Slow Living October

Hello.

Another month has rolled around and it is time to reflect on my Slow Living goals and join in with Christine and the other lovelies for my Slow Living report for October.

There has been beautiful sunny skies and a much warmer feel

 to the days in October, summer is on the way!

Nourish - We have been eating our normal range of foods I think, with a greater emphasis on home grown vegetables as I was able to provide broccoli, spinach, snow peas , podding peas, lettuce, kale and celery from the garden this month.  We mostly ate these in raw form as the boys don't like cooked veggies, although I did steam the spinach, kale and broccoli, because that's how I like it!  The snowpeas have been a star performer, I have been weighing my harvest and in the last 2 weeks of October I picked 5.5kgs !! That's a lot of snow peas, and they are still going strong.  

The chooks are producing a steady supply of eggs, so I have been making quite a few meringues to use them up, and because the kids really like them.

Prepare - Haven't really prepared much this month, we tend to eat things fresh and give away any excess.  This is an area I should try and improve. 

Grow - Things have been busy in the garden, I have been cleaning out beds ready for spring/summer plantings. I planted potatoes, zucchini, climbing beans, and a bed of capsicums, and there are lots of seedlings in the hothouse ready to go into the garden - tomatoes, basil, perpetual spinach, cucubers, cantaloup, pumpkins, 3 types of beans, snow peas, kale and lettuces.  My first sowing of sweetcorn didn't work so I am going to have another go soon.  

Also planted sunflowers and zinnias which are all up. 

 The raspberries are covered with flowers and plenty of buzzing bees, Yay!

In the garden, it has been all about flowers, with the poppies, iris and roses all putting on lovely displays, not to mention the blossom on the fruit trees and ornamentals, just gorgeous!

Green - Um.... I've been picking my own bunches of flowers and using extra blankets instead of turning on heating for the few cooler evenings as winter leaves us, It does feel like warmer weather is on the way.  Also looked into window coverings for our back room to keep out the sun this summer and help keep the house cooler, we have no air conditioning so it can warm up quite quickly inside.

Create - Didn't get much interesting creating done in October. I am continuing on with my crochet along blanket, although I didn't make a lot of progress, and I have started a Christmas decoration for a swap I have joined.

Discover - In October I was reminded that it is important not to take people and relationships for granted, you just don't know how long any of us have on this earth, and things can change very quickly.

Enhance - I took part in Blogtoberfest as part of the blogging community, I don't do a lot to connect with other people on my blog, so I thought it would be a good way to try and rectify that, I had mixed results. I found it hard to fit in a post a day, without feeling like the posts were very boring! Must try and find more interesting things to post about! 

Enjoy - We had family gatherings, a birthday and I had a night out to a great concert in October.  Also enjoyed a bit of day dreaming about some new crocheting, hope to get onto that soon!

So that is my wrap up of October, overall the time flew by so quickly that I didn't really get to achieve a lot.  I am finding with more work days away from the house, I don't have the 'Slow' life I am aiming for.  I am certainly going to take steps to address this in 2013, I haven't really got a lot of joy out of the last few months, and I think it is just because I have been so busy.  I really don't think the extra bit of money is worth it, so am going to rebalance things in the new year.

Have a great day!