Category: At Home (Page 1 of 4)

Not-Quite-Total War

April 6, 2015 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

Our yard is seeing a lot of visitors right now, most welcome, others not so much. We’re currently winning the long-standing disagreement about who the bananas belong to (with protests from the rats) but I’m having unusual trouble in the leafy greens!

I’m not really into absolute destruction when it comes to garden nasties. My usual caterpillar control is largely laissez-faire, based on reasonable consumption, natural predation and a small amount of direct intervention. The main part of the strategy is just encouraging paper wasps to colonise the yard. These ladies carefully inspect the broccoli for grubs, then carry off what they find to chew into caterpillar pulp for their babies.

I had a reasonable deal going with the cabbage moth caterpillars; they keep their activities modest, I squish only those who make themselves impossible to ignore. Anyone else who evades the wasps is free to inhabit the vegetable beds (and is actually fairly welcome; I like their soft green colour and retiring nature). But these new horrors aren’t content to munch on a leaf or two; they gnaw their way down through the central bud and destroy any new leaves that try to form. They’ll even chew their way down through the bud into the stem and kill the plant completely!

Because these little beasts are safely embedded in the leaf buds, my wasps can’t find them. Even hand-squishing them is difficult, because at a touch, they wriggle backward in the most revolting way and drop further into the plant. No matter how much time Maddy and I spend crouched in the brassica bed with a pointy stick and a gumboot at the ready, it doesn’t seem to be enough. I’m reluctantly considering Dipel as a potential solution but…

The potential for collateral damage is just too high!

Dipel is an organic control method specific to caterpillars, so it won’t harm my other little visitors, like ladybeetles and bees. It also isn’t airborne, so if I put it on the vegie beds, it’s unlikely to escape. But Hawk Moth caterpillars (like that beauty above) are my favourite summer guests and the real reason why I grow grapes. They just aren’t something I’m willing to risk.

These lovelies inhabit the grape vines from about November on, and are almost at the end of their current munching season. While they may brandish a menacing spike on their back end, this is actually soft, floppy and entirely ornamental, as is the line of eyes along their patterned sides.

I love how fat and soft they are, the variety of colours they come in, and the way they pretend to be invisible, while plonking their podgy bodies on the slenderest of stems and dropping enormous, coffee-bean sized poos all over the back veranda. They’re one of my loveliest garden ornaments and as long as they need to use the backyard, I’m reluctant to do anything that might cause them harm.

That said, though, the cold weather is coming, and with it, my need to enlarge the brassica crops. I’m hoping that winter will solve some of this problem for me, but before then, I need my plants to grow! So, for now, I expect to spend a lot of time hunched over in the rain, digging out nasties to squash, with a damp dog as my reluctant company. Whether or not I will break remains to be seen.

What would you do?

Gem

Sweet Nothing

February 22, 2015 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

Our long break is over. I’m filled with shame for slacking off, but I’m so happy to be writing again (not to mention gratefully amazed that people are still coming by here!)

Through December, I was just too busy to write. Then, in January, I was spending time on some public health and community issues that didn’t really use up much of my day, but that did ever-so-slightly curdle my typing. Reading submissions that made me cross, coming up with solutions and arguments and wincing every time yet another yellow envelope popped up on my phone soured my mood so that when I did have some writing time to myself. . . I suddenly had nothing to say!

Life has still been good, it’s just that reporting on it has felt, well, kind of silly.

Who cares about my tomato chutney, Kin’s pottery wheel and Maddy and Fu’s détente? Is my crop of summer vegetables and the beetle on our fence really relevant to anyone? The internet is full of information. Why add my contribution when, really, I’ve just been doing nothing? I haven’t even been able to scrape together enough material to write letters to my friends!

So, since this “nothing” is what I’ve continued to do, why are we back today?

Because I’ve finished with submissions for now. I am instead wallowing in gardening magazines, recipes and Jackie French books and have almost caught up with all of my favourite blogs. In short, I’m immersed in material that inspires excitement and enthusiasm, rather than irritation and tedium. And do you know what?

It’s lots and lots of “nothings” very similar to mine. And I love it!

Pearl and Elspeth’s plans for another strawbale project are really exciting. Nana Chel’s summer garden is lovely to see and I genuinely couldn’t be more pleased about Katie and Reuben’s spare-room clearout. In the right frame of mind, “nothing” can be sweet. And it has completely overpowered any sourness I still had.

