No time to ride or walk?!?

It has been easy to get into the habit of convincing myself that when I am running late then I do not have time to ride or walk to drop our smallest at preschool or daycare.  Well excuses no more - because having sat back and worked out the time difference - it's nearly nothing!

I started thinking about this the other day when I drove down to pick up our littlest from preschool - I was happily lost in work on my computer at home when I looked up at the clock and it was time to be at preschool (we get charged more if we are more that 10 minutes late!).  Thinking I was short on time I grabbed the car keys and drove down. When I got there I could not find a car park within coo-ee of the gate so ended up parking and walking anyway.  Reflecting on this it would have been quicker had I just walked down in the first place!

Our littlest walking to preschool in winter last year.

Similarly, daycare for our littlest is a bit further away than her preschool, but I took note of the time it took to ride her down and for me to ride back and it is only 10 minutes longer than driving down - and I get exercise.   

Even in the depths of an Orange winter the boys enjoy riding down to pick our littlest up from daycare.

 So why do I drive? Bad habits I guess.

Soft drink bottle flowers at the community garden

On the weekend we spent time down at the ELF Community Garden making flower sculptures from soft drink bottles and harvesting this seasons potatoes.

Carefully cutting petals from a soft drink bottle.

We used a hole punch and some paper fasteners to attach the petals to the base of the flowers.

Then we put on a stem and some extra wire as decoration - the kids displaying their finished products.

There were too many kids wanting to make plastic drink bottle flowers so we did not get time to make these gorgeous saucepan lid - venetian blind flowers.  Hopefully we will have another workshop soon as I would love some of these in my home garden.

  

After we finished the flower sculptures we spent some time working in the community garden. Bandicooting for potatoes was a favourite for many of the kids.

The potato harvest.... it was mashed potato for tea tonight so that we can make the most of some lovely fresh potatoes.

Our next community garden working bee coincides with a day introduction to permaculture- we will be building wicking beds, no dig gardens and compost heaps.  We can't wait.

Setting up to catch the heat from our northern brick wall

Living in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales at over 900m in altitude presents some problems for growing a range of plants - here is the backyard in our first winter here about three years ago.  Yes that is snow.

Probably harder on the plants are our heavy frosts - last winter we lost all our lemons in one heavy frost - they all half froze on the tree.

To try to buffer some of our more sensitive plants from the cold we have lined up a row of pots against the north facing brick wall at the rear of the house.  I am hoping that the wall will absorb the warmth of the winter sun and help take the edge of the winter weather for the mandarin and passionfruit in particular.  In the future I would like to paint the wall a dark colour to help it absorb more heat.  In summer the wall is mostly shaded by the eave and the pots do not get too hot.

This was one of our microclimates we identified while studying the Permaculture Design Certificate last year.