Wore my very old, very expensive Brooks pensioner walkers today but kept the walk short.
Repaired a wheel on Beryl’s large suitcase. A fine brass bolt is now holding it more firmly.
Baked a loaf of bread for Raoul’s birthday celebration. We use:
- 600gm of Laucke’s Multi-Grain Mix (http://www.laucke.com.au),
- 100gm of linseed ground in a spice grinder,
- 400ml water,
- 1.5tsp of Laucke dried yeast.
This makes a 1Kg loaf in the Sunbeam bread maker. Excellent bread but must be eaten within two-days or it falls apart when being cut. Have yet to find a solution for this problem.
To accompany the bread, I made a batch of hummus:
- 380gm of Cortas hummos tahina dip (from Woolworths),
- Three cloves of garlic, crushed,
- Olive oil
- And today, a garnish of finally chopped parsley.
This is a modification of the Taste.com.au recipe. They recommend chickpeas in a food processor. The Cortas pre-prepared is easier and I always need tins for paint, etc. http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/5103/hummus.
Emptied the trailer at the recycling depot. Green is a minimum $25 (on weekends) and steel free so got rid of old guttering. We went during a weekday at 12:20 and informed that the minimum was $50. Why the difference? Because municipal garbage trucks need access but the site was empty. After 13:00, the minimum was $25 and when we returned at 13:10, the site was choked. Whoever established this policy is wacky.
And then to Bunnings for linseed oil, and coach screws for the shed framing. I have been postponing assembling the framing – the timber was very expensive and I have a problem with cutting accurately. Tomorrow!
Finished the day at Raoul and Ronnie’s (next door) celebrating his birthday with a group of their friends on their almost-new rear deck. A very pleasant evening. We are fortunate in having good neighbours.
The Garden
Beryl’s palette, my exercise. We have developed the garden together over the past decades and during our ‘working-for-the man’ periods, it got out of hand. Over the past 15 months we have been steadily thinning and replanting.
The photos of the bamboo grove are from 2003. When we began refurbishing the house in August 2008, I had to employ some heavy-handed garden fixers, as we needed one metre clearance around the house for the scaffolding. Part of their task was to chain saw the bamboo. I nervously followed up with Roundup – nervous because it kills frogs – but Roundup was incapable of killing the roots.
- Photo 1: Looking west to the beginning of the sheds.
- Photo 2: Looking south to the neighbour’s adjoining wall.
Early this year, our next-door neighbour asked if he could send in a team to clear the roots so they could waterproof our adjoining wall. This left us with a trench one metre deep and 500mm wide. I then continued with sledge-hammer (to break up the concrete) and axe (to chop out the roots) and created a new garden bed. The outcome:
- The magnolia spurted new growth where the bamboo had pressed upon it.
- The heavy-clay soil that I dug out was sifted for bamboo twigs and roots and recycled with a mix of compost and gypsum.
- We now have a vegetable garden.
- Snow peas went in today.
It looks bare compared to the 2003 images but we prefer this outcome.
- Photo 3: Looking west today.
- Photo 4: The new garden bed – vegetables on the right.
Today’s Podcast
Aspen Public Radio – Jazz On A Thursday Night. Hosted by Stu Huck, a 3-hour podcast at 128kb and although he does play his favourites, there are some great classics, particularly if you like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck. The link is http://www.aspenpublicradio.org/listen_archive.php?prog=jtn but check out their Home Page. The Aspen Institute link has some excellent guest speakers.