I love nothing! I can’t believe I forgot that! The big stuff is important, it’s true; trips and events, people met, goals achieved. . . all of that does matter. But it’s the little rhythms of our everyday nothings that make those big things possible, and that also keep our lives satisfying, happy and full. And, since I’m so eager to read about other people’s sweet nothings, then maybe, just maybe, it’s worth writing about my own!

Nothing is important. Nothing matters. And isn’t that great?

Wishing you nothing but the best (and the best of nothing),

Gem

November was….

December 8, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

November was green, warm and quiet.

We’ve kept close to home (as our photos show!) but there have been plenty of visitors, human and otherwise and a new furry family member to keep us busy. The garden is green and productive, with even more promise for the coming months, work is steady and the house is clean (and almost organised!)

Restfully busy, November was exactly what we needed.

To active tranquillity.

Gem

Say “Hello” to Miss Madelaine!

December 6, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

Last week, we added another furry face to our household! I’d like to pretend that Madelaine is a rescue dog (since we got her through a rescue organisation) but to be honest, a semi-Labrador less than three months old is definitely appealing enough that she doesn’t a lot of help to find a home. If her foster mother had been the unscrupulous type, she probably could have sold Maddy on, not just charged us an adoption fee that barely covered her microchipping and vaccinations (and can’t possibly have paid for her food and regular worming). Rescuers are definitely not in it for the money.

I’ve desperately wanted a pup for years and years, but we’ve known since 2007 that we’d be returning to Japan one day. Asking family to mind cats is one thing; dogs are more demanding. That means that sleepy little Madelaine isn’t just our newest family member; she’s a real symbol of our homecoming. And, with both of us working part time, it’s the perfect moment to introduce a new baby to the house. Because goodness me, babies are a lot of work!

Feeding, playing, grooming, etc are all fairly straightforward at this age. But toilet training is definitely an issue (2 a.m. generally finds me in the backyard chanting “Go pee. Go pee,” to a yawning pup) and getting other family members used to the situation is also a bit of a trial. Fuji, our mad, weird little cat is extremely unimpressed at the new introduction, despite all of Maddy’s best efforts to ingratiate herself. Thus far, grovelling, barking, whimpering and rolling around under Fu’s nose have all failed to impress. My housekeeping has suffered a little as well, with my office overrun by cushions and toys, while their smelly little owner snores under my desk. And we’re stretching our already-stretched finances a little further, since Madelaine is going to need her booster shots and desexing very soon.

Still, all new parents have to deal with these problems, don’t they? Whatever their species, babies are expensive, messy, time-consuming and take a lot of effort to fit into your household.

Unfortunately, not everyone understands that.

Summer is a terrible time for animal rescue organisations. The kitten-breeding season reaches its peak, adult pets are abandoned over Christmas by holiday-makers who can’t find anyone to care for their pets and, in the early months of the New Year, shelters are inundated with dog and cat surrenders from people who didn’t seem to realise that kittens don’t come toilet trained and that puppies need to be exercised.

It’s a horrible, heartbreaking period for the workers, who either have to accept that they will be euthanising perfectly healthy animals or that overcrowding will force them to turn some animals away, with no idea what will happen to them. Our local RSPCA has been trying to deal with this period by holding events at the shelter where people can meet the animals as well as by reducing adoption fees during periods of heavy occupancy.

https://www.rspcansw.org.au/images/popupImages/popupImage.png

That means that, if you’ve been thinking about adopting a new family member, now may be the perfect time to start checking out not just your local RSPCA website, but other local animal welfare organisations. The amount of surrenders over this period mean that it’s easier than ever to find the right pet to fit into your lifestyle. Both groups can help match you to the right animal and can give you lots of advice (and, often, financial assistance) to help you properly care for your new pet.

For example, if your life is too busy to deal with the demands of a puppy in the house, you might be matched with an older dog or a litter-trained kitten. If you work long hours, an adult cat, or even two might be exactly the right companions for you. Even if you live in a tiny apartment or have one room in a share house, all is not lost. They can fit you out with a guinea pig, a friendly rat or even a ferret like Esteban to keep you company!

Just remember, though, pets, even the perfect pet, require food, exercise, vet care, a clean environment and your regular attention. Even if you’re matched with the ideal animal for your lifestyle, you’re still going to have to make some changes yourself, because your pet’s needs are not going to alter according to your capacity to give. You may be sad, tired or broke; they still want walkies! If you don’t feel that you can adapt to anyone else right now, the time may not be right for you to adopt.

