After the Storm Settles ..

The Clean Up Begins

As anyone knows when your cleaning skills are not the best to start with having higher priorities for 3 months is going to cause chaos. Um... the fortnight of completely ignoring anything above non nudity probably hasn't helped either.

Luckily my long suffering helper has kept the chaos from suffocating us.

With my Permaculture Design Certificate in my hot little hand it is now time to take responsibility for things again. It is time to ensure we are doing what we need to for our comfort, our community and the world. It is time for me to get organised and find a way to get things done so I have time to honour myself, my family as well as be an active part of the community.

Wish me Luck.. I a gunna need it.

Event West Gippsland - Nurture the land, nourish the people

Digest this! A one-day investigation into future food chains. Join experts to examine the way we grow, distribute and share healthy food. Get into grassroots networking and strengthen the links between farmers, food processors and health professionals.

The total cost, including lunch, is ONLY $30.

Savour the brain food! West Gipspland Arts Centre, October 6, 2009.

For more info click through

The trouble with lists. Challenge update

Hey, Andrew again.
Sort of an annoying day as I had a list of stuff to do and while I feel like I got a lot done when I look at said list I did diddly squat from it. Oh well lets see what I have done...

Observing

• Growth everywhere! Even plants I was worried were dead like one of the lemons and the blueberries have growth.
  
• A few dead fish :-(
• Paint on DIY stompboxes faded
• Belinda isn't surrounded by a constant cloud of A3 paper and transparencies
  

Planning for The Future -

• Read about natural pools. Trying to find what plants needed especially to scrub ammonia
  
• Asked fishing types what sort of fish they recommend for pool. Told they'd get me some
• Might need specific fish feeding worm farm
  
• Must strip old CRT for solar oven
• Solar oven could be used to bake on stompbox paint! Hmm maybe make another one for that. Paint fumes and food shouldn't mix
  

Working for the Future -

• Extended new garden bed about 5 meters. That's it for this year for that bed.
  
• Moved fermenty, sloppy mulch onto new bed
  
• Washed stinky, fur shedding dogs
  
• Collected various weed teas into the big tank
  
• Dumped drowned weeds and other black compost on spoil line
  
• Random weeding
• Tested fish pool for ph and ammonia
• Found a new amazingly painful spot to bash your elbow
• Collecting bottles for worm tea
• Being more focused on my fitness again. Min of 10 mins a day intense exercise
  

Building Community -

• Sent mail to gauge interest in self defence classes
  
• Joined facebook, made contact with good friends haven't been in contact with for years
  
• Actually went out to nightclubby thing with people

Learn a new Skill -

• Groovy programming language

Back to Basic Challenge.

Hi, Andrew here.
Belinda is still working away on her PDC site design. I'll use the Challenge update format.

Observing

• Flowers! Blooms to see in day and pretty smells at night.
  
• All our fruit and nut trees have at least some new growth. Very tiny on the apples.
  
• Early spring wattle flowers seem to have finished already. The normal signals of the seasons seem to be changing.
• Potato plants growing where I hoped they'd go wild
  
• The ground is quite spongy from the sudden heavy rain. I will walk along the swales and irrigation trenches and see what effect they have and if I need to extend them.
• All the worm farms have lots of babies and activity in them
  

Planning for The Future -

• Contemplating running self defence classes again
• Thinking about where should I put backup herb bed
• Thinking about how to get out of current unsocial mood
  

Working for the Future -

• Pruned lemon tree
• Wallaby fenced all but the biggest trees in orchard
• collecting worm tea in glass bottles
• Installed drum software
• Collected old music projects in one spot
• Organised the CD/DVDs
• organised my computer desk
• Cleaned weeds from paths and edges
  
• Cleaned out where the greenhouse/solar heater will be
• Did hedge with a power trimmer. Power tools can be pretty nifty. Certainly a lot easier than the hand shears for large areas. I'll use hand shears to do the job 90% of the time but was interesting after seeing the beating power tools got in whipper snipper versus Scythe

Building Community -

• Had family gathering at mudbrick palace (Belinda did all the work)
  
• Gave away some worms
• Helped build filtration system
  

Learn a new Skill -

• making printed circuit boards
• vastly improved speed of rotational strikes

maia's update - week 42

today i prepared a new veggie patch at the new house, with enormous help from my new housemates, R and P. i am so loving living here. in looking for a new place, i was after somewhere i could have good relationships with the people i live with. so far i've had excellent conversations with both housemates, had one of the neighbours over for tea, started getting to know the people who run the cafe across the road, and on moving day, R helped me bring over 7 loads worth of stuff in his van. my new life rocks.

this morning P drove his trailer out to the old place and we loaded up 5 wheelbarrow-loads of compost, the compost bin, bags of manure, fertiliser, leaf mulch, soaker houses, gardening tools... R volunteered to help me build the new beds. i almost passed out in happy.

