The Sustainable Renter 2011 No. 1 #sustainability #renters #foodgardens

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I am back - I think, I hope, we'll see.  I have tried to simplify the look of my blog. And, perhaps, there will be a change of tone. Perhaps a bit more reflective, a little less activist.  This is how my life is at the moment - much more reflective, much less activist.  A sign of increasing years. A factor of problematic health.  While I am an admirer of the hermitage and the desert, I am not one to cut myself off from this wonderful world, this creative planet.

I am reflecting this morning on a remark that was made in conversation after Quaker Meeting for Worship last First Day (Sunday) in regard to "growing your own" while living in a unit and that you can't really do it.   This reflection connects with a post I did on my Oz Tucker blog back at the end of 2008 under the heading of The Sustainable Renter. 

I have downsized.  I am now living - have been in situ for three months -  in a one bedroom unit in the centre of a heavily urbanised Melbourne suburb.  The unit is older - circa 1974 - priced at the lower end of the rental market.  My property manager says that it was a slum.  However, matters have been taken in hand to refurbish the property and install some better tenants.

I looked at flasher, more salubrious units than No. 8.  Even one with a bit of rear garden which could have been brought into production.  However, something kept me coming back to No. 8.  The kitchen was new, bathroom and laundry refurbished.  I like polished wooden floors - but what a pity the landlord didn't authorise a sand and a polish instead of leaving them well worn.  But this did not turn me off. I could live with that.  I'd probably get some rugs in due course.

What won me to No.8 is the fact that it is really a very private one-bedroom cottage.  I am at the end of a strip of eight units. I share no common wall.  I share only a carport which is on one side of my unit and provides distance between my unit and No.7.  On the other side of my unit is another carport.  This carport is of the old Aussie style - concrete slab, four steel posts, and a bit of corrugated iron on top.   Along the length of the unit, there is a path and a strip of lawn and clothes lines at the rear and, in front, driveway but with two semicircles of lawn which have some geraniums growing across the front walls of bedroom and living room.  Between the old carport and the fence is a scrap of lawn - mowed weeds, really - and a conglomeration of greenery (creepers, trees, vines) which forms a veritable bower but which, prior to my arrival, had been neglected and become overgrown and seems to have been used as a place for drunks who left their bottles and associated rubbish behind.  

In case regular readers have not picked up on this, one of my good points as well as one of my bad points is that I can see good things or improvability in just about anything, including human beings! I saw possibilities for me in this unit besides its convenience to the shopping district.

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The Portable Oregano Plant

This was part of my beginnings.  The oregano is looking a bit bedraggled at the moment as it always does at this time of year.  As we head into winter, the oregano has one long bad hair day. I get radical and cut it back to billy-o, as days warm I feed it with some compost and it gets back into the lovely lushness you see above. Yes, it is still in the same corrugated iron tub.  Along with the oregano has come mint from a wheelbarrow left behind at the last place - into a gleaned terracotta pot.  It looks beautiful.  I brought an old wheelbarrow, empty, which I filled with potting mix and I have spinach and sage seedlings there ready for transplant. 

Friends are an important part of all this. My friend Belinda turned up with unit-warming presents which included herb seedlings. What a doll! 

Needless to say, pots are the mainstay of the gardening renter.  Successful long-living plants in pots mean that when one moves one hasn't left a lot of work and maintenance behind completely.  The pots fill empty spaces and help to make the new familiar.  Admittedly, not everything is appropriate to pots - but an awful lot of useful plants are. Most precious to me are the herbs - because I love going to the back door with the scissors and getting these tasty additions to my evening meal.  This is a habit I don't want to give up.  

The longstanding companion to my gardening is that other G-word, gleaning.  Irrespective of the attitudes of local government, I glean from footpaths.  I refer to gleaning as the third oldest profession.  Gleaners are mentioned in the Old Testament.  This gives us a tradition and a place in the human community extending much further than local government by-laws.

Most of my pots come from gleaning.  A recent trip through an upmarket Melbourne suburb yielded some lovely, large Italian terracotta pots.  Well pleased with that yield, I can tell you.  The parsley is looking good in a large round, pedestalled pot with a decorative edge while the rocket seems to be well at home in the plainer,  modern, architectural style.  

One of the deficiencies is the battle for sunlight.  However, I am philosophical about this.  Every garden has its own micro-climate that the gardener has to get to understand and come to grips with.  I am digging up along the side fence in the small backyard - a distance of about four or five metres.  I have gleaned some concrete pavers to edge the garden but need a few more - so I will be investigating a couple of recycling centres.  

