Jen & Tam Down Under: Permadykes

Nice idea, but it has to go..

Our friend Stuart from Britanny (arch blogger at http://www.permacultureinbrittany, on visiting us in Lewes, made the remark that once we are underway in our new life down under, we could call our blog "PermaDykes at Blue Knob". There was much guffawing all round, until we realised this would probably result in an excess amount of spam, and other such ingredients from strange gentlemen in long brown overcoats. However, I like the name so much, it would be a shame not to coin it, and am risking all to publish this chapter under heading of the same name.

Since our (ad)venture has begun, I am constantly amazed to find myself taking on the, shall we say, more testosterone driven tasks. For instance, one of our latest tasks is in the living room. We gleefully demolished two hideous breeze block (Southern Hemisphere read Besser Block) units by the fireplace (see pic) and our fantastic weekend workers, Tis and Peter, demolished the fireplace surround itself.

Tis & Peter, Jen & Milly by the dis-mantelpiece fireplace.

The units were used not only by humans as table tops but also runways by mice, and served little more than heat barriers from the much needed fire. When the temperature gets down to 4deg C, these monstrosities of bad design/taste had to go! Now there are 2 rectangles of missing floor that require being raised to floor level. Much as we are loving the 70’s dark brown sunburst floor tiles that make up the living room area, nicely blending into 70’s light brown sunburst floor tiles that make up the kitchen area, we have opted not to use these for the infill (funnily enough) but are opting for a quick fix of concreting these rectangles in requiring sand, gravel and cement (yes we could do mud bricks, or “sawment” or any manner of eco-alternatives, but we’re entertaining at the weekend and need a solution NOW! )

There is usually an unspoken agreement between my wife and I, about tasks needing to be fulfilled. So, it was natural that I should be the one to get the trailer (borrowed from our co-op down the road), get the premixed sand and gravel, with 40kg bag of cement, from the Mill (our local farm suppliers), bring the trailer load back home, learn the art of trailer reversing, and dump the load at the allotted spot. Naturally, I would be the one to actually mix and lay the concrete. I mention this all in such detail, because Jenny was the one to go to college to study Forestry, including the art of trailer reversing, chainsaw use and maintenance and brushcutting. In our first week here “we” bought me a brushcutter just to enable us to walk to our front door without fear and last week, not only did I get to tow a trailer, “we” also bought me a chainsaw so I can go about the estate knocking trees off for firewood. Hmm...

Not to be outdone, Jenny has a mower given to us by our friend Ian in Brisbane, who never wants to f**king mow another lawn ever! It being winter, she luckily has only had to mow once. I have just heard of a friend in Brighton who had to be admitted to hospital after mowing his albeit rather overgrown lawn, with an acute attack of predictive text gone wrong resulting in an accute attack of 'Gayfever'... Talking the gay talk, I notice that Los Angeles has finally allowed gay marriages, and an 87 and 83 year old couple of gals have finally got hitched, although they had difficulty seeing where to put the ring ...