Slow Living Diary September 2012

-->

Once again, I am joining in with Christine from Slow Living Essentials for a monthly reflection of slow living…

NOURISH: I’ve got back into the habit of making more of our own dips (hummus, spicy pumpkin) to have as snacks.

PREPARE: I’ve started buying all our nuts loose and in bulk. I was surprised to find out how much more cost effective it is. I’ve also found 4 and 5kg paper or cloth bags of oats that I can buy from a local store.

REDUCE: I’ve been making head way with my personal plastic challenge. I’ve really been rethinking what I buy and am finding that I’m making a dent in what we buy in plastic. It helps to have the visual aid of keeping all our plastic for 1 week at a time. Shows me where it comes from directly, rather than in some sort of abstract manner.

GREEN: Our beautiful solar tracker was finally connected and she works so much better than our flat panels. It also means that we now have time of use on our meter. So I’ve been working extremely hard to make sure that we use as little electricity during the day as we can. I’ve also been using the timer on our washing machine to ensure that we only wash during off peak hours (5am).

The hardest bit has been being super organized about the washing – no more 3 loads in one morning. But there is something nice about the washing being all ready to hang out when one wakes up.

We’ve also finally started a compost bin for our cat litter after reading helpful posts like this. Little B and I spent a day decorating the bin so that no one could make any mistakes with the compost it generates.

GROW: I’ve planted out 4 kinds of tomatoes (Amish Paste, San Marzano, Cherry Roma and one that's good for drying) - 9 plants in all and my squash, pumpkin and zucchini seedlings have just about grown enough to go into the ground. Crazy though - we planted our tomato seedlings one week earlier than we normally would swayed by the warmer weather..two nights later we had a frost. My garden bed was the one with every bucket available tipped over each tomato plant. Good news...no damage done :-)

CREATE:  This month I had great fun making our Super Hero teepee. It was so successful that I’m in the process of sourcing secondhand material to make an outside one too (turns out queen size sheets are the go :-).

DISCOVER:  My favourite info books this month have been A Story of Seven Summers by Hilary Burden and How can I be prepared with self-sufficiency and survival foods by Isabell Shipard.

My favourite fun reads have been The Boy Who Fell to Earth by Kathy Lette and Runemark and Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure both by Joanna Harris. (I do have to say though that I preferred her last book about Vienne, The Lollipop Shoes).

ENHANCE: I helped update the website for a local community group.

ENJOY: Helping out on the zoo excursion for kindy – 23 kids, 8 adults from The Dandenongs to central Melbourne on the worst weather day imaginable (it hailed numerous times). But oh we had so much fun despite this!! The kids were so excited, a butterfly landed on a mum's face in the butterfly house, and Little B was sooo excited to have patted a frog!! :-)

Kiteflying with Little B – it’s so cute the way he gets such a buzz from it. And on really windy days it can be quite exhilarating (even for us big kids).