The weekend is over

I finished re-organising my pantry, it took longer than I thought it would , but that's ok it is done now and it looks a lot better. I started Saturday afternoon and had completed half by tea time, so I thought I would leave the rest till Sunday. I'm glad I did as I was losing a bit of committment to it and when I started again today it was with renewed zeal. I think I only found a couple of things past their use by dates: some tamarind paste and an opened packet of custard powder.

I'm finding it hard to get the pictures lined up so this will have to do. The top pictures are of the pantry before and the lower ones are the after. I'm off to relax now.

Planning for the Weekend

I've been making my plans for this coming weekend. Nothing special is happening, football is into the 2nd week (and I still have to think about my footy tips) but I have been looking at my pantry and thinking it is a bit of a disorganised mess, so this weekend will be devoted to re-organising the pantry.

My pantry is quite a large one, when we first moved to our house the pantry had very deep shelves on three sides (the door is on the fourth side) and things got shoved to the back never to emerge again. So we decided to change it and ripped out all the old shelves and my DH installed slim white melamine bookcases with adjustable shelves on one side, we left the back wall empty and put a broom cupboard( with shelves), another bookcase and in the remaining space 2 overhead cupboards and 2 cupboards with a benchtop, these were in white melamine also. I think it cost us about $250 all up, quite cheap compared to some quotes that we had.

It is generally quite tidy, but since we have come back from holiday in January I have let things slide a bit to the stage that it is starting to annoy me. I want to be able to have some un-interrupted time to do this job, so I will be starting Saturday afternoon and I should be finished by tea time Saturday night. Why not start in the morning you ask, well I have other things that need doing first , like go to the dentist, washing, folding, and a couple of other things, so if I get them done first then there is more chance of the pantry being finished in one go.

Sunday will be a bit of a rest day I think, I will go for a walk first thing and do the usual chores that follow on from Saturday (more folding, ironing) and then do a bit of reading. I have a book from the library - The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards, and it is on a 2 week loan so I must read it quite quickly.

Easter weekend

I've had a fairly productive weekend. I've finished my swap tote, and have started another one.
Have done a lot of washing (the lawn sure appreciated it via the grey water hose) I made 2 loaves of bread, there is only half left now. My DH has done a bit of painting that needed doing.

We had to work on Sunday at one of our jobs, not arduous work just some high level dusting which is better done when no-one is at work. That took about 4 hours and then today we did another of our jobs, we could have done it on Thursday night, but then we would have been home really late so decided to leave it till later in the weekend.

Went for a walk today, it is dark in the mornings now, the sun doesn't rise till nearly 0730. I didn't see a single person this morning, heard a rooster crowing, some dogs barking and kookaburras and magpies. We have a bird feeder hanging from a tree in our backyard, yesterday we had lorikeets, Adelaide rosellas, magpies, turtledoves, crested pigeons and magpies visit us. Last week we even had a couple of cockatoos.

Autumn equinox

It is the Autumn Equinox today at 3.48pm. On the day of the Autumn Equinox, the Earth’s poles are the same distance from the Sun. The Sun rises due east, sets due west and reaches 52° above the horizon at noon. There are roughly 12 hrs of day and 12 hrs of night.

In some parts of the world, such as Australia, seasons begin on the first day of a particular calendar month - in March for Autumn, June for Winter, September for Spring and December for Summer. In other countries such as Britain, it’s accepted that the seasons begin on the dates that the Earth passes four special points in its orbit about the Sun.

With the hot weather that we have had lately it would probably be more correct to have Autumn begin on the day of the Autumn Equinox. A scientist in Adelaide has done some climate modelling and has said that the recent 15 day heatwave was probably a one in 3,000 yr occurrence. The last heatwave of 10 days was back in 1934.

I'm just happy that it is over, I was starting to feel really grumpy, and I couldn't be bothered doing anything, just happy to lie around in front of a fan and read and doze. Last weekend I did the bare minimum that I could get away with doing, everything else I left till it got cooler. So now I am paying for it and have to play catch-up.

Day 13 of heatwave

It is Day 13 of our heatwave. This is the weather for the next few days:

Forecast for Friday:
Dry with some high cloud. Very hot with moderate to fresh north to northwestwinds, strong and gusty about the hills until mid afternoon, ahead of a slightlymilder, moderate southerly change late afternoon or evening.

Precis: Dry. Late wind change.

City: Max 40
Elizabeth: Max 41
Mount Barker: Max 38
Noarlunga: Max 38
UV Index: 9 [Very High] UV Alert from 10:10 to 16:40
Fire Danger: Extreme (Mount Lofty Ranges Fire Ban District)

Forecast for Saturday:
Dry with some high cloud. Very hot with light to moderate northeast to southeastwinds and afternoon sea breezes.

Precis: Dry. Mostly sunny.

