In the slow spirit of recycling, we thought we’d draw your attention to Swapatorium: A Journey Through Junkland. Sharing highlights from garage sales, it posts patterns, photos and recipes from the past so you can bring to life things like: a carpet collage (made from offcuts of colourful carpet squares), a 50’s knitted vest or a plant terrarium. It also runs retro food experiments - recreating recipes of yore (when food was hyper-coloured and moulded rather than cooked).

Another regular, Other People’s Photos, shows those stray pics found in a shoebox somewhere near the pile of books that when taken away from their familial context take on all sorts of meanings – limited only by your imagination.

We thought we’d share a pic from the Atlas of Orthopedic Traction Procedures (1954) found at the op shop recently. While it doesn’t really inspire you to lie back and put your feet up for the rest of the day, we have the instructions if you like.

Who’d of thought 13-year-old bread could be so sought after? Fatto a Mano’s organic sourdoughs are born from teenaged ‘starter’ that’s in its second generation – handed on from the previous owners (remember the revered Gertrude Street Organic Bakery?).

Starter is the essence of sourdough – a live culture that reproduces itself, and requires daily feeding. Fatto a Mano’s starter went with Sandra and Mario (bakers and owners) on their Christmas holiday and has had a few babysitters in its time.

There’s a little bit of starter in every loaf, be it: white, rye, honey and walnut or pumpkin and cumin. Each one is also a double-riser, left to rise for about 10 hours, then massaged into shape and left to rise for another…well...until it's ready. Sourdough is a fickle thing, loaves are left to rise for between 12 and 16 hours, sometimes 24.

The only thing fast about this place is the rate at which the produce leaves the shelves. Breads, pastries and sweeties are all fatto a mano (made by hand) and available Tuesday to Friday 8am-6pm and Saturday 8am-3pm.

Fatto a Mano: 228 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. Phone 9417 5998.

As if pottering about in nature noticing the butterflies wasn’t delightful enough, a slow coach recently found a colony of Eltham Coppers – a rare species that exists only in Victoria. Thought to be extinct for over forty years, the threatened Copper was rediscovered in a small bushland patch of suburban Eltham in 1986. They’ve since been sited in two other areas: Nhill and Castlemaine. This latest discovery, in Bendigo, raises hopes for the flourishing of the species.

Incredibly, the larvae of the Eltham Copper lives underground in the nests of the Notoncus ant and emerges at night to feed on Sweet bursaria – they’ll eat nothing else. The ants protect the larvae while they feed, with one ant attending to one grub at all times. That is until they fly the nest on copper wings from late November to January.

Keep your eyes peeled.

It’s fig season. Called ‘false fruits’, they are in fact encased flowers, which go unseen, unless the fig is cut open or you are a fig wasp. The teeny fig wasp (one species for each species of fig, which makes for a very specific plant-and-insect symbiosis) ensures the reproduction of the fig and itself by pollinating and laying eggs in the flowers. (Those crunchy bits in the ‘fruit’ are seeds and weeny wasps. Don't worry they're harmless.)

True slow ‘fruits’, figs are best eaten as close to the tree of origin as possible (they spoil easily) and as ripe as possible (look for the honey-like drop of moisture on the fig’s surface). Serve them fresh and full of sun – leave in the sun for an hour before eating. Whether you eat the skin or not is a matter of taste; fig-skin eaters also probably swallow watermelon pips (the black ones) and eat apple cores.

More than just good eating, these sensuous little bombs have significance the world over: Adam and Eve covered their bits with fig leaves, Buddha attained Enlightenment under a fig tree and Hindus believe them to be sacred. Go fig-ure.

Fellow word nerds, the Macquarie’s vote lines are open for 2007’s word of the year. From the list of candidates it would appear that the nation is catching up…er…falling back into line with the slow concept.

There’s artisan food (made by traditional, often labour-intensive methods and usually in small batches), food miles (a unit of measurement of the distance which a food product has to travel…as a measure of sustainable development), and a slew of ‘carbon’ terms, reflecting the collective consciousness for sustainable living.

And, our favourite, slow travel (1. travel conducted at a slow pace to enjoy more fully the places visited and the people met. 2. such travel seen as environmentally friendly through its lack of reliance on air transport) as an antidote for all those infomaniacs (those given to immediately attending to incoming messages, such as emails, text messages, etc) suffering from password fatigue (a level of frustration reached by having too many different passwords to remember), which contributes to the data smog (electronic information by emails, internet searches, etc, which, by its volume, impairs performance and incurs stress) that descends upon our days.

There are White ones, Yellow ones and Pink Pages; now there are Greenpages. This national directory links the householder and the corporate sector to businesses and services with a sustainable bent. Published online and in print, Greenpages’ 5000+ listings range from Pet Care to Insulating Paint; all meet GP’s green criteria, developed by a board of professionals across a range of industries.

More than an A-to-Z, well, an A-(for Architecture)-to-W-(for Weddings), its magazine format also features slick articles that are easy on the eye. The current Summer edition includes profiles of sustainable fashion designers (among them: Akira, Gorman and Vixen), and feature stories on bike culture and the Pacific island of Tuvalu, which is threatened by rising sea levels. Oh, and there are Eco-Horoscopes too. (Simone)

While kicking about in the dirt the other day, I uncovered a piece of that classic willow-patterned china (Exhibit A). We’ve all done it. But why is there such a prevalence of china chips in the ground? You’d think willow-patterned china was a commodity in the olden days, ceremonially buried for posterity.

Then, a shard of a beer bottle and a bread-tie (Exhibit B) unlocked the mystery of the willow-patterned china. It’s the detritus from picnics! The same patch of grass has probably hosted generations of picnickers, aeons of idle chatter and boundless joie de vivre.

Phone a few friends, tell them to bring a plate, and meet you under the magnolia tree near the Temple of the Winds rotunda at the Fitzroy Gardens, at the beach or on Herring Island.

And, no need to bury the Tupperware.

(Simone)

I did a radio interview recently where I was asked to list my favourite slow summer things to do. At the time, I was preoccupied with the best places to find shade and suggested, among other things, sitting beneath the 43-metre canopy of the magnificent Lady Loch’s oak tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG).

Someone from the RBG telephoned the studio later to say that the grand old oak actually fell on 15 November ‘07, exactly 118 years and one day after it was planted. It was sad and kind of lovely. And funny that I was recommending people sit under a tree that no longer existed. Hey, but at least there weren’t any readers of the Slow Guide sitting under the tree when it split and keeled over (although the publicity would have been handy!) The RBG hasn’t decided what to do with the wood yet. No doubt it will be highly sought after by artisans. What I’d give to have a kitchen table made from Lady Loch’s oak. Well, what I’d give probably couldn’t afford it anyway. It would be nice to think the RBG might commission a sculpture to be made out of it, a permanent presence in the gardens. We’ll see.

Anyway, I guess it just goes to show we should enjoy these things while we can. Seize the moment, so to speak, a perfectly logical slow way to live. (Martin)