Last week in Ligaya Garden #5

So much is happening, both here and outhere in the big world that we thought it worth doing a little catchup every Sunday and publish it on a Monday, Oz time.

All of the posts will be listed here on this page for your elucidation and convenience.

Another week with very changeable weather. I’ve started a few jobs around the house but they’re piling up because of storms.

Last night though, we had a real surprise. We were watching the movie ‘Aquaman’ and it got to a bit where Aquaman, as a boy, used his powers to summon a shark. At the same moment, there was a loud sound of rushing water coming from the bathroom.

Lon and I jumped up to have a look and saw water gushing out through the cupboard under the basin…a pipe had burst. Now, that’s acting talent for you!

Anyways, it was an easy fix this morning and the part only cost me $6 but there’s 15 years of bathroom stuff drying all around the house at the moment.

-Good news too, I had a chat with a couple of folks who want to run a course on energy efficiency and retrofitting for Housing Trust tenants. That will be a good thing indeed, it’ll help their money and help our world.

-A couple of days after that chat, I spent 3 hours talking with one of Gawler’s movers and shakers on the climate emergency scene.

We were trying to nut out something that we could implement soon to help folks on low incomes get their selves climate change effective. We came up with a great idea and are following up on aspects of it. I’ll write it up soon once it’s underway.

-On the subject of climate, I started to post a series of posts this I’d been working with on the Steemit platform. They’re about Fragmentation and Global Weirding. Just my insights and musings – nothing heavy.

-The big news though… Food Underfoot 2019 was announced. If you haven’t read about it before or haven’t attended a session, it’s te foraging walk I run once a year here in Gawler.

This one’s on October 6 an 1pm in Henry Chenoweth Reserve here in Gawler. I’d like to get about $30 a head for it but am running it as ‘pay what you can’ ’cause I’m not greedy and know some folks are doing it tough.

We’re not using Eventbrite this year because they scammed Jelina out of some money from an event she used them as the booking agents for. Instead, were just using Facebook Events, so you can book right here or just shoot us an email.

-I’ve been out and about photographing for updates to the various pages on the blog. I like to improve the pics where I can at any opportunity and we’re just getting into flowering time for many Aussie native plants and other seasonal wild edibles (aka ‘weeds’).

While I was out, I found a whole heap of Boxthorn bushes in fruit. Of course, I couldn’t help myself and grabbed a whole lot for jam but I’ll probably eat them raw before we get to that point.

-I’ve gone about as far as I can updating the Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri names of the plants on our Bushfood and Bush medicines pages. There may be a few more to add yet but I’m squeezing local knowledge to get this many.

-I’ve also added Flame Heath, Cypress Pine and Sedges to those pages. There’s still a coupe of plants to add and I’ll get them done as they flower this season.

-Marlon finished the brochure for the Field Geology Club outing at the end of October. It’s just a teaser for those from the club who may come along. It looks absolutely brilliant! Lon is a very good artist and designer, He finished his degree in it all at the end of last semester.

-On the bigger scale of things, Lon and I have been rejigging the solar. We removed the old panels from the north end of the house and replaced them with two, new 200W panels. We pulled down the post with the old 120W panel and that will be added to the other two, giving us about 500W. It’ll have to wait a bit though, it’s too wet and windy to climb ladders today.

We moved the batteries from outside by the aqusponics to inside the house, using the cupboard in the toilet as their home. I’ve made it into a vertical series of 4 racks that take the batteries and the new inverter we purchased from a friend.

Now, all we have to do is knock a hole in the wall and run the cables from the solar panels into the cupboard and connect it all up. I’m waiting on a friend who has said that they can get me the proper cabling and connectors vey cheaply, if not for free. I’ve got to do it properly this time. Were getting serious about going seriously solar by the end of this year.

-Jelina moves ever closer to crunch time for her PhD. There’s about 3 weeks to go until submission…

-Our regular post ‘Ligaya Gardening Tips’ reached #7 ‘Winter’s bite’ this week. Its about how tropicals suffer in Winter and what to do about them. It segues nicely I to next week’s edition.

Another week of nothing to do? Most certainly not around here!