Relocated

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Posted on March 29, 2026

Today is Sunday and it is a glorious autumn day. I have done 3 loads of washing, including the bed linen. This afternoon I will go to my regular Scrabble group. There is usually just 3 or 4 of us and we play several games.

Last week I continued working on getting the 3rd bedroom set up the way I would like. I have taken bundles to the op shop. These were mostly things that were left over from the community garage sale and that I had collected from other sources to sort out.

There is a small, plastic adjustable shelf that I no longer need. I am giving it away and it is being picked up this week.

Otherwise, there are only a few things left to deal with. The pile of towels is to be donated to a charity in Melbourne when I next head there. We need to buy some adhesive to attach a mirror to the wall and then hang the pictures once the mirror is in place.

I also sorted out the wardrobe. It had become a storage area for some of the equipment and supplies for our local film group. There is now some dedicated cupboard space at the hall where we screen the movies so I have rehomed them and freed up space in our house.

The ‘new’ cupboard with all of the catering supplies and equipment.

A bit of rearranging means that the home brew and some exercise equipment now have a specific location rather rather being shuffled around from place to place.

Every small step does make a difference.

Plans, Not Panic

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Posted on March 26, 2026

This is not an overtly political post, however, there is no doubt that the geopolitical events currently unfolding in the Middle East are going to have an impact on us all in one way or another.

I am interested to hear about what preparation and strategies you have in place. Have you considered how you will manage if fuel becomes limited, rationed or simply unavailable? What about food? Frozen goods, shelf stable supplies and home-grown produce?

Here are a couple of views of my pantry.

Luckily, it is autumn and the freezer is almost groaning with produce we have gathered and stored in various ways. I also did a big shop of bulk dry goods just a few weeks ago so the pantry is generally well-stocked.

The other thing to consider at all times but it is particularly relevant now is to make sure that food is not wasted. Leftovers can be turned into a whole new meal and some creative thinking might be required if ingredients run low. There are many websites that offer ideas of substitutions that can be made for specific ingredients.

This afternoon I saw a message to a local group asking if anyone was travelling to the next town (about 15km away) this evening and who might be interested in carpooling. This gladdens my heart immensely as it means people are thinking ahead about what they can do to make a difference as well as looking out for others in their community.

We have a small blessing as we are driving a hire car after my crash last month and it is a hybrid so less fuel required. We are also trying to minimise our travel and combine errands where possible. There is plenty to keep us occupied close to home and we are very fortunate to be able to catch the train to Melbourne if we wish with only a relatively short drive to the railway station in the next town.

I do have flights booked to travel interstate in about 6 weeks so I am hoping I am still able to do that. Yesterday, I received an email from Jetstar advising that my flight had been changed by about 10 hours – early morning instead of late afternoon. I expect that is as a result of the later flight possibly being cancelled. It is not a problem for me but the impacts are already starting to show.

I am mindful that the lack of fuel will have massive potential impacts in the farm and transport sectors so it is important that we all take whatever steps we can to minimise our personal usage. We should also try to be responsible for ourselves and look out for those less capable in our communities.

Oil and Dead Fish

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Posted on March 20, 2026

There has been such a lot going on behind the scenes while there have been no blog posts for just over a week.

Last night was the regular monthly film screening for our local film society. As secretary of the group I am usually occupied making sure that everything is ready for film night. There have also been other community activities as well as some administrative work at home.

The harvest continues with nashi pears to be stewed and I have also dehydrated quite a lot. GMan’s help has been invaluable in peeling, coring and slicing.

However, by far the largest disruption to my preferred pattern of blog posts has been the frightening existential threat posed by the invasion of Iran and the subsequent global chaos. Like many of you, my general mental state and equilibrium has been severely tested as I try to balance my day-to-day existence with the very real spectre of a global conflict affecting us all. The functional closure of the Strait of Hormuz is playing havoc with the accessibility of oil, petrol and other fuels.

Meanwhile, back to the title of this post – Oil and Dead Fish.

