Monday 21 November 2011

Recycled prayer flags




Recycled t-shirt prayer flags
What do you give a friend who is a twin soul, for her 40th birthday?  A little thought, and hey, why not twin prayer flags??
So I set about this week, creating my gift for Tangiahua (that's her Maori name).  A few old t-shirts cut into equal sized squares.  I decided to keep the ideas simple, so I chose 5 qualities to focus on - peace (it's what we all want), love (makes the world go round), respect (of one another, the earth and our culture - the picture is Maori), life (celebrating our time here) and gratitude (for all we have and are).
I cut out the names of the qualities on laminating plastic, then stenciled them onto the squares with fabric paint.  A few designs sewed on by hand, decorative embellishments and they are ready to be hung.  One for me, and one for my special friend.

Tangiahua's prayer flags
This week has seen tremendous growth in all my little tomato plants!  Wow, I find I have to pinch out their laterals and tie them up every 2nd or 3rd day! It never ceases to amaze me how tomato seeds have such incredible will to survive our compost bin for over a year, and then sprout up all over the garden in the strangest places!  Between pavers, under trees, in the pathways.... I call them God-planted.  I sow my tomato seeds with such care, prick them out into pots with compost, plant them out, stake them, pinch out their laterals, tie them to a stake for support................. God does no such thing and yet His tomatoes produce prolifically, unaided or attended!  Thus, we usually have such a glut of tomatoes.. I still have a few bags of frozen ones in the freezer from last summer!

We have been enjoying our little Lady's Finger bananas - well worth the space bananas plants take!  Creamy, smooth and super-sweet.  They even taste great on a piece of toast, smeared with honey and almond butter, sprinkled with sesame seeds for good measure!  A highly nutritious snack when on the run.  I have harvested the last of our Globe artichokes (though 2 new little bushes may yet produce a few new flowers) - we celebrate our last meal tonight.  That's the joy of eating seasonally - you eat your fair share and then go onto the next thing just as you start to take that food for granted!  Same with the asparagus - still harvesting the spears, always such a treat!  They are also nice to eat raw - great in salads - taste like peas.

Our broad beans are probably doing their last dash too.  They are a good source of protein, before our runner beans start to fruit.  But oh, what a labour of love!  Shelling them and then skinning them (the outer skin is super tough) takes the patience of Sister Theresa!  The epitome of Slow Food.  Not your meal choice when in a hurry!  I have found a good solution to the tedious job - get your teens to shell them while watching television!  
The last of the citrus are being harvested, amidst a mass of newly set, heady-smelling flowers.  What an intoxicating experience, I can't get enough of them - no wonder the bees are in a feeding frenzy around the citrus trees at the moment!  The feijoa trees are in bloom - and the birds are pollinating them.
Saturday's harvest - spring onions, fire-cracker radishes, broad beans,
oranges, bananas and artichokes

Our home-grown, spray-free, organic strawberries!
On Saturday morning, a local church had advertised earlier in the week, that they were holding a market of  used goods, food, tombola etc.  So off we set, tongue in cheek, "to find that elusive something that we never thought we needed until that moment we set our eyes on it"!  Well, imagine my sheer delight at discovering a dusty old infra-red lamp for the grand sum of $3!  I truly have wanted one for many years but they are so expensive, I have never committed to buying one!
Infra-red lamps can be used for a variety of healing - including sore muscles, wound healing and back ache.  Yeeha!  My son has been unwell and lying in bed for 2 days has translated into a sore neck.  So after a quick neck massage, he very skeptically sat in front of the infra-red lamp "but it's just a hot lamp!" for about half an hour.  Not so skeptical afterwards!  He claimed (with great surprise) that it was much, much better!  Here's to a host of infra-red healing!  3 cheers to recycling!  Hip, hip, Hooray!





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