PREPARING TO PROTECT MY SEEDLINGS We need resilience to cope with the impacts of climate change, and we need the courage, skills and tools to help us keep going as we work to restore planetary health. Today I finished off a bottle of New Zealand Vodka and, with my Read more…
DARN! There is something so satisfying about tackling something I’ve procrastinated over for a very long time. I love wearing black pure wool skivvies, but I think the moths love them as much as I do, and sometimes my gardening life plays havoc with them as well. Today I Read more…
Climate Action Now The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – released in March 2022 – urgently warns us the window to limit the threatening impacts of climate change is closing and immediate action is needed. We know this is the critical decade for reducing emissions. Read more…
Start again! As I continue to take steps to move towards a zero-waste life, on the 5th February I made an attempt to turn used cooking oil and ashes from the fire into soap. Sadly it didn’t work and ended up a greasy mess. I left it on a Read more…
HOLIDAYING LOCAL & SUPPORTING LOCAL AGRICULTURE Our son came home for the weekend and I explained how, on World Health Day this coming Thursday 7 April, we’re hoping to inspire 365 people to all take one new action to restore planetary health, so that we can have the action Read more…
FIRST OYSTER MUSHROOM HARVEST What an exciting evening! Tonight, 4 weeks and 5 days after taking the plunge and having a go at inoculating recycled paper with spawn, we harvested and ate our first crop of blue oyster mushrooms. It was hard to say goodbye to them after the sculptural Read more…
Stone Paper Recipe Book As the rain continues, the mould grows and more stories of loss in the floods surface, I’ve thought about all the memories and all the knowledge lost as books and artworks are completely destroyed by water. So, tonight, I opened the Stone Paper Sketchbook I’d Read more…
An Invincible Summer “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” These are the words of existential writer Albert Camus, who wrote The Plague, two years after the end of WWll. Today, on yet another interminably grey wet day, sunshine arrived briefly (via a Read more…
Less is more! At some point, between my childhood and now, we went from towels the size of my grandmother’s to ones the size of the towels we now have. My towel is three times the size and thickness of my grandmother’s towel. I blame the movies, and Marilyn Monroe! Read more…
Repurposing plastic with a sewing machine Tonight I decided to experiment with the sewing skills I’ve been developing over the last few weeks to see if I could repurpose plastic. I’ve had a beautiful old ceramic lamp stand without a shade that I haven’t been able to use, and Read more…
Transforming surplus veggies into stock powder For today’s new action for A Year in a Day I experimented with creating veggie stock powder to use our surplus and reduce packaging. The basket of saffron milk cap mushrooms we foraged yesterday were more than we needed for dinner so I sliced Read more…