Catering

Have you been well catered for over Christmas?

Did others cater for you or were you the one doing all the catering?

Are you the sort of gardener who caters?

Most of you probably have one of these in the garden.

Some of you will put food out for the birds too, I bet.

Like me you may have bird or mammal boxes to cater for the accommodation needs of our feathered and furred friends. You may have chosen plants to attract birds and butterflies. Lots of you, I know, have flowers in the veggie patch to bring the pollinators.

In your gardening do you ever consider the needs of our other four, six, eight or more legged visitors?  Or even our legless ones?

Butterflies like a shallow watering place with somewhere to land on.  They can slip their proboscus between stones to reach the water.  Other insects and lizards like a low water source too.

The chooks were digging up the plants in the grey garden, so my sister helped me to collect and spread these stones and small rocks.  This micro-pond was formed by digging a hole and lining it with a plastic bag disguised with rocks and gravel.

This one is an old bowl from the kitchen with rocks and stones.

They fill when I put the sprinklers on.

Now I am off to cater for myself, as The Cook is absent.

Mmmm! I think I can feel a smooth, green soup coming up...with a chicken broth as its base.

Don't worry, I will use stock cubes!

Friday Rant!

'The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal—and acutely sensitive to natural limits….'

I couldn't wait until Sunday for a 'Sunday Rant', to share this essay from 'Counter Punch'.  Do take the time to follow the link and wade through it, please. It has an american slant, but in our globalised world, is relevant to all developed western economies/societies.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

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Time to Abolish the American Dream

The Waning of the Modern Ages

by MORRIS BERMAN

THE END IS NIGH!

If you read Gavin's Blog (The Greening of Gavin), 

you will have seen this.  But it is so good, 

I have decided to post it here too, 

in the hope that it will reach more people. 

I like it because it is an easy-to-understand overview 

of what is happening in our world.  

It covers all the bases -  

capitalism's need for continuous economic growth, 

peak-oil, our over-reliance on

cheap money and energy,

the disintegration of the environment,

climate change...... 

I really like the fact that the author seems almost excited 

by the promise the crumbling of the world-as-we-know-it offers us - 

an opportunity to do it better.  

Have a look and see what you think.

Here is a link to the authors of the animation: Doing it Ourselves.

I am off outside to plant some more veggies!

Is it your fault?

Do you use recycled printing paper or does your's come from our precious forests?

Do you think twice about printing?

Do you use both sides of your paper to print on?

Do you use the backs of letters and envelopes for note paper?

Do you recycle your used paper?

Check out this link to a video about logging in the Toolangi Forest.

Rip, rip, woodchip.

That little animal, in the video, is the Leadbeater Possum, faunal emblem of the state of Victoria, Australia.  A government/private enterprise group is destroying the last remaining habitat of this endangered species.

Logging follow up

The logging protestors in the Toolangi Forest who I wrote about recently have having their day in court. 

The group, 'My Environment Inc' has taken VicForests to the Supreme Court this week in an effort to stop the logging.  I can't get to the court this week but I am sending a donation.  They have a Facebook page to if you are into that sort of thing.

Also, here is a link to an excellent ABC 7.30 Report segment outlining all the sides in the story.

Autumn?

The King Parrots love the seeds on the Japanese Maples

and feast on them each Autumn.

I followed my ears to something rustling in the trees

and found this immature male and his dad

munching and happy to pose for a few photos.

But does this mean that Autumn is here?

I am not ready yet!

I nearly got arrested!

Well, that is a bit of an over-statement...but The Cook and I were threatened with arrest.  The Cook has a job at a local magazine and we were sleuthing out a story about logging in the Toolangi Forest and a protest about same.

The protestors, The Central Highlands Action Group, had a camp

and welcomed us warmly.  Past their camp was gate across the road

and a man in a ute.

Although he said that he would rather we didn't, we walked past the gate and up the road.

This was not illegal until we got to this sign:

That's when he drove up and warned us that if we went any further,

her would call it in and have us arrested!

