Guerilla Gardening

What a fantastic idea this is. They had something about it in a recent NZ Gardener magazine (I think, presumably it was there and not on the kindy notices) and then I found this site tonight. I found the link through Beansprout's blog which I found through Nikki's blog. Nikki's blog was a key inspiration for me to start blogging and she rocks.

Anyway, guerilla gardening. The website I linked to first in this post is all about clandestine planting sprees to beautify public spaces in London. Very cool I thought and could I do it here? The seed has been planted in my head. The NZ gardener article was focused on guerilla planting of trees, preferably natives. But the London one was all about planting full stop. I have two local friends with native bush on their section who would be good for providing some seedlings. I quite fancy some stealth planting of wild flower seed blend on the roadside near us.

swap ya

Did some swapping today. Swapped my rubbish for someone else's. Actually I put some other people's rubbish into the in side of the bargain as well.

Started off at the beach, where I had two plastic bags - one for seaweed (for the garden) and the other to collect plastic. After a rather short walk along the beach I had filled both bags with plastic and other non-degradable rubbish plus I had armful of more plastic and then some seaweed hanging off one hand. Dropped that in the boot and then repeated the experience, only the second time I got a huge haul of seaweed (my biggest ever) as well. The amount of plastic in our oceans is revolting and I have to say that wandering the beach clearing it of litter is one of the loveliest enviro gesture experiences. I could happily do it every day and maybe I will.

Then we went to the dump and put the plastic where it should be (no plastic recycling facilities of any kind in our small town). And smashed beer bottles into the pit (you guessed it about the availability of glass recycling round here). My boy loves smashing glass at the dump. Not much in the way of middle class preschool pursuits round my house and garden.

Then we put five old tyres in the boot to take home and grow potatoes, beans and possibly strawberries in. Maybe I'll put flowers in them as well. We had a look around the for sale shed at the dump and noted a few things which could be useful for future garden projects.

I took many photos today, but my technical assistant appears to be on leave.

My other achievement has been to create a kind of cloche/mini tunnel house out of mostly found goods. Last year Favourite Handyman made a large chicken wire cover for the strawberry pots. Yesterday I had the idea of taping heavy duty plastic to it and hothousing the plants underneath. This is where it gets useful that I can't bring myself to throw away large pieces of strong plastic (like the wrapping when you buy a bed or dishwasher) as it meant I had just the plastic for the job. So that's on and looking good (photos not for ages on current signs). I thought about putting the part of the cylinder wrap which wouldn't fit in the cylinder cupboard underneath to warm things even further. But the fibreglass is exposed aqnd could blow round so I've left that in the shed. I reckon something large and silver-coloured would be good underneath though. Or even black to retain the heat.

I had so much seaweed that I've cut most of it up and filled two 20 litre lidded buckets and still had a huge piece left over which has been rinsed of sand/salt and is lying across the compost. The two buckets have been filled with water and are weighed down with a brick (otherwise the seaweed all floats on top and thus overflows). Tomorrow I'll drain the salty water off and refill them and start making seaweed brew, which Linda Woodrow the permaculture guru says is the best thing ever for your garden.

flowers for love, flowers for the planet...

Today was wonderful. Party, coffee with a friend, beach trip, visitors. The party host had made gluten free food for my boy which was an unexpected extra effort and a very special gesture. The world IS generously peppered with wonderful warm hearted people. And if it seems they are only hanging out in my small town, then I truly hope some move next door to you all sometime soon.



So we admired my tulips this afternoon. I have them in a lovely profusion of colours and petal shapes which wasn't what the packet promised but is gorgeous.



Then tonight I was wandering the web and chanced upon Snapdragon's blog of flower love, growing and selling. She does eco-flowers for wedddings and I noticed one comment about the benefits of couples who trust her to find the right arrangements and flowers on the day out of what is growing best rather than the pressure of having to grow certain plants for perfection on that particular day.



I remember seeing the film Maria: Full of Grace a few years ago and between the grim lives I picked up on there and the chemical nasties and air travel involved in the relatively cheap bunches of flowers on offer at Tescos (UK), I decided that bought cut flowers was yet another ethicall dodgy item which I needed to avoid buying.



I don't know anything about the production line of cut flowers in New Zealand but I'm pretty confident that a large amount of diesel, if not airline fuel as well, will have been involved in getting cut flowers to our local (and lovely) florist shop here in small town.



So what is my point (you might well ask that of my every blog entry)? My point is that I'm moving more and more to thinking that I don't want a garden only of edibles; I want flowers to cut and share the love with as well. Come live in my small town next summer and I'll welcome you with home grown flowers.



