updates on our adventure
October 20 2005
It's been a long while since the last update, mostly as what I had to say was about the house sale and I figured that was
probably not the best topic as I was getting ripe for a whinge. Sustainable housing is what we are about but potential buyers were walking in
and telling us, "First thing we'd do is put air-conditioning in, and sand back the house and paint it gloss white', we won't even talk about
the composting toilet. We could see all our work going 'down the drain' quite literally. Our $20,000 grid connected solar system being nothing more than
partial offsetting the power use of an air conditioner. It's been quite a learning experience. Not one I'd wish to repeat.
On a more positive note - the book is rearing ahead. We've seen what the designer has come up with book covers (and they look great), and we're almost at the point of first
pages. Alexandra Payne, the editor, is doing an amazing job of bringing it altogether and we're getting very excited about not just the look of the book but the final content.
As we've just gone another three months with hardly a drop of rain the garden is looking bare again. Started planting a few days ago after we had two inches with promises of more to come.
As it is we have a burst of flowering, fruiting going on, with peaches, nectarines, plums, grapes, macadamias, custard apples, avocadoes, lychees, apples, and the coffee bushes look like they have a coating of floral snow.
Even while I water and look after things it's with the knowledge that come November 24th we won't be here to eat any of it.
Four of the chooks and one of the moveable chook pens vacated the premise a few weeks ago, now we're down to 6 chooks and a lustrous one eyed aracuana rooster. I hope we can find him a home. He was bought as a hen, but soon started strutting around the place, spurting out a few spurs and tail feathers, and practising a gargling crow. Recently, after having moved him apart from his aracuana hen she was seen doing a pretty good imitation of a crow as they watched each other through the fence and gargled on their tonsils in an effort to communicate.
A reunion is on the cards.
Now that things are more conducive to long stints of uninterrupted reading I've been whizzing through a number of books. Top of the list is
Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, The History and Future Impact of Climate Change. I agree with Bill Bryson when he says, "It would be hard to imagine a better or more important book".
Check it out at The Weather Makers
Also Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss's - Affluenza - When too much is never enough, is crucial reading.
You can read the preface and first chapter at Affluenza
In the coming months we will start documenting the next adventure. Building a strawbale house. We hope to reduce the embodied energy, while building a solar passive design and eliminating as far as possible the use of toxic materials/chemicals.
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