Balcony Garden Dreaming

Epic Hawkesbury road trip, Part Two: Cat Raffle & Marilyn Monroe at Wisemans ferry

2012-01-22T22:51:00.001+11:00

This looks like a place for morning Yoga

I had set off yesterday morning, expecting to arrive at Bandusia's Permaculture Design Course in time for lunch. It would be garden-grown luxury lunch, with all the creative international people who were certain to be there, getting into each others dreams and projects and more.

A series of navigational errors and distractions had my car and I miss lunch, miss dinner, and now we were going to miss breakfast too.
We had made a midnight decision to return to the river bank, re-cross on the ferry, and curl up for the night on the correct river bank. There would be a leisurely breakfast for me, and a big tank of petrol for the Japanese car. We could then get lost to our hearts content.
A PDC is after all a 2 week course.

It was warm when I awoke, and peered out the window from the back seat. A beautiful day! I had just set a record: eight hours in the car and not one navigational mistake.
My morning yoga was on the grass, with river-washed air, in dappled sunshine. It set me up for a day of great expectations, a day where mistakes wouldn't even matter.

I wandered into town, seeking a pleasant spot for breakfast. Passing through a quirky little arcade, I noticed an unusual poster.
This poster that made me realize, people here at Wisemans are different.

The Cat Raffle

I could just imagine it
"Honey, we won the cat raffle!"
"Luv, we've already got 16 cats"

Looking closely, I learn the prize was a painting. The model is Reg, one of the handsome arcade cats, painted by a local artist

Take a look at the photo - its young Reg himself, inspecting his portrait.
The ear is back, a dismissing gesture.
He's not impressed.
Maybe he's getting a premonition of what the prize will be for him and his girlfriends - a community-supported desexing.

Sorry mate, but its got to be done.
I am impressed with this community.

Walking on, and who comes and greets me?

Reg the cat.
He stops me in my tracks. I drop everything. He makes out with my handbag.
Charming, radiant with health, and letting it out on the world.

Another little cat appears, hurls herself at him.

So things have turned out rather well for the cats of the Cat Raffle.

Behind me a lady with keys is opening the Local Gallery Co-op.
I start chatting, and get the whole story.
Reg and Rita are the direct descendents of the original ferry cats, looked after by the whole town.
I love this story.
I love that the townspeople didn't just moan about the bloody kitten problem, nor did they ignore it and let the cats get hard and mean and many.
Neither did they leave it to the usual saintly people, who get landed with paying to fix it.
A kind of tax on virtue.
In a generative, fun way, the cats got what they needed, the artist got some fame, and the main cat lady, whoever she is, got some food money.
Its all rather wonderuful, and very permacultural.
I handed her few coins to pop into the catfood fund.

I've slept here, so now its my town too, and my cats.

Cecilia takes breakfast on the Hawksbury river

Breakfast was slow and delicious. I watched the Hawksbury river wend around the bend, also slow and delicous.

On my way back, who do I see?
Its the cat lady.
Mired in a frenzy of miaowing, as she tries to open her antique store. Reg's head office.

Karlene of Wiseman’s Ferry Vintage and Collectables

Here is Karlene, coming to work with her arms full of home-grown roses, and her ankles full of ginger cats.

She is enjoying her life and her work. Check this out - a whole bookshelf of Marylin Monroe, a shrine to the beauty of one little lady.
"I taught a whole month of Marylin Monroe-themed English Classes, in Tokyo" I tell her.
We beauty addicts know, if you have to go to work, there is no reason why you can't make it lovely.

I like everything in her shop. Victorian fish-serving platter-knives, lacy. Coal-fueled bedwarming pans.
Back in Melbourne is an Aladdin's cave storage unit filled with things just as quirky and lovely, things I'm already in a relationship with. Things who are waiting for me to get my next house.
I'm not tempted at all.
But I am in need of a pretty cup and saucer for my morning tea.

This one is mine.

It has many predecessors, I'm afraid.

But I can invest in it lovely memories of 2012, starting with today. It may still survive a long time more.

So I'm back on the road.

The valley here in St. Albans unfolds its loveliness for me, curve after curve. Yesterday, with its perils and defeats, seem like the dream.

Its as if this valley doesn't yet know that plastic has been invented.

I feel like Frodo Baggins. I know why he keeps adventuring.

Very, very old pub. It smells wonderful inside, suggesting
centuries of roast dinners, wainscoting, and fireside conversations.

Have I gone too far?

No!

Its Bandusia, and I am a great, inadvertant success.

Arriving as planned, just in time for lunch.

Cecilia at Bandusia driveway, Photo Penny Pyett

Epic Hawkesbury road trip, Part One: Healers, Rechargers, and Reg of the Dump

2012-01-21T21:38:00.000+11:00

This is the story of my trip up here to Bandusia, over a week ago now.

