magazines

I've been pondering a few things about magazines today. I've not pondered much about gardening because my children keep playing vomit and hoopy cough tag and outside it continues to rain and then pour and then rain again.

A week or so Fire commented on my blog that I should read the New Scientist. So I bought one, because I hold Fire's opinion in high regard and thought she could be on to something. Favourite Handyman (also with health deficits but thankfully not vomiting) and I had a look and talked a bit about why we're not so excited by it. It doesn't seem to drag me into multiple aspects of a topic. I like the way some articles in the New Zealand Geographic do just that. I also like that our local library has the NZ Geographic because stunning gorgeous photography doesn't reproduce cheaply.

A magazine I often ponder subscribing to is The Ecologist. You might notice that I've had a learning curve on the creating links front. I've quite deliberately made the link to the current issue page because of an article which has this lead in:

Life, religion and everything: Scientist Rupert Sheldrake tells Laura Sevier it's time for religion and science to kiss and make up

Actually I'm tempted to subscribe just so I can get hold of that article and distribute it to my blog reading friends Fire and Rachael and see what they do with it.

Which brings me to an excellent development in international magazines: digital subscriptions. Much as I prefer to read magazines in bed, in the lounge, outside etc., digital subs are seriously much cheaper than paying for English and US magazines to be freighted over to NZ. Not to mention the carbon badness of all that printing and freighting.

Other magazines I like are NZ Gardener and NZ Organics (which doesn't have a website but is my favourite of the two). I could say quite a bit about Mothering magazine but I won't because much as I adore my children, they are finally in bed right now and I just don't want to talk parenting on my work break.

If you've made it this far, please comment and tell me your favourite magazines. Cos I learnt how to put sitemeter and clustrmap on my blog today while not cleaning up vomit and am consequently pathetically keen to see some signs that someone is out there, visiting me here!

Flowers

Sick children, bad weather. Sick husband, stormy weather. More sick children. These are out though, (photos taken last week in the sunshine):

What do you know about your home?

Yesterday's walk also took us through a new housing estate not far from us. I know from elderly locals that the area used to be covered in bush and that their children, now in their fifties, used to play there all the time in the school holidays. Fionn likes it now principally because it has a super smooth footpath which is perfect for super speedy scootering. There is nothing hidden, no garden surprises on these cleared sections. A rather large number of them are for sale, at prices which don't suggest they'll be snapped up overnight.

So I got thinking about the history of our home. I've always lived in rented accommodation from when I was 18 until last year but those flast and houses fascinated me too. I loved to collect stories about previous inhabitants and activities. A fragment of each of those homes have come with me as I've moved on in the form of memories and photographs, my own and those of others who shared the journey.

I hear often from local people about the house we live in now. It has hosted many good parties over the years - we've heard that from a large number of people so we definitely believe it. Hopefully we'll have a few big ones and lots of smaller special gatherings ourselves. I met a man who lived at our place in the 1970s recently. When he arrived to move in, he discovered that the previous tenant had recently skinned an animal in the lounge. His wife cried when she saw the state of the place. I told him about the reports of great parties. "Not in my time" he commented dourly. Thankfully there'd been a good clean up before we moved in.

We are going to see if we can find the original plans for the house. The actual house is largely unchanged apart from the fire, but there have been changes to the outbuildings and we want to restore or add a couple of lean-tos for wood and for hothousing tomatoes.

Maybe I'll create a blog just about our house. I'm finding blogging in some undefineable way more interesting than keeping a private journal and have had several ideas of other blogs I might create, like one telling the stories of my elderly local relatives. Blogs must be the coolest things for family historians. Maybe my brother and sister and I should do one - all be writers and create together a cache of family stories and then send an invitation to our parents to view it at Christmas? hmmmm. Bloody housework, gets in the way of dreams.

Docks

I've discovered some new things about docks in my winter reading. Before this year, I knew merely that they have long roots and thus it is very difficult to completely remove a plant. In the UK I learnt that they are often found near stinging nettle and the dock leaf can take the sting out of a brush with nettle.

Recently I've upped my dock knowledge game. It is called a tap root, not just an ordinary undifferentiated root. And apparently docks can be good things in the garden. Because their roots go so deep, they bring minerals from deep in the soil to the surface and make them available to other plants. I haven't worked out exactly how this happens but I believe it to be perfectly possible.

