Too long

I really feel as if its taken me too long to reach this point. I've being wanting to be more self-sufficent, growing my own food, living a simpler life for quite awhile and some of the things I've done in that time has being totally worth it.

One of the first things I ever did was create a green cleaner, and I still use a home made cleaner now and think they're mavelious. My second thing was to make moon pads for that female monthly problem that has to have saved me massive amounts of money but also saved waste and energy needed to create those horrid plastic supermaklet versions.

The third, more brillant thing I did last year. It started with crocheting a couple gifts for the sudden accumilation of nieces and nephews. This rather quickly sprialed into me learning how to spin fibres. Even now I own a spinning wheel and have a bag of wool to spin and I spotted a delightful book of crochet projects for young children recently.

They have, over time created building blocks, slow, shakey first steps. I have done some growing before, those first successes of tomato, peas, beans and cabbage stand out in my mind. Space however has being a problem.

Staying with my parents has being a hurdle, a 1*1m plot and a few potted herbs has all my mum allowed me from her fantastic native garden. My MF(male friend) only has a rental but it does offer oppitunity to expand my potted plants.

Most importantly however was finding a community garden starting up nearby. On Sun I will be joining many others to shift heavy jarrah sleepers in place for garden beds. The offical opening day is something like the 23rd of May. I immagine we'll be working busily until then in a shared effort to get some of the beds going by then.

In the mean time some photos of what I've being up to.



My MF's strawberries and my seed trays. This lot is mostly herbs, oregano and thyme I think have both spouted. Outside of veiw is a foam box made up of seedlings of broccoli, cabbage and caulifour. Just don't ask me at this stage which one is which because i've completly forgotten.




Just beyond the sight of those strawberrys is a chilli plant, which I'm drying the fruits of. It takes longer the dry inside then out but I can hang outside during the dry sunny days and bring in at night or leave inside if it rains.

here is previous drying efforts.



Just to round things off, here are some wholemeal scones I've made.


I've being doing some reading into the benefits of pre-soaking flour before using and also the benfitw of sourbread. I haven't yet incorparted this knowledge enough to figure out scone making but I hope to have a message up about a sourdough starter soon.

I keep doing this

Yet another try at blogging, deleting old and starting over. Still summer is over and already we're seeing rain, its the earlyist we've seen rain over here in Western Australia in years. April has being dry and hot for us for the last two years at least.

Still, despite a few fits and starts over the last ... 3? years, I feel as if I have made some progress toward the sort of life I want to have and finally things are starting to move together for me. None of it wouldn't be possible if not for a male friend in my life.

If anyone wants to know, I have no idea exactly what we are. We've tried dating and it turned into a bit of a mess, at the moment we're sitting on being affectionate friends if that makes any sence. Still what ever comes out of it all, we both want very simular things in life and hopefully will enable each other to accomlish what we want.

As soon as I can I get some photos of the few seedlings I've started up and a couple other things I'm working on and take it from there. Hopefully this time I won't over think things too much. A chronic problem of mine.