In the garden

I just started to update my FB status with this:

Planted more this morning - squash pumpkins watermelon tomatoes sage basil rocket lettuce tomatoes basils to go with the radish chives and something else that are already going, the beetroots carrots sunflowers garlic spinach coriander rosemary and parsley already going in the ground out the back, the asparagus and rhubarb that are growing strong, the aloe and other medicinals, the peas going crazy over the side, and the orchard-in-progress out the front.

and realised it probably needed a blog post instead!

Gardening is not one of those things that comes easily to me I have to admit. Between a dodgy back, a string of rental properties in the past and other things on my mind, nurturing things and putting down roots has not been high on my list of things that I've done well.

So the fact that there are more than a dozen trees - mostly fruit but also a bay and some privacy trees - out front, and pots going with various plants that I've sprouted myself from cuttings, or free plants from people, or sad plants from the nursery that I've nursed back to health, makes me feel like this is Home. Which is ironic given that if TheHusband's job continues to be awesome, it is really not very sensible for us to live here. But in the meantime, we make compost and wait to see what grows out of it.

For a Wednesday, it is surprisingly productive!

Yeah my plans for today were a week out of sync with reality, so I was suddenly faced with a free day. So here's a list of things to do:

• go to supermarket and get something to slow cook for TheHusband for dinner (as I'm out!)
• check out the quaint little nursery around the corner from supermarket
• find rhubarb and asparagus
• and a bay tree
• and some medicinal herbs
• order from Diggers
• order from Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond
• do some homework
• update my business website
• paint my toenails
• get a chilli mocha
• spray the shower with something to get the worst of the surprise orange mould off
• go out for dinner with workmates
• organise pickup of coffee table
• organise collection of swing
• organise collection of new bag
• buy new shoes with voucher
• buy Volley's
• make quesedillas
• call the electrician
• washing

And a nap perhaps?

How is it mid-August already?

July FLEW by in a whirlwind of work, travel for conferences, and my first sleeps away from my baby girl. Who is not so much of a baby anymore but is still feeding a little. Yes, at 27 months the monster troubles that I had starting feeding her have not dented my commitment to breastfeeding. I feel like a secret agent for change when I offer her "bee boo"...

in public and continue with my latte-sipping, cake eating, life-living and life-giving adventures.

TheHusband is working stupid hours, so the past month has been full.on! He is doing 14 hours away ish most days, 1 week out of 5, 6 days a week. That means I do the wake-up, the morning, the midday, the nap, the afternoon, the dinner and the nighttime parenting and he misses out on it. I joke that I saw him once in the daylight last week (Saturday) - when I told a girlfriend that she laughed and said she'd seen more of him as she'd spied him *twice* on Saturday!

Hats off to single parents the world over. It is *hard* to run a house, run a family, work some, study and parent and keep sane. What falls down the list is me-things though, so I'm glad I fill my cup in a few ways:

• Doing something for myself beforehand
• Taking things REALLY slowly and leaving whole days unplanned, unfilled and unscheduled
• Investing in a slow-cooker so I can put dinner on at 9am and ignore it for the day
• Eating said-slow cooked meals over the whole week

That "something beforehand" was that I went to a breastfeeding conference on one weekend, and then the weekend after - I went away! I was meant to go to Hobart via Melbourne. Literally as I was boarding the plane I was informed that my flights were changed. Ok fine, that happens but I was not entirely thrilled with the 4+ hour layover in my home state's airport. I did not really plan for that so insisted on vouchers to spend on food. I had a laksa then an indulgent chocolate cake and coffee, killing time slowly doing some study. I then discovered that I was now going via Canberra, instead of the way I thought I was, which wasn't the issue - the getting in to Hobart at 9pm was though! So I missed the important part of the conference that I had planned to be at. That made me cranky/sad and tired.

I did get to meet the delicious Serendipity in Chaos though!!!! We had a total mutual stalking/appreciation club going on. I also re-met Kestrel from Bowl of Stones, who rocks in so many ways. It was an amazing weekend discussing homebirth and women and babies and birth and stuff and things. I also got to meet Rachel Reed of Midwife Thinking, of whom I am the biggest fan and who has re-instilled in me a love of the Welsh accent.

