Household budgets make me shudder. I did my last one in 2020 and look how that year turned out! When I ran my consulting business for 20 years I was hugely busy and also super organised. (What do they say about giving important tasks to busy people?!) Quarterly reporting was…

I’m cooking up a storm in the kitchen since the arrival of my new stove with the big oven and 5 burners. It’s that time of the year when the salad spinner goes into hibernation and the heavy cast iron pots come out to play. I thought I’d share a…

Two threads weave together. The first thread was from two conversations I had this week. One was a pricing conversation with a carpenter. The other conversation was with a friend about her concerns about parenting and grandparenting in 2021. The second thread was coming across a book about the art…

Let’s talk heart health. It is estimated that over 5% of the Australian population had a condition related to heart disease in 2017/18 (i.e. stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure.)  There were more than 1.2m hospitalisations for coronary illness in 2017/18, that’s 11% of all hospitalisations. Indigenous Australians have heart…

Julia Richards has travelled with me and Viva70’s story for nearly 2 years and I am so grateful to this dear friend for all her expertise and wisdom as a medicinal herbalist. Thank you Julia. You have been our most regular and much loved contributor and we couldn’t walk down…

It’s moody, humid and overcast in the Central Highlands today. The sort of weather I associate with the pre-Christmas season. I like it. It doesn’t have the roar of summer sun and the battle to keep cool and keep new plants alive. Today is gentle. The perfect time to walk…

Another sensational article from Julia Richards, our dear friend who runs a herbal medicine practice  in Yorkshire. Thank you Julia…..Great article and a quiz to take as well! It’s a really good reminder that rest is more than sleep. Why you need seven types of rest With the ups and…

It’s the perfect storm for creating anxiety and fear, particularly here in Melbourne at this time, but also across the world. A summer of ” unprecedented” bushfires. Then an ” unprecedented” Covid-19 pandemic for which there is no cure. A predicted ” unprecedented” economic disaster and images of  Australians in…

” There is nothing older than not wanting to grow old. Our world presents us with a disastrous image of old age. We are afraid of dying badly, of ending our lives alone, unloved, perhaps dependent or suffering from dementia. Instead of confronting this fear, we ward it off by…