We didn't push the point.

The protesters had halted logging for over a day by locking themselves to machinery and with two tree-sits.  But as you can tell by these pictures, the loggers were back at work yesterday.

The concern for this particular piece of forest is that it is, as the protesters told us, 'the green hole in the black donut'. It was ringed by fire but not burned in the Black Saturday fires three years ago.

As such, it became a sanctuary for fleeing wildlife and has supported it ever since as the forest around has begun to regenerate.

According to my research, this area is listed among the second most at risk habitats in the country and is home to between 120 and 140 threatened species.  The Leadbeater possum being one of these.  The Victorian Government is looking at altering the Flora and Fauna Act.  At present the appropriate department only searches for endangered species in areas likely to be logged.  Changes will mean their surveys will include land already locked up in reserves and national parks with the aim of disproving the endangered status of many species.  According to the Age newspaper, senior department and government sources have confirmed the government wants to overhaul the act amid concerns that environment groups are becoming more skillful at capturing footage of endangered species to thwart logging operations.

I may not be taking up the activist's offer to teach me how to climb trees, but I may take them a cake next week.

Sunday Rant - Well put!

How did the uber-rich get that way?
Intelligence, talent, hard work or some other means?

You know I love a good rant on Sundays.  But I don't always feel in the mood.  Like today, for instance, it is sunny, I can hear my garden growing, the solar panels are ticking over, I have just enjoyed a couple of  scrambled eggs for brekkie, and I am having a second cup of tea while contemplating the rest of my day.

Then I found a post by George Monbiot, on the Permaculture Research Institute website.  It made me laugh...and cry at the same time.  

If you are in the mood to have your emotions tweaked, or are concerned about the inequalities in our world or the impact of big business on our planet...then I invite you to click below.  You will not be disappointed.

Click HERE 

to go THERE

An ethical question

I have been concocting various potting mixtures today and planting things up for the greenhouse and into containers which will not be in the greenhouse.

I am in danger of turning into a mad scientist, worrying about variables, control groups and the like.  You can look forward to a post (probably a whole raft of posts) about my experiments.

Last week, when I asked for potting mix recipes, My Favourite Witch, mentioned using gravel from a culvert.  I knew exactly what she meant, so today I donned the gumboots and waded into the creek to retrieve a bucket of the most beautiful gravel imaginable.  It is bigger than sand but still quite small.

 

 The creek is fast flowing and its bed is rocks and stones.  My daughter and grandsons made a little rock dam next to the bank last Summer.  The upstream side of the dam is filling with silt (yabbies are loving it) and the downstream side has this gravel.

As you can see, it it quite small.

I have been thinking that this, and some larger stones, would be a great floor for the greenhouse.

My dilemma is:   

should I be 'mining' the creek?

My thoughts are: the gravel has to come from somewhere;  I am taking a finite amount; no machinery will be used; no profit will be made from the sale of the gravel; fossil fuels will not be used in its collection and transport.

Do you think it will be okay 

- ethically and environmentally?


Mind you, if I decide to do it, I will have to convince The Cook that it is a GREAT idea and, carrying buckets of gravel up the creek bank and into the greenhouse, is a fabulous workout.

Oh!  'Old fossil' fuel will be required!

Giving some back...

....and getting paid for it!  I am looking forward to our electricity bills now that we are finally connected to the grid.  We just scraped in and will be receiving the old feed in tariff ...I think it is 61 cents per kW hour.  I keep opening the box and looking at my new money saver!

Some good news and a bit of Banjo.

Australia, following a ridiculous day in Federal Parliament (at least it was the public, not the politicians for a change) has a Carbon Tax.

The Snowy River has received a flushing flow with water from the Jindabyne Dam.  It is the first 'flood' since the dam was built in the 1960s reducing the flow in the river to a trickle.  The aim is to clean the river of decades of dirt and bio-matter and to cut a cleaner, deeper, narrower channel.  The Man from Snowy River would be pleased.

