Look what I found just around the corner

I went for an amazing and beautiful bushwalk the other day. Even though we are at the start of winter we saw some gorgeous and delicate wildflowers - Calatryix (the pink star flower), Hovias (the purple pea flower), sun dew flowers and more.

 Plus, of course, the robust and unique Mensies Banskias, or Firewood Banksias and this particularly massive Australian Christmas Tree and this awesome Golden Orb Spider. I know the bush is this beautiful but what I didn't know was that this particular bit of bush it was hidden just around the corner from my place. 

   

The walk was hosted by the lovely Kate Kelly from Save Beeliar Wetlands who is passionate about our local bush and thinks it's rather a mistake to plough a six lane highway through it. Our idyllic one and a half hour walk was the route of the proposed Roe 8 highway, a part of the Perth Freight Link. According to the Rethink the Link mob:

'The Perth Freight Link is a $1.6 billion, 13 km 6-lane heavy vehicle freeway that will divide suburbs and destroy ecologically sensitive land.'

Kate reckons around 96 ha of this kind of bush will be destroyed and will result in keeping about 10% of trucks of our suburban roads. For a while. Until the Fremantle Port reaches its capacity, which it nearly has. The message the Rethink the Link group is putting out is that the freight can go on rail and the Outer Harbour in Kwinana Port, which is planned for, should be built asap. 

Everyone knows that more roads equals more congestion. Roads are not the way of the future. They are from the olden days when we all wanted to hunker down in our individual quarter acre block and drive our gas guzzeling individual death traps of cars around so we didn't have to see, hear or know the existence of our neighbours. We didn't realize the effect this was having on our collective psyche or our health or the health of the planet. We now know cars suck. What we really want is fewer roads so we get to crisis gridlock on the roads then those able bodied among us can get on our bikes, breath clean air, be healthy and connected to community again. That, my friends, is the way of the future. I wrote to Mr Barnett to express my views. Here's my letter:

Dear Mr Barnett,

I'm writing to express my deep concerns about the Perth Freight Link project. The project will not have the effect the government wants, at $1.6 billion it will be expensive and come at the cost of our precious urban wetlands and the connectedness of our community.

This project is poor urban planning and will devastate communities who live beside the the new road. It will slice us in half. Big roads are not conducive to parents walking with prams, kids riding to school or bike riders. No-one wants to live in a city where the only way to get around is by car.

My family enjoy visiting the Beeliar wetlands often on weekends. We ride our bikes around the lake and enjoy spotting swans, snakes and even occasionally long neck turtles. PLEASE don't destroy this. It's a rare and beautiful piece of wilderness right by our back door. The same is true of the corridor of bush that had been set aside for the road. When Roe 8 was planned decades ago I'm sure we didn't know how precious our remnants of bush would be amongst our current landscape of urban sprawl. Don't squander it for the sake of a road, the world does not need more roads, it needs trees and bush. Every remnant is precious.

I am also concerned about the effect of more trucks on the roads and the pollution they will bring us. Research shows that more roads only means more traffic. Thankfully there is a solution which is to rebuild and incentivise the use of rail for cargo to and from the port of Fremantle.

I suspect the government is severely underestimating the community opposition to the Perth Freight Link. People have been working on this campaign for decades and there is no sign their determination is dwindling. Please do not be arrogant. Listen to us. We don't want it. We don't need it. We can't afford it. The last thing this world needs is a new road.

Yours etc

It was satisfying to write.

A sustainable wedding

Well, after 18 years of being boyfriend/girlfriend/partners Amy and I finally tied the knot. It was a great day and of course we tried to give it as low a footprint as possible.

The biggest factor in this is probably travel. We certainly didn't want people flying to Bali or Costa Rica just for our big day due to the air miles. So, we went ultra local: in our back yard! It just made sense for us, we love our home and garden, we have the space and it made it lower stress as well. We could set it up as we wanted, not having to rely on other people to do things like waste management, decorations, etc. Sure, it made a bit more work for us but Amy and I had time off work to do this. In the end two people out of seventy flew to the wedding and everyone else drove or rode a few kms.

We borrowed almost all the plates, cutlery, etc from Amy's parents church. We also borrowed chairs, tablecloths, cushions, lighting and more from friends and family. No plastic involved there and no cost. Amy made decorations, lots of beautiful bunting.

We paid some great local artists help out with photography, dress making, catering and music and we even had our friend Tim from Sand Sculpture WA to build us a sand sculpture as a wedding present to us.

With waste we put all the organic waste to the chooks or compost bins. All recyclables fit into one yellow Sulo bin. This was mainly bottles (wine and beer). We considered getting a keg of beer but in the end we didn't think we'd get through 50 litres and a lot would get wasted. This turned out to be true since we only used about 20 litres in the end. Most of the beer and wine was from WA, some from over east.

