Slankets really do exist.
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Tags: really just a big dressing gown worn backwards, slanket
I was lucky, as I grew up in the hamlet of Briantspuddle, which has no streetlights, so we got to see lots of stars (though not as many as I saw from the deck of a boat sailing in the Whitsundays back in 96), but here in Melbourne we only see the very brightest, especially when the lights are on at the MCG… I’m all for the Dark Sky Association.
Oscar goes to a meeting to battle light pollution
Tags: astronomy, dark skies, light pollution, star-gazing
A pint of stout at Mountain Goat Brewery
We’re about to head out to friends to watch the AFL Grand Final on the big screen (Go the Saints!). Have made kangaroo satay kebabs (trying out the satay recipe from the marvelous Martha Goes Green vegetarian cookbook!) and picked up a local brew from the Mountain Goat Brewery in Richmond. I love their stout!
Hector sees the advantage of renting
I buy very little new stuff – today I picked up some second-hand DVDs (which I’ll watch and sell on again), books and a butter dish. I would normally rent DVDs and borrow books from the library, but I don’t know anywhere that would rent me a butter dish…
Reading cartoons 6 weeks after I’ve sent them in is always interesting, often aggravating. In this one, I forgot to put emphasis on “buy” in the last panel. Duh.
Tags: anti-consumerism, military hardware, power plant, protest, renting, tank
The start of the walk through a part of Wombat State Forest
Boyf, Billie and I had a day out in the Daylesford area yesterday. Dogs are allowed in most State Forests, so we made a point of taking Bill to the Wombat one. We hadn’t realised just how much it had been burnt in last year’s bushfires. It’s great to see so much of it regenerating – fire is needed for some species to germinate.
Walking through regenerating bush
A lot of new growth could be seen through the burnt forest
We were walking for over two hours and it was only when Duncan stopped for a *ahem* comfort break, that he saw these….
Morels!!!
We got the chef at the Farmers Arms Hotel to confirm they are morels and when we got home, we looked them up in my mushrooming book….they looked just like real morels (not false ones) and what’s more, we found that morels commonly grow after forest fires…
So, hopefully, we’ll be fine when we eat them tonight. If not, it’s been fun!
Morels - pre-cleaning
Tags: food, foraging, good dog, local, mushrooming, organic, walking
I'm not a fan of tumble driers, but I would love to give this a go.
Tags: I love laundrettes, popcorn, tumble dry
Hector pours Lenny a coffee
Melbourne has so many good places for coffee. One of my favourites is Loco in Elsternwick.
I particularly loved this little bit of cartoon art on my cappuccino.
Tags: barista, cappuccino, coffee, latte art, melbourne
Part of the Arctic Circle community garden
Our community plot is fairly small – about a metre and a half, by 3 metres. We want to grow a lot of things, so decided to give “square foot gardening” a try. I had read about it on the net and seen a piece on Gardening Australia and it seems like a good way to maximise space.
measuring out the plot
View from the North (and visiting minah bird)
View from the South, boyf, dog, rollercoaster in background (Luna Park)
Tags: community garden, gardening, square foot, veg out
Oscar experiments with aquaponics
Oscar shows Ed his aquaponic fish
These strips are based on a report I read on Treehugger, which has a more recent article here
…there is a huge amount of interest in combining hydroponics with fish farming for a mutually beneficial partnership. Most notably Will Allen’s Growing Power team in Milwaukee have shown how aquaponics can produce a remarkable amount of high-quality protein and veggies on very limited urban land.
Tags: aquaculture, aquaponics, fish-farming, gardening, hydroponics, sustainable
Oscar and Ed discuss biodegradable bags
Biodegradable bags, takeaway cups/containers and other disposable items are only really good for the planet when they are composted effectively. As Lucy Siegle reports in The Guardian:
These products are biodegradable or compostable, made by substituting the oil-based synthetic polymers that ordinarily go into plastics for natural crop or waste resources ranging from cellulose from wood pulp to sugarcane or even potato peelings. The theory goes that you can have your cake, eat it and toss both fork and plate away without a care in the world to be absorbed by grateful Mother Earth.
Sadly, life doesn’t work like that very often. And neither does landfill, which is where most of this “biodegradable” waste ends up. Here, there is no guarantee that the air, water and heat needed by microorganisms to break down and feast on these biodegradable products will actually be provided. In fact, quite the opposite: today’s landfills are all about keeping the chemistry as stable as possible, which is why garbologists (landfill historians) can identify salad leaves years after they’ve been dumped.
I tend to use reusable bags, but sometimes I’m caught short and I’d like to know that any biodegradable bag I used would really break down in my garden and not end up as lots of tiny pieces of plastic.
Tags: bag, biodegradable, compostable, green, marketing, plastic
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