Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • Should be sleeping

    Tomorrow, I am getting on a plane and flying to Sydney, to attend a brand event with my sponsors for the Blogopolis, Kellogg’s. I’m pretty excited about this, but excitement seems to manifest in weird ways for me. Namely, procrastination.

    You see, I’m always so worried that something will go wrong at the Very Last Minute, leaving me unable to attend an event – so I try hard not to think about it, not to look forward to it and finally (the worst one) not to plan for it.

    I am good at procrastination. In fact, I think it’s probably likely to be my secret superpower.

    “Able to run around screaming like a headless chicken AT THE VERY LAST SECOND. Can ignore jobs that need doing up until an HOUR BEFORE. Forgets to plan everything and then FREAKS OUT.”

    I’m sure that would look perfect on my resume.

    Procrastination is why, this morning, you could have found me in the garden pulling weeds, transplanting strawberry plants and planting peas and beans. Not, say, doing something sensible like making a list and packing my bags.

    It is also what left me running around like an idiot this afternoon, trying to work out where my grey skivvy was, whether my skinny jeans would be okay for the plane and what on earth was I going to wear on Thurday for the actual Event.

    Sigh.

    I suppose everyone has to have a skill and this is mine. I only wish that it could have been a better skill, like organisation, or the ability to knit three jumpers at once, or even better, turn lead into gold.

    Now those would have been skills to be proud of.

  • How to grow garlic

    I try to grow garlic each year, because I prefer home grown garlic to shop bought garlic. Garlic I harvest myself is always fresher, less likely to go mouldy, lasts longer (see: fresher) and I always feel like I’ve been really productive when I’ve got my garlic plaits up and hanging.

    We’ve been living here for over three years now and I’m only just getting the garden into a semblance of a rotation system. The “big” garden failed entirely due to chooks and a lack of nutrient in the soil – but with a layer of hay over it and the chooks scratching the hay and grass out, it may be ready to have something planted in it next year.

    Sprouted garlic under mulch

    The greenhouse failed, due to wind and a general lack of ACTUAL strength, able to stand up to you know, ACTUAL WEATHER.

    But, my small garden has been working quite well, albeit messily because I haven’t weeded it, I’ve just mulched it and ignored the edges.

    Last year, I planted a little square of garlic and harvested around 15 bulbs. I hated that I didn’t have lots. LOTS is always better than some. (Some being better than none, but nothing beating LOTS.)

    This year, I went wild and bought 2kg of sprouted garlic cloves and planted them all in the garden. They’re just starting to sprout up through the hay now and I couldn’t be more pleased.

    How to grow garlic:

    Find youself some sprouted garlic.

    Some people use proper seed garlic, but I tend to just use green grocer bought garlic and leave it in my fruit bowl until the shoots appear. I’m pretty sure people will tell me that this is a terrible way to do it and supermarket or green grocer garlic won’t grow properly, but I disagree. It works fine, for me.

    Planting:

    Once your garlic has sprouted, plant it sprout side up in loamy soil, at about a depth of an inch. If you’ve got a large amount of green shoot, leave it above the soil, otherwise cover the entire thing.

    Plant garlic in the middle of winter:

    Garlic likes the cold (I’m in Tasmania, we have lots of cold) and I usually plant around late June, early July. I think I remember being told to wait for the shortest day to plant garlic, but I’m terrible at keeping track of the shortest day. BUT, that said, I have planted garlic in August before and it’s done quite well – I just harvested a bit later than normal.

    Garlic hates weeds:

    You will need to either weed your garlic regularly, or do what I do and mulch heavily around your garlic plants.

    Mulch:

    Once my garlic has sprouted and I can see the tops through the dirt, I cover the entire garden bed in mulch, to protect the shoots and keep weeds at bay. If I’m being lazy, I mulch the entire bed at the same time as I plant the garlic. It works just as well, either way.

    Watering:

    Keep the ground and mulch moist, but not terribly wet. You don’t want your garlic bulbs to rot.

    Harvesting:

    When the tops are about knee high (depending on your height – if you’re a toddler, you’re aiming for waist high tops) and are starting to brown off (usually by the end of summer) then you can harvest your garlic. I usually use a pitchfork and a lot of care to do this.

    Then I wash all of the dirt off and plait the garlic into strands, to hang in the kitchen, while wishing that I’d planted more.

    You can never have too much garlic.

    Sprouted garlic under mulch

  • Huh, would seem that the Jordan River is a little flooded

    We’ve had quite a bit of rain here lately – enough that I am feeling a little cabin fever-y and my children are, despite all of our best efforts, climbing the walls a little bit.

    But now, instead of just our paddock looking like a giant puddley duck pond, the Jordan River has decided to get with the program and flood.

    Of course, in the scheme of things, this is minor flooding, BOM tells me that the levels are set to reach their peak this afternoon and then start dropping and no one’s house is in any sort of danger.

    It does make for pretty photographs however.

    And curious sheep.

    [All photos taken with my 300mm lens. The flooding is terribly unlikely to get any higher and we would need an awful lot more rain to raise river levels enough to reach us – rain that isn’t predicted.]

  • Now the recovery starts. Living with Ehlers Danlos

    Dislocated left collar bone - photo taken in mirror
    Dislocated Collarbone

    I walked all over Melbourne last week, with my teeth gritted as my shoulder and ribs dislocated, trying to ignore what my lower body was screaming at me. I am pretty sure it involved expletives. It does appear however, that if you need to do something badly enough, you can force your body to do it.

    Unfortunately, three days of late nights, early mornings, lots of walking, laughing and sitting – it all takes a toll. I am pretty sure I wasn’t making any sense when people spoke to me on Sunday night, waiting to fly back into Hobart.