The flowers were flown in at great expense from the front garden (Banksia menzeisii and prionotes). Amy's dress was made from an old table cloth and she didn't buy new shoes or a tiara! The food was all vegetarian, made from mostly local and some organic produce. We even managed to use some of our own produce: home dried cherry tomatoes and pickled olives.

The power was 100% renewable, either from our solar panels or from Synergy's natural power. The water came from the rain water tank.

We had a great time and definitely recommend backyard weddings if you have the time and space.



The humble hanky

Wow, I thought taking a redundancy would give me more time to blog but it hasn't been the case at all. I think I'm busier now than I ever was! Anyway I have 10 minutes to shoot out a small post.

I grew up in the UK and I've always just had a hanky (or hancherchief) on me. I guess my Mum used them and so did we. So I always thought they were normal and everyone had one. I never really noticed that they weren't that popular. When I was about 20 I went to Cananda and blew my nose in a Uni class and an American girl said "Wow, what is that thing? Can you do it again? I've only ever seen them in old movies". That was when it really hit me, I was a freak with an out-dated mode of nose blowing.

This hasn't stopped me though, maybe I like to stand out from the crowd. The main reason I love hankies is because you don't need to chop trees down, process them in to paper and package them up and transport them around the place. You just get one from a drawer (or my pocket, I never leave home without a hanky) and put it in the wash when it's dirty. No fuss, minimal waste and no it's not unhygienic (my pockets can't get my germs as far as I know).

So now our whole family use them. Amy has even made hankies out of old shirt fabric and they're pretty good. Here is a Ben Sherman model (a swanky hanky). And no, you don't need to iron a hanky!

It always dismays me to see people who should know better grab a tissue. So the humble hanky should make a comeback, why don't you give it a blow?

Let us collect lettuce seeds

I really used to lament over our hot dry Perth summers. Last year we had no summer crops because we were away for seven weeks and as we gardeners know, a good food garden needs daily attention so we just didn't bother. But this summer, so far has been fantastic. We have had a bumper tomato crop, heaps if apples, bananas, boysenberries, lettuce and lots of other veggies.

Our new wicking bed is crankin' and will hopefully keep us in greens for a while to come. But of course, as seasons flow, some crops finish.

One patch of lettuce bolted a couple of months ago and now it's time to collect the seed. If you're new to seed collecting, lettuce is a great one to start with. I've been saving these seeds, which I originally got from our good friend Ben, for several years. They are red cos lettuces.

So first if all you need to do is resist picking from your best lettuce plants. Just let three or four go to seed. They look like this with fluffy seed heads when they are ready to collect.

Once they flower, seed and dry you just take the seeds. So simple. I just roll the seed head in my fingers to loosed the seeds and let them fall into a container.

And there they are, all ready for my next crop which will be in a few weeks time. I'm really trying to keep the greens rolling this summer. I have to remember how lucky we are in Perth - with care, we can grow most veggies most of the year round.

How to cook and eat globe artichokes

November and December are a time of year we really look forward to. We have apples, boysenberries and my favourite vegetable, globe artichokes available from our garden. I rave about artichokes to people and so many say "But how do you cook and eat them?". Well, here's how my Dad showed me and it's delicious.

First, pick the artichoke when they're fairly big but before they start to flower. They flesh out lots as they grow but if you pick them too late they'll be too stringy and less tasty. Cut them just below the globe, leaving maybe 10mm of stork on.

Then boil them immersed in water for about an hour with the lid on. To test whether they're ready pick a petal from low down on the globe and taste it. This is done by putting the petal in between your top and bottom teeth and scraping off the flesh at the lower end of the petal. If it's still hard to chew it's not ready yet.

When it's nearly ready put some knobs of butter in small bowls and microwave until melted.

Remove the artichokes from the water when done and serve. Place a large bowl in the middle of the table for discarding eaten petals and the choke. Now dig in.

 

Simply pick petals and dip them in the butter. Most of the lower, bigger ones have some 'meat' on them, the smaller ones higher up have less. When you've eaten most of the petals, stop before removing them all. If you do this you'll get into the 'choke', the upper part above the heart. This part will choke you if you eat it, hence the name. 

 

 

 

This part should be removed, as should the stringy stork below the heart. Remove the stork with either a sharp knife or kitchen scissors.

 

 

 

Then remove the choke by cutting horizontally between the choke and heart with a sharp knife, as below.

 

Discard the choke and eat the heart, smothered in melted butter!

 

 

They work really well as a starter, but not a main as there's not that much to them.

 

 

Have a go, it's the ultimate umami taste...







