Mine is not an exciting life, nor is a glamourous one, sometimes it's downright boring, but I've decided that although my life may not be glamorous or exciting that it's time I started to document it so that I have a record of how I spent my days to look back on in years to come.
Firstly, let me introduce myself, my name is Jan, I am still a few years off retiring, but not too many, I live in an old country town in South Australia that when I first moved here from New South Wales ten years ago was quite and everyone you met always said hello, these days it is a town like any other, it's noisy and busy and over the last ten years the population has grown and sadly no-one has time to say hello anymore.
I am an ordinary woman living an ordinary life that at times has moments of great joy and great beauty. I am the mother of five amazing, grown-up children all of whom except for the youngest have left home and are living their own lives, I also have four grandchildren with hopefully a few more to come in the future.
I am very much a homebody and love nothing more than spending my days tending to my gardens, I have both flower and vegetable gardens, which as you can imagine keeps me fairly busy, I love a clean home, but I don't like housework and wrinkle-free clothing is my best friend.
My evenings are spent reading, as well as knitting, crocheting and because it's now too hot to do either of those I'm going to try my hand at embroidery.
I am really writing this for myself, but I hope you will enjoy it as well if you do please leave me a comment and let me know. If this is your first time visiting my blog, hello and welcome.
Monday
A hot one today (34°C), I spent an hour in the vegetable garden making sure that all the plants were covered with shade cloth and they will stay that way until Thursday as tomorrow is going to be much the same as today and Wednesday is going to be 44°C. I went out in the afternoon, I wouldn't normally go out when it's as hot as it was, but it was necessary and while I was out I bought a new handbag. I've been wanting one for a while now and when I found this one on special for $19.00, (reduced from $35.00), I had to buy it and it is exactly what I was looking for.
Firstly, let me introduce myself, my name is Jan, I am still a few years off retiring, but not too many, I live in an old country town in South Australia that when I first moved here from New South Wales ten years ago was quite and everyone you met always said hello, these days it is a town like any other, it's noisy and busy and over the last ten years the population has grown and sadly no-one has time to say hello anymore.
I am an ordinary woman living an ordinary life that at times has moments of great joy and great beauty. I am the mother of five amazing, grown-up children all of whom except for the youngest have left home and are living their own lives, I also have four grandchildren with hopefully a few more to come in the future.
I am very much a homebody and love nothing more than spending my days tending to my gardens, I have both flower and vegetable gardens, which as you can imagine keeps me fairly busy, I love a clean home, but I don't like housework and wrinkle-free clothing is my best friend.
My evenings are spent reading, as well as knitting, crocheting and because it's now too hot to do either of those I'm going to try my hand at embroidery.
I am really writing this for myself, but I hope you will enjoy it as well if you do please leave me a comment and let me know. If this is your first time visiting my blog, hello and welcome.
Monday
A hot one today (34°C), I spent an hour in the vegetable garden making sure that all the plants were covered with shade cloth and they will stay that way until Thursday as tomorrow is going to be much the same as today and Wednesday is going to be 44°C. I went out in the afternoon, I wouldn't normally go out when it's as hot as it was, but it was necessary and while I was out I bought a new handbag. I've been wanting one for a while now and when I found this one on special for $19.00, (reduced from $35.00), I had to buy it and it is exactly what I was looking for.
Tuesday
I had my Spanish lesson in the morning and after 13 weeks I am finding it easier to understand which is a good thing as my teacher has now started speaking to us mostly in Spanish. My Spanish lessons are held at the local community house and there is also an op shop on the premises so after my lesson I decided to have a look around and I found another crossbody bag, this one was only $8.00 and it looks brand new so two bags in two days for less than $30.00, I love a good bargain. I didn't get home until 1.00pm and as the day was quite warm I stayed indoors until late afternoon, after that, I spent until it was almost dark watering in the hope that after tomorrow's heat something will still be alive.
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| New bag on the left, second-hand bag on the right. |
Wednesday
Today was horrendous with the temperature reaching 44°C, (it is still spring isn't it?), and as if the extreme heat wasn't was bad enough, it was also incredibly windy which didn't help with the fires that are burning at the moment, naturally enough I spent the day inside pottering around.Thursday
It is so much cooler today (23.2°C) and after yesterday's heat, the first thing I did this morning was open up all the doors and windows to let in some cool air and just as quickly closed them as I realised what I thought was cloud cover was actually smoke from a fire to the north of us. I wasted a whole morning waiting for a visit from the real estate agent who we rent our house from for our quarterly house inspection, it wasn't until almost 11.30am that I realized I had gotten the day wrong, now I have to spend another morning at home tomorrow doing the same thing. The smoke had cleared by early afternoon so I went down to my vegetable garden to check on the plants and surprising things looked okay, a few of the bean plants were badly burnt and may not survive, but the tomatoes look good, the pumpkin and squash looked a bit sad but they soon perked up with a good watering. |
| Sadly I don't think they'll make it. |
Friday
After the house inspection was over, I made a trip into town to do some errands and to pick up some books from the library that I had reserved, this is what I'll be reading for the next two weeks or so. On the way home I dropped into the local hardware store to pick up some bits and bobs for the irrigation system in the front garden as it's not working as well as it could be and some areas are not being watered at all so I'm changing out the drippers for micro-sprinklers which will hopefully solve that problem. I had bought some sprinklers about one month ago and put them somewhere safe so safe in fact I haven't been able to find them again, I guess they will turn up sooner or later.Saturday
I spent a couple of hours down in the vegetable garden today making sure that all the plants were watered and putting up some shade cloth ready for tomorrow as a high of 35°C is forecast, I must be getting old though as I got so hot I felt like I was about to self combust and the temperature when I checked was only 20°C. When I was younger I could and did spend all day out in the garden and it didn't bother me, but these days 2 - 3 hours seems to be my limit, I guess as long as the work gets done it doesn't really matter. While I was in the garden I sowed seed Early Extra Honey Sweet corn seeds, eighteen in all, I hope they germinate better than the last lot, I plant out the rockmelon seedlings, Hale's Best, and the Sugar Baby watermelon seedlings as well as some Genovese basil and some Lemon Gem marigold. After lunch, and after I had cooled down I went to Bunnings to pick up some tomato stakes and some fittings for the irrigation system in the vegetable garden that I forgot to buy yesterday and I'm hoping it will be finished on Wednesday I will be laying down pea straw as a mulch as soon as it's finished. Hopefully, with the irrigation system, mulch and shade cloth I can look forward to plenty of homegrown veggie goodness.Sunday
I spent some more time in the garden today tidying up and putting the remains of the brassicas in the compost heap, I've decided that I would like a small shredder as it would take less time for the big plants to break down in the compost bin if it was shredded first so that's on my wishlist for next year along with a new greenhouse. It didn't get as hot as it had been predicted, only reaching 30°C which I was grateful for.
My apologies for the different font colours I have no idea what's causing it or how to fix it.
I will be back next Sunday with another blog post, until then stay safe, Jan.
I will be back next Sunday with another blog post, until then stay safe, Jan.
