The Colour is Back in Our Diet

Recently we have been mostly relying on the garden for our vegetable component of our meals. The odd bag of potatoes or carrots have been bought from the greengrocer but most days our meals are built around what we have growing rather than buying what we need/want to make a meal. This has meant we have had a decidedly green diet as far as vegetables go. Well, the colour drought is now over. We are picking a lot of strawberries and the mulberry tree is heavy with fruit at various degrees of ripeness and the first tomato came off the bush yesterday.

Eating from the garden and planning meals based on what is in season not just locally but right here on our property, means that we are eating it as fresh as can be and that we are saving money. It also makes the tastes you have been missing taste that much sweeter when they arrive. I am very much looking forward to the summer crops which we haven't had for so long.

Maintaining enough fruit in our diets from within our own boundary is a while off for us. Our trees and bushes do provide some but they are not mature enough to fulfil our daily quota. We are trying though.

Tracy

Back online

Iam back online after taking the 'old' computer to the shop and finding out it is beyond repair. I thought all was lost for my relationship with the internet but it turns out that it was simple to fix. My son's laptop can plug into the satellite connection easily. I was never without internet, I was just without knowledge to connect to it. There are some advantages to being stranded in a world without the world wide web. I have been very busy around the house. I made some log cabin quilt blocks for a swap on my yahoo patchwork group.

Had a few tea parties with loved ones.

Worked hard in the garden. Mulching, weeding, planting and ridding the potato patch of the dreaded leaf-eating ladybird.

At times, I have been sitting and pondering and planning. This is my favourite spot in the vegetable garden to rest. It used to be a wasted space with the huge rocks we couldn't move just sitting there. Now it has a mandarin tree in the centre and some lavenders to make it look pretty (the lavenders are larger than the mandarin as yet but it will win the race in the end).

What I have missed while offline, is visiting the blogs that I enjoy, especially those of people who I now think of as real friends.

Tracy

Computer Woes

Yesterday morning when I turned on the computer, it was very uncooperative. I am writing this wee post on my son's computer at McDonalds where there is free internet.

Hopefully I can have the computer problems sorted sooner rather than later but not having the distraction certainly does get some chores crossed off the to-do list.

Tracy

A new quilt in the making

I have decided to follow along Christy's Fifty States Quilt. This week the featured block is Alabama and I will make it up over the weekend or maybe tomorrow if I have time.

Today it has been lovely outside. Just the right kind of day for toiling in the soil. Not too hot and not too cold, just right. I put an older picture up of one of one of my dahlias, Lemon Snow, because for one thing, that is what I was planting today, dahlia tubers and also because I have flat batteries in my camera.

I was unaware of how much I use the camera until the batteries went flat and now I know. I am at a loss. There have been so many little bits of every day life that I have wanted to preserve for posterity and all I can do is file them away in my mind where they will be lost. When digital cameras first came on to the scene, I was adamant that I wouldn't buy one but I relented and I am so glad I did. Digital photography takes away the need for economy with film and it so easy to delete the lesser quality images and even improve those that nbeed improving.

Hopefully Tim will be home from town tonight with fresh batteries and it will be allsystems go tomorrow.

Tracy

Family History Workshop

My Great Grandmother

Today my local library hosted a workshop on indigenous family history. I went along because I enjoy history in general and exploring my family history in particular. Like a lot of Australians, I have a varied and rich family history featuring convicts and immigrants. I also have an indigenous famliy history via my paternal grandmother.

The State Library ran the workshop which focused on the services they offered and also other research tools. The afternoon was interesting and although I already knew about most of the resources available, it was good to meet some others who are interested in the same thing. It has also sparked my interest again to do a little more research.

Tracy

Spring Cleaning- The lounge room

Before

Yesterday as it was the first day of the last month of spring, I thought it was just about time to start spring cleaning. If I wait too much longer, it couldn't be called spring cleaning at all.

I always start in the lounge room because that is where out fireplace is. Having a fire is nice and cosy all winter long but it does mean more dust. Every week, things get the once over as far as dusting goes but once the fire is out for the season, I like to give everything a good going over. I may have been a little premature because this morning the temperatures were down in the single digits.

after

I had a little help from Hope tidying up the bookshelves. They were a tad overcrowded and we have all been gulity of shoving books back any which way rather than putting them away properly. Still, I am going to procure another bookshelf to make things a little easier.

For anyone who is interested, these are some other areas of our lounge room. I bought this old Singer sewing machine with some money I made from sewing a few years ago. It doesn't see anymore sewing but the treadle has been part of a few games involving trains. I finished the blue cross stitch in 1993 and it is still one of my favoutites.

This corner is next to the fire place so it does get very dusty. It is an old hutch which my sister gave me. It was storing a mish-mash of items but I am going to put my vases in there now so they are easier to reach and they might make a pretty display too. The sewing boxes on the left which I have bought over the years from op/thrift shops house all kinds of sewing notions.

Yesterday the lounge room, today the dining room.

Tracy

Back to Basic Week 8

Only a day late this week and I have an excuse. We had a heavy storm pass over yesterday which dumped 48mm of rain, blew a gail and had thunder and lightning too.
Sowing and Planting

• 6 Hidcote lavenders
• Westringia Winyabbie gem
• 6 gypsophila
• purple petunias
• pink rosemary
• African daisy
• lobelia
• 6 red carnations
• Coleonema alba
• lemon variegated thyme

Harvesting

• flowers(roses in particular)
• broad beans
• cauliflower
• herbs
• lettuce
• strawberries (they are just starting and so far none have made it out of the garden to the kitchen)
• water (lots of rain)
  

Grace

Planning

• looking at a course to start next year
• refreshing the budget

Working

• spring cleaning
• mulching
• weeding
• mowing

Community

• gave away a few things via Freecycle
• 2 bags to charity

New skill

• learner driver education. I really don't like doing this but my son needs to build up his driving hours.