Book review: Garden Eco-Chic by Matthew Levesque

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 6 December 2011 in green, growing | 0 comments

A few weeks ago, I was sent a couple of gardening books by Timber Press to review here and on Recycle This. This is the first one – Garden Eco-Chic by Matthew Levesque.

I’ve reviewed it in full on Recycle This but in brief/tl;dr –

The book does look nice: it includes lots of great pictures and aside from being overly wordy, is well laid out. It also includes plenty of creative, inspiring ideas and information about sourcing materials and working with them. I imagine it would be useful if you’re interested in garden design theory too as he explains a lot of his choices in great detail.

But if you’re looking for a practical guide or want to create a garden with the emphasis on practical rather than pretty, I don’t think this book is for you.

Declutter November – final things and thoughts

Posted by louisa on Thursday 1 December 2011 in decluttering | 2 comments

After personally getting rid of bags full of clothes, craft supplies, a broken bucket and many books in the last four weeks, our little Declutter November challenge has come to an end.

My last three items for this last half week have been: a time-sensitive book from 2000 (so well out of date now), three VHS videos (saved from our main video clearouts because they’re a bit obscure from my film-student days, but we haven’t had a VHS player for years and years, so it doesn’t matter how obscure they are, I can’t play them) and a cardigan that I thought had gone in a much earlier clothes clearout.

My plan with the challenge was to get into the habit of seeing things and asking myself “do we still need, or even just want, that?” – and while I haven’t quite done it every day as intended (NaNoWriMo distracted me), I think I have done it enough to start looking at things in a new light. Some things were obvious contenders but some days I had to seek out something that needed to go – but as I said at the end of week 3, as soon as I picked something, I didn’t wobbly about it – I think I’d been blind to them then as soon as I saw them in a “I could get rid of that” light, it made perfect sense.

In some ways, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got rid of that much stuff – lots of little things. A few small bags of beads here, a handful of books there – but it does add up. We’ve got eight bin-bags and two carrier bags of clothes to go to the charity shop, plus two cardboard (banana) boxes of books and misc. We’ve got rid of three old computers (for their collectable-ness rather than their function) and a small bookshelf will go to the furniture charity shop next time we’re out that way. A few things have gone to/gone back to my mum and John’s dad, and a big box of misc has gone in the bin (thankfully it was mostly papers/card so it could be recycling/composting, very little has gone to landfill). Looking at it like that, that’s quite a lot of stuff out of the house! And it sounds like many of you have had similarly cleansing experiences — I’ve read all the comments, blog posts and tweets, and it sounds like an awful lot of packed charity/thrift/op shops have been getting stock boosts over the last few weeks!

I’ve also found stuff I’d forgotten about/lost and shifted lots of stuff from high concentration area to more out of the way locations (for example, our spare crockery and preserving jars now live in the porch/garage) so I’ve gained even more space.

All in all, I’ve very glad I did the challenge and am tempted to have another focused month next spring.

How has your decluttering gone? Any particularly noteworthy items that have gone bye-bye? Anything you found hard to let go – but you were glad about once it was gone?

November 2011 – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 30 November 2011 in goals | 3 comments

I’ve surprised myself by how focused I’ve been this month. I’ll talk about it more below but this is what my 105,000 NaNoWriMo words looks like:

(It’s slightly bigger in “real life” ;) )

Goals in 2011 progress

I’ve been so focused on NaNoWriMo this month that I’ve done little else. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that some stuff just isn’t going to happen in 2011. Nevermind.

November mini-goals

I completed three of my mini-goals – the Declutter November challenge (I’ll post more on that tomorrow, when I’ve got rid of my final things!), the batch cooking (mostly a really nice lamb stew) and NaNoWriMo. I’ve loved doing NaNoWriMo – it’s taken up a lot of my time but I hit the 50,000 word mark on Day 11, which both surprised and delighted me. As it’s set before I was born, I’ve had to do a lot more research for this story than I have for anything else and that has been a lot of fun too – I have read about such a wide variety of things and come across some amazing resources online. My one regret is that the story still isn’t finished (which was the whole point of doing it for me) but I’ve got enough weight of it behind me now that I really do want to finish it, so I’ll continue through December. I’m still not sure whether it’s going to be worth editing and polishing but I’m glad I’ve written it anyway. It’s also helped me smash through my extended writer’s block and I’ve actually written a short theatre piece, and planned another two, during the month as well.