House wise - we are making great progress on the front yard. We now have 8 trees in, 4 more holes dug for something to screen and edge the front of our property, plans for a new path, a herb spiral and more fruit trees! Currently planted we have:

• lemon
• satsuma plum
• blood plum
• japanese mandarin
• prune
• peach
• pear
• something else

and we're going to put something deciduous in the front to give us a clear edge to our property and something else to look at other than the back of the houses across the road. 

In the backyard, the peas are going great guns, the beetroot and spinach are going well, the plot where the parsley, coriander and rosemary are was in need of a weed on the weekend because it's such a great spot for growing, and the ash is leafing at the moment!

Bring on Spring 22 September!

In warming the cockles of my house/heart

We moved to the Adelaide Hills in January, which is summer over here in Australia. South Australian summers are brutal - days above 40C, weeks above 30C even overnight. Winter up here in the Hills though is cold! Not quite Canberra cold, or Alpine cold, or Tasmania cold but it is cold enough that in April we were struggling with keeping warm. In particular we indeed to keep the small child warm. She likes having pants off, and the house is up on stumps so the floors are cold. We looked into a few options and consistently came to the conclusion that putting in any heating was pointless without solving the heat loss issues that we have because of the huge windows we have in our lounge, dining area, and bedrooms. Anything that solves this problem is going to be $$$ though - quoted several thousand for curtains and pelmets, which also wouldn't fix the heating issue. The house has (well, had now!) an oil heater that burned fuel oil for heat. Not only did it stink, it also was a fire risk, a danger to anyone at that height, and it was f'ugly as sin. I pulled the mantel off it one weekend, and when TheHusband came home he went to work and cut the pipes and pulled it outside!! It was awesome and gave us an extra metre of space on the floor, and gave us another wall to it the couch of unusual length against. Ok so one thing down, now we were left with only a wall split system c1990. Noisy, inefficient and wasteful! Plus it needs to be said that it takes up a lot of the wall as well. Not ideal when we're trying to reduce our green footprint and again we needed to deal with heat loss as well as heat generation. So we did the only sensible thing and got a quote for double glazing. It is c-razy that it is not more common here in the Hills, and in Australia! It would make a huge difference to heating and cooling needs for so many people and I don't get how the family who previously owned our house coped with the cold. It is being installed on Thursday so I'm pretty excited about it all. We went with Magnetite as they were able and willing to come and quote, and custom make rather than only being able to give us what sizes were in stock. I'll let you know how it goes past Thursday. But for now I'll be very interested to feel the difference. I also did a lot of looking into heating options - a quote for ducted was a loss because we have insulation in the ceiling that does not leave enough room for the bits and pieces and ducting required. A new split system would be lots of money ($1200 times 3!), and other options were not much more appealing. I did consider using an off peak heat storage option but we're often not home for much of the day so it wouldn't suit our lifestyle too well. In the end we found eheaters - they draw a small wattage (400W) and them combined with a timer means we now have heaters for the house! They are not very big and are easy to install onto the wall. That with a new curtain hanging on the doorway and it's cuddly warm here today for the first time. And the double glazing isn't installed yet either! I have bought exciting new thermal unders the other day - Merino wool ones in fact. And have dug out my long socks, bought new shoes (lace up school shoe types) and knit a new host. I refuse to be cold this winter. Wish me lucky,

On making soap

It's been a VERY long time between soap making adventures. I've lived here for 5 years and been with TheHusband for 7 years and I've not made soap in that time.

I haven't needed to buy soap though (though I do sometimes cause I love handmade soap!) because I used to make a lot of soap.

But on Friday I had some lovely women friends come over and watch me make soap. It was all kinds of fun! And I could feel that inner mental housekeeper walking into long-closed rooms, tossing aside the dusty curtains, pulling back the cover cloths from stylish furniture and saying words like "triglyceride" and "saponification" for the first time in a llloooooonnnnnnggggg time.

I also made a lotion. It was so easy and it is a gorgeous rose-scented one. I used a rose hydrosol though rather than essential oils and now I'm all an-itch to buy more essential oils and hydrosols and oils!