Archive for the ‘home’ Category

• The Garden Terrorist

  Date: 2009.02.24 | Category: family, home | Response: 7

  I am going to let you know about the real life hazards of blogging……

  You see, I know the hazards.

  The first hazard that comes to mind is ‘being totally engrossed.’

  Now, I know of this particular hazard because it happens to me quite regularly. I spend my weekends and often my time before heading off to work, reading blogs. I am a blog-a-holic. OMG.

  Anyway… One particular weekend, not too long ago, I was catching up on some very valuable reading. I had my macchiato in hand and the morning was spent perusing, otherwise known as “hey, I’m having me time!”

  Midway between blogs I got up to go to our lovely composting toilet. I do intend to tell you all about our wonderful Rota-Loo at some stage…BUT…as I was walking along our wooden pallets towards the toilet, that is when I noticed we had been under a terrorist attack.

  Now you might find this frivolous or you may find it serious, but I could not believe that one tiny little terrorist could cause so much damage to my beautiful flowering gum.

  It’s poor roots all dug up and torn, exposed to the sun and wind. It’s leaves all wilted and forlorn…What could I do? I quickly growled at The Garden Terrorist and forbade him to come anywhere near my garden again.

  I then stooped down and covered up the precious roots, watered, fed and generally just hoped for the best. A few days later, my little Corymbia ficifolia that was planted for my son is looking okay. I really do hope she will pull through…

  AND the said ‘Garden Terrorist’ is a very new addition to the family here;

  

  He also happens to go by the name of ‘DEVO.’

  And here you can see he has taken a liking to the succulent collection……

  

  At least I can now explain where those bite marks came from! For a while I thought I had one helluva caterpillar on my hands.

• Knee Deep In Mud

  Date: 2009.02.18 | Category: family, home, owner building | Response: 3

  When we first decided to make the big ‘Sea Change’, moving from the city to the bush, we weren’t exactly sure where we were going to live. We knew we would like to build our own home and that we liked the idea of mudbricks but we didn’t realise the work that would go into our lifestyle change.

  My husband or myself had absolutely no building experience whatsoever. I am a horticulturist and my husband is a musician so give us a shovel and a guitar and we were both happy. We had never laid a brick, thought about trusses or wondered on the finer points of water proofing! Oh how all that was about to change…especially for my husband.

  We moved into a gorgeous area that was in the bush but close to the ocean. My parents live in the same area and they have a huge 10acre block of land. Most of it is bush. One night over a family dinner the idea was put to my husband and I by my parents “Why don’t you build yourselves a little mudbrick cabin on our land here. You don’t have to live in town and pay rent that way and it can be your own little place.” Well we thought that would be just great. So our ‘little’ cabin that turned into a HUGE project began.

  Our wonderful neighbours gave us the loan of their caravan so this is where we first lived while we lay the foundations of our cabin.

  

  It had an annexe on the side and every time it rained my husband would jump up on a stool with a tube of silicon to fix the leaks! We had old wood pallets on the floor and then carpet on top of that.

  It was freezing in the Winter and boiling hot in the Summer.

  My husband and I slept up one end of the caravan and our daughter who was 6 at this stage, slept up the other end. I wish I had more photos to show you of our caravan life but I didn’t have a digital camera then and so most of my shots were taken on an Instamatic. I think we lived in the caravan for a good 2 years or so. Some people would say it was ‘character building.’

  I have written in a previous post about the fact that we made all our mud bricks or ‘muddies’ as we affectionately called them by hand. I had a few people ask me how we actually did that. Well, the cement mixer was a really integral part of the whole process. We would mix 1 mixer full of clay with 1 shovel full of cement. Mix it all around with water till well blended then shovel into the moulds. The clay we used for the very first part of our cabin was actually off our land. For the second part of our home, we bought in our clay from a quarry.

  

  Most of the days spent making muddies were stinking hot and it was very heavy work. Each muddie would weigh on average around 18kg.

  Most of the mud brick making fell to my husband with a bit of help every now and then from my brother. I think we would make on average about 120 bricks a day and around 70 if working alone. The first lot of bricks we made were quite crumbly and our cabin is in need of repair inside where cracks and fissures have appeared. We became better at them though and they are now ripper muddies!

  Our mud brick making days have finished thank goodness sadly.

  

  This part of the house is now finished. At this end are the two kids bedrooms and our bathroom ( which is not finished).

  We have been in the process of building our own home now for 6 years. We have owner built and pretty much done every thing ourselves. We are very lucky though to have the help from my father who has also built his own mudbrick home. It has taken such a long time and my husband is certainly ‘over it’ but deep down inside I know he loves and treasures our home made with his own hands.

  Sometimes people say to us, “Haven’t you finished it yet?” with a look of incredulity on their faces. This annoys us both as it isn’t a race for us to complete it…although I would ADORE having a bathroom and hot running water…what a luxury! When we started building we had both just moved here and had no other prior commitments. Now we are both working, I own a 7 day a week retail business and we have 2 small children. One of which decided to pop into our lives right in the middle of muddie making. We had to adjust our plan then and incorporate another bedroom for the little fella.

