Revival of the Dawn of the Lawn of the Dead

September 2011: It LIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiives.

Since my last look at the state of the lawn in April, things have changed.

Not radically, but progress has been made. Unfortunately, the last satellite photo from near map was in September (don’t they know my need for aerial photography of my house is IMPORTANT? More important than whatever dark deeds took their satellite away from photographing my house, bring it back I say!).

Even so, when you compare April to September you can see the better coverage and new greenness of lawn (I can certify these are NOT weeds) in areas previously more moth-eaten than grandma’s fur stole:

Compare the pair

September’s photo is not as lush as July’s, but then July did have a heap of weeds taking root and obfuscating the issue:

July: Unfortunately this lushness will disappear once someone gets their weeding moves on

Slowly but surely the lawn seed I spread over the bald patches has taken root and I have tiny new lawn areas in spots that were previously bare. If they hold out through the mega-hot that is January and February, and I manage to even out the level of the lawn through the year; no promises but I might have a lush lawn for spring next year!

Pastariffic

Behold the wonder of fresh pasta

Le Amazant Monsieur H and the Divine Miss K gifted me with a christmas present right off my list – a pasta maker!

I haven’t yet found the perfect pasta recipe – the one I followed (2 cups plain flour, 3 eggs, 1 tsp EVOO, 1 tsp water) turned out dough that was a little too dry, so I had to resuscitate with another egg and some more olive oil. Nice pasta, but I don’t recall the quantities of oil that I added, so no “learnings” to carry over. I do have half of the dough in the freezer (there is only so much pasta one can eat in a week), may make lasagna sheets or ravioli with that, who knows?

First attempt - I think this pasta cut might work on dough that's a slightly thicker setting

Learnings from the first batch of pasta: it is important to flour the pasta after you cut it, otherwise it will clump when you cook it or store it, leading to wodges of pasta that don’t come apart as cooked.

Future plans: I do want to get 00 flour which is featured in other recipes and see how that works out for me. And I am curious about the pasta produced by a wholemeal / plain flour mix…plus I think a small clothes airer would be a good investment, so I can make and dry my own pasta!

New Years Houseolutions 2012

Every good new year's should either begin or end with a boardgame

Housie new year!

Being as it is now 2012 (and I am having a day off from re-pointing), it’s time to make a progress report on my New Year’s Houseolutions from 2011 and my other list of things to do and make some new Houseolutions for 2012.

2012 House0lutions

• Buy a 5.4 x 5.4 Sunshade in charcoal and install over paving at front: to protect car and to shade house
• Get some storage for laundry (Hello Ikea’s Lerberg, I be looking at you)
• Continue to revive front lawn:
  • Topsoil and level
  • Reseed bald patches
• Finish front garden bed:
  • 3 more pots of bamboo
  • Some more medium height plants (I have yet to decide what)
• Restore more freecycled furniture
• Continue re-pointing
• Woodchip front verge to make it tidier

I have to take continue collecting more freecycled furniture off that list because unless it is something that totally needs to be rescued by me, I am out of room in the garage until I finish a couple more projects.

Some other goals that are optional and will probably not be achieved in 2012, but one can live in hope (and carry them over into 2013 and beyond):

• Plant front verge with drought resistant plants that attract pollinators and/or are native bush tucker foods
• Big pots for driveway, to plant fig trees and pomegranate bushes
• 2 recycled chest of drawers for either side of my bed
• Shelving for garage
• Get stainless steel + sailing wire trellises for out the back and plant with passionfruit
• Solar panels: to make use of abundant resources and for guilt free electricity
• Grey water system to water lawn

Stool pigeons

I managed to time my expedition to Ikea during their birthday celebrations, meaning they had some nice plywood stools for $10 each instead of $15. Save $5 per stool, $20 if you buy 4 – who can resist that? Not me!

Twins!

So now I have 2 stools to sit at each end of my dining table, meaning I can drop my handbag on them most evenings…and that I don’t have to turn my house inside out to collect chair-like objects to seat dinner party guests. YAY!

Leave a light on for me

Pawpaw ointment and notebook conduct an interrogation of the suspect.

