highlights them and makes it arty.

Scrape away the distracting background

I drew on this really old, faded photo of the Sydney Opera House with a fine tip permanent ink pen, then cut it out. Now it's interesting.

Once I started I kept thinking of more things I wanted to do with the large pile of would-be rubbish photos. I'll take some before photos next time, I was just too engrossed to remember to do it this time.
Anyone else got good ideas to share for using up those photos? 

Grumpy Old Codger

Sometimes I fear that I am turning into that Grumpy Old Codger.

The more I travel down my own path of steps to be more environmentally conscious, the more annoyed I get with others and have to restrain myself from commenting. Because being all righteous doesn't help.
For example, in town the other day I watched a woman stub out her cigarette and flick it into a drain - one marked with a clear environmental message.

I wanted to bring it to her attention, a lecture on the damage from chemicals in cigarette butts to our marine life -  but didn't. Would you have?

The supermarket is another challenge. As they pack my cloth bags, I always look along the row of checkout counters to see if I can spot anyone else not using plastic bags. Sometimes there are one or two. At the moment at the supermarket that I frequent there is a promotion where they give little plastic "kitchen" treats away. When I declined them, the checkout operator asked if I would be happy to give them to someone else. I would have said "please don't, I am trying to reduce plastic waste" except right behind me was a little girl looking at me with hope, so I mumbled "sure - go ahead". 

And Daffodil Day (NZ Cancer Society) - every donor gets a plastic/synthetic flower pin. Now for that one I will write them a little email, requesting they go back to real flowers or biodegradable stickers. Of course we can just refuse them - but most people don't.

Cancer Society's daffodil pin

Then there is wanting to correct everyone's spelling mistakes.You would think I am perfect to feel like this, but no, I make spelling mistakes myself, as some of you will probably have noticed. And there is still some plastic in my shopping trolley...

Fortunately there are enough fabulous green and creative innovations going on in the world that keep me from feeling overwhelmed and depressed. I love getting feeds of Treehugger.com, Trash is for Tossers, Global Slow Movement, Colossal (an art design and visual culture website), Make Do and Mend.org, Green Ideas.co.nz
If you are not a Facebook fan these links will take you to their homepages anyway. Go on - if there is something new to you there, go give yourself a treat with your coffee break.