Yesterday was also National Ride to Work Day in Australia with over 100 000 people jumping on their peddlies and heading off to work and school.

Reducing my Blogging footprint

Blogging has proven to be a wonderful activity.

What started off just as an effort to record

my gardening and greening efforts,

has provided a thread that has woven its way

through my days.  

As I go about my day, 

blogging opportunities present themselves

and out comes the camera.

I enjoy the feeling of community

that blogging brings.

Male King Parrot in full breeding plumage

However, I find that it is taking up a lot of time and head-space

 that I could spend on other things.  

So...I am no longer going to try to blog every day 

and I am going to try to limit my posts to the original purposes 

of documenting the garden 

and my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint on our little blue planet.  

Cooking from scratch and 

cooking using produce from the garden will continue to appear.

Goats and chooks will pop in from time to time to say g'day.

The truth is, you may not notice too much of a change....

especially this time of the year when so much is going on in the garden.

But I think I will feel the change once the

pressure to produce something each day has gone.

Maybe less is best anyway!

Mother love?

Redback spider

Latrodectus hasselti

Yes, I know she is poisonous

In fact her bite can even kill

children and the elderly.

But if she did bite you, 

do not bandage the wound,

apply ice, take painkillers

and seek medical attention.

There is an effective antivenene.

But she is really very shy

and will not hunt you down.

After her photo shoot,

where she posed quietly

with her egg sacs,

I put this one back where

I found her under my sister's shed.

I think she is beautiful

and she gets to have her man

and to eat him too.

Birthday present

Firstly, thank you to 'Anonymous' for 

letting everyone in the blogosphere know it was 

my birthday yesterday.

Secondly, thank you for your kind birthday wishes.

They must have worked because

look what I got for my birthday!

 No, not a new van, or two.

...nor a lot electrical wiring.

 No, it wasn't a ladder....

...or a toolbox full of tools and swear words.

 And it certainly wasn't a couple of cheeky boys!

 It wasn't a second storey on the house...

IT WAS THE

SOLAR PANELS! 

They are not pretty...but they already had the old

meter running backwards today.

i.e. making more power than we were using.

It's elecrifyingly exciting.

Whether, weather,weather...

 Whether the weather be hot,

or whether the weather be cold

We'll weather the weather together,

Whether we like it or not.

But will we?

My low tech high/low thermometer.
Today's range 8.5 - 14 deg C.

I was already thinking about the weather because the rain put paid to my kitchen building plans and this was going to be a little light hearted post about that.

Mist rolling up the valley late this afternoon following a pretty soggy day.

Then I went wandering down the

Sweet Scented Pathwith Mrs B.  

She posted about a book she has been reading.

She included this quote from Paul Gilding's book, 'The great disruption'.

"It's time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. Instead we need to brace for impact, because global crisis is no longer avoidable. The Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological change like the melting polar icecap. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version  1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our plant's ecosystems and resources." 

- from The Great Disruption: How the climate will transform the global economy by Paul Gilding

And even if it was only about fossil fuels...

The ordinary bloke over at

The Greening of Gavin

posted about Peak Oil today

and will be following up tomorrow.

Have a read. 

Of course, all over the news for weeks (months) we have had the pollies in Oz arguing about how to deal with global warming. I am so over their bickering and their Mickey Mouse 'solutions' which all involve fiddling at the edges of the problem...fiddling while Rome  The Earth burns.  If the Carbon 'tax' ever gets of the ground properly, at least it will be something.

But I am with Paul Gilding, we need to take a good look at the real problem....capitalism and the orchestrated consumerism we have all been lured into since WWII. All sorts of environmental (and humanitarian) disasters have been caused by the hunt for profit and our belief that we should have the biggest, newest, bestest, latest..... 

Money or the latest fashion/gadget isn't worth much if there isn't any world.   But it is so hard.  If you are trying to be an ethical consumer, advertising and packaging make it very difficult.

The lovely Rose is carrying out her own detective work over at 

The Greening Of Rose.

