About

Hi there!  A quick intro: I am a stay-at-home-mum with two kids and a patient husband living on a 1/3 acre lot in suburban Charlotte, NC.  I love our little piece of paradise not least because of the long growing season and relatively mild weather we are so lucky to enjoy.  When we bought the house the gardens were established but very generic and had not been particularly well tended.  Once the madness of moving had died down I quickly found myself looking for a little plot of sunshine to grow a few summer herbs, something I’d not been able to do in our dark condo in Cleveland from where we’d just moved.  I remember the basil that year grew to enormous proportions, a shocking size! and I remember being overrun with pesto and caprese salad trying to use it all up.  High class problems, I’ll admit.  But I had caught the bug. To grow my own foods, to harvest and cook with produce that comes straight from my own garden is not only cool and eco-chic but very very satisfying.  It turned out that I love to garden. 

My favourite flower is always the one that is blooming. This is a particular favourite of mine, the Festiva Maxima Peony.

Looking back I can see that I come by it honestly.  I grew up in country Australia where we always ate from our own vege garden and tended a few animals but it was my Grandmother who really instilled in me the value of homegrown, homemade, and homecooked.  She was an amazing woman, resilient, resourceful, thrifty.  She taught me how to knit, to crochet and sew, how to bake and to cook, how to preserve my own jams and pickles.  Her garden was gloriously filled with the most gorgeous flowers that the local garden clubs would come to see each year.  She also kept a productive vegetable garden, cooking and eating seasonally as you do when you grow your own food.  Recycling and minimizing your carbon footprint wasn’t a ‘thing’ it was just how you lived, not wasting anything, not taking more than you need, not making work for yourself.  I think of her often as I go about my day trying not to waste anything, to not take more than I need, to not make work for myself.

I love my little vege garden. The sunflowers make me particularly happy.

Just recently I learned that living this way, as my Grandmother had taught me, was a ‘thing’.  What I always knew as just being is now called Urban Homesteading.  It turns out that not everybody automatically knows how to do this stuff (really, I didn’t realise)!  Although I learned much from my parents and my grandparents I have learned more by simple trial and error.  Lots of trial and error!  But through my experimentation I have found solutions to many problems that frighten people away from trying a more sustainable lifestyle.  It’s not hard, but I know it can seem overwhelming to start.

Through this blog I hope to connect with other like minded folk who are bringing a bit of the country back to their urban lives, to learn from others who have gone before me, and perhaps to inspire some newbies who are looking at dipping their toes in to a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Welcome to Greens, Eggs and Cans!  I hope you stay a while and join me on my Urban Homesteading adventures in the Suburban South.

Strawberry fields forever.