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. (Look for the 'Me & My Sloth' series.)

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.

Harris Farm Markets is one of those true family businesses – started in 1971 with a roadside market in Villawood. Three of owners David and Catherine’s five children work for Harris Farm, each having gone off for a while establishing careers elsewhere before coming back to the fold.

The produce is good, which has a lot to do with Harris Farm's independence; its buyers decide every day what’s worth stocking, without being dictated to by store managers. It is also to do with the Harris’ relationships (some going back 20-odd years) with various suppliers, like the Mudgee Honey man who buries honey in earthenware pots to age it and drives down once a week to drop off his produce.

Harris Farm’s character belies its size, with over 1000 employees. It is an active member of Job Support, a project that employs young adults with intellectual disabilities. It also works with Early Release, which helps get young offenders back on their feet.

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 simultaneously 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 the 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 on 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)

Recalibrate your clock and reflect on the maxim, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Mark a ‘slow day’ in your calendar for January, and get to work on noticing the magnificence of Sydney in Summer.

Detour – turn left where you would normally turn right and explore a new suburb. Get off the train or bus a few stops early and walk the rest of the way home. Catch a ferry, any ferry. Sample some of the things about which tourists rave. Stop and smell – in our case – the frangipanis. But, most importantly: stop.

Look.
Listen.
Smell.
Touch and taste.

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 a Port Jackson fig tree in the Domain, at the beach or on Shark Island.

And, no need to bury the Tupperware.

(Simone)