  My kids still get bathed in a bucket every now and then, although we did have a solar shower for a while there. I sometimes think about putting it back up but then I worry it might mean the ‘real’ shower might take a bit longer. It might not, it’s just a niggly kinda worry.

  When we finished the first little part of our home, which by now you have probably guessed we call ‘the cabin’, we all moved into it. Our little boy was only a few months old and it was in the middle of Winter. We put a Patriot wood fire in and it warmed up the cabin beautifully. So we all shared the one room, all in together.

  

  Where the beds are is now our kitchen and there is a entrance way knocked into the wall at the top left that goes out into the new part of the house.

  

  As you can imagine it was pretty chaotic at times..but it really was character building

• Happy Birthday To My Little Girl.

  Date: 2009.02.12 | Category: home, Uncategorized | Response: 3

  Yesterday was my daughter’s 11th birthday. Happy Birthday Sweet Heart.

  Her birthday arrived in the middle of a very hectic and scary week…with bushfires raging across the nation and one burning only 20km’s away from us.

  We wanted to celebrate her special day and try to relax and have some laughter and fun.

  So I decided to make a special birthday dinner and a yummy cake.

  

  Chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache. This cake is usually delicious when I make it, but this one was a bit dry and hard. Have you read the book “Like Water for Chocolate?” The girl cries into the cake mixture as she makes it and then when all the guests eat it they are really overcome with sadness. I think a bit of tension and worry ended up in this birthday cake!

  I made Southern Fried Chicken, which I have never made before but have always wanted to. It was very tasty but I just cant seem to get the frying bit right. They seem to brown quickly on the outside while still raw in the middle. I ended up finishing them off in the oven. I made Spicy Potato Wedges too with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce and of course, corn on the cob. My birthday girl loved her dinner, so that was good. Her and her little brother loved the pink Spiders I made too. So easy and delicious, just pink lemonade and ice cream in a tall glass.

  We pushed the couch aside and danced to 11yr olds music Rhianna, Fergie, Christina et al.

  I’m not sure why my 3yr old son thinks that what passes for dancing nowadays is to just sit on your bum and spin around a lot..Um..maybe that is dancing?

  A beautiful birthday with lots of smiles and laughter.

• Australian bushfires.

  Date: 2009.02.11 | Category: home | Response: 6

  I feel so overwhelmed with emotion that I feel sick to the pit of my stomach.

  Australia has witnessed the most devastating bushfires and all of us have been affected in one way or another.

  I have been living for the past week on ‘high alert’, as my home is in country NSW and only 20km’s from an out of control bushfire that has been raging now since late January.

  We have the fire pump set up next to the rain tanks, all hoses checked and ready, gutters cleared of debris and leaves and twigs raked away from the house.

  I am awoken early each morning around 4am by the smoke wafting over our property and curling in under the doors and through the fly screens on the windows.

  I constantly check the rural fire service website and my email for fire updates and warnings to prepare.

  I listen to the non stop news until tears well in my eyes and fall down my face at the nations loss, so many lives, so many homes, so many children, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers…..

  We will share our grief, try to help the healing through talking and sharing stories. It’s going to be tough though.

  There really is no way to express the feeling of shock, devastation and loss. I can only give and hope that in some small way I can help…..some one.

• Giant Bird Of Paradise

  Date: 2009.01.26 | Category: home, Horticulture | Response: 0

  I have this absolutely huge Giant Bird Of Paradise ( Strelitzia nicolai) growing at my work. It is stunning and reaches a height of around 5 metres. It is also very wide and spreading.

  People are always mistaking it for a Banana tree. In fact, this is what I also thought it was at first, until I saw the incredible flowers it produces.

  

  At the moment it has many flowers all over it, nestled amongst it’s big sheltering leaves. I am sorry I did not take a photo so you could get an idea of the size of these flowers. They are quite large actually and are very dramatic. The plant gets it’s name by the fact that the flower does indeed look like a bird.

  

  The plant is native to South Africa and there is an orange flowering species too ( Strelitzia reginae) although it is a lot smaller in it’s growth habit.

  This is a fantastic, hardy plant to use if you are trying to create a tropical style of garden but suffer with drought and tough conditions.

  I would also like to take this opportunity to wish my beautiful friend Kerri a very happy 40th birthday! She has spent 2 sun soaked weeks camping on the beach near where we live. We celebrated the day with pink champagne, fresh oysters and delicious prawns. Oh and Chocolate Mud Cake.

  

• Mmmm….Quinces…Quince Jelly? Possibly….next year.

  Date: 2009.01.24 | Category: home, Horticulture | Response: 1

  I adore Quince Trees. They are just so beautiful in so many ways. They have gorgeous, grey velvety foliage that is soft to the touch and very tactile. The flowers are just spectacular too. Quinces are in fact one of the earliest trees to blossom in Spring and their flowers are quite large and a lovely hue of dusky, antique pink.