Enchanted Pecan forest, Bandusia

I had heard that my Permaculture heroes were gathering to teach a PDC at the many-starred Bandusia Contry Retreat, home of the new Permaculture Sydney Institute.

You don't just sit around in Sydney with this going on.

So I packed my bag, and hit the road.

I was not gifted with a talent for navigation and map reading.

Life also landed me with irresistible urges to sidetrack, ever since I was tiny.

Here is what life is like, when you are made that way.

Here are the people you meet, and the things that happen.

Its just the way it is.

Circling Bondai - Rebecca

First I got the creative idea that Bondai was on the way to St. Albans, which meant I just had to drop in and finally meet a lady from my Meetup group, a lady who had caught my fancy.

After circling around a bit, I arrived at Rebecca's.

Dahlia flowers, my constant friend the thermos,
and vintage tea sets at Rebecca's

The circling included getting pastries that neither of us would eat - she is a naturopath, I'm a permie, we don't eat that kind of dead white-flour food.

She kept them for her husband.

Kitchen sink sprouts

It was fun at her house, as it looked just like her - lots of growing, originality, and things evolving into other things.
Her work and her surroundings are all of a piece. She is also a 'doula', a kind of midwife. Bringing life to the world, and liveliness to our bodies is her mission and her profession.

Urban Beehive

Her new garden is just getting started as a permaculture garden. I did not know about her permie side, she did not know about mine. But we found each other.

Like a bee to honey.

I love that all the colors of her house, the moods and eras all sing to the same tune - aqua and flowery and 50's and housewifely.

The theme of her house is Happy.

Rebecca is coming to my 'Tim Ferriss Meetup group's New Year Planing day next weekend, when we will be thinking up ways to bring our lovely projects to the world.

One of her many projects is Rhubarb, a wholefood co-op.
A labor of love, I can see.

I peeped into her pantry, the cupboards were full of bottled produce she and her friends had grown, all in jars without labels, all rather magical.

To this she will be adding jars of upackaged grains and treasures from her co-op, one day soon.

Orrganic good things, to be cooked up and become....herself.

We enjoyed each other, did some mutual admiring, hatched up more new insights and ideas about how bodies really work.

Then I was back on the road.

I won't make it to Bandusia by lunchtime, I realize.

Circling The Highways:

You can't actually look at your iphone while driving, and I forget what maps are telling me the minute I take my eyes of them.

My memory is excellent. Its just not interested in things that will date so quickly as 'right, then left'.

In Sydney, if you are two seconds late changing lanes, you can get taken 20 minutes in the wrong direction.

That happened, and it happened.

I just don't learn.

But I stayed on the road, just kept on going.

In my car, 2008.

Circling the Suburbs

I drew near the house of another lady I couldn't resist meeting, the second healer for the day.

Janene is a host to special paying travelers on Air B&B, a wonderful site for sharing and connecting good people.

She looked like a friend waiting to happen, so I dropped in.

She shared her lunch with me. I gave her come of my cards, and a bit of garden advice.

She let me recharge my poor overworked iphone, before I headed into the mountains.
Navigating wears everything out.
While I waited, she had me sit and listen to a downloaded affirmation on her personal computer.

I enjoyed it so much.

There was some Californian motivational speaker, urging us into visualizations to draw in a soulmate.

Another one of my blank spots.
Navigating, and finding soulmates.

It did, however, pop into my imagination how nice it would be to have a Japanese bathroom, steamy with the fragrance of ceder wood.

Yes, geting a husband could result in enough stability for such a lovely thing.

My phone charged, and with a charming new vision, my bath of matrimony, I waved goodbye and got back on the road.

Cecilia driving, 2008

A hut in the forest

Driving deep in the mountains, there is a patch of convoluted turns so tight, I didn't even THINK of disobeying the speed-signs. 5km, they said, at the turns.

It seemed endless, but I did emerge.

I pulled over to calm the adrenaline, say a little prayer, and let the antsy cars behind me pass.

Now can you imagine this? They leaned on their horns, to teach me some kind of lesson.

Man!

I sat there a long time. I gathered my wits, as the light faded.

Did some more gathering my wits. Then just a bit more.

I turned the key.

Silence.

Lucky my phone was charged. An NRMA man was on his way, through all those curves, to come and charge my flat battery.

Off the road. Just temporarily.

Reg of the Dump

My evening rescued by Reg of the Dump.

Reg took me in as I waited in the fading light. 90 minutes, they said.

"Would you like a cuppa, love?"

"Well, is there any chance I could use your stove? It would be great if I cook some of my oatmeal. Its just in the car".

"We can do that. Come in, come in".

My dinner: Oatmeal and Hawksbury river prawns, wth hot water and milk.

