Simple Green Living on Facebook

What? It's 2012 and I am only joining Facebook now????? Almost unbelievable isn't it? But anyway, you can find a community on the Simple Green Living page at FB. It is a baby step to connect with those greenies, natural whole food fanatics and simple living folks who are on there already.

Join up here!

Feel free to "like" or  recommend to others or add your green living or recipe blog posts as you can.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Seasonal Merry Go Round

Having a veggie garden makes me so aware of the changing seasons. So here we are into March and Autumn...it kind of just snuck it's way in making the mornings darker and cooler, leaves drift to the ground while out walking, a light jersey needed for the evenings and bare garden beds waiting for their new inhabitants.

All our beds have been cleared out with the exception of some carrots, a little bit of corn and this messy bed above which holds the last cucumbers, loads of basil, dill, chillies, beans and yarrow. This bed will lie fallow for winter as the sun is blocked out by the house for these 3 months.

Today we got stuck in early and finished preparing the kitchen garden beds. This is the original garden which started us on this journey in 2008. While you can see nothing from this broad photo, the garden holds onion seeds in the first bed, beetroot in the second, purple sprouting broccoli in the 3rd, broad beans in the 4th and in the 5th a sneaky hopeful planting of Chinese Cabbage and Pak Choi. I am hoping that there is still enough time for the 5th bed as it too is in full shade through winter.

The pond garden, which was 2010's addition is now ready for planting. I hope to get that done tomorrow which is generally my rest day, but we are on a clock here with 5 weeks to go before my son and I leave for London. The asparagus will need to be cut back and fed in May, doesn't it look full and healthy?

Every bed was also given a generous helping of Bounce Back as well as all our pots and hanging baskets. The kids also fed the baskets and pots some liquid feed today when watering.

The one bed we cleaned out had some forgotten bush beans and they had dried on the pod. To my delight we have enough dried beans to give Jamie Olivier's home made baked beans a try....that's a job for tomorrow too.

What are you doing in your changing season garden right now?

Slow Living 2012 - Month 2

Perhaps this email should be titled: "Falling of the bandwagon and how to climb back on" but I like the idea of rather joining in with Christine's Slow Living 2012 Diary each month. So instead of writing another post about all the things I didn't get to here is how my month went:

NOURISH:
This month we were so blessed with a free gift of many many granadillas. Eaten as is and made into granadilla butter were a highlight. I also make a batch of spelt/blueberry muffins for breakfast each week...recipe to follow in another post. Evening meals have been fresh garden salads with a little twist...Chicken Caesar Salad being the current favourite and fig, haloumi and walnut coming in second.

PREPARE:
Chillies have been pickled, tomatoes canned and eaten!

REDUCE:
No summer jammies for the kids...winter PJ's were cut off at the mid thigh and rehemmed and reused. Does horse manure count in this category? If so, I relieved my friend of some 30 bags and dug it into our soil :)

PS cleaning this area is on a to do list!

GREEN:
Vinegar continues to be used for most cleaning and drains. A friend laughed at me the other night when I told her that I shower with a bucket behind me to catch water. We also use an old pool pipe to chanel the water from the kids bath to part of the garden. This is not new this month but I thought I would share it anyway!

GROW:
All our seedlings are planted and growing. They need transplanting this weekend. Garlic was also put to bed...very excited about this one.

CREATE:
My creative space was my daughter's 13yr album. I am now the mom to three precious teens (and one almost 10yr old) and they are all delightful to me. My 3rd child is now 13 and I always give them an album showing their 13yrs of life in our family.

DISCOVER:
I discovered iTunesU this last week. Oh my! Where am I going to find the time to learn all this? I settled on two courses eventually. I also have discovered Lynn Austin as an outstanding Christian author and while never choosing to read novels over the last few years but recently I am enjoying 5-6 pages as my eyelids droop at night.

