The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Today was the fourth day in a row that I have rode my bike to and from work. Eight kilometres there and eight kilometres back.
Tomorrow, I’ll be riding to work, then to a film, and then home.
Admittedly, the Somerville is only ten minutes ride from my current Friday job. But if I ride home from the film, then I will have rode my bike for a whole week. Go me!
This week I decluttered my desk of the computer that was running Windows. It had had a good innings, as it has been useful for over ten years. I had started to use it less and less as we now run the couple applications that need the Windows operating system in VirtualBox on H’s Linux computer. Also, the battery was a little tired so it took a few presses of the on switch to get it up and running.
There was no sadness moving on this beige box, unlike decommissioning my SPARCstation 2. I shed tears over that. So much so, that I have not been able to finish this blog post until now.
H went to a lot of trouble to choose a new box that had a super quiet power supply and fan. And I must admit, there was no comparison between my new Linux computer and the SPARCstation. The SPARCstation sounded like a plane taking off in comparison. But I do miss my WYSIWYG FrameMaker application. So far, the combination of the SPARCstation, SPARCprinter and FrameMaker is the only setup that has been truly WYSIWYG.
The SPARCstation and peripherals joined the other stuff in the bin on Resource Recovery Day April 2008.
Ending on a positive note, decommissioning the Windows computer means that I have successfully decluttered another item for the The De-clutter ’52 Things in 52 weeks’ Challenge organised by The Organised Housewife.
The mango pip that I sprouted almost three years ago to the day, is now planted in the ground. It is under an established pomegranate tree, which I hope will protect the tree until it is more established. I will then cut back the pomegranate tree.
Just prior to the tree going in the ground, it did flower but it was not followed up by fruit as we had about three very hot days and the flowers were scorched. Also, many of the bottom leaves have dropped off either due to the stress of planting or the hot summer weather.
I’m happy that it has found its feet (or roots), as there is new growth from the top and it is groiwng upright. Also, it is happily sharing the irrigation with some catmint and a feral pumpkin, zucchini, or cucumber. Not sure how to tell these apart until you see the fruit.
I haven’t rode my bike for a couple of weeks for various reasons; holidays and hot days being the main ones.
H has adjusted my saddle tonight and I have had a test ride. Hopefully, we have got it right now. I have been experiencing a sore neck and shoulders after riding my bike, enough to worry about it and nearly get to a physiotherapist. Except, that if I don’t ride my bike and do a few stretching exercises it comes right after about a week.
Tomorrow I will be riding to work, then meeting up with H and a friend at the Somerville for this week’s Festival Film – In a Better World, then riding home.
It is going to be cooler tomorrow, only 25 deg C, so the ride in the morning and evening will be pleasant temperature wise. We should zoom home as the winds are forcast to be a moderate South/South West.
I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder, but I definitely have ‘stuff’ that is not loved or used – too much in fact! Well, not according to some people I know, but it is a personal decision and I consider what I have is far more than I want.
I have been flying on and off since April 2008. Looking at all my stuff, you would probably say ‘off’. But while I know I may not have ‘put away’, ‘give away’, or ‘throw away’ as much as I would have liked, I know that I have not recently brought into my home anything, and resisted most strongly when other people want to give me their stuff.
This Christmas New Year period I had two weeks holiday and decided the main task that I wanted to do was to begin to declutter. Note, the word ‘begin’, because even I know that realistically I could not declutter over two weeks.
I started by gathering together the pile of diaries and calendars (1999, 2005-2010) and spent a week going through them all and noting in a personal journal and 2011 desk diary any achievements and experiences where I could improve. This not only decluttered the physical diaries, but decluttered my mind.
I plan to follow FlyLady’s How to Declutter, i.e. set a timer for 15 minutes and ‘put away’, ‘throw away’, or ‘give away’ during that time. Also, I picked up a copy of Corinne Grant’s Lessons in Letting Go before the holidays which gave me some perspective to the task that I was about to begin.
During decluttering I came across The Organised Housewife with a number of posts related to organising and decluttering. The “The De-clutter ’52 Things in 52 weeks’ Challenge” is appealing because the number 52 makes decluttering my home sound so easy. Fifty two weeks in a year, one declutter a week, I can do that!
Yes, I have a supply of clean fresh water. However, water is becoming more scarce and is limited so I don’t feel I can wholly claim “Not In My Back Yard”.
Currently, I rely on a state government authority to deliver clean fresh water. Water is plentiful for drinking, bathing, flushing toilets, washing clothes, etc. However, I can only water my garden once per week with automatic sprinklers and supplement this with hand-watering using a hose pipe.
It is only the middle of October, but already the garden is suffering from subsequent dry warm days. I’m not sure whether watering with a hose pipe is going to be enough for the garden during the hot summer days. It is going to be difficult to prioritise my time to spend an hour every day to water different parts of the garden.
What I feel is really crazy, to me anyway, is that people can top up their swimming pools, but I can’t leave the hose pipe running on a fruit tree or turn on the automatic sprinklers. I guess if my lime tree dies, I can always go to the shop and buy a lime. But I would prefer not to buy the wax coated limes that have travelled thousands of kilometres.
If I could hear lots of splashing from people enjoying their swimming pools, then I may feel differently about it. Sadly, I think most of them are simply contemplation pools that require lots of top ups with water, chemicals, and power for the pumps.
I recognise that I have choices, some of them lifestyle choices. Unlike some parts of the world where the walk to a supply of clean fresh water is a long one. I don’t have to grow my own food, as there are many fresh food choices in shops very close to my home. And it is sheer joy to be able to pluck the ingredients from my own garden to create our meals.