A few weeks ago I was the recipient of a substantial platter of excess food from a corporate catering event. It is not unusual to have significant leftovers from these type of events which happen thousands of times every day. Most of the food was distributed and able to used and I was extremely grateful to see it not end up in landfill. Included on the platter was a container of individual serves of condiments for sushi. These were soy sauce and wasabi paste. The soy sauce was in the ubiquitous, tiny plastic fish. These plastic fish were banned in South Australia in September 2025 in a world-first but they are still currently used elsewhere.

I emptied all of the soy sauce from these tiny containers and this is the pile of plastic waste which will literally take hundreds of year to break down in landfill.

The yield was 100ml of soy sauce which I have put in a jar and will use in my regular meal preparation.

There is a very obvious environmental hazard that these small containers, and their even smaller plastic lids pose to wildlife, particularly of the marine variety. They are plastic and where does plastic come from? That’s right……oil. Yes, the very same oil that is required in one form or another for a large percentage of our transport fuel, medical equipment, food, fertilisers and a thousand and one things that are part and parcel of our daily lives.

Could there possibly be a more wasteful and frivolous use of a finite resource upon which our very civilisation depends than making single-use plastic containers to dispense a mere 3-5ml of soy sauce onto your takeaway sushi?

Plastic is made from oil. Oil is finite. Oil is expensive. Perhaps now is the time to stop and consider everything that we take for granted that is made from plastic in some form or another. Is it necessary? Is there an alternative?

Time to buy a glass bottle of soy sauce?

Harvest Happenings

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Posted on March 11, 2026

Even with a relatively small garden the late summer and early autumn harvests are enough to keep idle hands occupied.

We have 2 varieties of Nashi pear trees espaliered and we have had them netted for the past 3 months to allow the fruit to grow and ripen unhindered by our feathered friends.

Today we picked all of the fruit from one tree. 70 Nashi pears.

GMan has been busy for several hours peeling, cutting and slicing. We cooked them in batches in the microwave and they are now cooling before we freeze them. We use the lightly stewed fruit on our breakfast cereal.

The fruit from the other tree will need to be picked before too long. Meanwhile the tomato harvest continues. This all from a single plant. We have enjoyed generous serves of tomato in lots of meals over the past few weeks. I think I will need to dice and freeze some of them for use in casseroles and other cooking during the winter.

Additionally, the cherry tomato plants are now ripening so I am simply destalking and rinsing them and freezing in 1kg bags. I can see some sauce making in the not too distant future.

Seed Saving

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Posted on March 1, 2026

In 2023, the first year that we were living here, I noticed some sweet peas growing through a front fence as we were walking. Once the flowers were finished and the seed pods fully dried, I picked about 3 or 4. Each year since then I have saved the seeds and replanted them and am blessed with a bumper crop of long-lasting flowers.

The spring was particularly cool this year so the flowers lasted until early December when we had our first real burst of hot weather. The pods were not completely dried by the time we headed overseas in mid-December so I asked the housesitters if they would mind picking the pods once they were dry.

5 weeks later I came home – not only to dried pods but a 1kg bucket FULL of sweet pea seeds. All shelled and carefully saved. Not only had they done that but on top of the bucket was a delightful hand-drawn illustration.

I scanned and cropped the image as I wanted to use it on packets of seeds for other people. There was no way I was going to be able to use 1kg of seeds.

This is a pile of scrap paper from old diaries (2013-2015) that I have been slowly using but I honestly have far more scrap paper and notebooks than I will ever use so I decided to use some to make seed packets. They are A5 size.

I printed the image I had created and then folded the papers to make a small seed packets ready to fill.

How many seeds? I counted out 180 seeds which filled the tablespoon measuring spoon (15ml) so I decided that a tablespoon full of seeds would go in each packet.

Once the seeds were added, I folded the top over and secured it with a piece of sticky tape. I ended up with 46 packets of seeds as well as enough left over for my own garden.

I am planning on selling them for $1/packet at the upcoming garage sale.

It may seem flippant to be writing about seeds and flowers while the world teeters on the brink of a global war. There is not a lot that I can do personally about the escalating conflict, however, no matter what happens around us the plants will keep growing and producing food and flowers in abundance which we can share without being beholden to tariffs, oil or any other commodity.

Salvage or Not?