The problem has been that I’ve enjoyed NaNoWriMo far too much and not made time for anything else. The bacon hasn’t been made, the crochet tops still only half-finished, and not all my winter to-do to-did – but I think it’s been worth it over all. I’ll do them in December :)

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

I came into November having bought 11 things in 2011 and while I’ve randomly seen a few “oooh!” things this month, I’ve been very clearly telling myself “if you buy that skirt you’ll probably never wear etc, that’ll be the last thing you can buy in 2011” — and that’s been a surprisingly good motivator for keeping my purse in my pocket. I’ve bought no new clothes* so I’m still on 11 in 2011!

* I did buy some exempt socks as my sock drawer has seen a good number of comrades fall over the last few months – in the summer I don’t mind holey socks (and generally don’t wear socks that much anyway), but in the winter, I get annoyed when I can see more feet than cloth. I did go out of my way to find better quality socks than just replacing them with cheap ones – who knows how they’ll last but they certainly feel better quality (thicker, better stretch) at this point.

Growing & Chickens

The garden is asleep for winter – well, it should be, I’ve seen a disturbing amount of new growth out there — buds on trees, spring bulbs starting to peek through… There are a few leeks still to pick but everything else is finished for the year now. The chickens helped me clean up the last of the green things earlier in the month – and we discovered that if they eat a lot of achocha, it taints their eggs. Unfortunately we discovered that the day after I’d dragged the whole massive wall of achocha down to their run – Lily-dog got the next day’s eggs so we didn’t accidentally make them into a cake. She didn’t mind one bit :)

Two of the chickens – Ginger and Ms Mauve – have had partial moults but seem to be on the home straight with that now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t start laying again until the new year though (or after that if it gets cold). Because of them being out of action, the short days slowing things down generally and our team getting that bit older (the ISAs are nearly two now), we’ve only been getting two or three eggs a day this month — 73 in total (or 2.43 eggs on average a day). Not the end of the world, still enough for us but we can’t give as many away as normal.

As always happens at this time of year, my mind is turning to next year – I need to decide on what fruit tree (choices: plum, damson or cherry) to add to the garden, which boring shrubs to replace with more soft fruit bushes (probably raspberries), and whether to get more staggered season strawberries or whether I should go for a glut for jams… Decisions, decisions!

Spending

Another reason I’ve loved NaNoWriMo – it really helped curve my spending after an expensive October. I was too focused on my writing to spend time browsing online shops or getting tempted on eBay. No expensive new books or craft supplies! At £128.01, it was by far my lowest month of spending all year – hurrah!

My biggest spending was on transport (taking the little stray dog to the vets and I missed the last bus home after class two weeks in a sodding row – meaning expensive taxis, boo) – £52.80/41% – and eating out (£34.70/27%). We’ve had a couple of lots of take-out and eaten out at restaurants a couple of times too. I’m annoyed about the taxis but I don’t mind so much about the food as it’s all be good food, not just junk. The other things I spent money on were socks, some things for work, and the vet’s bill for the small lost doggy.

All in all, it’s felt like a productive month – but I think December needs to include more bacon & crochet, and if I can stick to spending just as little as this month, I’ll be very happy.

How was your November? I hope yours was as good as mine!

(Oh, and Alexis, Martine & anyone else who NaNoWriMo-ed – congrats on winning too :) )

Declutter November – end of week 4

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 November 2011 in decluttering | 3 comments

No pictures this week because first my camera battery died mid-photo session and now my computer isn’t recognising the memory card. Sigh. Just imagine pics of assorted junk ;)

This week, I got rid of:

• Big Blue Dog – one of those “oh so soft!” impulse buys at Ikea nearly a decade ago. Deserves a more loving home (and a wash first).
• A freebie baseball cap from a geek conference
• A mirror I (charity shop-)bought just before we moved here but never even took out the bag
• Another old work diary, really no idea why I keep these
• Two books – one from my women’s studies book stash and one on artists using recycling materials that was given to me but I never looked in because that’s what I use the internet for
• A stack of papers, which became kindling for last night’s stove
• A box of misc rubbish – really random stuff from a card from colleagues I barely knew when I left my job five years ago to old mobile phone packaging and lots of tiny bits and bobs including a bottle of artificial vanilla-scented oil burner oil which had leaked everywhere and gave me a headache for the rest of my tidying mission.

