sustainable living april

Years ago I joined in with an Aussie blogger - Slow Living Essentials - and her Monthly 9 round up, which was always a great way to remember and reflect on what had been memorable in the month gone by. That was when I was still entirely at home with the younger children, still grew lots of veggies and had lots of zest to sew and repurpose everything! I still do the repurposing bit but the children have flown and the garden is quite overgrown. Did you see what I did there? It rhymes!!

Anyway, I eventually ran out of blogging puff and then headed out into the world to study. It really was just what I needed at the time though and I learnt a lot about myself as well as the particular psychotherapy I was studying. It was the first time I had studied other than school and it certainly inspired me to perhaps do some more in the future.

So imagine how excited I was to find that Sustainable Mum was doing a very similar monthly round up of all things slow and special and sustainable? I find that its very easy for me to think back over the past month or past year even, and just see all the things I hadn't done or achieved. Sure there are many of those Not Done Things since I have a very active imagination and a lot of things on my to-do-one-day list but many of them do get done. And many of them are focused on sustainability and lightening our footprint on our amazing Mother Earth.

So here goes with my April happenings -

nourish: This month has been all about storing the abundance available in autumn. When the virus first became a pandemic and we were all forced to stay home, my daughter and I decided that we might need to make the most of the autumn fruit harvest. She is in the hospitality industry and knew that her job was on the line (yes, she's out of work now) and I just couldn't pass up what was a very abundant year for fruit. I think we spent most of April either foraging fruit, cooking it up or finding new places to store it!

lessen: There've been two things that have stood out since we've been closeted at home and they are related - using less fuel and eating out less not at all. Firstly fuel. Being aware of the need to lighten our footsteps and actually doing it are not always on the same page. We can afford to fill our fuel tanks weekly or more if need be and so we did! A quick trip to town for a drill bit or some nails; a jaunt to the beach on the spur of the moment; an outing simply because we feel like it; all of them add up and are not strictly necessary. Well, none of that's been happening!

And then theres the eating out. Until about 13 years ago, Stuy and I had been on one dinner date. Seriously. One. With a bunch of children, one income and no baby-sitters there wasn't much scope for personal outings. I think though it was also that we'd never grown up in this new 'cafe culture'. Neither of our parents went to cafes or out for dinner in a restaurant - in the 70's it just didn't seem to be a 'thing' for them. When we first met in the very early 80's we sometimes went with a group of friends to a Chinese restaurant for a birthday occasion but mostly we went camping or to the pub! But after babies? Nothing!

In the last few years going to a cafe once or twice a week has become quite usual for us though! And while we are aware of the drain on the purse, we went anyway. Now we haven't been for at least a month and I must say its been rather nice in an unexpected way. Of course the money saved is great but I'm also finding that its nice not to feel sort of.... obligated to catch up with friends at the cafe. I do miss seeing people but not as much as I thought I would and its actually really nice to not have that pull to go out. Does that make sense?

So on both counts we've lessened the outings and the obvious winner is that we've saved money!

grow: Once again this one is connected to daughter Bee. When we harvested the last of the zucchini, corn and beans in her garden there was a lovely gap in the beds. So we planted perpetual spinach, coriander and parsley. I was wanting some kale as well - however according to Bee, kale attracts cabbage moths which results in green caterpillars. Bee has a serious phobia with caterpillars - since she was in her early teens in fact - so anything that promotes them is out of the garden asap!!

(I wonder if maybe her phobia comes from the lovely fat silk worms we kept on the sideboard every year when she was a child? I loved them but perhaps there was a Traumatic Incident at some point.....like a squashed one maybe).

So now she sticks to non-brassicas. Just in case ;)



thankful: Many things to be thankful for but one of my big ones is that I get to spend extra time with some of my children. If we'd taken the bus back up to northern NSW in April as we were going to, we would not be spending such a wonderful time with Bee and partner. She is number 5 in the ranks and rather quiet, so its been really lovely to make up for some of that missing one on one time that may not have been in great supply when she was growing up.

I haven't mentioned this yet because I want to do a separate post about it...but I have a new grandchild! I would have missed his first year almost completely but because we are 'grounded' I'll be seeing him right up until Christmas I hope! And of course his mama (our oldest daughter) and his two sweet older sisters too.

And lastly, I'm grateful because Son 2 and partner have cut short their around Australia travels and have come home to Tasmania for the foreseeable future. Fortunately they are also quite happy to be back at home so all is well!

create: Due to much food-ish types of happenings, theres been very little of anything else creative but there was a back log of mending. I don't know about you but mending is one of my least liked tasks - second only to modifying garments - and my mending waits a long time! Stuy tears his shirts on a regular basis and I refuse to buy new ones, so it's only if I happen to find one at the op shop that he gets replacements. The checked one below was pretty badly in need of throwing out but I just added a large piece of that blue/purple flannelette underneath and zigzagged away!! It's certainly not a fabulous mending job but it did the trick and should last him over winter when it's covered by a jumper anyway! 

In other sewing - Bee's flatmate needed his work pants fixed (also a major tear!), Stuy needed a small tear in a pair of jeans mended.....

.....and I spent a lovely afternoon sewing up a bunch of fruit and veg bags out of a piece of chiffon type fabric that I'd picked up at an op shop. I usually use floral net curtaining which works really well but wanted to use up the chiffon-ish stuff. I don't bother with a tie up bit at the top - after all the plastic veg bags don't have them either and they just add extra weight.  

learn: I've banged on about this before (like in my last post!) but I have been perfecting my sourdough skills - along with the rest of the world it seems! I tend to read just part of any given instructions and then head off on my own and as usual that's what happened here. But I did re-read and re-search and tried a few different things and its been working every time I baked in the last couple of weeks.

I've also learnt that I'm more of a homebody than I'd thought. I'm liking these stay at home times. I'm enjoying not having visitors. I love the lack of car trips. So I think I'll be looking at spending more time at home again even when all this isolation is over. We shall see.


fun: All things considered, April was filled with lots of fun times as well as virus worries. There were jigsaws done which is not a usual occurrence, we played various games and we had a little 'homies party'. We went 'camping' and had jaffles for dinner in the backyard and we searched recipe books for new meals to try. Most fun of all was just being together.

Well, if you've read right to the end, well done!!

And if you are a new friend, thank you so much for stopping by and leaving a comment. I'm really enjoying visiting you all in return and getting to know you post by post!