Long Weekends

It's difficult to believe but we're now half way through 2009. I often find myself reflecting on this during our June long weekend, wondering what I've been doing with my life this year, and if I continue doing what I'm doing - will I be proud of myself at the end of the year? Well, if this weekend is a reflection of what I've been doing, I'm OK. I went away with some girlfriends to their bush property for a few nights. We're going to be entering a bushwalking/orienteering event in July and we decided we'd go away to practice. We had a great time, enjoyed beautiful clear crisp days and colder, "red wine by the fire" nights. We feel alot more confident in our walking and our teamwork, and have worked on a few competition strategies.

While I was away I finished "Unaccustomed Earth", and started 'how to live the Good Life". The Unaccustomed Earth was an enjoyable read, although I'm not sure I'm OK with the ending - but I guess the author wanted us to see how unpredictable and undirected life can be. Throughout the collection of short stories - about Indian families who have immigrated to US and UK - I felt like I was having coffee with the lead character, listening to their life story. The last few chapters bought together some of the characters in earlier short stories, and shared how their lives crossed paths again. Another good book starring Indians and especially expressing the experience of Indian Women.

How to live the Good Life is a diary telling us about the experiment of the family who wanted to change the impact of their life on the planet. They also have this blogsite which continues their story. I've started, and discovered the author is very engaging and funny. Each day she provides insight into her struggles, her mans adventures in recycling, and her sons experience surviving without lollies. I'm going to take my time through this book becuase I want to learn from her experiences. I want to try some of her suggestions. Just a couple of quotes so far:

This book is unremittingly positive in nature, and gives practical information on how we adopted a sustainable lifestyle without huge cost and without great sacrifice.... its an indepth look at how we live and how we could be living. ..Domestically sustainable.

The rainbow lorikeets are eating the sunflowers, and as [we've] discovered, the king parrots are enjoying the blue lake climbing beans. For the last few days I've been doing the haka around the block scaring the .... things off.... but I am feeble, and cannot compete with the numbers, their stealth and their quiet skill in denuding plants of their protein.... Trev is seen in the garden with a Bart Simpson grin and a homemade shanghai....

Once returning home from my trip, I had a full day to spend on my own garden - and wow did I achieve. I simply cant recall everything I did today but it involved feeding and watering my citrus tree's and all my pot plants and roses, composting and mulching a renewed garden bed ready for planting, weeding.... and weeding, pruning hydrangea's and other things hanging in the wrong spots, and harvesting. This weekends pickings include

• lettuce
• bok choy
• spinach
• beans
• rubharb
• celery
• carrots
• and the seasons last guava's