Instead of a wooden stake, my fingers fight these energy suckers as I turn power switches off to kill anything on standby.

Standby power is the energy some products use when they are turned off but still plugged into power sockets.

Commonly household products like TVs, video and DVD players, computers and stereos are left on standby when not in use. Often this power serves no useful function and is sometimes referred to as vampire power because it slowly sucks energy through an appliance when it’s not in use.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, nearly 11 per cent of Australian residential electricity use is used by standby power.

Also an Australian Greenhouse Office report found that in 2005 standby power cost consumers over $950 million each year and generated more than 6.5 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution.

My husband hooked up our TV, DVD, stereo and PlayStation into a power board so we just have to turn one switch off to kill all those vampires. This does the trick in our lounge room but there are still a few other rooms we need to address.

I have noticed a few standby switches, which automatically turn off standby power, coming onto the market. These sound promising and could help save some time.

Has anyone tried any of these standby switches? If so I would love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment below.

On a recent trip to a friend’s house in Thora – near Bellingen, we picked the hugest yellow button squash I have ever seen. It was bigger than my hand. In fact all the vegetables growing in my friend’s garden were freakishly huge.

Giant chillies, squash, zucchinis and chard. It was amazing and fun to wander through her garden picking giant vegetables – don’t think I will ever be able to achieve that in Sydney. Must be all the rain. We also spotted a lychee tree, which had the most delicious fruit I have ever tasted. Lychees are always good but I had never tasted one freshly picked from the tree. My son and I had a great time scavenging the tree.  A truly memorable experience.

My mother passed away at the end of last year after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and so to me the fig tree represents her, and is a wonderful reminder of mum in my favourite place – my garden.

It is a lovely little tree that I keep in a half wine barrel, which is surrounded by succulents.

I want to plant the tree in the ground when we settle in a house we know we will be living in for a long time. That way I can keep my eye on it but hopefully it will be ok in the barrel for now.

Sometimes I think the most precious plants in our gardens are not the ones that look the best or give us the most fruit but the sentimental ones – a pink frangipani from a good friend, an avocado tree to mark a new beginning or native lime to celebrate the birth of a child.

In this case my fig tree represents all the good things about my beautiful mother. Its short branches, vibrant lime green leaves and delicious fruit all signify my mother and her life on this earth. It is good to know she is resting my garden.

Not only have I spent the past week mourning my favourite tree but I’ve also been trying to think of an alternative one for Christmas. I am not really one for buying a new pine tree every year and I really didn’t want to buy a plastic one. I have bought a few living potted trees in the past but they have all died on me, despite my repotting efforts - so I didn’t want to do that again either.
Luckily, and I really mean luckily, my husband came home the other day with one from his office that they had used last year and were going to throw out. It is plastic but I figure it is being recycled, reused and rehomed at our place now. My kids have decorated it already, and are awaiting presents.

So dilemma over.

What sort of Christmas tree do you have? Have you got any good ideas for eco trees? I love this recycled plastic bottle Christmas tree in Paris. What an awesome idea. Creating something like this would take me years because I don’t drink many things in green plastic bottles. I guess it could be an ongoing project.

Well I did eventually but I had to dig around a lot and I accidentally broke up a few of the heads, which is not ideal. I also probably missed a few, so no doubt some are still underneath the soil somewhere.

Garlic is my favourite winter crop because it pretty much grows by itself. It takes a good four or five months but is resistant to pests and disease (so far) in my garden, and in Sydney’s fairly wet winter climate it doesn’t need much watering. I would highly recommend growing garlic but my number one tip would be to make sure you dig it up as soon as the stems die down. This way you can see exactly where each garlic head is under the soil, which makes it much easier to dig up. An obvious tip I know, but sometimes when life gets really busy it is easy to overlook the garden – particularly hidden bulbs.

The other tip I have is if you have a 17 month old baby and a garden bed full of baby tomatoes next to your garlic then keep an eye on her because she will eat all your tomatoes, even the green ones. While I was busy digging up my garlic I didn’t notice my daughter savaging my tomatoes. The ones she didn’t eat got squashed on the ground. Cheeky little bubba.

Never-the-less I love getting out into my vege patch and still manage to keep it full and productive. Rather than work too hard though, I love to make things in my garden work for themselves. That is why I really love companion planting, minimal fuss fruit and vege plus wild and self seeding plants. Also every-now-and-then I stumble upon a plant or process in my garden that is pure accidental genius. One such example, which I have been using for a few seasons now, is my lemongrass plant.

