geocaching

Wildlife at Kedron Brook, Lutwyche/Grange, Queensland

What to do, when you need to entertain the kid/s and moneys tight, and they are sick of games, and the park, and TV, and you?

After a bit of a surf, I lucked onto the concept of geocaching....
I thought it sounded like a great idea, but assumed it was mainly an American thing. Imagine my delight when I typed in my postcode and hundreds of little boxes flashed up on the screen!
I picked 3 that were within 2kms of my place, making about a 4 km round trip, up and down hills, through parks and along bush tracks.

We had a lot of fun, searching for the little containers,deciphering codes and figuring out clues.

It felt a bit like being a spy. Lots of "Shhh, look casual, there's a muggle coming."

Walking down Eildon Hill, Wilston, Queensland

My tips for a successful geocaching walk:

• Write down, or print out, the coordinates of the geocache you are searching, as well as any clues, or extra hints.
  
• You can use a hand-held GPS, a mobile phone with a maps app, your car gps (which is what I did), or even just print outs from google maps.
  
• Copy and paste the coordinates into google maps search, and a little green arrow will pinpoint the exact spot for you. I printed these as a back up, because I didn't trust the battery on my gps, and I found they were more useful. My gps isn't very walker friendly, sometimes its 100m-200m out.
  
• Make sure you have a pen/pencil for writing in the logs, a notebook to record your finds and maybe some trinkets for exchanging. You could take a digital camera, I use the one in my phone, but don't post any photos of the actual hide because that would ruin it for others.

General walking common sense:

• Pack plenty of water, 2L each minimum. I have two one litre bottles fridge cold and two frozen. By the time you have drunk the the first two, or they are too hot to be refreshing, the frozen ones are defrosted.
  
• Wear hats, sunscreen and sunglasses.
• Wear comfy sand-shoes, or boots, (preferably old and worn in)
• Take insect repellent
  
• Take snacks, everyone (me included) gets grumpy after a while and juice, a biscuit or a piece of fruit can stop tantrums before they start.
• Keep the walk to a length that the youngest, (or the most unfit) geocacher can cope with.
• Don't walk in the middle of the day. Leave really early and plan to be home by 10am, or leave it until after 3pm. Especially this time of year. And if the forecast has temps in the 40s like they are having down south, its probably a good idea to postpone it.
• Take your rubbish with you. "Cache in, Trash out".

BOGI Fair

Went to Brisbane Organic Fair today. It was held at Albion Peace hall, under the albion overpass.

There were heaps of great stalls, loads of plants and seeds and books. Absolute heaven for me.

I came away with some seeds, $1 dollar a packet, who can pass that up?

I got Rosella, European dandelion, Purple Tomatillo, True Chamomile, and grain Amaranth.

My son spent most of the time in the "Livestock" section/petting zoo... It took a glass of real lemonade, made with sugar cane juice and real lemons, to tear him away.

Who could blame him?

delicate sweet bambi"Is this my good side?"

Naptime...Tamworth pig:

Baa Ram Ewwe....

Oh awww, can we get one mum??? pleease I'll be good , I promise.......

A gorgeous Dame... French Houdan

grey days

This is my response to Towards Sustainability she seems to be having a grey day, which happens to me all too often :) (I also have a lot of red days- where i'm angry and snappy all day, *sheepish grin*)

Working the jobs i do, I am privy to a lot of different people's lifestyles and I get frustrated when I see some of the things people do. Some of the things, I have been guilty of myself, so i try not to be judgemental, but the simple fact is there really is no excuse for not knowing better, anymore. Even mainstream media has newspaper articles and tv shows on simple, green living, so most people are aware of the issues...

Some of the things I have seen, (perpetrators shall remain nameless)...

• 4 (!) airconditioners on at once, with windows and doors open... the mind boggles.
• Televisions left on all night, with no one even sleeping in the room.
• Manicured, monoculture lawns, that are as productive and useful as a carpark, and use more resources; petrochemical fertilisers, precious drinking quality water, etc.
• Driving less than 1 kilometre round trip, just to pick up "dinner" through a drive thru.
• Dozens of cars waiting in a line for over half an hour, engines running, to pick up children from school.