    The crash after forcing my body to keep up with my mind is usually swift and brain numbingly dull. I stop being able to walk any more than the bare minimum and my stamina for doing anything drops to basically nil. I spend a lot of time laying down with a book and a child snuggled under my arm.

    Bendy joints don’t actually take too well to being overused and this time, I forced myself so far that I’m exhausted even writing this post (even though I want to) and everything has been a little neglected.

    Case in point: I had to remove the hoses from the back of the washing machine today, to get rid of a blockage of sticks and leaves in the cold water intake. Half way through removing the first hose, I was curled up foetal on top of the washing machine. Nathan removed the second pipe, while I flushed the first one with a spray bottle. Getting them back on again left me  exhausted. To be clear, I am talking WASHING MACHINE HOSES. Not running a marathon.

    Once I’d finished, I sat down on the bed to eat with the children, and woke up two hours later, with my pillow imprinted on my face and both wrists dislocated from where I had tucked them in to my front and then rolled on them.

    Yay me.

    Being chronically unwell manifests in a variety of ways. My relationship with food has changed and as much I adore food, I now choose food that I know won’t make me throw up. Nothing overly spiced, light, clear soups, mild flavours. All very boring in the scheme of things, but more fun than vomiting in public.

    I think eating whatever I want from a restaurant menu is one of the things I miss the most. That said, I am becoming very acquainted with what a good consomme should have and the one I ordered at Movida Next Door while I was in Melbourne was absolutely divine.

    I can tell that it is going to take me a few weeks to recover from the hell I put myself through in Melbourne and if I appear to be suffering from narcolepsy, or if I’m not about on twitter, you know why. There are only so many blocks you can walk and joints you can dislocate before everything rebels and the choice of coping or not coping is taken away from you.

    Boo, hiss.

  • Nuffnang Blogopolis, the good and the bad #nnb2011

    I attended Nuffnang’s Blogopolis this weekend and I have come home with some thoughts that need working out in my mind, so LUCKY YOU, you get to read all about it.

    The bad:

    • There was no Welcome to Country. It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and I was a little stunned to realise it had been left out. I tweeted it and got a few retweets, so I wasn’t the only one who thought it was poor form to have been forgotten.
    • I knew a lot of the content being covered and while there were great points spoken about, I struggled to keep my attention on all of the panelists, all of the time. I found myself straining to hear some speakers, especially towards the end and I’m not certain if that was an audio issue on the conference’s part, or a brain shut down on mine.
    • It got really hot and airless at the front of the room and I had a hard time with that. I didn’t go back to my table after lunch, instead electing to sit up the back with my notepad and listen from there. The chairs were more comfortable there as well and I was able to sit more easily.
    • My painkillers kicked in a bit before lunchtime and I spun out. With the heat from the room and the headspin, I worried I was going to pass out or vomit. I didn’t do either of these things (bonus!), but I also think that my tweets probably stopped making sense.
    • Working with Brands, the session, made me incredibly grumpy. I’m not entirely sure what they thought they would achieve by telling bloggers to basically suck it up, be happy they were working with a brand and bend over backwards (or forwards) and do whatever it took to keep the client happy, but I know damn well that if I had to jump through the hoops that the Agency was talking about, I wouldn’t feel nearly as well disposed towards the brand at the end of it. I finished that session with a whole bunch of notes to take back to my sponsors on things NOT to do. So maybe it was worthwhile for that.
    • There was a lot of anti-Blogger sentiment expressed by speakers. I love wordpress and I want everyone to convert to it, but it was overt enough to even make me cringe. You don’t gain anything by putting 50% of the audience off-side at the beginning by implying that the platform they use is lesser. Being on Blogger doesn’t mean that a blogger is of less quality than their peers who are using self-hosted wordpress. It just means that the blogger has different priorities. And that is okay.

    Logistical issues:

    • The line for tea and coffee at morning tea was ridiculous and I don’t think the line was even half way through when the break finished. I desperately wanted a cup of tea, but took one look at the line and didn’t bother. I eventually got a cup of tea in the afternoon during the panels and I’m glad I did, the tea was excellent.
    • Also, and this is sort of petty, but the cupcakes were ridiculously dry. The icing was nice however.
    • The allocated seating worked well, for me, but only because I lucked out and had a decent table. I didn’t hear the same thing from everyone and so for some people, the allocated seating didn’t work. I think a better way to do it may have been allocated seating until lunch and then allowing people to move.

    The Good:

    • Michael Aulia of Craving Tech made me pick up my pen and take notes of what he was saying. His suggestions for speeding up a website were exactly what I needed to be hearing and so I thank him for that. I’m researching and implementing some new plugins as I type.
    • Darren Rowse of Problogger is a fantastic public speaker and I took notes through his entire speech, just so that I could report back for a few people who weren’t there. I like that he is platform agnostic and his line about “a small group of raving fans being better” than a bunch of traffic who is a bit meh resonated with me. I think that what he had to say made a lot of sense to everyone, regardless of niche.
    • The day was run to a military tight schedule and we didn’t run overtime, or end up cutting anything short. I thought the organisation that Nuffnang had done was incredibly professional and they did a great job keeping everything on track.
    • It’s hard to run a conference when you have a range of bloggers attending. Different niches and people who have just started blogging, right up to people who have been doing this for years. Some things didn’t apply to me, but I think there was probably something for everyone in the program.
    • I got to hang out with my friends, and I met some fantastic new people, whose blogs I will be visiting and familiarising myself with over the next few weeks. For me, this is always the best bit of any blogging get together.

    Finally, I would like to thank Kellogg’s for sponsoring me to attend this weekend and especially Karina from DEC Communications who was instrumental in getting everything done. Also Louisa at Brand Meets Blog for introducing us!

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