This weekend.... natural skincare and Glandular fever....

It's been a busy weekend for me, I have spent all day yesterday and today at a natural remedies and skincare course, making medicinal vinegars, herbal wine, tinctures, etc, and then today making up yummy face creams, scrubs, massage balms, lip balms etc. Had a great time, but  I will touch a little more on that later in the week with photos etc. I have just gotten back from taking Toni to the hospital, she has been quite unwell for a few days, and her glands have swollen to an absolutely huge size, and have gotten much worse today still, and the swelling has now spread to her jaw, which is what was worrying me, as I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night with her having breathing problems. She had blood tests yesterday, and is due to go for an unltrasound tomorrow. The hospital accessed some of the blood tests from yesterday, and it appears she has got glandular fever. We are still waiting for one of the blood tests to come back to 100% confirm it, but everything so far is pointing to it, they are 90% sure that's what it is. Even the lymph glands on the back of her head have swollen! I took her down to the Wesley, and I can only say what a great hospital they are,  the doctor spent so much time with us, accessing her blood tests etc for us, and fully explaining absolutely everything, and answering all of our questions with such detailed answers. It is quite expensive to go to their emergency dept, but having spent many, many hours in public hospital waiting rooms over the years, it was well worth it. Unfortunately, for glandular fever, there really isn't anything they can give her for it, we just have to manage the pain and nausea with medication. She is suffering quite badly with nausea and headaches, so I think she's going to be in for a tough time with it all.  Anyway, I've finished my cuppa now, and I'm starting to feel pretty tired, soI'm  off to bed.

Permaculture course day 5

Day 5 was all about "cultivated ecology" ie: vegetable gardening.  The morning session was spent as a general question and answer session on vege gardening, and everyone had a chance to throw out a topic that they wanted to know more about relating to their vege garden or vege gardening in general. We also had a look at the "Mandala" designed vege garden, which is a permaculture designed keyhole, circular type vege garden. I can see so many advantages to this type of system. It will mean re-designing my gardens here, but I knew that was on the cards anyway.  There were food presentations just before lunch  on kang kong and cassava. Jeff did the presentation on cassava, which is so versatile, and he made a yummy cassava cake...it was really nice, and had a rice pudding, custardy type taste and texture. He also did some in the oven and made a fritter out of others. These will definitely become an addition to our garden. Tim did the presentation on Kang Kong, he made it up into a stirfry, this was also really nice, and can be used as a leafy green in stirfrys or in salads, again very versatile, easy to grow and tastes good to boot. It is quite similar to spinach, and I liked it much better than pak choi. The thing that I like about the food presentations is that I am trying food I have never heard of or tasted before, and it is opening up my eyes to the vast array of food available out there, that is much, much easier to grow than the standard vegies we've eaten for years as our standard daily menu. I think a cooking course might be on the cards after this utilising all of these types of foods. In the afternoon we got dirty in the gardens! We constructed a no dig vege garden, which is basically building up  composting layers on top of your vege garden and planting in to compost into this layer. This is obviously no good for root vegies, but fantastic for leafy vegies, and builds up the organic matter in your vege garden. This saves back breaking digging in your vege garden. This method is also fabulous for growing potatoes in. After this was a bit of revision of the day. So another informing, educational day. Next week is part 2 of water and trees in permaculture. I will be late for next weeks class as I have flowers arriving for weddings, and these need to be unpacked and regfrigerated before I can leave home for the day. I am really looking forward to the bus tour coming up in a couple of weeks where we go and visit other permaculture farms, I think this will be really inspiring. Tomorrow I go and do my skin care course that was postponed 3 weeks ago and Tafe. It teaches how to make skin care creams, shampoo and conditioners out of natural products.  I am really looking forward to this.