(all photos are click-to-embiggen, as belinda sez)

a few weeks before i moved in, R pulled out all the weeds from the veggie patch. the only things left were some self-seeded beetroots, chillies, lettuces and a lonely broad bean. on the right you can see the chillis i transplanted from the old place.

the photos were taken after R had gone over the beds with a mattock and separated out four beds. R and i spent an hour burying some soaker hoses, which work a treat.

i'm almost done laying the half-a-trailer of compost onto the new beds, then it's the hay. i'm intending to start planting immediately - P was given some silverbeet seedlings. the far left bed will be planted with green compost as it's the least fertile right now.

this compost is mostly finished turning into soil, though i did find some larger chunks i've thrown into the compost bin to finish digesting.

along with the worms, slaters, slugs, ants and snails, i've managed to transfer some interesting spiders. i didn't get a picture, sadly. these had big bellies, and red colouring at the front half of the body. anybody know what these might be?

near the back door i planted some artichokes and herbs from the old place. the artichokes weren't happy where they were, so i've placed them in a nice sunny spot. just out of shot on the right are oregano, greek oregano and sage. apparently one of the previous tentants had grown sunflowers in that spot, the soil is lovely and dark. i've added some chicken poo and lucerne mulch.

for perspective, here are the herbs in relations to the house. all the pots in the background are mine. i am crazy plant lady, who knew.

"but we'll have four hours on a plane - that's time off!"

hello, my name is maia, and i'm a late gen-x overachieving workaholic.

i only realised this recently, which is a topic for another time.

the title of this post? i heard those words come out of my mouth recently. in a couple of months, i'll be driving across the nullabor with a partner. i'm intending to spend a week in WA, during which time i'll be attending a conference, meeting lots of new people who are likely to be important in my life, staying with friends and friends of friends, sight seeing, a fair bit of professional networking - lots of stuff (tm). we were discussing the relative merits of driving back to minise re-entry shock versus saving time by flying home. i raised the point of wanting a bit of a break after the adventure, which is when, well... when my partner laughed and hugged me.

i'm often greeted with incredulous stares at how much i get done. the most important principle i use is all is one. like in permaculture, most things can have multiple purposes. i'm sorting laundry; while i fold, i create separate piles, each of which is destined for a different location (separate drawers and rooms).

the main ways i increase efficiency is through multitasking and multithreading. i've just put the oven on to cook stew; that means i need to start making muffins in 45minutes, and the whole lot can be turned off at the same time. during the 'dead' time, i can get a few other things going, and time-slice into blocks as short as 30-seconds, allocating them to whichever task i need to. i pick up the pillowcases from the laundry pile, stop via the study to grab a folder i need for the work i'm doing in the lounge, and make my way to the computer via the linen cupboard, switching the kettle on as i whoosh past, give the veggies a stir, and having a conversation with the housemate about the internet bill. all up, less than 6 minutes.

to be able to do this, i am constantly keeping tabs on everything that's going on. it takes a lot of energy. i wouldn't recommend it necessarily, though it is useful (stressed? must be time to clean the bathroom!). i do this is because i'm naturally inclined to. to me this seems normal. in fact, until i started being aware of what i get done, i didn't realise i accomplished more than anybody else. that one's really important: taking real honest stock of how much i achieve.

oh yeah, lists! i am the queen of post-it notes. the back of my hand is covered in ink. i also have a masterlist, which i keep in 'the cloud' - on google docs, so i can access it anywhere.

the downsides of being a workaholic are, i am chronically underslept; i'm often late (though i assert that's a slightly different issue); and i need to consciously create relaxation. i can get carried away with stressing about all the tasks i've not got to yet, or whether i'm doing things in the most efficient way possible, but i'm getting very good at perspective.

people who lead these kinds of lifestyles are often referred to manic depressives, type two bipolar, insane... and yes, i am prone to a level of depression, especially over winter. not sadness - i still feel loved, connected, happy etc. but everything is a lot of effort, and many activities get put on hold. there's a lot more time spent in pyjamas.

of course, the other commonly forgotten name for people who live like this is 'working mothers'. kudos to you if you are one.

Re- purposing without a Purpose

(click to enbiggen)

Now when I made this bag I honestly didn't have any idea what it was going to be used for. At the point that I made this I didn't even think about the impending birthday party I was planning to attend. It was made in a fit of "these fabrics are awesome together lets make something". Luckily my taste is similar to her taste and the time spent, when I had it, made my life infinitely easier last week, when I didn't.

She may have just been being polite but the lovely lady that received this gift was actually using it the next time I saw her. It is always wonderful when the time and energy you spend on something is visibly loved by it's new owner. Even if I wanted to I couldn't make this exact bag again. It is unique and due to the materials used will almost certainly stay that way.

Process overview for those who might want to try something similar (click to enbiggen)

Anyway back to the materials.

As the blog is reflecting recently my back has been good enough to start using my sewing machine again. As with anyone doing any craft, no matter how useful the end product, if you keep buying your materials new it very quickly adds up to a very significant expense. Being honest, it is in fact enough of an expense that it could very easily stop me from stretching these creative muscles and see where they can go.

I needed fabric that was cheap enough I could afford to make mistakes with it. Some small lots to encourage me to be creative with matching. Some large enough that I could potentially make a skirt or a dress out of it if the mood struck.

Standing in the middle of the op-shop after sifting the fabric donations I started getting a little discouraged. I found a few short lengths that would be useful but I am a girl of reasonably understated tastes. Understandably all of the small number of larger length donations were .. um .... ugly, garish and something I just couldn't imagine myself using.

Then my eyes fell on....the bedding.

Yup, there were piles of sheets in all sorts of non objectionable colours and patterns. To make my day even brighter as long as I stuck to the queen sizes I was generally paying less than $1/meter.

Now used sheets are not exactly an ideal fabric weight. That said at double thickness, ie one used for show the other for lining, make something quite useable even in a clothing context. The main thing I wasn't a real fan of is that most of them are now poly cotton rather than cotton but they fit my budget and right now that is pretty important.

When I have payed a total of $2 set of sheets it is much easier to take a few risks and just hope it all works out and to this point it always has.