So far I have calendula and marigold seed (and some flowering plants of calendula - for beneficial insects and companion planting and possibly to make eczema cream with), nasturtiums growing wild, and a range of spring bulbs which I've mentioned before. There are some roses and freesias out the front from the previous owners. Some of my herbs will grow beautiful flowers, like the echinacea which is currently 4mm high in the propogator but will one day be a metre high, apparently.



I've had the Kings Seeds Catalogue out on this subject. A viola called 'Heartsease Miss Helen Mount' (right) is on the list on the lovely name alone. And below is a picture from the catalogue of a 'hardy easily grown perrenial' called Thistle Blue Glove which sounds just right for my leave it to do its own beautiful thing front garden.

I keep finding more and more. Of course there are also sunflowers waiting to obliterate, sorry decorate our lawn. Only three of the miniature ones from last year's seed packet germinated. Due in no small part to getting no special shelter to germinate at all when the weather was still very nippy. Next month I'll be planting the Skyscraper sunflower seeds. After they've colonised the back fence area, the neighbours will have no idea whether I'm hanging out the washing in my jammies any more.

The sun shone the whole day long

Filming of the reenactment of Noah and the Flood seems to have ceased here in Small Town, just as I was on the verge of looking at the real estate and job ads for Anywhere Else.

So I dug in two full buckets of Bokashi (it had rained so much and for so long that my back up nappy bucket and three icecream containers are also full of food scraps waiting to be Bokashi'd) and now have all of my largest new garden plot dug over. In a fortnight I can til it a bit more and by Labour weekend it should all be ready to be filled with seedlings. If filmingof Noah: The Sequel resumes too soon, then it will be Liquorland for me.

Fionn and I filled some tyres with potting mix from two big tubs of cabbage trees which died (sad for Favourite Handyman I know, but I did never want them in the first place) which were absolutely teeming with worms. Then we planted my borlotti bean seedlings. Five. After one hour, we had an 80% survival rate. We don't know which blackbird stole the seedling, but we are blaming the species generally.

All but one of my tomato seedlings are now in individual pots on the north facing windowsills. I'll have 14 plants if they all last to fruiting.

The wind and rain have wrecked my crocuses and partly spoilt some tulips. I'm going to have to rethink where the bulbs go next year. I've also discovered that the funny weed things by the roses out the front are some kind of freesias or similar spring bulb and very pretty they look too. I need to find what kind they are and plant more. I'm starting to get what this whole "massed plantings" thing is in flower growing speak. Not six togetherish, but 30 clustered very close.

fish

Eating fish is bad-for-the-environment. Surely you all know that already. The oceans are running out of fish.

Eating lemon and pepper flavoured tuna in a tiny can is bad in more ways than I have fingers to tell. Or close to that many.

I love those little cans of tuna. A lot. Equal to how much I love Hellmanns mayo, which is probably also bad because it tastes so good that it must be bad.

So my latest attempt to deal with this badness of mine (I should mention here that a background in Roman Catholicism is a very excellent preparation for adult environmental guilt) is that I am focusing on eating five + fruit and veg a day which should leave me less room to eat the fish. I should already be eating 5+ but my recent audit suggested otherwise. Like an athlete in training, I'm going to keep moving the goalposts, until I am eating 9+ servings of fruit and veg a day. Surely that will knock the canned fish eating on the head.

I do reserve the right to have Hellmanns' mayo with my veg sandwiches though. On the hedonistic scale, it is surely less evil than having gin for breakfast.

I write this not because it is interesting but to bear witness that this is my goal, this was my goal, and to hopefully make myself stick to it.

If I fall off the canned fish wagon, then no one will have to know, but as my Mum taught me, God will. He might not comment on my blog, but maybe my inability to lie will keep the canned demon out of my tummy.

spong mincers

I have one of them. I used it to make Shepherd's Pie for dinner. I googled to find you a picture of mine (which I got from a charity shop in Ilford when we lived in London) and came up with this cool blog featuring a spong advert here, where we learn that our husbands will be moved to ardour by our Spong-made meals. Would it be bad blog manners if I had copied his photo of the ad and put it here? Please can someone tell me?

food

I'm doing food thinking at the moment because the previous status of my home (sick children, bad weather) has remained constant. Meaning I cannot garden and have not been able to for so long now that it hurts to contemplate the topic.

So back to food. Yesterday I was playing around linking from blog to blog being overwhelmed by how much is out there and how gorgeous the photography is on so many of them. I had some serious thoughts about food and some less serious ones. I'll do non-serious now.

This blog is a great idea, encouraging children to eat an adventurous range of vegetables, but be warned: it sings! While I was off making toast, something started singing and it wasn't The Adventures of Massey Ferguson. I had juggled so much to sit down in quiet this morning (including putting Massey Ferguson on the other computer via earphones for the nearly no longer sick child) that I could not actually stand to read the blog because it made a noise.

This one was pretty sophisticated, which is a nice form of escapism here in vomitland.