A greywater reuse system seems the way to go. However, most systems are not suited to a small metropolitan block or the guidelines preclude any real advantage such that I feel that I am paying for an expensive hobby rather than working toward an environmental sustainable living. But I guess everyone has to have a hobby.
Although we had watched the dolphins from our balcony at the resort, and at other times in the water when they were fishing amongst the sea grass, we went to see them one morning on cue.
The dolphins at Monkey Mia swim up and down the beach, but some come in to the shore at a regular time to be fed by DEC staff.
The recent close encounter with the Monkey Mia dolphins heightened my sensitivity to reading about the wildlife in the area of the West Atlas oil rig spill.
“There were times when we were literally in a sea of oil from left to right and as far as we could see ahead of us – it was heavily oiled water and it was sickening because in this we were seeing dolphins surfacing,” — Dr Gilly Llewellyn, Conservation Manager, WWF-Australia on ABC Online.
The oil spill is 200 kilometres off the Kimberley coast. Would more people stand up and take notice if the oil slick came into the shore?
Lining up to view the dolphins.
A real treat was to take a 30 minute air charter with Margaret of Shark Bay Air over Denham and Francois Peron National Park.
Denham has a wind farm, so I had to have a picture of that. Interestingly, the resort at Monkey Mia does not get power from this, but from a huge noisy generator that also runs the desalination plant.
The contrast of the red dirt and cliffs with the blue of the sea and lagoons is breathtaking.
The gypsum claypans or birridas were once land-locked saline lakes. There are a lot of them and quite intriguing. Some look like scars on the landscape, and others look very regularly shaped as if they were carefully planned and built.
Little Lagoon and Big Lagoon are two flooded birridas. Again, the contrast of the colours was amazing, white, aqua, and red.
We didn’t spot any wildlife, but they would have to be pretty big to be able to spot from the plane anyway.
Thirty minutes is not a long time in the air, and we were soon on the way back to the airport over the historic Peron Homestead.
For me, climate change is on the doorstep.
If I differentiate the back of the house from the front, the two spaces each have a different combination of energies or microclimate. For example, the back yard has the air moving quite differently as it tumbles off the multi-story house at the rear. Whereas the front yard is somewhat sheltered from the wind by our own home and the surrounding limestone wall. The back yard is mostly shaded, whereas the front yard is in full sun, apart from one section that has some afternoon shade from the neighbour’s carport.
All the garden ‘soil’ is black sand, alkaline, free draining, and repels water.
We are considering installing a greywater reuse system and rainwater tanks as Perth’s 800 mm rainfall is reducing each year. The sprinkler ban during winter and now back to only being able to use irrigation twice per week is not enough to easily manage a lush food producing garden.
At the moment I consider myself fortunate in that I have the opportunity to grow my own food and that it is still a choice. That is, if I don’t grow food in my garden I can go to the shops and I buy what I need. It may not be as tasty, and there will be dozens of other decisions to make such as do I buy the local oranges from Gin Gin, Western Australia, oranges from South Australia, or from California. And that is not including the varieties or whether to buy organic or biodyanmic.
Eventually, we will have the greywater reuse system, rainwater tanks, solar hot water system fixed and back on the roof (currently we are using gas), and a photovoltaic system. We already have a pretty light carbon footprint, but we will do our best to look at ways of reducing it further.
Working with the climate, adapting to it, I feel is a better way of living sustainably and increasing resilience. So no, we won’t be installing the exterior uplights, swimming pool, or airconditioner that appears to be the new home essentials.
Saturday was mostly taken up with Yoke‘s ‘Wholegrain, Sprouted Wholegrain and Essene Sourdough’ workshop. A dozen of us ate and baked our way through:
Yoke demonstrated making a multigrain sourdough bread dough, which we got to take home to bake. Also, we had the choice of what dough to make ourselves to bake at home. I made a quinoa spelt sourdough bread with 50% cooked quinoa and 50% sprouted quinoa. Apart from being a bit big for my small loaf tin and the difficulty of getting it out, the crust was crisp and the bread was delicious. We had it with Borlotti Bean soup on Sunday.
Now I need a kitchen gadget, i.e. a juicer/grinder to pulverise the sprouted grains. Having seen Yoke’s Samson – it was so quiet and steady, I’ll wait until I can save up for something similar. However, apart from the essene bread and multigrain, I can bake the other breads from the workshop and perfect these. What is really great about them, is that they require a lot of starter. Great for the those days, when it is plentiful and raring to go.
Armed with sun hats and umbrellas, on Sunday we went up to the WA Biodynamic Festival at High Vale Biodynamic Orchard in Pickering Brook. It did rain while we took a tour of the orchard, but the weather was warm and we missed the very heavy downpour. The guide’s presentation was interesting and he answered many questions clearly and succinctly. A article written about biodynamic vs traditional farming was posted with a photographic display of the farm that explained that a biodynamic farmer’s enthusiasm for the health of the soil is what makes them different to traditional farmers that rely on products brought onto the farm.
One of the reasons we went to the Biodynamic Festival, is that they promised tasting of their core cider. It was worth the drive. Unfortunately, we could only taste it. Distribution is not happening until January next year. We’ll be watching out for it.
Over Saturday and Sunday, I emptied the worm factory tray ready to plant seedlings, and moved the compost bin for the first time. Also planted two lots of cucumbers (bush crop and burpless), sweet corn, basil, and red onions. I planted the seedlings in the worm castings, and spread the compost around the plants. The compost is very black and a nice crumbly texture, and very wormful. Hopefully the worms will find new homes before the neighbourhood magpies come on their rounds. There were so many snails, that I opted for the snail pellets. Not sure what the biodynamic or organic gardening technique is for snails. Strange as it may seem, I have found that they prefer my basil seedlings to beer. Perhaps they are not Australian snails 
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