Somewhere in my dock reading I got advised that dock leaves make good garden mulch. Maybe the minerals are in the leaves then? Anyway, when the children and I were having an edifying walk round the block yesterday, we wandered through what was once a community reserve project by the sand dunes and is now somewhat neglected. Amongst the native plants were lots of healthy big docks, not in seed so safe on the spread front. I gathered a few bunches and found a use for those nasty nappy bags you can buy at the supermarket for disposable nappy using holidays. Good size for bunches of dock leaves. So we'll be back down there sometime soon I hope.

The desk

Anyway, I'd asked Favourite Handyman to remove the lid of the school desk so I could create a mini glasshouse in it. He and Fionn went the extra mile and painted it blue and white with splotches of bright red around the side like butterflies. It looks gorgeous, way beyond what I'd imagined or asked for.

It wasn't until I got home that I realised a crucial error on my part. The depth of the desk is indeed sufficient to fit pricked out seedling pots, but there is no room for the actual plants to grown upwards. I could use it for raising seedlings from the seed stage, but I already have three plastic propagators for that. The other alternative is to find a way of raising the sides with something strong enough to still rest the heavy safety glass on top. I'm looking around and I'm thinking. Still.

Poo

Just before I left the house this afternoon, I tucked a few coins in my pocket, despite going nowhere near the shops on my girlie cake gathering outing (One woman brought her husband, two brought children of the non-baby kind, both against the rules. Very bad form on an otherwise fun afternoon).

It became obvious why I'd tucked coins in my pocket when on the way home I saw several supermarket bags of horse poo for sale on the side of the road. Fifty cents per bag and as it happened I had $4 and could stash the whole lot in the boot of the car (which now has two functioning rear lights again at a cost I won't go into).

I got home at six, deposited the baby with Favourite Handyman, noticed that the washing was still out, the seedlings were still outside and there were no signs of dinner preparation whatsoever. Still, horse poo projects were more interesting. I decided we didn't need a rubbish bin any more and emptied two bulging bags of horse poo into the rubbish bin and filled it three quarters full with water. Lid on and I think it is two weeks I wait until I can decant the liquid off the top to use as liquid garden fertiliser and top up with water to repeat the process.

Still leaves six bags of horse poo to deal with. I'll report back on that when I have an answer.

Horse poo doesn't go straight on the compost pile like chicken manure because horses have quite fast digestive systems and weed seeds come through them whole and sprout in the garden.

Got an opportunity to talk garden and poo with a couple of other women. I may have a source for getting some of the scrapings from the calf pens of a local farmer - hay and cow poo mixed together. Woohoo. I am really making progress on my poo projects. Also looking out for the opportunity to sweep out underneath the shearing shed on a sheep farm at some point.

Saw my chicken raising friend. She is about to raise about two dozen chicks from eggs and wanted to know if I wanted some more roosters to kill and eat. Yes please!! She declined my offer to pay her but was keen when I suggested that we kill, pluck and gut two at a time and give one back to her for eating.

someone else's junk

is going to become my outside miniature glasshouse/ seedling raising house. Found from a local school caretaker on his way to the skip, two old fashioned wooden desks. One is now my sewing machine table and the other is about to lose it's top and then be filled with seedling pots and covered with the perfect sized piece of safety glass the previous inhabitants left in our garage.



We have an Iris out now. It looks perfect. My photos are hidden away on the camera as usual because I didn't get a tutorial last weekend after all.

You know I am exactly like this in real life. Well this is the positive version anyway, we'll leave out the people who never take a shine to me. You meet me and I seem interesting. You arrange to see me again and I bring something really yummy and it's all looking good. We each have a new friend. Then over time I ramble incessantly at ever more frequent intervals and there is no more cake for the next 15 months and although I talk about cleaning the house all the time, you find yourself looking gingerly for somewhere safe to sit in my lounge again and again and again. The best visits are on sunny days when we sit out in the garden and you take a tour and I bring drink out to you and thus you only notice anything terrible about the house when your children, who you didn't think had standards at all, complain about the state of the toilet. Maybe that isn't the best visit, but it's as good as it gets during gardening weather and indeed during non-gardening weather. Online is good. It's so clean.