Zingiest, Tastiest, Kickin' Fresh Lemonade! Pow!

Alex made lemonade today. Fresh lemons from the lemon tree, fresh mint from the garden and sweeeet sweeet sugar. Look forward to more of these in the summer time!

More, more!

We've been putting together no- dig vegetable gardens for the last couple of months and sowing seeds for spring and summer. This is part of our (Alex's and my) attempt to become more sustainable and also a strategy for stress relief as we use gardening as a form of communication with nature and meditation for the soul (necessary in semi-city/suburban life). We are planting a variety of edibles that we commonly buy-

leaf vegetables incl. lettuces, spinach's, silverbeets, cabbages

tomatoes of many varieties

herbs such as mint, parsley, sage, thyme, rosemary, chives and basil

peas and beans incl. an experiment with soy beans

onions and some garlic

We are also dabbling with magical herbs for teas, skin treatment and flavourings such as Valerian, calendula, chamomile, nasturtium, coneflowers/echinacea, astragalus, catnip, mugwort and hyssop. This is for what we will call, our pharmaceutical garden.

We're also propagating "weeds" and special plants that improve the soil and can also be eaten for their high nutrient content such as nettles (for nettle tea), dandelion (eat the leaves and make tea and returns nutrients to the soil), chickweed and native warrigal greens.

We have two beds (thanks to our landlords who are allowing us use of two disused gardens in their front yard) and a lot of pots, polytrays salvaged from street dumping and containers in our part of the yard.

Today, as we prepared the second bed, G (kindy aged boy) and O (his littler sister) emerged with their parents P and T (who are also our landlords and live in the house our granny flat is attached to) for a family working bee cutting the grass and trimming the edges. We hijacked the kiddies, in perfect gardening attire of gumboots and bucket hats and watering cans in hand, to help us put the garden together and show them what we were doing.

They demanded "more, more" even after we had planted all the seeds allocated for that day and watered all the layers in the second no dig. This is funny, Alex and I often look at the garden together proclaiming "more plants! more plants!" O wanted to know WHY, we were planting seeds and told me she "wuved begetables" especially pumpkin and potato. I told her hopefully we'll plant some potato in some hessian sacks sometime but there was no room for pumpkin in our garden! G said he hated peas when he was a baby but loved them now, which is lucky because we have the whole back fence ready for climbing peas and beans. He said that if anyone stepped on the baby plants, we should "smack them!" but I don't think it'll come to that.

After resorting to forcing them to leave because we simply had no jobs left for them late in the aftermoon, everything was very well watered in all sectors of the garden, all seeds sowed and the bed polished with pea straw was ready to sit a while before being planted into, they asked if they could come back next week and help us. O's favourite things to say "can i help wu? pwease?" and "come on, a widdle more, a widdle more" dwindling as she is shuffled back into her house and G, who is very manly for a kindy boy, already lamenting the time Alex picked him up so he could reach to water the back of the garden and how strong both he and Alex are.

What perfect and entertaining garden hands!

no more wishing

the wish tree at LIVE FUTURES, harking back to our Lurkers event where hopeful for the Copenhagen summit, we hung wishes for those attending. it can be hard to not remain disempowered.

so you're going to start to notice a lot of permaculture related blogging on this site as its become one of my primary interests in the last year. ive found myself, in the city, longing for a need to connect to the origin of things- where things have come from and how they fit into my cycle of being. a growing concern for the state of the environment, ( i won't say "climate change" because it's time to say Ecological Crisis ), and the way the food industry impacts upon this has become predominant in my everyday life as i take on a number of gardens, start an interest in foraging and supporting "artists" and "activists" (because that's what organic permaculuralists and even vege gardeners are) in their endeavours to re-educate for the future. we need to look backwards in order to look forwards and become connected- grassroots stylez.

currently alexander and i are getting our first vege patch ready for spring. we are also (with our friend el) maintaining a balcony garden at COFA- even though I don't attend there. with our very close friend and fellow artist victoria we have been allowed as 'guardians' to some land in wombeyan caves where vic is hoping to start a journey to self-sustainability. we are weaving these ideas into our current artworks as they become entangled in our everyday lives..

that- is very briefly, an overview of where I am at right now. you will hear much more on the matter as i consolidate my ideas in post form.

no more wishing:

alex at LIVE FUTURES where we worked on the COFA permaculture patch (balcony vege container garden).