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Posted on December 19, 2025

I discovered recently that some clothes can be salvaged and others can really only be destined as waste or recycling if you have access to textile recycling facilities.

First, a pair of GMan’s shorts which he managed to splash with a substance containing bleach and you can see the results near both side seams below the pockets.

The fabric is sound and they in otherwise fairly reasonable condition so I decided I had nothing to lose and coloured in the affected spots with a black permanent marker. The result is far from perfect, however, the marks are considerably less noticeable than before.

GMan will continue to wear them for everyday wear.

A top of mine had a different fate. I bought a very fine knitted top for $5 secondhand almost exactly 2 years ago. According to the label it was linen. Anyway, it had been gradually getting thinner in the underarm area and I suspect that was was why it had been donated in the first place. It has finally become unwearable so I have added it to the pile for textile recycling. The photo shows a close-up of the multiple small holes under one arm and the other side was in a similar state.

This is my last post here for about a month as we are now on holidays and I will be posting here.

Tinned Tomatoes

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Posted on October 23, 2025

You may remember this post from about a month ago. I bought 3 rather large tins of crushed tomatoes. I made sure that I had a plan for how to use/store nearly 3kg of crushed tomatoes once the can was opened. This is important to make sure that nothing goes to waste.

I opened one a couple of days ago and used 2 cups of it in a dish I was making. The remainder are now frozen in quantities which are a similar size to a regular 400g can of tomatoes.

Do It Once

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Posted on September 15, 2025

Almost all of what I, and probably most of you, do is repetitive. Some things are repeated daily, weekly or less frequently. Things like meal preparation and washing up can even be multiple times each day.

However, there are some jobs which can be done once and once only. Many fall under the broader category of decluttering which in itself can seem like an endless task.

I recently cleaned up the desk in our small office which is a built-in desk in the walkway through to the laundry. Keeping this space free from clutter is an ongoing project and I completely understand that.

There were 6 small plastic boxes sitting one one corner of the desk. These had previously held photographic slides that belonged to my father. The slides have all been scanned and saved so I had disposed of the originals. The boxes were covered with adhesive labels and notations in permanent marker and I had been undecided as to whether I could repurpose the boxes. I possibly could but the question really is, ‘do I need them?’

After several months of seeing these boxes multiple times each day I decided that they could be used by someone else. So, the first step was to remove the labels and clean them up.

No before photo but here they are, ready to go. I plan to take them to the Bendigo Share and Repair Shed as I feel that someone will be able to use them.

I am sure that they will be perfect storage for someone’s small treasures.

Just because you don’t want to send something to landfill does not mean that you are obliged to keep it or even to find a way of using a particular item.

Outsourced

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Posted on August 16, 2025

The past week since my last post has been somewhat devoid of blog material. In fact, it has been generally fairly quiet with us spending most of the time at home. There were a couple of fine sunny days which were perfect for some more fence painting. We have now completed 2 coats on all of the outside of the pickets and both sides of the gates. Once we finish the inside of the pickets then I will just need to do some touching up of baseboards and posts which are dark grey.

We did go out yesterday afternoon to pick up the quilt which I had taken to a friend to quilt on her longarm machine. It is always a delight to see the transformation from a piece of patchwork to a completed quilt. I think this one looks particularly spectacular.

A close-up of the stitching pattern.

The backing fabric from a thrifted doona cover really highlights the quilting.

Meanwhile, in a change of pace we have a weekend full of activity but more about that next time.

This and That

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Posted on August 9, 2025

While it is only the beginning of the second week of August there is a definite hint of spring in the air. At least the bitter chill has gone, at least for the moment. Today was a glorious sunny day.

The daffodils are almost ready to burst forth.

GMan picked all of the remaining lemons from the tree. It is only quite a small tree and one of the branches that was laden with fruit really needed to be pruned.

I have juiced about half of these and will do the rest tomorrow.

One thing led to another and I sorted out the freezers which were a bit of a shambles and I was not 100% certain of what was in there. I found a single serve of soup and a zucchini quiche which GMan and I had for our lunches. I also pulled out a bag of whole ripe tomatoes from last summer. I will thaw and chop them to use in cooking.