I got a bit side tracked on my last post, talking bout feelings instead of practical plans so here's the new edition:
Ditto
Ditto
Ditto
Ditto
Ditto
I'm also increasingly aware of the liberation offered by permaculture principles. I'm not going down the full path: the zoning of the yard should really be changed, some serious landscaping undertaken, and we'll not be self-sufficient in terms of produce, but the idea of minimising energy expenditure is very appealing. In my understanding this refers to material and physical components of energy (I'm not sure of the right measures; who would guess I did chem. and bio. at school?) but it strikes me these lead directly to emotional energy. Less running around to buy seeds, compost, chemicals, less time tweaking and weeding and preening, less time writing things in calendar squares, can mean less time worrying and stewing about All The Many Things That Need Doing. Perhaps if there's a place for everything - every plant, every bug (though I'm unconvinced about this), every experience - then there's not so much of a need to have everything in its place. I'm making small changes with the medium term aim of permacultural practices and am hopeful that my garden this summer will be a place of bounty and beauty and calm. And lots of fun.
Hmm, still an awful lot about feelings ...
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
A good day
Yesterday was gorgeous. The mercury climbed all the way up to 15 degrees and I spent the day outside in my new boots. We enriched the front bed and planted out some roses, artichokes and bits and pieces that had multiplied over the summer. I dug in the green manure and spread some manure about deserving plants. I filled up one black copmpost bin and got it ready to stew, and repositioned the other one. I planted out some more local plants in the little patch at the back fence. Best of all, we all marched up the land slip area at the end of the street and collected kindling, and some oak leaves and clover for a new compost pile.
As a tangent: I spent my teenage years convinced my mother planned the embarassments she heaped upon me on a seemingly daily basis. I can't remember what was so dreadful but it can't have been as odd as marching the family up the hill, wearing my 'gardening hat' and wellies, with one baby in the backpack and the other in the wheelbarrow, dog lead by a piece of blue string taken from a hay bale. Marching down again, we pushed the barrow full of pine cones and sticks and carried big bags of organic matter. Norma across the road has long suspected we are not like the others; yesterday's excursion must have convinced her.
Anyway, the point of the list of jobs done is this: it's like nothing was done at all. I sat down at the gardening calendar this morning and filled out squares for the next two months; I wandered outside and saw jobs to fill a dozen more. I love gardening but unlike lots of other hobbies, it's not something to be done only when I wish. It's lead by seasons and cycles that are dictated by forces beyond me and while there is some leeway as to when a task is completed, if I don't get things done I may not have another chance in the year, and plans and produce can fail. We sing the praises of gardening but it can be another rod to my back, a source of guilt and oppression at the end of a long week of rods, guilt and oppression. There's an ambivalence in my love of the veggie patch.
When we talk about gardening organically it's most usually discussed in terms of sustainability, environmental and financial. I think Al and I are a point where we're achieving these positions. But I want to think more about emotional sustainability and how I can achieve this in my life and my garden. A garden's no good to us if it is a series of tasks to tick off and re-list, even if we save thousands on lettuce and reduce our carbon footprint.
I enjoy each garden task in the moment but finding the time to get to them and the overwhelming sense of 'too much to do' can make it difficult to step outside the back door. I need to remember what the garden gives us, and then I think some of the frustration will leach away.
My garden gives me a sense of security and stability and a sense of place - it roots me (pun!) in my home and my community. It offers the opportunity to complete a task, to tick something off a list, and to use my body in a contextualised way. It gives me great joy to feed my family from what we grow, and the food is so much tastier - there are no measures for just how much better it is. The garden offers stillness: on a Sunday afternoon when the jobs are done it seems nothing surrounds me but sunlight and birdsong, and time stops still - a cliched and banal phrase to write and a deeply calming sense to experience. It also allows a stillness in my mind as my body slips into well learned movements and patterns; the garden offers relief from an intellectual and hyper-verbal life.
Finally and most importantly, the garden allows us all to work together with a common purpose, in a shared space and time - experiences that are rare today but so valuable in developing our sense of how we fit together as a family. I come back to yesterday afternoon up the hill in the sun, Lucy, Al and I searching for pine cones and singing 'Daisy, Daisy give me your answer, do" while Nell-Nell warbled along in her backpack and the dog tore around, mad and still puppy-ish beast that he is. In an L.M. Montgomery book, A Tangled Web, a young girl dropped a handful of rose petals into a glass jar to mark each day of perfect happiness. (One night, jilted and heartbroken by her unworthy fiance, she buries the jar in the garden before it is full.) I'm not one for those kind of gestures but if I were, any day marked would have been lived in the garden.
