OUT THERE

(photo by Jocelyn Kinghorn via Pinterest)

We have embarked upon the path to self-sufficiency we have (tongue very firmly in cheek). We now have basil and mint herbs and are growing cress. Today I bought a bell pepper to plant up too, and I have chive and parsley seeds to plant. We are seriously contemplating a chicken. (I am anyway!) I'd quite like a rabbit too although I'm not allowed one. Pout. Oh and I bought a couple of heather plants too as they can cope with the shade (our back garden is shade heavy) and bees love them. I tentatively pointed out that if we had a goat T would never have to mow the lawn, but T put his foot down on this idea too.

I don't quite know what's going on with me. I haven't felt right for a loooong time. Lately all I can think about is having a garden, growing some of my own food, being outside, reconnecting. I think that's what I really need, to reconnect to the earth. Could it be that the reason I have been feeling so down this last year or more is because really I want/need to be outside? It's like a yearning, like a returning to something even though I wasn't there before... does that even make sense?

I've decided that I want a bike. I do live in a city where practically everyone has a bike, but not me. I've never really liked cycling. But this urge to be outside... I want to be able to cycle to the park, and go for a ride out in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside this spring and summer. Getting a bit fitter on the side would be a nice bonus.

I dolly daydream about gardening. Today I actually asked T to take me to Yarnton nurseries and this morning I pored over a gardening catalogue whilst I drank my tea. After reading The Secret Life of Bees on my kindle I spent half of last Sunday researching bees, bee blogs, awesome things about honey and telling T that I wanted a bee hive. I am well and truly fixed on the idea of having bee friendly flowers and plants in our little back garden, anything to help the little fellas.

Am I having some sort of bizarre reverse midlife crisis? You know, instead of ditching T for a younger model and snaffling a Ferrari, I have an overwhelming need to buy a spade and grow my own courgettes! I feel as though I need to be outside, out doors. I need to be doing something. I don't want to spend 9-10 hours per day cooped up at work indoors. I don't want to do that five days a week and then spend my hard earnt money on things that are exorbitantly priced and over packaged and relatively tasteless and sprayed with god know what when potentially I could grow my own. I don't want to be inside when I could be outside. I don't want to be cooped up in a building all of the time. Aaaaggghhh I need something to change. So desperately. I need to find a new path to follow, a bright, shiny, new dream to believe in.

Somehow this giant voice inside of me head seems to think that the answer is OUT THERE...

Her Fearful Symmetry

I read The Time Traveller's Wife years ago and really enjoyed it but for some reason it has taken me a while to get round to reading Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.

I absolutely loved it. Partly a ghost story, partly a love story and partly an insight in to the strange world of twins I was captivated. The characters are all somewhat odd but that is part of the fabric of the story, if they had been "normal" the story itself could not have happened. When I grasped what was going to happen I gasped out loud always a sign of a good book!

What good books have you read lately?

Do you compost?

Not a very sexy subject, I know, but in our new(-ish) flat we have a small garden, and a composter. I have been ignoring it since we moved in at the start of December but have had the odd pangs of guilt. Which worsened the other day when I confessed to everyone on the steering group that I was sitting in on (a potential "doggy-bag" scheme) that although I had a composter I didn't know what to do with it. I was met with blank looks and "Put stuff in it, it's that simple..." so this weekend I decided to do my homework!

Now I have dragged the composter to the most suitable spot in our garden (ideally in a sunny spot over bare soil, unfortunately our garden is all shade!) brought the little food waste caddy up to the kitchen and written out the following list so we know what we can compost:

• vegetable peelings
• fruit waste
• tea bags
• plant prunings
• grass cuttings
• cardboard egg boxes
• scrunched up paper
• twigs
• crushed egg shells
• salad leaves
• old flowers
• cereal boxes
• toilet roll tubes
• wool
• sawdust
• feathers
• hoover bag contents
• tissues
• shredded paper
• corn cobs & stalks

It can take 9-12 months before your compost is actually usable and I don't know if we'll even still be living here by then (we took the flat on a 6-month lease) but I figured it was worth doing anyway. Even if we don't get to reap the results I hope that somebody else will and we'll be putting less rubbish in to the recycling and landfill which is a bonus!

Do you compost? What other inventive ways do you deal with your household waste?

PS. Thank you for your supportive comments about my depression, they are truly appreciated :)