It was all from our spare room, which has just been a dumping ground for miscellanea since we moved in. This sorting got rid of two cardboard boxes from up there too.

Declutter November mini-challenge week 4: your hobby/craft stash

And then there was the painful craft stash reduction. I cleared out:

• Three pairs of knitting needles – a 10mm set, a 5mm and an about 6mm set which has lost their ends. Oh and one half of a broken needle. (…?) (Mum: I’ll put these in my box of stuff for you in case you want these. The pairs, not the broken bit.)
• Two balls of turquoise acrylic yarn. I’m gradually getting rid of all my 100% acrylic yarn – I bought a lot of it when I first started knitting again but don’t like using it now.
• Some candle sand – I wasn’t sure whether this was really a craft stash item but I found it in one of my craft stash boxes so I’m including it ;)
• Four vintage pillow case – bought for the fabric but I have nicer ones I’m not doing anything with so chances are these won’t get used any time soon.
• A couple of metres of blue polyester. Left over from an old project. A project from 1999.

In my sorting, I also found some things I forgotten/didn’t know I had:

• A ten pack of wool-heavy green yarn, which I think was 100g a ball, away from the rest of my wool in a drawer.
• Two BNWT bras and a hoodie
• Two cute little fabric handbags
• A script for a play I performed once – and one that just this week I looked into buying again so see if it would be suitable for using with my drama group. Answer: no. Finding that script saved me £8!

So my decluttering this week has actually saved me money and provided me with “new” things to enjoy!

Just a couple of days left now – I’m hoping to get rid of a couple of big things since most of the other stuff has been quite small…

What have you got rid of this week? How did the hobby stash declutter go?

Three Chicken Things

Posted by louisa on Sunday 27 November 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

Have you heard of Three Beautiful Things? Every day since May 2004, Clare has recorded three things that have given her pleasure during the day. Sometimes these are big things (like her wedding day or the arrival of baby Alec) but mostly they’re the small, everyday things that make life wonderful: the “tight fists” of roses set to bloom, the pleasant sound of snow and the magical transformation when separate ingredients turn into food.

I 3BTed every day too, for just over a year, but I got out of the habit – I do still notice things and write them in my head, just don’t commit them to paper/blog anyway. I should really get back into doing it again, because sometimes 140 characters on Twitter just isn’t enough to describe the beauty in the world.

Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning all this here and now is that I had Three Beautiful Things happen connected to me cleaning out the chicken coop this morning, and I thought I’d record them :)

1. We’ve had the chickens for 18 months now but today was the first time that I time it right to see an egg being laid. Lime is in the nest box when I first go down there so I leave her be – I sweep some leaves and retrieved Lily’s Oinky toy from the field where she’d dropped it in her running-around excitement. I peek back into the nest box around ten minutes later and see a big dry poo being pushed out – delightful – but then instantly the egg follows. It’s slippery and slick when it lands on the straw.

2. Blue hops onto the edge of the chest, clucking questions, as I dig clean shavings out of the bag. Her comb stands tall and red, her eyes are lemon and clear. Her neck feathers swoop sideways like a teenager’s fringe. Gingery-red, flecked with blonde and black.

3. Lime stands on my feet while I’m giving out pumpkin seeds so that she’s the closest to the treat source. It reminds me of how Lily sits on my feet when I’m cooking. The “please?” look on their faces is the same too.

And a bonus item:

4. As I stand at the kitchen sink washing my hands, the trees are alive with birds. A pair of chaffinches – a boy and a girl – hop about in the elder tree, the small blue tits are just tiny specks as they flit around the far away ivy bush and in comparison to them, it seems that the large tits in the cherry plum tree are truly defining gravity when they throw their big bodies into the air. Then I see another couple of birds in the holly bush that I hadn’t consciously seen before and I take in their noticeably longer tails and white mohawks so I can identify them later on the RSPB website. My hands are perhaps the cleanest they’ve ever been by the time I’ve had enough of the wildlife show.

What beautiful moments have there been in your life this weekend?