Spring is here! Simple Days #1

Happy Spring!


In honour of September being the calendar beginning of Spring here Down Under, I thought I might attempt to shake off some of my winter apathy by doing daily simple living posts, as I did over last summer. They were well received by readers at the time, although I haven't had the energy to continue them unfortunately - but since I had a record (for me) 490 visits yesterday, I had probably better get more organised about posting regularly ;-)

I found that during the time I was doing the simple living posts that putting down my daily (green living) minutiae in writing not only gently reinforced the reasons why I do these things each day, but also how although each baby-step may seem small and inconsequential by itself, over the period of a day (month, year) they all add up to something quite significant. I hope you get as much out of these posts as I do :-)

Doing: Reading the house meters and car trip meter as I do on the first of each month. As I suspected, our electricity and gas use were WAY up on average this last month, since it has been quite cold, and the water is also way up since we've had next to no rain and the tank ran almost dry, so I had to use tap water recently to water the vegie garden and fruit trees. I also suspect longer showers have upped the gas and water usage (we have gas hot water). No excuses now that the weather is warming up though - these figures are a great wake-up call for me to get stuck back into reducing our resource use because - with the exception of our petrol use - I am pretty disappointed with them.

Electricity: 13.9 kWh/day. Average for 2008: 12.5 kWh/day. Australian ave: 18.9 kWh/day.
Gas: 52.0 MJ/day. Ave 2008: 38.0 MJ/day. Aussie ave: 100 MJ/day.
Water: 467 L/day. Ave 2008: 367 L/day. Aussie ave: 625 L/day.
Rubbish: 4.7 kg/week. Ave 2008: 8.2 kg/ week. Aussie ave: 11.9 kg/week.
Recycling: 2.15 kg/ week. Ave 2008: 4.8 kg/week. Aussie ave: 3.1 kg/ week.
Car: 140.6 Litres petrol used for month. Ave 2008: 242 L/month. Aussie ave: 560 L/month.

In the Garden: Do you know what this is?

It's a vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia). It needs hand pollinating in Australia to produce the long black, scented vanilla beans (which are the seed pods) as we lack the hummingbirds that fertilise it in it's native subtropical countries, and each flower only opens for one day, so you need to keep a close eye on it. It arrived on Friday in the mail, and now I have to decide what to do with it! I would like to keep it in a pot for another year or so - it won't start producing pods until it is about 3 years old - to baby it along a bit over next winter before I plant it out into the garden under a palm tree (to use as a trellis), but I am worried that the growth over this summer might be too much for a pot? It won't grow as much as it would in the tropics this far south though, so I might pot it up and just see what it does I think, unless anyone has any other suggestions or experience with them?

Making: New batches of homemade Moisturiser for myself and Shaving Gel for DH.

Baking: Low fat muesli bars for after school snacks.


Dinner: Stir fried marinated Skippy-fillets (kangaroo), with vegetables and Hokkien noodles.

Reading: World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler. I don't get much of a chance to read these days, so it's slow going, but I am quite enjoying it.

Contemplating: The new-to-me crafting intricacies of the present I making for my sister's new baby due around the end of the month. I can't reveal what it is in case she's reading ;-)