ENHANCE:
This is a hard one, I don't want to share too much but I have learnt that when others face great difficulties it is an opportunity to not preach to them, adivse, point things out (unless asked) but rather just to love them physically and practically with a meal, hug, email or whatever the Lord lays on my heart.

ENJOY:
Two things are bringing me immense enjoyment at the moment. Jamie At Home is still delighting me with his seasonal recipes like the chicken dish below.

Then my younger son and I have taken up Geocaching. For a long time I have been looking for some way to combine learning, fun, adventure, reading, writing and history and Geocaching has done it for us. He has started a little blog adding our adventures each week. Last week we did the Company Gardens in town and it was delightful with all the cultures gathering in one place, the beautiful gardens and his favorite - the squirrels who ate from his hand.

That's the wrap up for the diary...now the count down begins....London Calling 5 weeks!

Natural Flea Control

Pests...they will always be with us. Here in the Western Cape, and I suppose elsewhere, fleas on cats and dogs are a big issue. Try as I did, we never got into a regular defleaing routine for our dogs. I also have never liked pumping them with drugs and spraying/dipping them with chemicals so about a year ago I went looking for another solution.

I want to state at the outset that if I were living in a high tick zone I wouldn't think twice about medicating my pets to protect them from tick bite fever, it would be the lesser of two evils and I would do whatever I needed to protect them.

But here we we live we don't really have a tick problem and even where we walk we don't pick up ticks. So these following solutions work for me.

Diatomaceous Earth is our first line of defense. You can read about its function here. We buy it locally from Living Seeds.

We use it in our coop for our chickens too as it is great for controlling mites. How we use it on our dogs is simply to rub it into the areas fleas enjoy the most being the leg pits. We also wash all doggie bedding once a week and then sprinkle the kennel and the blankets with it.

For our little house dog, Lucky, we added another nifty gadget and it cost us all of R5! A flea comb.

Here Lucky is waiting for her tummy to be combed.

At just the right angle - more or less horizontal with the fur - it collects fleas and their eggs which are then emptied into the toilet. We comb her morning and evening. Takes about 5 minutes a time and she loves it.

I admit this picture above is rather grim, but its to give you an idea of how fine the comb is. The comb would work well on cats as well as larger shorter haired dogs but we cannot use it on Zeus, he is too big and too fluffy.

In this last year we are yet to be over run by fleas, we never see them on ourselves and our dogs are not constantly scratching. They have not had any hotspots in this time either, so I think we are onto a winning combination.

Have a chuckle

So...littlest one decides he needs more Lego and makes his siblings pay for him to do their garden chores...sowing seeds in the newspaper pots.

Guess which seeds he sowed and which I did?

Bedding down the garlic

A couple of weeks ago I bought Egyptian Pink and white garlic from Living Seeds. I eventually got around to planting it yesterday.

So into a bed of rich compost and manure I had added some calcitic lime about a week ago. I raked this over first.

Next I estimated about 10cm apart and dug little indents about 4cm deep. Each indention got one clove, planted pointed side up!

Then covered them over and because I am leaning towards being scatter-brained I made me a lil ol sign so I don't forget and plant something else here.

Sleep tight lil garlic babes...see you in 10 months time!

Batering time for granadillas

Last Sunday my children were asked to help out at a friend who needed her little son to be played with while she made 200 fondant roses for a wedding cake. I sent along two children - one to play, one to help with the roses.

When I came to collect them she gave me a grocery bag full of granadillas from her hedge that stretches about 6 or 7m up the driveway. What a pleasure!

Within a day half were turned into granadilla butter for toast and pancakes...so yummy.

Littlest one helped me by taking out the pulp and stirring.

200g butter

3 cups of pulp

3 cups sugar

8 eggs beaten

Melt butter in a double boiler, add sugar and pulp. Add beaten eggs and stir from the sides to the middle until it covers the back of a spoon.

Pour into clean jars and allow to cool. It may seem a little runny but overnight in the fridge will firm it enough for toast.