downshiftme.com - downshifting from the UK to Nova Scotia, Canada

Podcast 65

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (16.3mb) or right click here for dialup version at 8.2mb.

Not podcasted since December… quite a winter..

January – snow
February – more snow
March – less snow

Horticultural happenings
- awards
- Skills Canada gold medal
- commissions
- business
- job

Our garden
- greenhouse
- soft fruit
- grapes

Home brewing
- beer
- wine

Immigration update
- medicals
- bureaucracy
- new 5 year graduate work permit

My job
- at the University
- website work

Animal updates
- Spencer
- Dylan
- chickens

Visitors from England next weekend

Bad Things
AJ – ticks
Matt – bugs

Good things
AJ – Twinnings Herbal Teas (wellbeing range)
Matt – living in the country

Podcast 64

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (11.6mb) or right click here for dialup version at 5.83mb.

2nd anniversary of our first podcast (not going to play it again)

63 podcasts later but bit out of practice.

Nice to hear people have come to us after we stopped weekly podcasting and they have listened all the way through - out of real time.

Winter
- Quite a winter - 5 storms (including last night) - last winter 5 in total
- 10cm last night
- snow most of December

Horticultural happenings
- passed semester with honours
- one more to go
- lots of houseplants propagated

Knitting
quest for the gnome
tree decoration
knitted our hats

Creeping Canadianisms
highway
gas

Immigration to Nova Scotia - we have PNP

People not always doing what they set out to do coming here
True of many downshifters
Adapt plans if things don't turn out exactly how they are planned

Bad Things
AJ – TV
Matt – snow

Good things
Matt – snow
AJ – snow

Christmas Tree

We spent last weekend selecting a tree. We found quite a few nice specimen but it seemed such a shame to cut them down. Then we found this whopper - the top 8 feet were great but it was stopping light to a few more spruce and rather nice white pine. We decided it would be ideal if we took the top 7 feet as a Christmas tree and allowed the others around it to thrive - woodland management you see :)

This weekend we went to retrieve the selected tree and I filmed the retrieval using the digital camera and posted below:

In praise of simple pleasures

Over the last few weeks I've found myself distracted by the strangest things; consumer electronics, vehicles, new possessions - distractions that I thought I was inured against in our new simpler life. Its been odd to find that I'm keen on a fancy thin television set, that I still mourn my old x-box and that my head is turned by a shiny red Ford Ranger. So you can imagine how relieved I was this week to rediscover an old distraction. Grasses...

The first snow of the winter fell recently and while I was out with the dog I noticed that two of my favourite grasses were poking out of the snow - still vibrant and a stunning shock of colour against the white.

Late in the autumn, I dug and planted a new bed in our Japanese garden, mainly to accommodate a lovely prostrate pine that I had been given - I had the happy thought of moving my favourite grasses over to complement the planting so I shifted my Japanese Blood Grass (Imperata cylindrica "Red Baron") and my Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens)

Black Mondo grass isn't actually a grass (it's a member of the lily family) but its dark purple almost black blades are grass like and beautiful. It is one of the loveliest things that I have seen.

Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to take photos, hopefully I'll remember next snow fall, but in true Blue Peter style here's a photo of the unfinished bed that I took earlier.

The Blood grass is looking a little sorry for itself now, but the Mondo grass is still stiff and perky in the chill November air.

My love of grasses has been reinvigorated by my study of them at college. I have been fascinated by the Miscanthus genus, the striking inflorescence and variety of blade colour, the soft nature of Pennisetum orientalis, and the sheer impudence of Calamagrostis acutifolia 'Karl Forster'.

The amazing differences in how they sit in the landscape fascinates me and I have plans to install a grass only bed in the gardens here at some point. Needless to say, when it comes to propagate these grasses at college, there will be a few small examples propagated for my own collection, (legitimately of course thanks to the generosity of my prop lecturer).

Anyone know where to get a cheap laptop hard disk?

Would you believe the hard disk on my 14 month old laptop has died?

Anyone know where I can get a cheap one of these?

Would this do? Anyone got any better suggestions?

Or this?

The Archers to be Podcast

Excellent news from the BBC. The everyday story of countryfolk, The Archers is going to be podcast!

This means I don't have to bother with downloading a real audio file using one piece of software and then converting it to mp3 on another piece of software so I can listen on my iPod on my way to work.

Good old BBC - you have made one Englishman abroad very happy.

Podcast 63

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (11.8mb) or right click here for dialup version at 5.9mb.

Why we stopped podcasting
Busy
Ran out of things to say
Spencer tries to stop the podcast
Was worried slightly we had “lost our way” with my new job

We are poor, we knit our own yoghurt and hats.

Didn't get chickens as we hoped to this year.

Got some great emails from people – people said they understood but would miss us.

Met some great people visiting
Welcome to Nova Scotia – Mark and Tania, Richard and Jane, and Flora and Larry

Harvest – potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini/courgettes, squash, chilli peppers, some berries.

Next year – carrots, parsnips, more potatoes, onions, more zucchini, berries – hoping the grape vines and kiwi survive.

Triumphs of the year - we can look back and give thanks

So settled
Survived the winter
Had some great produce
Great fun - spent time together
Enjoy walking the garden after dinner
New job meant physiotherapy on foot and filling replaced which came out in November
AJ learnt to can - chilli jelly, jam, chutney, pickle, salsa
AJ has mastered beer - Matthew likes the beer

Setbacks

Truck still dead – setback – bought car – on credit
Not grown as much as we would have liked
Money running out faster than we hoped

Downshifting is about finding your own path. Choose a different way of living.

We need BBC Canada.. Doctor Who, Torchwood, Spooks, Robin Hood, It's not Easy Being Green, Buildings that Shaped Britain.

Don't feel homesick but nicely nostalgic.

Found our house in a book.

The school was bigger than we thought. More outbuildings - like we thought.