On the other hand, it’s not all work. Interacting with a pet isn’t nearly as demanding as interacting with another human and we manage that every day. And they will offer you their constant companionship, loyalty and unconditional love, even on days when you probably don’t deserve it. If you are sad, they will comfort you. If you need exercise, they will run with you. If you just want some company while watching T.V. or washing the dishes, they will sit on your feet and just be with you. Forget matching teatowels or a potted fern; pets are the best, fastest and most rewarding way to make your house a home. There is no other feeling of well-being that compares to a contented Fuji purring in our laps when the day’s work is done. And being greeted by Maddy’s funny, whiskery, little face in the morning brings happiness to the start of every day.

We love our furry family and are so happy to have them.

Gem

P.S. You can find the RSPCA Australia website here. If you’re in the Hunter Valley or Central Coast, here and here are some other rescue organisations. There are plenty more, if you google!

P.P.S. Internet troubles and Madelaine meant this post was late; we will still update Monday, as per usual. Meanwhile, check our our Facebook page to see what we’re up to!

Spring has Sprung (Away!)

November 23, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

Things are looking very summery this morning. The cat is melting, the grass is turning crunchy and the cicadas are already tuning up for what looks like it’s going to be a long, hot day. Our extended game of musical couches has made us pretty late to the party this year; now that we’re finally feeling like fresh starts and spring cleaning, the season for it is almost over!

But …. The jacarandas are still in bloom, our coastal evenings are still gentle and cool… the time for new beginnings is not yet completely gone. And that’s just as well, since there’s one very important new beginning happening on the median strip in the middle of a nine-way intersection near our house.

That’s a plover (Vanellus milus) also known as a Masked Lapwing, a mad, idiotic, insomniac bird found all over northern, eastern and central Australia. Plovers walk around and feed all day, then fly around and scream all night. I have no idea if or when they sleep, but it’s clearly only when no-one is watching.

You get the idea; plovers are very active birds. However that particular plover, spotted on the median strip a little over a week ago was, on first sighting, doing something that a plover simply does not do.

It was sitting.

As soon as our eyes met, the plover leapt up and hurried away as nonchalantly as it could. And I thought “Hmmmm……”

The next day, there it was again. Same place, same bird, same nonchalant trot from its seat. And I thought “Aha!”

With a quick look for traffic, I zipped across the road, up onto the median strip and there it was:

Now if that doesn’t say springtime, what does?

I have a certain amount of experience when it comes to spotting plover nests, but it isn’t as though they’re very good at hiding them. A plover couple will find or scrape a very slight depression into a patch of short grass or dirt, then the female lays her eggs in it. Kin and I spent much of September annoying the Clarence Town plovers by hunting down and inspecting their efforts.

The owners of those three eggs had carefully constructed their nest in a wheel rut in a parking area… in exactly the same place where they’d recently lost their first clutch to the back wheel of a ute! They were most indignant when my mother built a fence around it to prevent the same thing from happening again.

(Indignant or not, that fence did the trick. All three of those babies hatched safely and were last seen trekking about near the creek, with both of their parents in attendance.)

My intersection plover might not have actually built on the road, but she was still very close to it, so I didn’t stay and look at her nest for very long. She’d developed two broken wings and a terrible stagger and I was afraid she’d flap her way under a car if I upset her too much. I took one last shot, assured Mama Plover that her eggs were lovely and walked away quickly to let the poor thing calm down.

Her husband remained in the air and followed me the length of the block, then sent a sharp gargle back to his partner to give her the all clear. By the time I was back at my gate, Mama Plover’s broken wings had miraculously healed and she was sitting again.

Kin and I checked on them every day for the next week, and that watchful husband delivered a heads-up and an all-clear every time. On Tuesday evening, we were finally rewarded by this sight:

And then the next day….

And there were no more broken wings for Mama and Papa Plover! Both of them, swooped us, determined to defend their babies from the paparazzi. Plovers are known for aggressively defending their nests; male plovers even have spurs on their wings, all the better to drive off photographers. Kin and I both grew up blonde in magpie country, though, so dive-bombing birds are not a new experience and we managed to get our shots without anyone (us or the plover parents) becoming too upset.

The day after that, we decided to stay well away from the family, as the last eggs would be hatching. We knew that once they were all safely out of their shells, the family would no longer remain in the nest. Until they were clear of that busy intersection, we were not going to risk chasing anyone under a bus!