Digression (rant alert):
This annoys me, a fair bit. It takes me 1 hour total, to catch the bus from 2 kilometres away, get son and other hangers on, and catch bus home again. Sometimes we walk home, because we enjoy the walk! Some days, I hate the walk, and the chunk it takes out of my day, I will admit. However, it has cost me $2 for the bus fare, the bus goes that way whether i'm on it or not, so I'm not adding to emissions and I get a bit of exercise.

Also I can:

• chat to my son, who isn't really a talker, (when we are walking, there's no chores/tv/homework to get in the way of chatter),
• collect flowers for my cockatiel to nibble,
• drop off letters at the post box,
• collect seeds and leaves from street trees for craft,
• chat on the phone without worrying about causing an accident,
• read a magazine/book at the bus stop, (guilt free 5 minutes of sitting down, oh yeah)
• listen to my mp3 player,
• or just "be" in silence (it's truly amazing how quiet the suburbs can be, especially between 8am and 6pm, when no one is home!).

Some, not all, of the people in the pick up line have thier reasons, like not wanting to disturb a sleeping baby, that's fine. Seriously, though people, if you can, - walk, or turn your darn car off!

Anyways, back on topic...
How to feel less frustrated/angry/depressed/worried about the world ending in a human wrought environmental disaster...

Truthfully, it's hard. It's enough to make you want to take up goat farming in woop woop.

The only thing you can control are your own actions, which is pretty sucky.

Wouldn't it be cool to be the government for a day, or a week?

To just blanket declare pesticides illegal, or to ration car use, or to give away water tanks and alternative energy systems?
We could make it compulsory for every school to be a permaculture site. How great to go to a school that is passive solar designed, shady, airy, non toxic and has chickens roaming around?
We could ban MDF, chip board and air fresheners... sigh.

(Actually, the first thing I would do, as President of the world, would be to ban the use of perfumes/body spray/cologne and cigarettes if you plan on using public transport... this is purely selfish, i find the cocktail of smells mixed with stale cigarette smoke makes me feel ill when i'm on the bus. Why do teenage girls think they can cover the fact they have been smoking with half a can of impulse?)

To combat the hopeless feeling, the "why do i bother being vegetarian and using bicarb soda to clean the bathroom, when next door is flushing scented bleach down the loo, and eating preservative laced factory farmed chicken nuggets" feeling, I remind myself that I am not alone.

There are people just discovering how to have less of an impact on the planet, and there are people who have been living frugal simple lives forever, before 'eco' was a buzz word, or before even hippies for that matter. And there are plenty of people who also feel that the world is going to hell in a plastic shopping bag.

You could bang your head on a brick wall, or you can slowly chisel at its foundations.
Simply by sharing fragrant bunches of fresh basil, and sunripened homegrown tomatoes with friends, I motivate them to grow their own herbs and some vegies. When a client needs plants, I use local organic nurseries and substitute productive/native plants for ornamentals and exotics. When I give a friend a handmade gift, they feel special, the extra effort on my part is worth more to them than if i spent more money. When I turn up to a friend's house with some fresh baked breadrolls, or a bowl of home made dip, they are blown away, it's much more impressive than a bottle of wine you bought on the way there.

Keep on imagining a better world, living as simply and as greenly (is that a word?) as you can and take your canvas bags to the super market.

River cottage

I guess i'm making up for lost time, i havent been able to post for awhile, either that, or i'm just procrastinating....

Anyway... I love watching/reading about people who are leading the kind of life i'd like to have...
Living in the country, running a smallholding, and so on...
I really like shows like "River Cottage Spring" if you are in oz you can watch it on Iview
but I have to say that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a little, well, annoying. His heart is definitely in the right place, and his shows are great.

But i can't help feeling jealous of his beautiful cottage, with its pretty vegetable patch and its neat paths. And all his employees..... no wonder the house is neat and tidy, his rows of vege are straight and weed free.... He has a team of gardeners and people to look after his livestock.

He is, if not rich, comfortably well off and a bit out of touch with "poor" people, (like me), who out of necessity, put budget ahead of other considerations. When you are living on $250 aud a week, which is what the single parents pension is, nearly all of that goes to rent. So even a couple of dollars more a kilo for free range, or organic food, is simply impossible. Instead of belittling people for choosing cheaper food, we need to educate people about growing their own, and preparing food from scratch. (Which I admit he is trying to do... in his own way... but still average Jill will be intimidated by the fact he has loads of people to help him.)