City: Min 20 Max 38
Sunday Dry. Mostly sunny. Min 21 Max 38
Monday Dry. Sunny. Min 23 Max 39
Tuesday Dry. Increasing cloud. Min 25 Max 39
Wednesday Possible shower. Min 20 Max 31
Thursday Possible shower. Min 20 Max 27

Noarlunga is the area where we live, we usually find that it is a couple of degrees cooler than the city. We haven't had to resort to using our airconditioning much. We've been quite comfortable with a fan while sleeping.

My vege garden is still surviving, I am watering once a day but checking in the afternoon and if anything is looking a bit sad then I throw a bit more water on.

It is too hot to cook anything hot so we've been having a lot of salads, although this weekend I'm thinking of making a vegetable curry, which is meant to be cooling (perhaps because eating curry makes you sweat) and a yoghurt dessert which I saw on tv yesterday afternoon. Will post the recipe tomorrow if I haven't melted away by then :)

Feeling hot, hot, hot

We are into our eighth day of over 35C and I am over it, still more to come according to the weather forecasters. Haven't been doing too much because of the heat. My DH has been slaving outside away building a pergola, he starts early while the area is still in the shade and stops once the sun hit it. Me, I have been doing as little as possible, just the things that must be done.

We had a long weekend, so nice to have Monday off as well. I bought my first thing from Ebay today. We have been wanting a scrabble set for a while, so I saw some on Ebay and there was a "vintage" one in Adelaide, pick up only, ideal for us as we could just go and pick it up and pay at the same time. I bid for it and managed to get it for $10.50 - a bargain, there are 4 pieces missing but we can replace them quite easily.

The vege garden seems to be coping with the heat. We have been watering twice daily, and even the warrigal greens are coming up now, and some self-seeded coriander is going well. The zucchini plant has 5 zucchini growing on it. The only disappointment is that the tomatoes aren't colouring up yet (the sole one that did go red, some bird got to it)

The un-paper bag

My completed shopping tote. It can hold quite a lot, I had a half bunch of celery, some bananas, truss tomatoes, 1kg brown sugar, 2 packets of pasta, 500g almonds. I put the wine bottle beside it to show how tall the bag is.

Walking this morning

I like to go for a walk most mornings. It is cooler and quieter in the morning and everything smells better. My DH and I say hello to the neighbours "fierce" guard dog before I set off. This morning the moon is hanging low in the eastern sky, Venus is above it. It looks stunningly beautiful . Sometimes I have already decided where I will walk and other days I just wander. Today I'm wandering, I set off up the hill, it's just starting to get light. The other side of the hill I start getting into my stride, a few cars on the road but no people yet. I cross the road where the footpath runs out, and hear some rustling in the gum trees above, I stop and go back a few steps to have a look, then I hear plop, plop, plop (lucky I didn't have my mouth open) and I see a possum making its way through the branches to the next tree, I knew it wouldn't have been a koala as there was no smell. I carry on, there's still not a lot of traffic about yet, and no one else walking either.

Getting lighter now, I get to the roundabout and decide to walk past the shopping centre, there are a few cars there now, mainly the staff for the 2 supermarkets. I can smell the hot cross buns from the bakery, it makes me hungry and I spare a thought for the bakers slaving away with the hot ovens. Along the back of the shopping centre and down past the fitness centre to the sports oval. I can hear the fitness instructor yelling out to the class (aerobics of some sort is my guess) from a distance it sounds like someone being murdered. I walk through the sports oval, the council have sealed the walking/bicycle tracks around this area so the footing is nice and level, across the creek and past the retirement village, I circle around the school and come out on one of the main roads. I don't like walking on the main roads much (too much traffic and fumes) so I head up a side street and cut through a path and come out a bit further up where I can cross over and head home. There are more people out now, some walking their dogs and others walking or running to the bus. I can smell the perfume that some of the women use, don't they realise how overwhelming and unpleasant it can be. I cross through another park, there are birds in the gum trees looking for nectar, I grab a flowering piece for our two cockatiels before I go up the last hill and arrive home.

Hump Day

The shopping tote is finished and I am quite pleased with it. It didn't cost me anything except time and now that I know how to make it next time will be easier. So hot today, I heard the weather forecast this morning and they were saying that 7 days in a row over 30C is officially a heatwave, and they have predicted 7 days over 30C. I like warm weather but not this warm. I just feel like lying around reading and doing nothing.

I made ginger beer last weekend, with the warm weather it starts working quickly so it is not long before we can drink it. I make a half batch of the recipe I have, it doesn't use a plant, just mix it up, wait a day or 2 for it to bubble and then bottle.

I have been trying to limit my time on the internet, I used to watch a lot of TV then decided that I was watching too much and I think I swapped tv watching for internet surfing. Over Christmas I didn't have as much access to the internet so I sort of got out of the habit. Once we were back from our holiday it didn't seem to hold as much interest as I had other things to do, so now I try to use it as a reward for when I finish my To-do list, I give myself 15-20 minutes surfing.