garden
« Previous EntriesThe Power of Community
Friday, July 3rd, 2009There’s very little that could be more powerful than a group of people with the same goal working together. Last Saturday, after one hour of throwing ideas around, 12 of us permablitzed for 3 hours to transform a neglected patch of yard into a productive herb and vegetable garden. What was achieved in an [...]
Trial and Error
Friday, June 12th, 2009These are the other members of the Seedsavers Group I’m a part of – Francoise, Kate and Adele with Rosie standing in the front, and Francoise holding ….. This was obviously taken before the cold set in! The great thing about our group is that we meet every Wednesday and share gardening notes, seeds and, [...]
Dill’s Atlantic Giant
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008This amazing heirloom pumpkin, a Dill’s Atlantic Giant, was grown in Bathurst by Keith Hungerford, and its brother or sister won a prize at the Bathurst Show! It then went on to be displayed at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney. The breed has produced the world’s largest pumpkin weighing in at 496kg. It took [...]
The Year of the Potato & the Doomsday Vault
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Today I stumbled across this amazing photograph taken by Maria Tefre for the Global Crop Diversity Trust. It’s of the Global Seed Vault being built into a mountainside cavern in Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole. Its goal is to store the world’s crop seeds in case of [...]
Hypno Chicken!
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008Yes, it’s true. You CAN hypnotize chickens. Click here to watch a video of how my children do it! I couldn’t believe it. The boys called me down to the chicken yard and all the chickens were lying on their backs with their feet in the air.
It’s not enough that we do our best
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
As more and more reports come in of food shortages around the world (this photo is from The Wire ), Churchill’s words ring in my ears:
“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required. Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and [...]
Strawberry Fields Forever
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008What an inspiration you are Helen! It seems that it’s time to get this blog on the road again. My son Oscar and I have been busy in the garden for weeks now, watching and learning how nature works. We’ve managed, for example, to save strawberries from the damage caused by months of rain – [...]
A bite of borage, a shot of courage
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
Quick, before Monsanto gets hold of the seeds … get yourself a borage plant!
Pliny, and others throughout history, have attributed borage with giving people courage, driving away sadness and depression and lifting the spirits – just what we need to help us tackle global warming!
Pliny called the plant Euphrosinum, because it “maketh [...]
Time is life
Friday, September 14th, 2007Camellia in our Spring Garden
The challenges we are facing with global warming, peak oil, flu epidemics, collapsing stock markets, and mounting stress appear insurmountable. These are all complex problems. Is there any way to build immunity and to survive these diseases of our contemporary world and the illness threatening our planet?
After 2 years of [...]
Paul Stamets & Magic Mushrooms – the web of life
Saturday, September 8th, 2007
Mycelium on decomposing log (photo by Dr. George Knaphus)
Every now and then it is possible to learn something so huge it can almost blow your mind away. Last year it was the severity of global warming. Today, in our permaculture class, it was finding out about Paul Stamets and his theory that mushrooms [...]