I cannot afford organic, free range meat, so we simply do not eat meat. If we could harvest our own meat, and be sure of the animal's quality of life and it being chemical free, i'm sure we would eat it sometimes, well not me but HH definitely. We generally can't afford organic fruit and vege either, so we try to grow as much as we can ourselves, which isn't easy, living in a rental and working/studying/parenting fulltime.

Obviously, I don't have a solution or I would be living it already. I think generally simplifying where you can is the answer. Eat simple food, which is as ethical as possible. Take baby steps, for example, buy free range eggs, before jumping in and setting up your own chicken coop. Eat at home more often, and prepare as much food yourself as you can, before agonising over the environmental costs of rice farming, or soybean production.

Just start where you're at.... Bloom where you're planted... and don't beat yourself up if you can't keep up with the Greenes'...

This quote from Homemaker Ang kind of sums it up:

"Instead of eating the white bread we all grew up on, one of us decides to break the mold and start buying whole wheat bread at the grocery store. We feel so proud of this accomplishment because we are feeding our family more healthy than how we grew up. Then we meet a woman who buys organic whole wheat bread from a posh health food market, and she meets a woman who bakes her own organic whole wheat bread in her bread maker everyday! Then she meets a woman who bakes her own organic whole wheat bread but kneads it by hand everyday rather than using a bread maker…. But she meets a woman who grinds her own organic wheat berries each day and bakes her own organic whole wheat bread and then she meets a woman who GROWS her own whole wheat to bake her own bread but this lady even meets a woman who grows her own whole wheat but hers is actually organic! YIKES! I could keep going on and on couldn't I…?"

She goes on to say "Ps. I don't like the woman who grows her own organic whole wheat…"

Ode to Pepe

"pepes home im very happy
my song /im vary vary hapy my cats home
happy happy happy happy
my cats home la la la la la la da ha"

-By Jella B. (Number one son), NB: "vary" = very


Our cat went missing on Tuesday 22nd, we didn't think too much of it, he can sometimes stay away for a couple of days.

The dust storm happened on Wednesday, and he didnt come home.... He still wasn't home by Friday and i was very worried. I walked up and down the street, rattled his biscuit box, called his name, a number of times, but still no Pepe. On Sunday, I snuck into my nieghbours yard, who is away, and called out again, not much hope by now, but I still had to try.

And guess what? There lying under some bushes, alive, but skinny, and dirty, was our cat! I picked him up and noticed his back leg was all floppy. I took him home and called the vet, thinking he had a tick, or had brocken his back. Of course being sunday, our vet was closed, I had to take him all the way to Brisbane vet hospital, in Albany Creek. My knight in shining armour (my sister), drove us out there, the gps getting us lost on the way... I love technology....

It turns out that he had smashed his upper back leg and his hip socket, which required massive surgery and a few days in hospital, (and a big chunk of the savings for our house deposit!). He was probably hit by a car, because his claws were shorn down.

It cost a heck of a lot of money. But I know it's worth it, especially when I know my son has cried himself to sleep for the last week, and I shed (more than) a few tears myself, thinking he would have to be put down.

Right now, the patient is sleeping in a make shift bed, with a certain 7 year old lying next to him on the cool bathroom floor. He's looking a bit punk/emo, with a pink arm cuff (painkiller patch) and his leg, thigh and random patches of fur shaved. He is also a bit groggy, but he can limp around and he's alive, so i'm breathing a sigh of relief.

We can always earn more money, but we can never get another Pepe.

i read a news item out loud to my son, because it said that doctors were telling people to stay inside, and i wanted to convince him that im not the meanest mother in the world for making him stay inside today.... but some how he picked up on the advice to clean all surfaces with a damp cloth.... and he is now washing all his hot wheels cars...

"people should minimise their exposure, cover their mouth and nose if going out, and damp wipe and mop their house to further get rid of any lingering dust."

Dust storm Brisbane

I'm bunkered down inside my house, all the windows are shut. It's sweltering hot, and the light has an eerie orange quality. There is a beautiful breeze, pity i can't let it in. We can barely breathe the dusty air inside let alone the thick orange cloud outside. We are both feeling a little wheezy and our noses are running.

10 am this morning facing south west from my back verandah:

12pm (note the crane- its almost the same view)


10 am facing south from my verandah:

and again at 12pm:

my neighbours backyard:

UPDATE

Braved the dust and went exploring, my son was jumping and running around like a skittish kitten, strange how kids and animals are affected by weather....