As you probably realised, I am a little picky, which has made choosing the perfect lamps for my bedroom a bit of a challenge. Once I find the lamps I like (must.have.matched.pair), I usually find they are discontinued when I finally free up funds to purchase them.

Discontinued, or beyond reasonably and pragmatically expensive or…just wrong because even thought they were angled desk/task lamps in a nickel finish they were not the right shape, colour or right shade of nickel…or they were  just…not right. I may not always be exactly sure what I do like, but I definitely know when it’s a “no” or a “not in my house, sunshine”.

Luckily for my picky-ness and my budgetary constraints, I  discovered while checking the Ikea site that they made a specific desk/task lamp in nickel. And at $39.95, getting two of them was a reasonable proposition. Hells year.

So now I have two lamps and that special righteous joy that comes from the perfection of symmetry and not losing sight of your aesthetic principles in spite of the challenges presented by product availability, range and pricing.

Matching

Happy HipsterMAS

It’s that time of the year again. The time to crack open a bottle of champers and decorate the Christmas tree. This post is a little belated as this year I managed to decorate my tree on the 1st of December, rather than the night before Christmas.

This year, as with previous years, while the rest of the world is strewing garlands of fairy vomit multicoloured tinsel around like it’s the morning after fairy spring break, I am more measured in my approach. The Christmas Elves are going to have to improve tinsel technology significantly before I let its lairy morning after, winged little whore-ass into my house.

I bet you can you tell the sight of tinsel fills me with that special Christmas spirit and joy to all personkind

Shades of grey

This year, I went for a metallic grey themed tree with decorations ranging from silver through to pewter with tiny little pops of white in the form of some ceramic snowflakes I picked up off etsy:

White against dark faux green, one of the best colour contrasts ever

So a Happy Christmas to you, lets hope Santa’s list shows that you have been nice, not naughty this year…if you have tinsel on your tree or in your office, I bet you are looking at it slightly differently now

All a question of technique

Having spend most of the back of the house honing my re-pointing technique, an image of the work in action might help to illustrate how I am working:

Re-pointing in action

The coffee fairy took this photo while I was working on the front of the house.

The wood rectangle I am holding is the float trowel, it has a hand grip on the other side. The small trowel is actually a paint scraper. Once you have filled the area you are working on, let the mortar dry a little (I find another icecream containerful of mortar somewhere else is about the time needed) and then use a brush to clean up and smooth your work.

The best house-related fun you can have for 8 bucks

Front of house, to the left

At $8 for a 20 KG bag of cream mortar, re-pointing is definitely cheap DIY thrillz, but still very satisfying. I have used up 2 bags already and I bought another 2 bags over the weekend so I could get started on the front of the house.

On Sunday I did most of the left hand side of the house and started on the right. There is still the U in the middle of the house, but I will do that last. As I go along I am getting cleaner and more adept at it, which is satisfying…and means less clean up too

I still have some finishing touches to do at the back

• Sweep up
• Get DIY Dad to remove drain pipes so I can repoint behind those

But those can wait for a while.

The drain pipes will probably be left until the every end as pretty much every rain water pipe needs to come off so I can repoint behind it.

More territory gained

 

Recipe: Thai Influenced Burger

Burgeriffic

Before you read further down this post, I should warn you that these burger patties and the resulting hamburgers are quite addictive. There is some magic in the combination of beef, garlic, ginger, coriander, spring onion, fish sauce and sweet chili patties along with salted cucumber ribbons and more coriander, all of which are enclosed in a fresh sesame seed bun that renders the final product more addictive than cocaine.

I should know, I have made two batches since Saturday and it is only Tuesday. Plus I plan to make more in the very near future…

This recipe was inspired by Mr and Mrs Rule-Britannia (who now have a little baby Rule-Britannia, btw!). They brought some thai burger patties along to a picnic and inspired me to consider what would I consider the perfect combination of flavours in a Thai influenced burger patty.