The family has decamped to a stretch of land near the railway line, so we’ve since been able to sneak up on them and check on the babies. I’m happy to report that all eggs hatched, all babies made it across the road and there are now four fluffy little pompoms running around behind their mother who, by the way, still views us with extreme suspicion. As soon as either one of us is sighted, she or Papa Plover give a sharp chiack! and all four of the babies drop to the ground, where they become invisible.

Well, almost invisible. He’s doing his best.

Our plover family might have brought springtime back to us, but my goodness they’ve made this last week anxious! Building a nest on the ground in the middle of an incredibly busy intersection and then leading your fluffy little stilt-walkers across those roads to another stretch of bare ground where their only defence is to pretend to be invisible at extreme risk of being stepped on… it just doesn’t seem like the best survival strategy. Especially since plover couples generally nest at the same site each year, so every batch of babies will have to face the same hazards!

Still, I guess it’s worked out for them so far; plovers are extremely numerous in Australia, and they seem to adapt quite well to an urban lifestyle. And our plover family is still trekking around with all of its members, so maybe Newcastle railway lines are a better place than they seem for a new beginning.

Happy springtime! And, if you’re walking to Broadmeadow Station, please be careful where you put your feet!

Treading lightly….

Gem

Luxury on a Budget: Afternoon Tea

November 16, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

I’ve said it before and I still mean it: When you’re trying to save money, luxuries have to come first. It’s not just possible to enjoy a little luxury while sticking to your budget; it’s absolutely essential. If life has no space for a bit of pleasure now and then, what on earth are you budgeting for?

There’s good news for your bank account, though. When it comes to enjoying a luxury, the thing itself is only part of the package. The main point is the quality of the experience. And the good thing about that is that it means you can have a whole lot of indulgence without spending very much. One happy little low-cost luxury enjoyed in Australian homes, schools and workplaces is morning and afternoon tea.

Japan understood the importance of teatime very well, changing the brew from hot matcha or oolong in winter to cold green or barley tea in summer, enjoyed with a variety of sweet or salted snacks. China and Hong Kong enjoy formal and informal teatimes, including yum cha, the ultimate tea break. South Americans sip volcanic mate, while India and the U.K. both enjoy their morning and afternoon tiffin with savouries and sweets (hence the Australian and New Zealander taste for the experience). Whenever you enjoy it and whatever you call it, when it comes to luxury on a budget, teatime is right up there with foot massages for pleasure and value for money.

Being Australian, Kin and I have always enjoyed our morning and afternoon teas, but we only started making an event of it during our first Japanese winter. Maybe being indoors so much caused us to try and make it a richer experience or maybe the frozen landscape so far from home caused us to invoke the spirits of our ancestors with their tin teapots, fruitcake, scones and blessed, blessed heat. Whatever our reason for starting, we kept it going all through that winter and now, two years later, we still haven’t stopped. No matter how busy or wretched the day, we always come together in the afternoon to enjoy a little oasis of peace and pleasant sensations.

Remember that word, please! PEACE is the point to your afternoon tea. This is an everyday event, so it’s not supposed to cause you any stress or problems. With peace in mind, here are a couple of my simplest, most reliable recipes for teatime treats:

(All measures are Australian and metric. I’ll include a conversion chart on the site soon, but for now, look them up here.)

Banana Bread

The simplest thing to make in the entire universe. I’m not even kidding; I have left entire ingredients out of this recipe before, and it still keeps coming up edible.

3 tbsp olive oil (or other vegetable oil) – 2 cups self raising flour
2/3 cup sugar – 3 eggs
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) – ½ tsp salt
4 large or 5-6 small mashed bananas

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease loaf tin and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs together until light and fluffy. Beat in bananas (if you’re using an electric mixer, you don’t even have to mash them, just dump them in one at a time and let the mixer squoosh them). Sift dry ingredients into the bowl and mix well. It should still be pretty liquid at this stage.

Pour mixture into tin and place in oven. Bake for about an hour; shorter if you like things heavy and moist, longer if you like them fluffy and light. Simple! Slice and eat hot, cold, toasted with honey or however you prefer.