Remembering this makes me think again on how good my life is and feel a little less overwhelmed by next Saturday's list:
* clean chicken coop;
* spray burgandy mixture on peaches;
* get manure;
* mulch fruit trees with manure;
* plant potatoes in back plot;
* be happy.
As a tangent: I spent my teenage years convinced my mother planned the embarassments she heaped upon me on a seemingly daily basis. I can't remember what was so dreadful but it can't have been as odd as marching the family up the hill, wearing my 'gardening hat' and wellies, with one baby in the backpack and the other in the wheelbarrow, dog lead by a piece of blue string taken from a hay bale. Marching down again, we pushed the barrow full of pine cones and sticks and carried big bags of organic matter. Norma across the road has long suspected we are not like the others; yesterday's excursion must have convinced her.
Anyway, the point of the list of jobs done is this: it's like nothing was done at all. I sat down at the gardening calendar this morning and filled out squares for the next two months; I wandered outside and saw jobs to fill a dozen more. I love gardening but unlike lots of other hobbies, it's not something to be done only when I wish. It's lead by seasons and cycles that are dictated by forces beyond me and while there is some leeway as to when a task is completed, if I don't get things done I may not have another chance in the year, and plans and produce can fail. We sing the praises of gardening but it can be another rod to my back, a source of guilt and oppression at the end of a long week of rods, guilt and oppression. There's an ambivalence in my love of the veggie patch.
When we talk about gardening organically it's most usually discussed in terms of sustainability, environmental and financial. I think Al and I are a point where we're achieving these positions. But I want to think more about emotional sustainability and how I can achieve this in my life and my garden. A garden's no good to us if it is a series of tasks to tick off and re-list, even if we save thousands on lettuce and reduce our carbon footprint.
I enjoy each garden task in the moment but finding the time to get to them and the overwhelming sense of 'too much to do' can make it difficult to step outside the back door. I need to remember what the garden gives us, and then I think some of the frustration will leach away.
My garden gives me a sense of security and stability and a sense of place - it roots me (pun!) in my home and my community. It offers the opportunity to complete a task, to tick something off a list, and to use my body in a contextualised way. It gives me great joy to feed my family from what we grow, and the food is so much tastier - there are no measures for just how much better it is. The garden offers stillness: on a Sunday afternoon when the jobs are done it seems nothing surrounds me but sunlight and birdsong, and time stops still - a cliched and banal phrase to write and a deeply calming sense to experience. It also allows a stillness in my mind as my body slips into well learned movements and patterns; the garden offers relief from an intellectual and hyper-verbal life.
Finally and most importantly, the garden allows us all to work together with a common purpose, in a shared space and time - experiences that are rare today but so valuable in developing our sense of how we fit together as a family. I come back to yesterday afternoon up the hill in the sun, Lucy, Al and I searching for pine cones and singing 'Daisy, Daisy give me your answer, do" while Nell-Nell warbled along in her backpack and the dog tore around, mad and still puppy-ish beast that he is. In an L.M. Montgomery book, A Tangled Web, a young girl dropped a handful of rose petals into a glass jar to mark each day of perfect happiness. (One night, jilted and heartbroken by her unworthy fiance, she buries the jar in the garden before it is full.) I'm not one for those kind of gestures but if I were, any day marked would have been lived in the garden.
Remembering this makes me think again on how good my life is and feel a little less overwhelmed by next Saturday's list:
* clean chicken coop;
* spray burgandy mixture on peaches;
* get manure;
* mulch fruit trees with manure;
* plant potatoes in back plot;
* be happy.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Daffy down dilly
Our garden store held a sale at the beginning of autumn, offering unlabelled bulbs for 10 cents each. I scooped up big handfuls because I love to garden with a bargain. Lucy and I planted them under our avenue of fruit trees (well, three in a line) and waited to see what would happen. Yellow has happened. Behold the first daffodil in our garden:
To my delight, we've inherited a couple of big clumps of jonquils but no one before us has planted daffs. I'm not overly fond of them myself. Jonquils are sweetly scented and subtle; even the brightest seem understated, politely suggesting we not give up hope, spring will come again. These shafts of bright yellow put me in mind of a slightly overdressed guest at a party, proposing an awkward toast at not quite the right time. I'm partial to a garish flower, but I always feel slightly embarrassed for daffodils, announcing something we'd all suspected for weeks: it can't stay cold forever. They are magnificent in their thousands, a wide sweep under a sharp blue sky, or breaking through the snow, a strong restatement of earlier, more subtle implications that things are happening. But they seem a little out of place popping up by themselves in the back of the veggie garden. I'm appreciative of their efforts, but they don't have the resonance I'd expected having grown up on a steady diet of British children's books, with their accounts of cold, cold winters and the welcome creeping spring.