By sheer coincidence I planted a small lemongrass plant into the middle of my herb patch about four years ago. Since then it has grown pretty big. Every winter I severely cut back its dead grassy leaves so by spring it grows new shoots and long green leaves.

The lemongrass plays an important role in my patch. The cut back leaves provide excellent mulch for my new spring garden. I scatter this over a mixture of freshly spread compost, cow manure, and blood and bone, let it settle for a few weeks and then plant out my spring herbs and veges.

In the heat of summer the patch gets very hot and a lot of direct, burning sun. This is where the lemongrass’ next role comes into play - its leaves shade my veges a little – partially protecting them from the damaging afternoon sun. In winter, when the patch gets less sun, I cut back the lemongrass to let the sun through.

You can see in the picture the lemongrass cut back with its freshly spread dried leaves as mulch.

I never planned for this to happen at all in my garden – it was just one of those amazing things that grow and evolve through sheer accidental genius. Not genius on my behalf but on nature’s. Ain’t gardening a wonderful thing?

Has anyone else experienced accidental genius in their garden? Please leave a comment below.

Visiting John’s sustainable house in Gordon was more than just checking out rainwater tanks, solar panels and a vege patch. It was more of a journey through John’s concepts and philosophies in life, which all in some way focused on sustainability.John describes his house as “eco deco”, which is apt taking into account its many green features like rainwater tanks (can contain up to 20,000 litres), a concrete thermal mass floor, internal high thermal mass walls made from fly ash blocks, soil covered concrete roof with a native garden, double glazed windows (some with electronically controlled roller shutters that help regulate indoor temperatures), solar power PV system on the roof and a composting toilet.

Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a bush valley in Gordon – one of Sydney’s leafy northern suburbs - the house provides amazing views of the bush through most windows, balconies and the roof plus close experiences with wildlife like Kookaburras and swamp wallabies. The sounds of the valley and its wildlife provided a great backdrop to John’s entertaining tour.

Wildlife aside, walking though each room in John’s house was more like walking though a moment in John’s life or a concept in his brain.

For example the front of the house expressed his interest in Budhism, and Western and Eastern architecture while the entrance was influenced by his favourite architects. The living and dining rooms expressed his love of ecology while in the kitchen John told tales of his life growing up in the country. Even his light fittings had a tale. In his bath/laundry room we learnt about the importance of massage to the skin, while in a bedroom we were enlightened about tales of magpie sex and human overpopulation. Sustainability of our bodies through good back care was woven through John’s tales, which ended with us all trying out some saddle chairs and a chez lounge in the last room of the tour.

Luckily, we all ended up on the roof to soak up the amazing views into the valley and to discuss John’s skylights and surrounding neighbourhood history.

I’ve been to a few Sustainable House Days in Sydney and Canberra and while most houses inspired me a lot, John’s house tour was definitely the most entertaining and one I would recommend.

However, he only does a few small tours at specific times on the day so bookings are essential. Next year, if the house is on offer again try to book in quickly.

More information about Sustainable House Day.

I really like planting out seedlings when it’s drizzling in spring. Seedlings seem to establish themselves better in the dirt and there is nothing better than the smell of good, damp, living soil.

I have replanted my three garden beds with some of my favourites – Tom Thumb tomatoes, sweet basil, lettuce, rocket, zucchini and shallots. My son ate the first mulberry to turn black today, small limes are forming on my tree and I am ever hopeful for the flowers sprouting on my avocado tree.

My garlic is still growing nicely, the native spinach is thriving and I have no idea where I am going to plant my space saver pumpkins this year. There is no room left!

The bath was found lying around my brother’s property – he previously used it as a worm farm.

The water was collected in a tank and the heating came from burning reclaimed wood (see the ashes under the bath).  The air conditioning and heating – well that was provided by Mother Nature.

The worm farm is basically a bottomless bucket that has been sunk into his vegetable patch. The top of the bucket is level with the top of the vegetable patch’s top soil.My friend treats the farm like any other – he throws his scraps into the bucket and then covers it over. The soil around the bucket is amazingly rich, moist and full of worms. And as you can imagine his vegetables grow incredibly well in the soil. He does say the scraps inside break down quite slowly so he also uses another worm farm.

I’ve been thinking about setting up a similar system in my raised vegetable beds but instead of just one bucket, using four – one for each corner. I am also thinking of drilling holes into the bucket so the worms and their lovely juices can roam and flow more freely into the garden’s soil.

Has anyone else out there set up a similar system?