Butter cake with passionfruit icing

Up until Japan, I baked my cakes in regular, round cake tin. Nagahama, however, had never heard of such a thing, so I wound up instead having to buy two tiny loaf tins and bake two tiny cakes …. which has turned out to be the best thing ever. I now get one cake to eat and another to freeze for the next time I fancy cake and don’t feel like baking (and sometimes when a woman needs cake, she needs it right away!) Other advantages are that small cakes get eaten quickly, even if you don’t have any visitors for a few days and they also make portion control much easier. Kin could happily eat an entire meal of cake, so he likes the small ones; for some reason, it’s much easier to cut yourself a small slice of a small cake than it is to cut a small slice from a large cake.

Butter cake (Margaret Fulton):

125g butter (half a block) – 2 cups self raising flour
¾ cup caster sugar – 2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla – ¾ cup milk
Pinch salt

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease your cake tin/s and set aside.

Cream butter with vanilla and sugar until it looks white and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time until thoroughly combined. Sift flour and salt together three times and fold into mixture alternately with milk, using a spatula or wooden spoon.

(I regularly skip this careful sifting and the cake still turns out pretty good, so if you’re in a hurry, just stir it up and go)

Dollop mixture into tin/s and place in oven. Bake for 30 minutes (twenty-five, if using two pans).

Icing:

1 cup icing sugar – 1 tbsp melted butter
2-3 tbsp passionfruit pulp

Makes enough for one of the little loaf-cakes, so if you’ve made a big cake, double up.

Using a spatula or a bread and butter knife, mix the lot together in a bowl, then spread it on top of the cooled cake. Too simple! I also often replace the passionfruit with whatever citrus is handy; use a few tbsp of the juice and grate up a few teaspoonsful of zest to mix through as well.

Sultana scones

Slightly more tricky here: If you want these guys at their best, you actually have to cook them at teatime. Scones are a teatime staple for a reason, though; they’re cheap, quick, pretty easy and bloody awesome. I like plain scones with jam and cream, but Nagahama sometimes had trouble providing these, so sultana ones with butter were a good mainstay.

60g chilled, chopped butter – 2 cups self-raising flour
½ cup sultanas – ½ cup milk
1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 200 C. Grease a baking tray or dust it with plain flour and set aside.

Sift flour into a bowl and then rub in the butter with your fingers until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Give the bowl a thump on your benchtop every now and then, to bring the big lumps to the surface. Stir in the sultanas. Make a well in the centre of your mixture and very slowly pour in the milk, stirring quickly with a butter knife until you have a dough. You may not need all of it, so watch out; if your mixture gets too sticky, you’ll have to dust it with a bit more flour.

This next step is where all recipe book authors turn out to be filthy liars. They will now tell you to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it until smooth. Do NOT do this, unless you enjoy eating grey, tasteless lumps. Instead, gather the dough gently into a ball, turn it out onto the lightly floured surface and then carefully fold and press it a couple of times until it looks like it’s fairly well combined. You may only need to do this two or three times and remember to be gentle!

Roll the dough out until it’s about two cm thick. Use a biscuit cutter or the top of a small water glass to cut scones from the dough (probably 16-17 of them). Place on the tray about 1cm apart and brush them with a little milk. Bake them for about ten minutes or until they sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom. Serve hot, with butter!

Even at 1/3 cup, these scones aren’t super sweet; I’ll add more or less sugar depending on how we feel. If they turn out to not be sweet enough for you, these scones are lovely with some honey or stewed blueberries.

Morning and afternoon tea are small, light meals, with the main focus being your chosen drink, rather than food. On working days, our afternoon tea is as simple as coffee for Kin and a pot of tea for me, with some little treat like a slice of cake or some good fruit or mochi. On non-working days we become a little more elaborate and along with our sweets, we also enjoy things like olives, devilled eggs, little sandwiches and other small, savoury items. The point isn’t the food, it’s the event; a period of stillness, pleasant sensations and happiness in solitude or in good company. Stuffing yourself with half a cake is no luxury at all; but slice of it with afternoon tea is an experience to savour.

Tea’s up!

Gem

Transition

October 21, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 2 Comments

It’s been a long hard, couple of months since I received that greeting from the ol’ home town. Unfortunately for us, that was only a harbinger of what would next be splashed in our direction. So where have we been, you ask?

Actually, most of you stopped asking about two months ago, but for those of you who still are (a surprising number) we have been suffering a low-level, first-world agony that a lot of people probably don’t relate to, but for us has been terrible. We’ve been homeless!