Ingredients
Makes 3 patties

• 250gm beef mince
• 1 heaped tsp minced garlic
• 1 heaped tsp minced ginger
• 3 spring onions finely sliced
• Handful of coriander finely sliced
• 1-2 tbsp sweet chili sauce
• 1 tsp fish sauce
• 1 egg
• Breadcrumbs (you do this by the feel of the wetness of the patty, so I can’t give an exact measure)
• 1 lebanese cucumber
• Salt (1 tsp)
• Fresh bread buns, buttered (avoid hamburger buns, go for a proper roll)
• Coriander sprigs
• Peanut oil (1tbsp)

Put the beef mince, garlic, ginger, sweet chili sauce, fish sauce, egg, coriander and spring onions into a bowl and combine. It’s easiest if you use your hands. You should end up with a slightly wet mix, so start shaking in breadcrumbs gradually and mixing through until you end up with firm but pliable mix which you can form into patties.

Cut the lebanese cucumber into ribbons using a vegetable peeler and sprinkle the salt over it (this is to draw alot of the moisture out). I salted my cucumber while it was still on the board:

Salted cucumber

Once you have formed your patties, heat up your peanut oil in a fry pan and then put in the patties. It takes 3-5 minutes for each side to cook, so leave them a minute or two and then move them around with your spatula to make sure they aren’t sticking.

While your patties are cooking, put a layer of cucumber ribbons on your bun along with some coriander sprigs *(and maybe some pepper if you are so inclined).

Then when the patties are browned on both sides, lay them on the bun:

Assembling the masterpiece

Close bun, cut in half if you want to and the eat. Enjoy – these are so good, there should be a law against them.

NB – I did want to put lemon grass in these, but mine jar was passed its use by date and I still can’t bear to cut the beautiful bounteous one I have growing in a pot (it’s so pretty and lush), so I did without. But I shall make them again, oh yes I will, my preeeeeeecious (sorry, just finished a Lord of the Rings Extended Version marathon).

I reckon these would be absolutely bangin on a BBQ.

Re-pointilism

I have progressed further with my re-pointing. It’s not perfect and it’s certainly not finessed like federation tuckpointing, but I know I am going to render the house so I don’t need to be as pristine as all that.

And now that I have a bit of a knack for it, I can actually go faster which is excellent. I have now done all the back of the house barring a 1 metre strip towards the far end (behind the lemon tree) and barring underneath the drain pipes (DIY Dad needs to help me remove the drain pipes for that bit to be finished):

Still needs a clean up, but that is one Sunday's worth of work right there

Things I have discovered:

• Icecream sized containers are the best for carrying mortar about – you may have to make more quite often but it means the mortar won’t haave dried out by the time you reach the end of it
• Perfect consistency is 4 mugs mortar mix to 1 mug water (with perhaps another 2 tbsp or so of water if needed)
• Wear gloves, the thin latex gloves and change them often (or lose a layer of skin…or 3)
• Diamond shaped trowels are good for mixing
• A small flat head paint scraper is the best nifty tool for getting the mortar into the joints
• A float trowel (large, rectangular) is very handy too, use it as a palette
• A thin piece of dowel is good for pressing the mortar in to deep crevasses in the wall to make sure there are no air bubbles and your mortar is compressed.

Technique

I use the float trowel like a palette. You dump mortar onto it (as much as you need) and then move it level to the course you are repointing and flat against the brickwork.

Then use the small paint scraper to shift the mortar into the cracks until they are full. Even if the mortar falls off the wall, your float trowel should capture most of it (conservation and meaning less clean up). You can work quite quickly this way.

Because the float trowel has a long and a short side, you can shift it around – sometimes deliver mortar off the long side, sometimes off the short side; dependent on the obstacles around you.

There will still be awkward areas (around pipework, behind round hot water heaters and in other tricksy areas where you can’t get the float trowel in), for them I balled up the mortar in my hands and pushed it in, using the scraper to press and level it.

Not a professional but a gifted amateur

All in all, it has taken me about 4 days, over 2 years to do the back wall of the house. But now that I have the knack and am a bit more confident, I reckon I will try and get it finished before Christmas. Ideally I will spend the next couple of  Sundays on this until it at least the back and the front are done but we will see how we go. If I can tick most of this off before it gets too hot to work through the day, that would be awesome.

I calculate it will be another 5/6 days to finish the front (larger area with the U in the house,) and maybe 1/2 days for the side…and then there is the clean up. There is always the clean up…