The old Aussie carport has become the potting-painting shed.  This is where my gleanings reside; where painting and potting happens.  I have plans - but that will wait for another post. 

For the green bower, I have gleaned a cane table with a smoked glass top.  I have discovered that The Big Green Box that sells hardware has a system, within its paint department, that is called MisTints.  Dented cans and tints gone not quite right reside here for reduced prices.  I have some selections which include some decking oil which brought up the cane table a treat - thus preserving it against the weather.  I have a couple of dining chairs with metal legs to sit beside the table.  These are gleanings from quite a few years ago. They will get a repaint - and Vinnies have yielded appropriate cushions to go with the chosen colours from MisTints.  

These are just some of the ways The Sustainable Renter can turn thoughts and yearnings for self-sufficiency into reality.  In the end, it is down to us: our choices, our imaginings; our efforts.  

Further reading:

Permaculture, Self Sufficiency  and Sustainable Living Books

Backyard Self Sufficiency

Hard Times Handbook on sale at The Bookshelf of Oz

Other self sufficiency books at The Bookshelf of Oz

How can I be prepared with Self Sufficiency and Survival Foods?

by Isabell Shipard

#Waste, Half-Pay Pudding, and doing a (budget) stretch #stretchingthebudget #ockhamsrazor

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Picture below from here

Bernadette Hince is a woman after my own heart. Yesterday's Ockham's Razor contribution enchanted me.  It is entitled Half-Pay Pudding, a recipe from Mrs Beaton, and, dear Networkers, I have found the recipe for you here.

Bernadette speaks of waste - all sorts of waste but the emphasis is on food waste.  From limited means to relative prosperity, our attitude to waste changes.  She speaks of her own experience of a limited income, a family to feed, and the money not stretching to the next pay-day.  A story familiar to many of us!

It puzzles me that there does not seem to be widespread take-up in Australia of Paul McCartney's call for a Meatless Monday. Why?  Australian eating habits have changed.  Few people would eat meat three meals a day,. seven days a week as in my grandmother's day (well, six days a week if you were a Catholic; six days a week for the six weeks of Lent if you were Anglican).  

Like Bernadette, my money didn't always last the distance until the next payday and I had to make the most of being creative with what was in the pantry.  This usually meant some form of quiche or egg and onion or asparagus concoction.  Usually, pastry was involved to make the meal more substantial and to make it go further. It's Lent at the moment, so it is a good time, spiritually, to take on the traditional meatless Friday or, if you are spiritually innovative, Meatless Monday.  

I live on money courtesy of Centrelink due to my great age and antiquity.  I live in a small cottage which I rent - a reasonably priced piece of real estate but I need subsidy from my family to keep things together.  So I try to stretch things - my bandwidth usage (peak and off peak times), petrol, gas, electricity, water, washing days, bathing, flushing, and on it goes.

I am vegetarian these days - and I commend this as a way to stretch the budget and still provide yourself with interesting cuisine.  I am fortunate insofar as I live in walking distance of two major shopping centres.   It is easy and convenient for me to shop competitively.  I can go to that low priced international chain first while picking up other stuff at my favourite one of the Australian supermarket duopoly and the Asian fruit and vege shop has some attractive offerings as well.  

I glean other people's hard rubbish.  I compost - although it only mounts slowly in a one person household.  I recycle. I do things up. I am happy to receive my sister's hand me downs.  Seldom find a fit in opp shops. I sew, I knit. I renovate, refurbish, and rejig furniture.  I garden.  When I was feeding a family, I made my own bread. Don't do that anymore.  The little I eat is not worth it.  And one of the two faith communities of which I am a member, has - each Sunday morning - day-old bread and other bakery items for the taking (small donation suggested) from an independent bakery.  

Yesterday, at Quaker Meeting, one Friend had come with some garden produce.  So I came home with a couple of handfuls of cherry and roma tomatoes and four green figs.  The tomatoes will become a salsa tonight to have with pasta.  The green figs have become a small bowl of jam.  As well, my daughter was carried away over cheap plums and grapes last week and gave me some.  I have picked at the grapes and there are still some left.  The plums were over-ripening quickly, too quickly for me to eat.  They have become two small pots of jam.They will keep company with the unfinished plum and cherry jam from my friend Belinda's kitchen. 

I loved Bernadette's attitude to food, friends, and hospitality - and my jams will go well with Lemonade Scones and Pikelets.  So, Networkers, if you have time to drop in when you are in the outer east of Melbourne, come and have a cuppa.