Not desperate, on-the-streets, sleeping-in-the-car homeless; first world, supportive environment, surfing couches homeless, and most of the past few months have been spent with my long-suffering parents in their tiny, five room miner’s cottage in the country. Neither of them complained, of course, but to suddenly have an adult child, her husband and both of the pair’s possessions stuffed into a space set up for two people must have been a strain. Especially since we couldn’t tell them when the situation was going to end. Luckily, in the country there’s enough room outdoors for even freeloaders to have some space.

But it wasn’t much fun, either. Home is very important to Kin and I. It’s where we socialise, rest and do a lot of our work. Normally, wherever we go, we manage to haul a bit of home along with us, whether we’re in a campsite, hotel room or a shared bed in a dormitory. While our friends immediately rush out to explore, we first spend an hour or two arranging and provisioning our base. When we left Japan, though, we packed home up and sent it away, cheerfully believing that we would unpack it at the other end in a week or two.

It’s been four months.

Strictly speaking, we moved back in a month ago, but that was the beginning of a three-week period that was just too depressing to blog about. If we weren’t at work, we were scouring dirt, mould and grease off every surface, in a suffocating miasma of hot water, sugar soap and cockroach droppings (a nightmare aromatherapy that is going to take a lot of time to recover from). Our best efforts, however, couldn’t exorcise the smell from the carpet or some of the wall stains, so we’ve been camping on a sheet of plastic on the grubby boards in our bedroom, waiting for the landlord’s magical army of carpeters, builders, painters and other wizards to perform their glorious work. Thus, our possessions have remained in their boxes, awaiting rediscovery.

Now, much mending has been done, a new, terrifyingly pale carpet has been laid, and while, there is still a lot of carpentry and painting to be done, we have moved in some furniture and tentatively unpacked a couple of boxes. Kin has (mostly) set up his computers, I have (mostly) sorted out my kitchen, we have both (mostly) shelved our books and we’re feeling much more at peace.

And, while unsettled, things haven’t actually been bad. It was lovely seeing so much of my parents (and, briefly, my sister!) and we’ve still been working on things that make us happy. Kin, using a desk he made from two upturned cabinets and a wardrobe door, has finished his Maned Wolf motion study.

And I, once the worst of the house was scrubbed away, flung myself into the garden and have been happily weeding, planting and consuming copious amounts of dirt and red wine from a teacup. Our first greens are already sandwich-sized!

Not terribly impressive until you see what I was working from.

See? I’ve been busy!

We’re busy and tired, and the house is still stuffed with builder’s rubble, ripped garbage bags and battered cardboard boxes. But we’ve managed to recapture just one or two little spaces that make the place our home, and the energy and peace that gives us both has to be felt to be believed.

To home and happy spaces!

Gem

June Was….

July 6, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

Apologies for two gallery posts in a row, but it’s that time! We’ve bid farewell to June and are gearing up for a frankly horrible July… so we’re lucky we have such wonderful things to remember!

June was lovely meals, trips to Kyoto and wanders at wonderful Fushimi Inari; this time with Gem’s older sister and family who came to visit early in the month (our last visitors in Japan!) Nagahama has resumed regular warm-weather routines and we received more visits from our friends, the rat snakes. Kin’s school also had a much more exciting visit from sumo champion Hakuhō Shō and several members of his stable. And, of course, June was Gem’s graduation ceremony to a slightly higher grade of tea ceremony practice.

June was warm, family-filled and very, very busy… but was still nothing compared to the madness that will be July. Wish us luck, everyone!

(Gem will add a more complete gallery to our Facebook and Flickr pages later in the week!)

Gem and Kin

Fuss and Budgets

June 22, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 3 Comments

By Gem

Enroute is having money worries! Saving for a house has seen us put away a respectable stash, but now we’re soon to leave our jobs, leave the country and start taking some very big chances…… and that means we’re nervously facing the fact that our savings are likely to take a kicking over the rest of 2014. There are tough times ahead, we’re a little anxious, but we know it’s time to make some hard decisions.

So we spent lots of money and bought a camera!

You WHAT?

When we were young, Kin and I both had our own special ways of being terrible with money. In our defence, please note that we’ve always paid our rent and bills and never had our phones cut off. But once these essentials were out of the way, our spending habits were atrocious.

Bad Spending – Gem-Style

My dreadful money method was to meticulously plan where absolutely every dollar should go and to deny myself pretty much anything I wanted, pretty much all of the time. This allowed me to accumulate some savings… which were then decimated at intervals when the rigid discipline became too much and I went temporarily buy-crazy.