She is tracking down the sources of her daily food.

What is in the product,

where it is produced and packed...

and who owns the brand.

Even a humble carton of orange juice 

with the label 'Berri since 1943' and 'Australian Grown'

contains additives produced in China

and is owned by a multinational. 

It feels as if there isn't a lot the individual can do...
proselytize...but who will listen?

Vote...who for?

Another blogger, Nick,  over at , Make Believe, has made a few
changes to the way he lives now and is
making plans for the future after reading
Gilding's book.

So here I sit, chipping away, doing the little I can to make a difference.

Growing a few veggies,

turning off lights,

installing solar panels,

avoiding processed foods,
cooking from scratch,
eating mainly vegetarian,

keeping chooks,

ignoring advertising,

buying only what I must,

making do,

recycling, re-using, repurposing,

op-shopping,

volunteering,

reading,

educating myself about the issues,
trying to become self sufficient
(in skills and knowledge as well as the usual)

and blogging about it.

Whether the weather be hot,

or whether the weather be cold

We'll weather the weather together,
I hope,

Whether we like it or not.


Remember Winter Wednesday tomorrow.
Write something that is good about Winter
and join in the fun.

Four Seasons in One Day

We are in midldle of Winter at the moment.  Well, and here is an anomaly, because Australia is such a big continent it has different climactic regions.  This is obvious if you follow a few Aussie gardening blogs ... we are all planting different things.  Up north, north of the Tropic of Capricorn it is very different to down here in the South....check out this map.  

I live just below the 'O' in word 'Victoria' in the south-east corner of the big island.

Winter, is officially all of June, July and August.  The four season model is one that was imported with the first white settlers but with a slight change.  Somehow New Zealand and Australia do not follow the practice in other countries of using the solstices as a marker for Winter and Summer and the equinoxes for Spring and Autumn.   

But this is the interesting thing to me....The indigenous people, always much more in sync with their environment, have different seasonal models for their regions.

The Wurundjeri have 

a six season model 

for the Melbourne region.

Like many native peoples the traditional inhabitants here did not have a written language.  The length of the days and the seasonal changes in the night sky provide pointers to the time of the year along with the changes to plants and animals. Click on the above diagram to see a clearer version and scroll down to to see an explanation of what happens in each season and how it affected the movements of the indigenous people in the area.

The indigenous model makes wonderful sense... but it doesn't work for my veggie garden.   June, for instance, is often dry and is certainly warmer, in my experience than July and August when it can be very cold and the soil, particularly so.  In June I can still plant brassica seedlings, other greens and root crops.  In July the only thing that will germinate and grow are snow peas.  Although by August, I can start seeds inside for planting out in late September, once the ground begins to warm.

Ouch! The irony just hit me 

in the head like a wood splitter.  

Here I am writing about growing 'exotic' vegetable species, and an 'exotic' four season model in a land far removed from their countries of origin discussing a seasonal model developed by people much older and wiser in the ways of this country than me...and on a blog about being green and environmentally aware.  

Mmm!  I have to go and think about this some more.


Postscript:  It is NAIDOC week.
Click on NAIDOC to find out more and to see what is on in your area.

Is your bum guilt free?

 Crapman wants you to make a stand when using the toilet.

Healesville Sanctuary is promoting the use of recycled toilet paper.

(When this product was first introduced, my mother was horrified...

'Who would want to use toilet paper that had been used already!'

However, she quickly changed brands once she found out it

was made from recycled office paper...chuckle!)

Australia has the highest rate of extinction of mammals in the world,

and we have lost vast quantities of our native forests in the past

200 years.  

In a time of climate change, our trees...

whether they come from plantation or old growth forests...

are much better off in the ground than down our toilets.

If you use recycled toilet paper 

then your bum is guilt free.  

If you don't it's time you made the switch 

and your bum will feel much better.

In the flight show, a parrot unfurled this sign.

You can show your support for Crapman by visiting and friending his facebook page

Stop being a tree flusher 

and wipe for wildlife.