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Mid March/April is Olive Time. It’s the time to start picking olives, preparing them and bottling them. It is quite an exciting time and for some, a tedious process of washing the olives twice daily but for me, a daily ritual that I love. You see I love olives, I was introduced to them by…
Okay. Here we are in the COVID Lockdown and we have all the time in the world. Kitchen and laundry cupboards are Marie Kondo-ed. I look around. What else have I been meaning to do for ever and ever....Windows! But I don't have window cleaner left in my cupboard! What to do? Don my protective…
Beautiful French Lavender Ladies. I have harvested tonnes of my English lavender a month ago. It doesn’t have the big showy floral petals on the ends of the lavender spikes like the French lavender, but rather compact flowers on the end of long stalks. They are really fragrant and I love the meditative activity of…
Yesterday I had a gut feeling about this COVID-19 business. After doing my weekly shop this morning and discovering chaos and pandemonium in the store, with customers cheek by jowl, trolley to trolley I wondered at the sanity, or lack thereof. So I am not one to panic, but I am a practical person and…
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March is New Zealand’s Sustainable Backyards month. I am doing a heap of workshops and we also hosted an open day backyard garden tour. So it was no surprise when the Weekend Sun local paper emailed to say they wanted to do a story on us. Sure. Why not? But what turned out to be…
At Christmas our family exchanged gifts and one of the gifts was wrapped up in a coffee sack. My daughter worked in a coffee roastery and these sacks are onsold for $2 or given to staff for free. As we sat there in the afterglow, I eyed up the coffee sack “wrapping” and thought, “Hmmm,…
I’ve always been interested in making my own personal care and household products. This way, I know what goes into them.....no harsh chemicals to affect my health, that of my family, or the planet. So I was chuffed when I found a recipe in an old Organic NZ magazine from 2012, featuring a dishwashing powder…