I look for spring elsewhere, not on the calendar or in the temperature but in subtle shifts of activity and colour in my backyard. I see the beginning of nuptial activity amongst the birds, and this will soon be followed by beaks full of hen house straw and labradoodle wool flitting past our windows. The jasmine is full of elegant pink tips; I catch its scent and my heart stops and then beats a little faster in hope and nostalgia. And most excitingly, the chooks have started laying: five eggs today, the most we've seen in many months.
And here's something bright to put a spring in my step and a smile on my face: my new wellies. They're garish and brash and so very different from the black pairs scattered across the back steps in my childhood.
As children we were told to stamp on the toes of our boots and then shake them upside down to kill any spiders who might crawled in to nest. I've done this religiously over the decades but not now, not with these boots. They're so very funky they could harbour nothing bad at all. I've used them about the place and on trips up to the dog park but they haven't yet been christened with a stretch of hard garden work - just one more reason to look forward to the weekend,
To my delight, we've inherited a couple of big clumps of jonquils but no one before us has planted daffs. I'm not overly fond of them myself. Jonquils are sweetly scented and subtle; even the brightest seem understated, politely suggesting we not give up hope, spring will come again. These shafts of bright yellow put me in mind of a slightly overdressed guest at a party, proposing an awkward toast at not quite the right time. I'm partial to a garish flower, but I always feel slightly embarrassed for daffodils, announcing something we'd all suspected for weeks: it can't stay cold forever. They are magnificent in their thousands, a wide sweep under a sharp blue sky, or breaking through the snow, a strong restatement of earlier, more subtle implications that things are happening. But they seem a little out of place popping up by themselves in the back of the veggie garden. I'm appreciative of their efforts, but they don't have the resonance I'd expected having grown up on a steady diet of British children's books, with their accounts of cold, cold winters and the welcome creeping spring.
I look for spring elsewhere, not on the calendar or in the temperature but in subtle shifts of activity and colour in my backyard. I see the beginning of nuptial activity amongst the birds, and this will soon be followed by beaks full of hen house straw and labradoodle wool flitting past our windows. The jasmine is full of elegant pink tips; I catch its scent and my heart stops and then beats a little faster in hope and nostalgia. And most excitingly, the chooks have started laying: five eggs today, the most we've seen in many months.
And here's something bright to put a spring in my step and a smile on my face: my new wellies. They're garish and brash and so very different from the black pairs scattered across the back steps in my childhood.
As children we were told to stamp on the toes of our boots and then shake them upside down to kill any spiders who might crawled in to nest. I've done this religiously over the decades but not now, not with these boots. They're so very funky they could harbour nothing bad at all. I've used them about the place and on trips up to the dog park but they haven't yet been christened with a stretch of hard garden work - just one more reason to look forward to the weekend,
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Babes in the wood
Our town borders a large and beautiful reserve. There are sections of forest, grasslands and glades. Throughout birds call each to each and wallabies and pademelons bound about. We walk three minutes from the roads and there's no sign that the suburbs of a major regional centres lie two minutes drive away. I love this place.
Back before the girls, Al and I would take our dogs Jasper and Pete, and walk for hours. In summer we'd trip down to the river and all four of us would swim in isolation, never seeing another soul. Things are a little different now, and our times in the reserve are curtailed by naps and quiet times, play groups, the cold, the heat, meals around the table and any number of issues we never considered when it was just the two of us. When we do go, as we did yesterday, the times spent and the distance walked may be shorter than they once were but our enjoyment of the place has increased ten-fold. Even on hard days, our kids makes almost everything more fun.
(Air travel excepted.)
Back before the girls, Al and I would take our dogs Jasper and Pete, and walk for hours. In summer we'd trip down to the river and all four of us would swim in isolation, never seeing another soul. Things are a little different now, and our times in the reserve are curtailed by naps and quiet times, play groups, the cold, the heat, meals around the table and any number of issues we never considered when it was just the two of us. When we do go, as we did yesterday, the times spent and the distance walked may be shorter than they once were but our enjoyment of the place has increased ten-fold. Even on hard days, our kids makes almost everything more fun.
