window of sunshine

Nearly two hours without rain yesterday afternoon and I got outside for some of that time. Bliss. I held on to the experience throughout the rest of the day as I cared for my chickenpoxed children.

I tied up some of the falling over broad bean plants. Favourite Handyman has nailed some chickenwire to the fence for supporting the beans. The chickenwire doesn't spread the whole way along yet. Next time I plant broad beans, I must remember to stake with bamboo at the same time as I plant the seed so I get to stake up close without disturbing the root structure.

It was very wet underfoot, too wet to bury the bokashi or do much weeding. I pulled some docks and sent the dill to the compost.

I used up some more cupboard ingredients by making a double recipe of oat bread and a double recipe of orange and date muffins. Most of the muffins are now in the freezer for school lunches. WShat I really want is the satisfaction of some empty packets but I'm still not quite there. Making muffins is helping use up some white sugar, which we seem to have mountains of.

I don't know what I'll use up today. I still have bread and muffins left from yesterday. Too cold for sushi.

The sun is shining outside though and I can see the breeze, meaning the ground could dry out enough to bury some bokashi. The gardening experts would probably still say it is too wet to be digging, but here in wetville in Autumn/Winter/Spring, you've got to take your chances while you can. The soil moisture often doesn't ease up for for months on end.

I bought a great magazine yesterday called Grass Roots. It is an Australian magazine, with the focus on managing in drought which never quite works for me. But it is a very good magazine in ever other way. It seems to be aimed at self sufficiency enthusiasts, both in suburban and in larger contexts. Lots of reader contributions. This issue has an article on how to replace a zip in clothing, which I found really useful. We are trying to fix rather than replace things around our house. We don't have a subscription to the simplesavings website, but we are on the free mailing list and I notice that May is 'fix it' month there also.

Last week Favourite Handyman went to buy us a new cold tap for the kitchen. It had been leaking for ages and the plumber told us when he last looked (he was over for some harder plumbing work) that we'd need to replace the tap next time. Turned out a new tap started at $120 (but mixer taps, which would mean throwing out the perfectly good hot tap started at $80), so FH bought a new washer for $4 and put it on to see if we could keep it going a while longer. Our tap is now working beautifully.

We don't have the ability to make a new grate for the fireplace though, so as ours is eroded away quite a lot, we'll have to shell out the $200+ required for a new one soon.