back to basics - week 33 (and introduction)

some of you reading this have met me already - i occasionally comment, and more occasioanlly come with belinda to various events.

what am i doing posting here? good question. aside from belinda & andrew (and the expanding menagerie of animals), i spend more time at the mudbrick palace than anybody else. so much so, i have a semi-official bedroom, which i share with other visitors and stuff-what-we-haven't-found-a-place-for. so i've been invited to add my own contributions.

i am using this blogging space in a few ways. keeping in closer contact with its owners, for starters. mainly, it's a way for me to keep track of what i'm doing, and contribute to the overall goals of the blog. i'm also trialling blogging, seeing if i natually sustain momentum communicating in this way.

various facts about me:

• i live in inner north melbourne on a rental property, sharing with a couple of other people
• i do various kinds of growing/preserving
• i'd like to have the space in my life to knit/sew/other kinds of crafts but it would push out too many other things i'm interested in keeping up with at the moment
• my eventual aim is a large, rambling house in inner north melbourne, large enough to accommodate several adults, that produces most of the food necessary for the household
  
• i avoid capital letters in writing as much as possible

my challenge update for the week:

sowing seed or planting -
sowing
it's a bit late in the season for many seeds, so i'm cheating. i've taken jackie french's advice and planted everything quite close together, interspersed with green compost (lupin, peas) that someone gave me.

• one punnet brown onion seedlings
• one punnet beetroot seedlings
• lots of garlic

harvesting

• broccoli
• silverbeet
  

planning for the future -

• manifesting some underbed storage containers
• rearranging furniture in my head
• thinking about a shelf making project
  
• making shopping lists for legumes
  
• intending to plant something every day this week

working for the future -

• rearranged bedroom. moved the tallboy to stand on so i could reach to fix the blinds, and just kept going. that's two rooms optimised in two weeks, i'm chuffed
  
• fixed bedroom blinds
• decluttered a whole heap of crap, including several pairs of shoes (that's even a bigger deal than it sounds. i am of the firm opinion that there are two kinds of women - women who are into shoes and johnny depp, and women who are dead. notable exceptions include those into robert redford/richard gere/insert name of older male actor here)
• picked up a whiteboard off a freecycler
• bought & assembled clothes rack. along with incoming shelf project, i'll be able to move all the stuff out of the ugly cupboard in the study, and my living space will be beautiful and peaceful
  

building community -

• helped organise and run a networking night for a work-related association
• attended sister's gig with a friend, discovered a great new local band
• caught up with someone moving interstate
• shared free tickets to the burlesque with a friend going through a tough time financially
  
• wrote a hand written letter to someone overseas
  
• wrote an article for uni magazine about a student-led social entrepreneurship initiative
  

learn a new skill -

• that delicate balance between professional mingling and socialising