  

  Ours are currently in fruit and each year I think I really should make some quince jelly. I love it with cheese and crackers But each year I never seem to have the time. So I just enjoy the spectacular fruit hanging on the tree and appreciate the beauty that is my quince.

  

  I love Botanical illustrations like this. This one is taken from Wikipedia.

• Frolicking Flamingo’s

  Date: 2009.01.17 | Category: family, home | Response: 3

  

  These two very unusual specimens arrived in our garden on Christmas Day. They seem to like the place and have decided to stay. They dont eat much or cause a fuss.

  My very clever brother made them actually. They are made from steel, cut into shape and painted with a very quirky kinda style. This is the first time he has attempted to make anything like this and I think he should get his creative hat on and make some more. There is a whole world of wonderful birds out there and therefore just a ton of inspiration.

• My Stunning Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia)

  Date: 2009.01.14 | Category: home, Horticulture | Response: 4

  It is virtually sweltering here today! It is so hot!!! Actually looking at the gauge confirms that it is 43 deg Celsius which is around 109.4 Fahrenheit. There is no where to hide…ugh…except within the confines of a cool dark house and the most powerful fan money can buy.

  It’s pretty loud in here then as you may imagine, the fan noise competing over the kids watching ‘Fraggle Rock’ on tv. Oh, Fraggle Rock is back? It does seem so.

  A quick escape out into the heat to check the mail led me past this stunning beauty by my front gate

  

  Dwarf Orange Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia). This is a grafted specimen and only grows to around 3 or 4 metres where they usually can get up to 15 metres in their natural habitat. It is a West Australian species and the flowers are so symbolic of long hot Australian Summers.

  

  The bees love it too!

  You can grow this tree from seed but it does not grow ‘true to type’, which means that the flower colour can vary greatly from the parent plant. In fact, seed collected from a red flowering tree may even turn out to have white flowers or pale pink. The grafted species ensure you will retain the colour you desire, whether it be intense red, bright pink or this superb orange. They are usually grafted onto the rootstock of the Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), as it is a very hardy and adaptable species.

  This particular tree was given to me about six years ago from the guy who grafted and grows them. He has a native plant nursery that specialises in the production of these beautiful grafted gums.

  

  You can even grow these trees in a really large pot or tub. A half wine barrel is ideal.

  I have just recently bought a red one and a pink one too to plant out in my front garden. I had never got around to planting a tree each for my children so these two will be their trees.

  Oh and by the way, can you believe apart from getting waylaid by such a stunner, by the time I got to the mail box it only had bills for me?

  Time to hit the beach….

• Santa arrived on a fire truck

  Date: 2008.12.26 | Category: family, home | Response: 3

  Every year the people in our small bush community put on a fantastic Christmas party. It is held in the old hall which is right next door to the bush fire brigade. The hall used to be used for dances and social gatherings but over the years it fell into disrepair and became quite dilapidated. Through the hard work of volunteers and fundraisers it is now looking more beautiful than ever, fully restored with a kitchen, toilets and a great big communal area.

  Santa visits every year and gives each child a gift and lollies. This Santa is quite unique though, he doesn’t arrive on reindeer’s or even six white boomers, but on the back of our local fire truck! The kids all gather out the front of the hall as the sound of the siren rings through the hills. It gets closer and closer and louder and louder as each child’s excitement grows. Then around the corner comes Santa with his helpers, and the kids faces just beam with the most magnificent smiles.

  

  Everyone shuffles into the hall and Santa sits on his throne giving out gifts and dispensing hearty “Ho, Ho, Ho’s”.

  Afterwards we enjoy Christmas Carols sang by our local choir and the kids break apart a Christmas Pinata.

  It’s really a lovely way to say thankyou to all our neighbours, share some food and a few drinks and to enjoy in the season that is Christmas.

  For everyone who has no idea what a white boomer is then this you tube clip may help enlighten you

  My son just LOVES this song and it has been his very favourite song this Christmas.

  Merry Christmas.

• Scrumptious Apple Berry’s

  Date: 2008.12.22 | Category: home, Horticulture | Response: 0

  The Native Appleberry ( Billardiera scandens) is one of my favourite native plants. It is a delicate little climber with beautiful lime green little bell flowers. The flowers are then followed by this lovely edible fruit that falls to the ground when ripe. The fruit was an important Aboriginal bush food and it has a flavour reminiscent of unsweetened stewed apples.

  The plant itself is very commonly seen growing in the bush and in coastal areas of Eastern Australia, from QLD right down the seaboard to Tasmania. It will grow in full sun to dense shade and can be grown quite successfully under large trees.

  

  This is a photo of one growing on my property on the fence. I never planted it there, it is a wild species that has taken a liking to the position. You can see the appleberry fruit in the top right hand position of the photo. The fruit can get quite large, approx 5cm or so and are very squishy when ripe. I wonder what the kids would say if I replaced Granny Smith in their lunch boxes with lovely Appleberry’s…