Water-saving: how-to fit water-saving aerators to taps

Posted by louisa on Monday 11 October 2010 in green | 0 comments

A few weeks ago, I found out that our local water company Yorkshire Water was giving away some water-saving gizmos to its customers. Our water isn’t metered here so we’re not interested in saving water to save money, but more interested in it from a green point of view — and I guess getting into the habit in case we ever do get a water meter fitted.

As well as a shower aerator, a pretty pointless thing for the toilet cistern and a four-minute shower timer (which I’ll use for eggs), we got two tap aerators and a fitting tool.

We fitted one of the tap aerators in the kitchen yesterday and we’re already noticing the difference. It doesn’t feel like we’re getting less water when we’re washing our hands etc but it takes considerably longer to fill a glass/the kettle – showing how much it’s reduced the water flow.

It was really easy to fit the aerator – you don’t need to turn off the water (well, you do at the tap, but not at the stop cock) and we didn’t even need to use the tool provided (I’m guessing it was a wrench type thing to unscrew tight bits).

Let’s start with a shot of water running from the existing tap – for comparison.

Start by unscrewing the very end bit of the tap. You might need the tool or a wrench if it’s tightly attached. Ours screwed off easily with just a bit of a manly grasp (not a euphemism).

Line drying – Petra’s peg airer

Posted by louisa on Saturday 9 October 2010 in frugal, green, making | 1 comment

One of my top 5 clothes line drying tips is to use a “peg clothes dryer thing” – it stops the little items taking up space on your main line and is easy to take inside if it starts raining.

Petra left a comment to say she’d made her own from “some electricity pipe, an old iron coat hanger, some rope and pegs”. I asked her to send a picture for inspiration for when I make my own and here it is:

How great is that! Simple but does exactly what it needs to do!

Thanks so much for sending over the picture, Petra!

New books in, old books out

Posted by louisa on Friday 8 October 2010 in decluttering | 0 comments

I went on a bit of a book buying spree one evening last week – a combination of Amazon new & used, and Abebooks. Unusually for me, all of the books were fiction – I think I’m subconsciously preparing for a winter of reading in front of the stove.

Six packages arrived one morning – our poor postman – and to make the most of it, I stretched out opening them over the next few days. I love opening parcels containing brand new books – the flatness of the pages, that fab new book smell – and compared to that, opening new-to-me used books is a more varied, often disappointing experience if the books are in a poorer condition than expected — but that’s usually fleeting and I’d prefer to have cheaper, used books than that new-book experience any day.

When I was talking about the hidden costs of hoarding a few months ago, I decided that I’d have a new policy when it came to buying books to avoid our (extensive) book collection spinning out of control: for every two books I buy, I have to get rid of an existing one.

So I got nine books in and this is my five out:

A couple of old fiction books, a judgemental poor man’s Louis Theroux book about the US, a how-to book on soft furnishings which I bought at the wrong end of my interest in soft furnishings, and a coffee table book on Art Deco artefacts/ornaments.

With Dan’s great suggestion for using Library Thing as a way to remember books rather than keeping the physical copies, I don’t have to worry about forgetting the fiction ones, so all these will be heading off to a charity shop soon!

Simple spicy smoked mackerel kedgeree recipe

Posted by louisa on Thursday 7 October 2010 in cooking, recipes | 5 comments

We had some reduced-to-clear smoked mackerel in the freezer so I decided to make some kedgeree for a quick but tasty dinner on Monday evening.

It’s a bit buttery, pretty spicy and quite, quite fishy – basically yum on a plate. And it’s easy to make too.

Lessons from our summer of growing

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 6 October 2010 in growing | 7 comments

So the summer growing season is just about over here. We’ve still got some chillis growing and ripening, and there is some winter-time veg still on the go, but the summer is just about done.

As our first summer in our new house, I always said it was going to be a year of experimentation and by mid-season, I’d already learned a lot and made a number of resolutions for next year. The last half of the season has added to that list.

Overall, it’s been a bit disappointing – I’ve learned from my mistakes and the quirks of this garden – but let’s start with some positives:

• Borage has been a big success. I grew it almost entirely as a bee attractor and it did its job well. It grew bigger and better than I thought it would, and while we didn’t like it, the chickens LOVE it. I won’t grow it in the same place next year, but I’ll definitely grow it again.
• We’ve had a lot more courgettes (& marrow) than I thought we’d get – I gave away some of the plants and they gave one or two fruits then died, but here, they gave and gave. Wonderful.
• We also had a lot of salad leaves at the start of the summer (later they became bitter, not sure why). We ate salad with both lunch and dinner almost every day for about six weeks – low effort, high impact, ace. I’ll grow more next year, from earlier to later.

Spotted – foxes and fungi

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in wild food | 0 comments

On our lunchtime dog walk today, the dog ran through the beck into the meadow – the steep hill of grassland a short way from our house – and stopped.

From the ridge at the top of the slope, two burnt orange foxes were staring back down at her – they looked between her and me, then ran off into the woodland between the meadow and our house. I wish I’d had time to take a picture – John’s yet to see any foxes around here and also, the contrast between their fur and the green grass was extraordinary.

Lily *needed* to thoroughly smell where the foxes had been so while she was busy with her nose, I looked for mushrooms. There were a number of different tiny bell cap type mushrooms around in the grass – I think the bigger one (which is about 10mm in diameter) is a brown bell cap (Conocybe Tenera), and the darker one is possibly a hay cap (Panaeolus Foenisecii). Not sure about the little one – possibly a baby brown bell cap?

I also spotted one of the biggest mushrooms I’ve seen around here – a Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) about 20cm in diameter. It had been knocked off its stalk and the gills were damaged – either by the heavy-heavy rain from the other day or by foxes wanting a trip.

Finally, I saw a couple of interesting bluey-grey mushrooms on the edge between the woodland and grassland. This one is pretty badly damaged so I brought it home to identify it – and I’m pretty sure it’s an Aniseed Funnel Cap (Clitocybe Odora) — the smell is really quite distinctive.

How to make a piggy bank/money box

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 5 October 2010 in green, making, meta | 1 comment

Over on Recycle This today, I’ve asked:

What can I reuse or recycle to make a moneybox/piggy bank?

As I say in the post over there, my first project needing a moneybox is to retrospectively pay for the automatic chicken pophole door we bought last week. But I’d also like other piggybanks to set aside money for/from other projects – I find seeing money building up physically in a pot has considerably more motivation impact than when it’s building up symbolically in numbers on a bank statement.

So any suggestions on what I can do?