Interested in sewing, gardening and preserving, with a strong focus on sustainability.
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- 3 yr. ago
- Posts
- 38
- Comments
- 3625
- Joined
- 3 yr. ago
Electrical safety check will be happening shortly. Mr Woof is going to be very unhappy about this. I'm hoping the tester is lazy and cuts corners to get it over and done with. Electrical safety is important, but it's a brand new house, doing a full check seems a bit of overkill.
Edit: just realised how visible my underwear is on the clothes line. I've brought those in, I don't care if Miss Meow sees it but some random stranger feels a bit weird.
2nd edit: done already! Mr Woof had no idea what was going on but he was not happy about it. He gets so confused when anybody comes inside, he doesn't know whether to aggressively guard territory or welcome the new friend, leading to very confused behaviour. A lot of friendly waggles combined with angry barks.
It looks like my plan to use the govt. 5% deposit guarantee scheme won't work out. They make you use all of your savings, so I won't be able to keep aside enough money to do the maintenance (like restumping) that a house of the age I'm looking at is going to need. I guess it's back to paying mortgage insurance and/or asking for help from family. Frustrating.
I'm not sure praying to cat jesus is the best option. It is possible all of your problems are caused by too much attention from cat jesus, who thinks it's fun to keep knocking you off the shelf.
Maybe dog jesus would be better for this specific situation, dogs understand the importance of a good pack.
I've had a good day in the garden. Harvested the pumpkins, cut back the very exhuberant saltbush, planted the brassica seedlings and done a bit of general tidying up. It's amazing to think that just one year ago this garden didn't even exist.
I think you've inspired me. I wasn't sure what I was going to have for dinner, but I do have a lasagne in the freezer and I think I'm going to do that.
I added some craft into my plans for the day - working out how to cut down the oversupply of coles bags into little gift bags I can use for my excess produce. It took a bit of fiddling but I have now worked out a fairly simple way of cutting them down and folding them. No tape or glue required. I'm rather impressed with myself and am trying to decide if I have the skills and energy required to do a tutorial I can put online, because I think they are rather nifty.
There was just enough frost here last night to partially kill off the pumpkin vine, so today is officially pumpkin harvesting day. There are a couple of little fruits that were put out late that are still nowhere near ripe, hopefully there is enough life left in the vine to ripen those off before it dies off completely, but even if not it has been very productive.
Edit:
It's looking like a lovely day today (after a very cold start) and I'm looking forward to getting out in the garden. I've got a couple of punnets of brassicas to plant, weeds to pull and some mulch to put down. I also want to do a bit more work on establishing the edging of the beds and mow the grass. But tomorrow looks like it will be lovely too, so I can take my time and finish anything I don't get to tomorrow.
I think autumn is my favourite season, it has some lovely weather that is not too hot or too cold, without as much wind and bluster as you get in Spring. Plus you are winding down in the vegie garden and tidying up after the summer harvest season, so it doesn't have the sense of an overwhelming amount of work building up to be done like Spring does.
Ah, the eternal struggle of wanting to be precisely on time or a touch early to social events, whilst knowing everyone else will actually be a bit (or a lot) late and you'll just end up sitting awkwardly with the host if you actually arrive at the stated time.
I generally skip the snacks and head straight to the cold stuff. I usually find some decent frozen fish. Last time I was there they had frozen smoked salmon - not the thin raw slices, chunks of hot smoked cooked salmon. I have made a risotto with some and have plans to do a pizza at some point.
I read that as 'chocolate origami'. That would be a touch hard to fold, but very decorative.
That's what I'm thinking. But it will take a while to actually tee up finance etc. and then actually find the right spot, so I'll probably be poking at my decision like it's a loose tooth right up until everything is finalised. And then It's going to be a whirlwind of moving and planning what to do with the property and I won't have time to think about where it is actually located again!
Amusingly I'm currently living in an estate of bird names. In Ballarat area you mostly want to avoid the flower name streets in Wendouree. But Wendouree also has the most expensive property in the area around the lake.
Sebastopol where I am considering moving to is probably second on most people's list of dodgy places, but there is just one section of ministry housing and along the main road that seem to actually have some problems, the rest is just a bit poor. Which suits me perfectly, as it has let to a bunch of larger parcels of land that still have small unimproved homes on them which is exactly what I am looking for. I want a big garden, I don't want four bedrooms, two bathrooms, three living areas and 17 sheds covering every spec of land, which is what happened to most of the bigger blocks where people had the money to do it.
Melton's biggest downside is that it up with Rockbank to become a bunch of new suburbs no one ever heard of. The huge advantage of that is the suburbs creeping down towards the south stopped the weir being a great place to torch stolen cars, which a decade ago was Meltons main claim to fame (as far as emergency services go).
Realistically speaking there are no suburbs or towns I'd say are overall really bad. Where there is a problem spot it's generally at most a street or two, or isolated dodgy neighbours. I read a study a while ago that looked at the crime distribution of a bunch of areas and identified that there were crime 'hotspots' but they generally were no bigger than a block or two, and outside of those areas there was not much impact felt from it.
I do have the bonus information that comes from working in emergency services, I get to see a lot of things that are going on that most people don't, so that at least reduces the risk I'll get stuck with the dodgy neighbour.
The other one here is arsenic which is high in some areas due to the gold mining. I found some maps from the GardenSafe program where you can send in your soil samples for free testing and was able to identify that the areas of the inner east in Ballarat are the ones to watch out for - which coincides with the soil types I was looking at on another map. I'm likely avoiding that area because of that, as well as it being a bit more hilly - but it does have some beautiful leafy areas filled with historic homes that would make it a bit nice to live in too.
There are definitely some cheaper shops - multiple op shops, NQR etc feature prominently which is definitiely the sorts of shops I appreciate. The biggest crimes around here seem to be theft from/of cars that are parked outside, but that is happening everywhere.
Vicmap also has the overlays for flood, bushfire etc. and I've also been looking at maps of the soil type in various areas (as having a garden is a major thing for me). Ballarat also has the bonus issue of a major gold mine right in town, which adds issues like underground blasting, tailings dams and possible toxic dust/water runnof, plus there are unmarked underground tunnels which occassionally lead to surprise sinkholes.
It's quite challenging pulling all the information together. Unfortunately street view here is quite out of date for most areas - plus when the car last went through in 2010 a leaf got stuck to the camera and the entire area has the centre of the frame blocked out by that. It is on my way to work though, so I've been trying to drive down a different street every time to get a better feel for the area. I plan to take Mr Woof over there and spend some time walking it as well.
As far as I can tell most of the negative stuff is just prejudice from people who don't have any connection to the area and just denegrate it because its a lower socio-economic area.
I don't think I can get the secret until I actually moved there, but I'm guessing it's some sort of zombie virus spread through meth.
Whatever it is I'm sure it will be worth dying on occassion as the area has good public transport and has large house blocks which are still affordable. The great Australian dream's not available without sacrifice these days, and giving up the avocado toast is nowhere near enough sacrifice in the current housing market. Dying every few years or giving up a kidney seem like the going rate now.
Trying to figure out what different areas are like to live in based on people's online opinions is very challenging. The area I am looking at ranges from a really nice place to live (as long as you avoid a small problem area with housing commision flats) to an absolute hellhole where you need to sleep with one eye open and can expect to be murdered every couple of years.
Haggis with mashed turnip and potato, roast carrots, and some apple chutney on the side, please.