The Green Garden

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February 11, 2018February 19, 2018 The Green Garden

Summer: tents, beaches and long lost memories.

January 18, 2016February 11, 2018 The Green Garden

On breastfeeding in public in the UK

January 13, 2016February 10, 2018 The Green Garden

Visiting art galleries with four year olds

February 12, 2013March 28, 2018 The Green Garden

Making our own Beads of Courage

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We’re still picking plenty of capsicums and chillis from the garden. . This is from a plant that despises cold temperatures and is intolerant to frost. . Part of me is like, “yay, capsicums in May” and another part of me is like, “we are near the start of winter and climate change is here and this is not at all okay.” . Pretty photo though.
Gifts from Tangaroa for our mara kai. . Perhaps once a year, we spread a layer of seaweed on the garden. I ohhh and ahhhh at many a handful. Surely the prettiest of the mulch additions! . There are endless ways to utilise seaweed - not just as a mulch addition, but as a tea, or direct into your compost pile. . If you are going to add it direct to your garden, I’d recommend not going too thick - just use it as an addition to your mulch layer, rather than the mulch layer. . When collecting do check that you can, and only take from above the high tide line - some seaweeds are designed for going in and out of tidal movements and no one wants to destroy one system to help another . . We garden directly on sand dune here, so we find layering various materials into our mulch helps to encourage super happy, super dark soil underneath. .
We trundled to the beach this morning and made a mandala. I took abundant snacks, but not any water. That’s an amateur’s mistake, I know, yet somehow here I am surprising even myself. . So three hours in, and long before our enthusiasm waned, parched throats dictated a full retreat back home. . Albie has been in full flight - a grand mandala design in his mind that was thrice the size, which he could see was only being half realised by his mediocre assistants, but he was patient with our efforts nonetheless. . And as we went away up the hill, we walked backwards to admire the pattern we’d created on the beach below. . Another family encircled it, pointing and chatting. . The mum turned and shouted up to us, her hand cupped to her mouth, “It’s so beautiful!” . Albie shot his hand high above his head and waved vigorously back. “Thankyou!” he shouted with a grin ear to ear. . As we kept walking Albie says thoughtfully to himself, “That felt really good.” . Temporary, imperfect, magic - just like the mandala itself.
What we call the beginning is often the end/ . And to make an end is to make a beginning./ . The end is where we start from… . We shall not cease from exploration/ . And the end of all our exploring/ . Will be to arrive where we started/ . And know the place for the first time./ . – excerpts from T S Eliot, Little Gidding . . Mum died in 1994 of cancer. The details in my head  of who she was, have long faded. Her laugh is gone, the sound of her voice disappeared, the scraps of her handwriting I have are strangely foreign to me now.  Its all out on the periphery of my mind- all that is, except for one. . What I can remember keenly and clearly, what has never diminished, is the great, big smack-bang feeling of  Love. The love she had for me, and the love I returned. . So, Mothers Day had been a bit stink until I became a mother myself. And then, Boom! All that I had popped carefully away in the back reaches of my mind and heart, came charging back out. . When it was my turn to be Mum, I wanted to turn to her again, to talk to her, to lean on her wisdom and strength. . She was nowhere to be found and I missed her all over again. . But it was in becoming a Mum, that I got  a new appreciation of  the relationship that I had lost. And while this all sounds deeply depressing,  in fact, it has made me feel HUGELY grateful. . Grateful that I had a wonderful Mum to miss at all and grateful that it is now my turn to be that kind of person for someone else. Albie and Fred have helped me understand, not just what it means to be a mother but what it means to be a mother’s child. . It was something I had packed away for far too long. . So, what a blessing it is to be a mother - alive on this earth and in connection with her children. May I always remember it is a privilege and not a right. . To all the mothers, and to all the children of mothers, and to all the mothers and children lost in between somehow all along the way. . Happy Mothers Day. . (I wrote the bulk of this on the first Mothers Day after Albie’s birth. How far we’ve come since.)
The chayote. They’re absolutely prolific, thrive easily and I’m yet to have any pest issues. Its like a silverbeet for hardiness, but a zucchini for usefulness. . What to do with a chayote? . It is one hugely versatile mofo and I’m still trying things out. You can slice it raw into salads - it’s incredibly juicy, crisp and slightly sweet and not at all as fruity as an apple in a salad, which is something I appreciate. . You can roast it and when roasted it goes deliciously creamy and keeps its sweetness. I add olive oil and salt at the start and garlic at the end and it is delicious. Throw in some chilli and some fresh herbs and some goats cheese and you’ve got a mouth party. . It’s a excellent replacement for green papaya for those obsessed by Green Papaya Salad (who isn’t? I tripped around SE Asia on that dish alone), it makes an incredible tzatziki neither watery or soggy, You can grate it, you can steam it, you can stuff it, you can marinate it. Its awesome as a layer in lasagne. It’s even high in vitamin C, folate and fibre. AND the entire vegetable is edible — skin, flesh, seeds, shoots, leaves, flowers. And when you cut it in half it looks decidedly like a lady fruit, if you catch my drift. Which is neither here nor there, but absolutely worth mentioning. . AND, if you want to grow your own just get your hands on a chayote fruit and wait for the creeper to creep out the join and plant it. So easy. I should be on commission to the Chayote Fan Club I know - but I suspect the membership may be just one. Let me know how you love it eat it! All hail the Chayote!
International Composting Awareness Week! It’s a real thing and I slid in, on Friday, in celebration of it to tell y’all about the virtues of the worm farm for the home garden. I wouldn’t change my worm farm for the world. Together with the compost heap and the chickens, it keeps our sandy soil (we’re on a sand dune) as healthy as possible. The videos have cut off so here is a quick summary of each layer: Top tray: is where you actively feed them. Once it is full, you moved it down a layer and bring the bottom layer (once it is emptied) to the top and start again. . Middle top tray: worms are still working their magic on what was the top tray a couple of months ago. . Middle bottom tray: I use this awesome vermicast around new seedlings, as an addition to homemade seed raising mix, in the bottom of a hole when I’m transplanting anything. . Bottom tray: liquid fertiliser. It has to be diluted 1:10 or even 1:15 to make worm tea, but it’s an awesome tonic for houseplants and as a foliar spray too. . So yeah, worms are exceptional creatures. Every garden needs them! I often refer to them as Runpelstiltskins of the earth - turning waste into garden gold. . Happy worm farming!

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