(Air travel excepted.)
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Take the weather with you
I love to talk about the weather. Before the girls came along Al and I would convene in front of the news each night to discuss the weather report: it didn't seem as hot as that; it was definitely colder than that this morning; negative two tomorrow, that's cold ... Like Paul Simon says, "All the news I need to know is on the weather report".
This week weather talk has been a variation on the theme of 'cold':
Monday, it was 0 degrees when I arrived at work.
Tuesday, gales and downpours soaked me to the skin as I walked with my umbrella.
Wednesday morning I walked to work in the dark, smog and mist all around - bleak and beautiful.
Thursday morning my ungloved fingers stopped working before I had listened to the first song on my ipod.
Friday, well I'm not out of the house yet but Lucy just went out to the garden and then came straight back in again, a certain sign it is COLD, COLD, COLD.
I don't mind the winters down here - coming from Queensland I find the mists and the smoke and the frosts romantic. And hanging above my desk at work is this picture, shooting a bolt of heat into each day:
This was my garden in the first home of my own. It's still my favourite. It was built in a drained in-ground pool, surrounded by mango trees, with a vacant block at the back. At times the area felt almost deserted, despite being filled with high density housing. It was lush: a forest of basil hip high, lemon grass, chillis, eggplants and zuchinnis, a lime tree and other bits and pieces popped in among the marigolds. Even with bold and ravenous possums there was food to spare - I'd gather massive bouquets of herbs and spices for my friends. It was a time and place of plenty.
I remember the morning I took this photo. The bottle is the remnant of the night before, when a friend and I sat at the table talking for hours, drinking and tossing grapes into each other's mouth (now I think: choking hazard!). Such a luxury, all that time, though I took it utterly for granted then.
Some things don't change, no matter what the weather or the era. Looking closely, I see that even then, I had planted four zuchinni plants for my single person household. I also notice that plants are scattered everywhere: there was just one big bed and much of it was self-seeded. I moved away from that approach into the more rigid rotational system I've been working with over the last years, but now I'm coming back to that looseness and faith once again.
This week weather talk has been a variation on the theme of 'cold':
Monday, it was 0 degrees when I arrived at work.
Tuesday, gales and downpours soaked me to the skin as I walked with my umbrella.
Wednesday morning I walked to work in the dark, smog and mist all around - bleak and beautiful.
Thursday morning my ungloved fingers stopped working before I had listened to the first song on my ipod.
Friday, well I'm not out of the house yet but Lucy just went out to the garden and then came straight back in again, a certain sign it is COLD, COLD, COLD.
I don't mind the winters down here - coming from Queensland I find the mists and the smoke and the frosts romantic. And hanging above my desk at work is this picture, shooting a bolt of heat into each day:
This was my garden in the first home of my own. It's still my favourite. It was built in a drained in-ground pool, surrounded by mango trees, with a vacant block at the back. At times the area felt almost deserted, despite being filled with high density housing. It was lush: a forest of basil hip high, lemon grass, chillis, eggplants and zuchinnis, a lime tree and other bits and pieces popped in among the marigolds. Even with bold and ravenous possums there was food to spare - I'd gather massive bouquets of herbs and spices for my friends. It was a time and place of plenty.
I remember the morning I took this photo. The bottle is the remnant of the night before, when a friend and I sat at the table talking for hours, drinking and tossing grapes into each other's mouth (now I think: choking hazard!). Such a luxury, all that time, though I took it utterly for granted then.
Some things don't change, no matter what the weather or the era. Looking closely, I see that even then, I had planted four zuchinni plants for my single person household. I also notice that plants are scattered everywhere: there was just one big bed and much of it was self-seeded. I moved away from that approach into the more rigid rotational system I've been working with over the last years, but now I'm coming back to that looseness and faith once again.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Be the change ...
Jenny nominated me for a bloggers for positive global change award, which was very kind of her. As part of the process, I'm asked to nominate five other people, to pass the love around. But I'm not sure I can without being redundant. I'm late to the scene, and most of the blogs I visit and find inspiration from are part of everybody's blog roll. Many of the sites I really love have already been nominated others. But here are four people who might be making a difference in some big ways - I don't know - but whose lives, at least as they are told to us, make me appreicate the importance of acting local, particularly when that local is at the level of our own homes and backyards.
