Yearly review

Review and Renew 2009

Yearly review

I have been thinking about the garden what went well and what didn’t go quite so well and what I want to try in 2009.

Went well

  • Compost – composted all household compostibles
  • Lettuce (I had home grown lettuce most days)
  • Mint – great but has now passed its best lasted about 3 months
  • Rosmary – can’t fail with this
  • Dwarf broad beans – I harvested a few and killed them and left in soil (fixing nitrogeon)
  • Garlic (from sprouted cloves)
  • Basil – good but bolted quickly

Almost Worked

  • Peas, tomatoes – started well but got rot
  • Cabbage, broccoli – started well be savaged by snails cabbage moth & slugs.
  • Broad beans some looked promising but rotted or just died
  • Strawberries, grapes (produced but eaten by birds)
  • Chillis (from from chill seeds from kitchen) kept getting eaten when young
Failures (didn’t grow at all)
  • Soybeans (maybe the seeds were bad)
  • Grow from seeds they kept dying
Things I have learnt
  • How to use mulch
  • How to water
 
 
bloodshot eye

Painfull eyes continued

bloodshot eyeMy eye has been giving me grief again. I went to see a specialist about three months ago and he told me I have a “corneal erosion”. Basically it like a scab on my eye that keeps sticking to my eyelid and slows dow the repair. Using thick eye lubricant on my eye before I go to bed helps although sleeping on my right side (as it is my left eye with teh erosion) it has been playing up recently and I was doing a bit of research looking into eye health and this is what I found
“Taking a vigorous walk for at least a half hour can temporarily reduce discomfort and pressure in the eyes.“

also recommend

“Blend until smooth: Serves one.

1 cup of skim or soy milk
1 dash of cinnamon
3 ice cubes
1 tablespoon flax seed oil
1 tablespoon lecithin granules
2 level scoops of vanilla or chocolate whey protein powder

1/2 banana or 1 cup of fresh fruit (mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, peaches, etc.)”
full article

Question_mark

What is food acid?

Question_markI have been on a mini mission this last 5 months. Everytime I have been at a supermarket I have been looking for decent pickled onions and pickled beetroot. It is hard to find in Melbourne.

I have too major gripes with the pickles I have come accross.

1. They ask to be refridgerated after opening because .. (point 2) They do not contain any vinegar! (Instead sugar water and food acid)

I thought the whole point of pickling was to preserve said food and I also niavly expected pickled onions or beatroot to contain vinegar. Last week picked my own. I’d reccomend this as it only took me about half an hour to make 6 jars. (below is one)

Food acid is in so much stuff.

For instance it is in the “peters” lemon “Icy pole”. I was eating one of these a while back and read the label.

“All Natrual ingredients” then the ingredients read
on the Nestle website  it says

”


Key nutritional benefits

  • 99% fat free
  • Gluten free
  • All natural colours and flavours

 

”
What’s in an icy pole then?
“Water, sugar, food acid, natural colouring, natural flavouring”

I had two questions about this
1. How is “food acid” natural
2. How can a lemon icy pole with all natural ingredients contain no lemon???? Was lemon juice one of the “natural flavourings” on the ingredient list?

I called the nestle number on the packet to ask for more details. They could not tell me what food acid was. When I asked what was the  “natural flavourings” I was told that this was a trade secret and if other companies knew then they would be at a competitive disadvantage. So it doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that these lemon icy poles have never been anywhere near a lemon.

Food labelling – what a load of nonsense!

Paul

mac-os-x-snow-leopard

Snow Leopard $30 not well spent

I have just had to turn off my router for the second time this morning because the wifi has not worked reliably since I upgraded to snow leopard on my macbookpro.

Excel was routinely crashing my laptop too. I had to fix that – what a pain. Snow leopard looks the same as previous and at the moment is more unreliable.

ALSO something I am really annoyed with is that the multi-touch touchpad which I got the distinct impression would now work with 4 finger gestures is not compatible with my laptop. hmm Well I have 1 finger gesture of my own.
hmm
hmm
This is the first time I have ever bought an operating system. I won’t be doing it again
hmmf
lightbulb

Energy Efficient light globes are harmful

I have long suspected that the claims made for energy efficient light globes is nonsense so armed with google I did a bit of research

The claim for energy efficient globes (Compact fluorescent lamp)

  • More environmentally Friendly

  • Use less electricity

  • As good as existing light globes
  • Last Longer

Let me take these items one at a time

More environmentally Friendly
These bulbs are much more energy and resource intensive to manufacture and they also contain mercury making them difficult to dispose of properly.
Use less electricity
They do use less electricity however they are basically using the same technology as old fashioned fluorescent strip lights and they share the efficiency profile of these. If you turn these lights and never turn them off they use about a quarter of the energy of a conventional bulb. However if you turn your lights on and off frequently (like we do) then the efficiency goes right down because these bulbs (just like fluorescent strip lights are a lot less efficient when being turned on and off).

As good as existing light globes
I hate the light from these (the wave spectra is different). They also take a while to get to full brightness. They have also been shown to cause epilepsy and they can buzz. The EPA take the safety and disposal of these pretty seriously if you break one you need to evacuate the room for 15 minutes and dispose of the bulb in a glass jar
Last Longer
I suspect if you have a modern house with electrics then they would last longer but I frequently have these (expensive) babies blow on me. Also as they get older they get less bright. The life is also dramatically shortened by turning them on and off.
 
SOURCES – WIKIPEADIA
 
NEWS ARTICLES
 
australian tsunami

Australian Tsunami

NSW, Victoria Lord Howe Island and NZ were on Tsunami alert yesterday! I watched the unfolding events using tweetdeck – it was fascinating!

“The weather bureau says east coast beaches may experience abnormal wave conditions today after a tsunami warning was cancelled overnight.

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of New Zealand last night prompted the Bureau of Meteorology to issue a tsunami warning for parts of the east coast.” FULL ARTICLE HERE