Green and Thrifty

Over the winter I have been drying orange peels on the wood heater. They make the most marvellous fire starters, as they are full of oils, and they make the house smell lovely as they dry. Actually, they generally get slightly scorched when I dry them on the fire, but I figure they will get a lot more scorched when I use them as fire starters..

And look at my new kettle! I have been hunting for a second hand stovetop kettle for ages, and was just about to give up and buy a new one when my friend Katherine found this adorable whistling kettle at the op shop. Actually, it is more of a shrieking kettle. When it boils it shrieks like a toddler having a temper tantrum at the supermarket, and it makes me laugh every time. I keep the kettle on the fire for endless cups of tea.. it never gets to shrieking point on the fire, but burbles away happily to itself. I pop it on the gas and it comes to a shrieking boil in a few seconds. It is very companionable, it's like having another pet :) When I am not using all this lovely free hot water for cups of tea I periodically take the kettle outside and pour the nearly boiling water on the weeds attempting to grow between the pavers in the courtyard. Nothing discourages weeds quite so much as a kettle of boiling water.

When the fire isn't on I am continuing to use the vintage kettle I bought a couple of years ago. Several months after I bought it, The Boy accidentally killed it by neglecting to cover the electric fuse mechanism thingy with water. But then a few months later I found a spare fuse in an op-shop, and The Boy bought me another jug at Christmas time, so I have back ups. I am not sure that this is strictly thrifty or green as I am sure it would be using a whole lot more electricity than a modern kettle, but it gives me so much joy. I love the simplicity of it. It is literally a jug, with the most basic electrical mechanism attached. I was reading a book recently, written in the 1960s in New Zealand, and the author mentioned 'plugging in the jug' to make a cup of tea, and I remembered that phrase from my childhood. These types of kettles were mostly gone then, except from church kitchens and old people's houses, but the phrase remained.

The girls and I made a bean trellis. When I moved in here one of my fences was a wire and iron dropper one, which was not at all dog proof. I had it replaced, but kept the old fencing as I knew it would come in handy one day, and it has. I plan for it to be dripping with green beans come summer. As you can see I did not do anything so tedious as measuring matching spaces between the poles..

I have been removing plants from the strawberry patch to decongest it a little and have transplanted them to make a new strawberry patch. The first little self-seeded lettuces are beginning to pop up, so I transplanted them to a safe place next to the strawberries, so that they won't be accidentally weeded or stepped on. The first self-seeding baby rocket plants have popped up among the garlic, so I will leave them there for a while to enjoy our first baby greens for the year. I am so excited because it is nearly Spring and there are jonquils and daffodils out, and the next door neighbour's plum tree is in blossom. There are bees! Spring is so thrilling!

What green and thrifty projects have you been up to this week?