Tamsin at Something more comfortable. Tambo is a dear friend and an inspiration to me. We share many of the same ideals, struggles and questions but Tambo lives her life and loves her family with a graciousness and appreciation for beauty that warms me. For me, Tamsin's blog is about living beautifully in ways that sustain us emotionally as well has physically and environmentally.
I don't know how Janet at Muppinstuff would describe herself but when I read her work I gain an appreciation for how social change is lived in personal ways as much as it is pursued through protest and debate.
Em at three times three writes about her life with her family. Through her constant care and advocacy for her child with special needs she must surely be effecting some change for those who will follow her. I think her fight contributes to the development of support systems that are generous and responsive to people's needs.
I'd finally like to mention Nutmeg, from Another Nutter. Her blog is a book blog but Nutmeg is also developing a permaculture garden in what I suspect is the Sydney suburbs. If we all did this in our backyards, we'd be living in some very special places. I believe that our gardens are both a symbol of our engagement with the idea of 'nature' and our most direct and sustained relationship with it. Gardeners (Janet is one two, as is Tamsin) make a difference to our world, aesthetically, environmentally and philosophically.
Plus, all these women are mothers. And perhaps our greatest opportunity for social, political, environmental and global change comes through helping our children see the possibilities of different ways of living.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, ladies. They're much appreciated.
Tamsin at Something more comfortable. Tambo is a dear friend and an inspiration to me. We share many of the same ideals, struggles and questions but Tambo lives her life and loves her family with a graciousness and appreciation for beauty that warms me. For me, Tamsin's blog is about living beautifully in ways that sustain us emotionally as well has physically and environmentally.
I don't know how Janet at Muppinstuff would describe herself but when I read her work I gain an appreciation for how social change is lived in personal ways as much as it is pursued through protest and debate.
Em at three times three writes about her life with her family. Through her constant care and advocacy for her child with special needs she must surely be effecting some change for those who will follow her. I think her fight contributes to the development of support systems that are generous and responsive to people's needs.
I'd finally like to mention Nutmeg, from Another Nutter. Her blog is a book blog but Nutmeg is also developing a permaculture garden in what I suspect is the Sydney suburbs. If we all did this in our backyards, we'd be living in some very special places. I believe that our gardens are both a symbol of our engagement with the idea of 'nature' and our most direct and sustained relationship with it. Gardeners (Janet is one two, as is Tamsin) make a difference to our world, aesthetically, environmentally and philosophically.
Plus, all these women are mothers. And perhaps our greatest opportunity for social, political, environmental and global change comes through helping our children see the possibilities of different ways of living.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, ladies. They're much appreciated.
Crunch time
There's lots of research telling us women feel stressed when they combine work and family. These pressures are greater for women with more than one children, women with young children and women who work in the professions. I tick 'all of the above' and while I manage the difficulties as best I can, I am failing to do so, and everyday I feel as though I am failing a little more.
I don't want to complain. I make a good wage and my workplace is better than most. We have no real money troubles and we are healthy. Plus, there's not very much new to say about the time crunch, in my life or as a general proposition. But this morning, talking about insurance issues with Al over breakfast, I was interrupted by Lu who told me not to talk in 'that voice, that grumpy voice'. I hate that my children are picking up the edge to my voice, the one I try so hard and so unsuccessfully to soften.
Never once in my schooling did I recieve 'must try harder' on a report card. And now it runs in my head in a continuous loop. I know, I know, don't be so hard on myself, we can't have it all. I know all these things in theory and I agree. But how do I walk the talk? And is it ever okay to use that phrase, even while typing it with an ironic twist to my smile? And, come to think of it, is that in fact the saying?
I don't want to complain. I make a good wage and my workplace is better than most. We have no real money troubles and we are healthy. Plus, there's not very much new to say about the time crunch, in my life or as a general proposition. But this morning, talking about insurance issues with Al over breakfast, I was interrupted by Lu who told me not to talk in 'that voice, that grumpy voice'. I hate that my children are picking up the edge to my voice, the one I try so hard and so unsuccessfully to soften.
Never once in my schooling did I recieve 'must try harder' on a report card. And now it runs in my head in a continuous loop. I know, I know, don't be so hard on myself, we can't have it all. I know all these things in theory and I agree. But how do I walk the talk? And is it ever okay to use that phrase, even while typing it with an ironic twist to my smile? And, come to think of it, is that in fact the saying?
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