Kale chips (this post is not about wellness)

I don't believe in wellness or health and well being. As a population, humans are pretty healthy. Especially us white ones. I don't think we need to deprive South American countries of  their staple foods so we can purchase them as over packaged, organic, fair trade super foods at our gourmet shops just for some over researched vitamin or anti oxidant I could get from an egg my girls lay me or a bit of kale. Based on food waste stats we'd just throw half I'd it away anyway. I think all we really need to  be well is to not eat junk, work less, spend more time with our loved ones, exercise incidentally by riding a bike, dancing or kid wrangling. And always garden. Okay I'm sound a bit like a cat poster but just think all this wellness stuff is a bit narcissistic. We are the most overpopulated species on the planet. We are well. The planet, sadly, is not.

So this post is about kale chips for the planet, and they also happen to be good for you.

Kale grows so well. Is doesn't need heaps of water and is pretty disease resistant.  Often you can keep them going over summer too. In Perth that's really saying something!

This is the link to the recipe I used. I found it worked well to use the sun oven too. It took much longer for them to crisp up but they did eventually.

They will be great for Quin's waste free lunchbox which his school is starting this term. However, I suspect the chips won't last long because they are soooo delish! I'll definately make them again!

Commuting: electric bike is best

I have a 20km journey to work. Over the years I've made this trip by car, bus, bike and electric bike and the latter is my mode of choice these days. It ticks all the boxes: low emissions, time, health, cost and pleasure. So, let's go into the reasons. The table below shows the ratings for the criteria I think are important and I'll go through them one by one.

Mode of transport	Emissions	Cost	Time (minutes)	Health	Pleasure
Car	High	High	30	Poor	Low
Public transport	Low	Medium	75	Poor	Medium
Bike	Very low	Low	50	Good	High
Ebike	Low	Very low	40	Very good	Very high

Emissions from cars has impacts on both climate change and localised particulate pollution (eg smog). Most forms of public transport also emit these, however because they transport many people at a time the emissions are much lower. There are no emissions from a bike, except possibly methane escaping in the saddle area! The emissions from ebikes are minimal. My 40 km round trip uses about 1kWh of energy and since we have solar panels most of this is from renewable resources.

The costs of running a car are huge. It's estimated that the average Australian car costs about $12,000 a year to run. This includes registration, insurance, fuel, maintenance and depreciation in value. On fuel alone it is the most expensive way to commute by far. I'm amazed to read in the news that Australian's number one financial worry is the cost of power, when the cost of running a car is far higher. My 40km round trip costs $20 a day if you calculate it at 50 cents per km. If I did that every work day of the week it would cost around $5,000 a year. The cost of public transport is quite high too. My return journey costs $6.60 a day. Riding a bike is free and the ebike costs around 25 cents to charge. I've put the cost as very low due to the fact I don't go to the chiro any more (see health section). The exercise I get means I don't need to go to a gym to  stay fit. Three years ago we replaced our second car with an ebike and we've probably saved $8,000 a year since then. Here's the old bomb off to the scrap yard.

Time is the only area where the car wins and time is precious. The big loser here is the bus. I have to walk to the bus stop, wait a few minutes, get off the bus and change at Canning Bridge, then wait a few more minutes until the next bus arrives and then walk for a few minutes when I get off the second bus! The bike beats this easily and the ebike isn't far behind the car.

Health is a big deal, in fact it's one of the most important things in life. There is no exercise value in driving a car and since most of us sit behind a desk all day that's not good. I've also had two accidents on the way to work in the last eight years, with people rear ending me resulting in minor whiplash both times. Except for the walking bit public transport isn't much better. In fact, if you consider the fact that you have to be in close proximity to people who may be sick it could be worse. The health benefits of riding a bike are huge. Why did I put good for bike and very good for ebike I hear you say. This is what I've found: riding a bike is good exercise but it's also very tiring. This can cause wear and tear on the body and result in injuries. This doesn't apply with ebikes. I can set the level of assist on my ebike to suit how hard I want to push my body and this means if I'm a bit sore I take it easy and still get to work on time. I've also found that I ride my ebike much more than the normal bike. There's no exercise value in a bike collecting dust in the shed. These days I ride to work three times a week (I work 3 or 4 days a week). In the past I've had chronic back problems which need regular trips to the chiro (every 2-3 weeks), but since I've started riding so much I don't need the chiro any more. This probably saves me about $800 a year.

Pleasure is different for everybody, but I find I get the most out of riding my ebike. I love the feeling of gliding along without too much effort, of overtaking cars stuck in traffic along the freeway bike path and of arriving at work energised and ready for the day. The down side is the weather, but we're lucky in Perth. It's mostly sunny and rain rarely stops me riding. I quite like going by bus too because I can relax and day dream or read a book. The car I just find frustrating, you have to concentrate so much and the traffic and waiting at lights is just boring.

So there you go, that's my take on commuting. And here's the bike I use, a Workcycles Fr8 with an Ezee electric conversion. 10,700km on the clock and going strong. I can load it up with enough gear to go away for a 4 day work trip and can pick and drop Quin from school too.