Result? Despite the constant threat of nest-egg annihilation, I never seemed to obtain anything I wanted. (Buy-crazy shopping is not well-considered shopping.)

Bad Spending – Kin-Style

Kin, on the other hand, would frantically spend anything he earned or received as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, he never thought very hard about what to spend it on, so his money would just evaporate, leaving him with nothing between pays.

Result? No savings mean a person has very little money at a time; and that means that Kin never got much that he wanted either! To make things worse, he also ran up some emergency debt (although not very much, thankfully; one of the good things about being in a low income bracket in your twenties is no-one wants to lend you money!)

So. Neither of us had much money (although I had slightly more than Kin) and neither of us were able to have nice things (although Kin had slightly more than me). Day to day, life was okay, but we were both just treading water; neither of us were ever in a position to improve things for ourselves.

Then, one day, we met, we moved in together and we combined our finances. And we combined our opposing ideas on how to manage those finances. And together, we developed our most important household rule:

Budget Luxuries FIRST

This isn’t the disaster it sounds like! The key words here are different for each of us, but the rule helps us both.

For me, the keywords are “Luxuries FIRST”. I like a good fait accompli and am happy to simply sit on money I don’t yet have a purpose for, so I will stick to a spending plan, even if it means having to scrape every last coin out of the couch, make scratch meals out of pantry scraps and home-grown vegetables and wash the dishes with soap. Because of that, it’s actually quite easy for me to sacrifice after the fact, especially since I already have my lovely indulgences to make me happy!

For Kin, who could happily get through the lot, the keywords are “Budget FIRST”. This means that before he spends any money in a pay period he has to think about what he actually wants, not just this month, but in the short and long term future. Actually setting aside physical containers to hold money for different purposes can be helpful for this sort of person. For example, you might have one envelope with money for restaurant meals, another with money for a new mattress, and so on. Doing things this way means that there is no large pool of cash for you to draw from to dilute the sacrifice; every time you spend, you will have to decide which area is going to take the hit. Watching your holiday, bicycle or pretty dress dribble away a few dollars at a time is a wonderful way to focus your attention on unnecessary spending.

If you don’t like keeping cash in the house, having separate bank accounts for your different kinds of spending can work (this guy has a lot to say on that topic, if you can avoid the advertising) but you really need to stay on top of fees and taxation.

But please remember: We budget luxuries first out of our household SPENDING money. We do NOT prioritise them over our rent, bills or savings. If you or your partner just flat-out can’t be trusted right now, this would be a terrible idea for you (you need to think about more basic goals, like these or these). There are also a lot of low-cost ways to obtain your pleasures, and I’m looking forward to talking about them later on!

Where do you fit luxury into your life? Where are you prepared to sacrifice and where do you indulge?

Happy (frugal) hedonism!

Gem

Look Who Came to Visit!

May 18, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

It’s spring alright! The rice fields are green and full of joy (for frogs) and the nights are dark and full of lurve… also for frogs. As well as having bats to watch, every evening we can also listen to the chorus of croaking from all directions.

Of course, all of this activity means that other creatures are becoming active too, including this fellow:

This is a Japanese rat snake (Elaphe climacophora) that I spotted while watering the beans. It seemed pretty determined to work its way up the canal, so we figured it was heading out to the big rice fields to find frogs like the one above. Being Australian, I immediately yelled for Kin to grab his camera and he raced up the canal in pursuit.

Unfortunately, his model did NOT feel cooperative. Rat snakes are quite timid (and, apparently, very bitey) so it decided to try and pretend that it wasn’t there and wait for the camera to go away.

Kin was a little disappointed but, as it turns out, he didn’t need to be! When I went for a run along the same canal, I found another friend for him to photograph!

Another rat snake! They must be everywhere at the moment! This one seemed a little less timid than the first and allowed Kin and his camera to get quite close. It was proceeding in the same direction as the other fellow, so there must be something attractive (to snakes) in that part of town.

It seems that Japanese people respond to rat snakes much the same way as Australians do to carpet pythons, so our friends should have a safe journey, wherever they’re going. It was lovely to see these beauties and we wish them well on their travels. It’s also fun giving our U.S. friends the screaming heebie-jeebies with these photos!

Is anyone interesting out and about in your area? Have they come to say hello?

We’ve just made a Flickr account, so I’m gradually uploading our photos there (including our Facebook albums). If you want to see more snake pictures or others (soon), please come and visit us!

Gem,