Choose life. Life is wonderful.

Wednesday 22 February 2017

NATURE BRINGS SOLACE (Feb 2017)




I love nature. I love camping in it, walking in it and living in it.

Over the years I have camped in small tents in numerous national parks across 4 states. From the time my children were 3 months old they went camping. We never had electricity - it wasn't available in most national parks. We camped all weathers including snow at Barrington Tops.

Barrington Tops Photo Source

 The last time I did this sort of camping was 10 years ago with my daughter and son-in-law at Carrington Falls, not far away in the Southern Highlands. 

Peter and I own a caravan now, so I have graduated to a more 'civilised' type of camping.

I love the view from my backroom at home....





and my bedroom as seen below.

(The poor old blinds need replacing, but I have so many other things to do which visitors can see that I'm afraid these will be left for a while.)


 I live in the trees. There are times when I think I should move, as maintenance becomes more difficult as I grow older, but I just love it so much it is really hard to decide what to do. Some mornings a lyre bird comes to my back deck. My backyard is a rain forest - not to everybody's taste, but I love it.

Below is a Birds Nest Fern in my back yard.

 

Below is a view up my yard from the cubby house.








Food

On Friday night I tried cooking with Kataifi pastry for the first time.






I followed the recipe on the packet for prawns in Kataifi. I think the prawns I used were too small so there was a lot of Kataifi, which was very crunchy, but not much prawn. We dipped them in peppery mayonnaise but they just weren't tasty enough - just a big mouthful of crunchy nothing dipped in mayonnaise. 
Kataifi can be deep fried, which would probably be tastier. It can also be used for some Middle Eastern desserts , as pictured below, which I might try at some stage.  


Decorating

I spray painted an old cane mirror I found at the Salvo's for $8 about a year a go.I gave it a coat of Aluminium which I think makes a great base which you can read about in last week's post. 

Then it was sprayed gloss white and hung it in my back room above an old cane shelf I also sprayed white.

 

Craft

I cooked up another batch of toadstools, ready to be painted.

 




In The Garden

Peter constructed an above ground garden that I bought at Aldi on special for $10. There is a paved area at the back of my house where the paving is slipping and weeds dominate, so I am changing the nature of the area to above ground gardens.

Under the pavers was a thin layer of blue metal so we covered that with cardboard.


We began filling it with some mulch from an old Brush Turkey nest which you can read about here in a post from May 2016. 


It will take a while to fill as my back will only allow me to move a couple of buckets of mulch a day from the bottom of the garden to the top. But in a week or so I should be there and I will top it up with potting mix.

As I have mentioned before, I love fungus. I find it fascinating in that it is neither plant nor animal, and think it is often very beautiful decorating a forest or garden in various forms, my favourite of which are toadstools. (However, I am not so keen on fungus on bread or in my fridge. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about that!)

When we cleared an area for the garden we came across some interesting forms of  fungus as seen below.







Effective altruism

I watched an interview with Professor Peter Singer and was really impressed by what he said about the use of charity money to alleviate world poverty.
'Singer is an advocate of effective altruism. He argues that people should not only try to reduce suffering, but reduce it in the most effective manner possible.' (Wikipedia)


If you are interested in where your charity dollar can help most click on thelifeyoucansave.com. This doesn't mean I support all the views of Peter Singer, in fact I oppose quite a few of them, but I like the idea of charity dollars going where they can make the most difference. 

While Peter Singer is an Australian, he works in the USA and his web page is probably most suited to Americans. While I am a Christian, I also see myself as a critical thinker, and don't immediately dismiss the ideas of non-Chrisitans. To do so would be ridiculous as science and ideas have been the domain of both Christians and non-Christians for thousands of years.

Australia has 54,000 registered charities. It does seem that some type of consolidation could mean a sharing of resources. 

Duplication of services is seen as a growing problem and the ACNC(Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Comission.)plays an important role in addressing this. Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision, (and every caring woman's poster boy) recently said, "Mergers and collaborations are not appropriate for many charities, but fewer charities in Australia might actually mean more and better services if we can build on our effectiveness and reduce duplication." (Huffington Post)

But on a world stage surely we should be able to at least make sure everyone has enough food to live. There is plenty to go around.Here in the West we waste so much food, while many of our brothers and sisters don't have enough Is it politics or just sheer selfishness which sees such inequity in our world?


Interesting sites

1.
Pods for the homeless in Los Angeles
Photo Source
 Click here to read about some pods for homeless people. They are designed by Los Angeles architecture students. 

2.
 Burn beautiful swirls into wood
Photo source
 Click here to watch an artist burn a beautiful pattern into a piece of wood. 

3.
 Strawberries in pots

Photo source
  To learn how to grow strawberries in pots click here.

4 comments:

  1. Beautiful! absolutely beautiful. I love the trees, I love the fungus, I love the house as I always have. No better place to grow up <3

    ReplyDelete
  2. Every time I see fungus on my walks I think of you and even take some snaps.
    As for the huge number of charities, it would seem like a great idea to merge some, but I imagine each have their focus. Take for example the various cancer charities. Even the one I support, Without a Ribbon came about just 2 years ago because the Cancer Council doesn't recognize rare cancers for their care and funding, yet a large proportion of cancers are classified rare! I could get no psychological support for CC for my problems after my rare cancer yet I could as a breast cancer survivor!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Michelle. Thanks for your comment about the charities. You are right. It is good to have another opinion from someone who is really involved.

      Delete

I love comments so please feel free to comment.