A Hectic Week

Yes folks, I have been away for an entire week from blog land, but all for good causes.  Sometimes life just gets in the way of wanting to write it all down for prosperity!

Tuesday night – ACF GreenHome Community Workshop – Caroline Springs

A great turnout of about 50 people who wanted to learn about growing their own food.  I even got a speaking part and managed to fit my story of how I made my garden into a 10 minute time slot.  How I fit it into 10 minutes, I do not know.  Soon after my talk, we heard from Vasili from Vasili’s Garden.  He gave a great opening this week talking about how he learnt about growing food from his father in Coburg, which is actually the site of his garden centre!  He talked about the grow your own revolution that he has been experiencing over the last year, and urged those experienced gardeners in the crowd to help gardening newbies out as much as they can.  I had a ball and was in my element and answered lots of questions about vegetable gardening and chicken raising.

Wednesday night – Administrative work for Melton Sustainable Living Group.

Kim and I spend the night typing up the committee meeting minutes from the week before, and planning the next six months worth of workshops and events for the group.  It is going to be actioned packed with even a beer making workshop being held by yours truly.

Thurday night – Melton Sustainable Living Group Monthly meeting.

We had a presentation by the local representative of Tri-Nature who make all sorts of products (cleaning, cosmetics) that have no petrochemicals in them.  Each bottle has a cute picture of an Australian native animal on them, and Kim innocently asked if there were any animal products to which I replied, looking at the bottle with the Kookaburra on it, that it had essence of Kookaburra in it.  Well that started a running gag with all the products for the entire evening.  Essence of platypus, galah, and wombat.  Seriously though, there are no animal products in the Tri-Nature range, nor is it tested on animals.  A great evening was had by all of us.


Friday night – I surprised Kim and took us out to dinner.

When I got home from work, I was in such a great mood, that I told Kim to get her glad rags on and that we were going down to her favourite Chinese restaurant for a nosh up.  It was a great meal and we arrived home relaxed and happy.  I then remembered that I had to submit an Green Living tips article for the Caroline Springs Community update, so I worked on that until midnight and sent it off.

Saturday – Busy as a beaver

We took an early trip to the Neco Superstore on the other side of Melbourne, which were having a 60% store wide closing down sale!  We bought up big, as the picture shows, but who could resist a bargain of eco goodies. Kim and I talked to the owner, who gave the main reason for their closing down was that until there was a monetary incentive, for instance a price on carbon, the majority of people just are not interested in greening up their lives.  I piped up that we were some of the passionate few who did care, and he agreed that it was people like us were the only ones that kept his business running for so long.  Such a shame that the Government’s inaction and poor policy is hurting small businesses like Neco.  Such a shame that they would rather fix up easy things, than tackle the real issues like climate change.  At this stage of our global awakening, Neco’s business should be booming!

Anyway, we came home with this eco-booty all paid for with cash.

Ben loves his science kit, Kim loves her bamboo salad bowl and organic cotton quilt, and I managed to pick up a newspaper log maker, some watering sticks that you can turn a large PET bottle into a watering can, and a book by Richard Heinberg, called Peak Everything.  Oh, and of course our stationary needs for the next three years.

In the afternoon, I planted some more cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse and some rainbow chard in punnets.  The first lot of tomatoes are going gang busters and are about a metre tall already.  They should have flowers in a few weeks and hopefully set fruit.  I then weeded the garden beds, and watched the bricklayer fix up the two cracks in our 6′ boundary wall.

Sunday – Happy Birthday Gavin!

Yes, today is my birthday and I rose early and did a gym session to keep the back strong.  Kim cooked me a full English breakfast which was very yummy and filling.  Then it was present time, and I got two books, lots of Fiskar gardening tools and a Bunnings voucher.  They all reckon that I am very hard to buy for because I reject consumerism except for sustainable products.  Oh well, I believe that it opens their eyes to how unsustainable our society has really become.

I then got stuck into the garden, swept the path to the shed, re-hydrated a big block of coconut coir and mulched the new citrus trees and the pony tail  palms I re-potted last weekend.  I then rescued a garlic plant that the bricklayer had dumped a ton of broken brick on, and tided up his mess around the garden in general.  This afternoon all the kids and I mucked around outside playing with a nerf ball for about an hour, while Kim made me a coffee and walnut cake with candles, and some salads for the BBQ that I cooked later on.

Other than that, there was time for a Nana nap after lunch and that was about it.  Now is the first time this week that I have had some spare time to myself.  I am looking forward to posting more this week, and am hoping to put up a couple of podcasts now that I have paid my podbean site fees so I can have additional capacity to host the episodes on.

All the best, Gav