He offered me some Hawksbury River Prawns he had just cooked to go with them. The were tiny and sweet, like cashews.
Fusion cuisine.

After my supper, Reg showed me some of the treasures he had gleaned from his days as the boss of the Wiseman's Ferry Dump.

A carousel cigarette dispenser. A curly candelabra. Elaborate Victorian dining contraptions and fancy china, all from the dump.

He showed me the legacy from his dear dead wife, the china dolls she had made by hand. She was always in the op shops, he said. Always looking out for frocks to be re-made into fine little dresses for her pretty girls, her darling girls.

Hes blokey, but seemd to like the postcard set I gave him, with my pretty drawings.

Recharged again and back on the road, I kept on going.

I've missed lunch and I've missed dinner, but I kept on going.

Circling Wisemans Ferry: Dark

After my usual wrong turns and reverses, my little car and I arrived at Wisemans Ferry. A man with a biker's beard put us on the ferry, and winched us over the river.

After an increasingly strange drive, I finally saw what my iphone map had been telling me all along - there are TWO ferrys at Wiseman's. I had taken the wrong one.

As is my custom.

I back track, yet again.

Starry night by Ander Bos

By now, everyone at Bandusia would be asleep. I have enough petrol for the official part of the journey, but my capacity for getting lost is beyond calculation.

I vote to wait until the petrol station opens.

My car and I found a place by the river. I spread out my Sheridan sheets as far as they'd go, and hopped into my pink pyjamas.

Off the road, but just for a bit.

Getting Down and Out in Double Bay - New Year, New Life

2012-01-20T20:56:00.001+11:00

Photos by Cecilia and passers-by, 2nd week of January, 2012

I heard Double Bay is a desireable area, so I thought I'd go and live there for a bit.

At the Marina. Yeah, I got a bit skinny over Christmas.
You are quite welcome to cook me dinner.

Down the road from my friend's house is a marina, where I take my strolls, and meet other vagabonds from all around the world.

They live, eat and sleep in tiny, tiny cabins for weeks, but have a vast view of the sea, horizons all around.

Its 180º opposite of life in a McMansion, or even a real mansion, where your house is vast, but you may be confined to an office to pay for it all.

Some of these boats even had weenie balcony gardens, little cheerful pots. How precious this scrap of soil would seem, if you were weeks without it.

"Land Ahoy". Thats how they greet their pot plants each morning.

Double Bay streetscape, 10 minutes from Sydney's city center.

2011 was my year of being reclusive, so for 2012 Im going to have a go at being out and about.

Here is the result:

First night
We had a nice dinner, my laptop and I, with rain pattering on the awnings, the air fresh and electic.
When I got a whining neighbour, I moved table and fished out my earplugs.

We may not all like each other, but there are plenty of tricks that allow us to share the same world.

Next Night

The food at Mrs. Sippy is almost as good as my own cooking, delicate and classy.

Hey, maybe we just have similar tastes.

The lady beside me took my photo when she had her smoko.

Then her companion invited us (my laptop and I) over to join them.

Nice!

It turned out she wasn't Kylie Minoge, but an Executive's assistant.
She's just about to start running work-life balance events, and needs some good Permaculture.
A woman with keen insticts.
He's not a film star either, but a Dubai Lawer. I wonder if his office needs a self-watering indoor edible garden?
I like this town.

Next Night
The fellow who took this photo had helped me with parking, the day I moved in, and recognized me. He was chivalrous then, and interesting now - he has his own T.V. show, imagine that.
I could look it up on Google as we chatted, and show my lovely permaculture too.
Share surplus ideas, get them out there too.

I like dinner with technology, and yes, I do like this town.

After that?
The next night I knew my Permaculture heros were coming to town, to teach a Design Course. John Champagne. Janet Millington. I tried to track them down, but they don't seem keen on mobile phones.

Dinner alone.

And then?
I'm going to get in my car and follow them, see if I can help out on the course.
I hear there is no wireless in that part of the Hawksbury region.
No phones, no email, no googling people as you meet them.

But great expectations for another good week, in my year of getting out there.
Acording to one of the great minds of our time, 99% of success is just turning up.

How to apologize - lunch, Bonza rent-a-bike & getting connected

2012-01-08T12:53:00.000+11:00

While my mother was here in Sydney over the holidays, we had a bit of a blue. (That's an Aussie term for a fight).
No words were exchanged. I just up and left before desert, before I chucked a spazza (that's a politically incorect term for 'get mad').

She was probably feeling a bit miserable about it.
So the next moring I sent a text message. "Sorry I got cross. You ways and mine are different, and there is no reason you should do things my way. Would you like to go on a bike ride after lunch?"

Sunscreen, as supplied by Bonza Bike tours

That wasn't so hard. And it is all true.

Just because I'm right and she is wrong doesn't mean I cannot say "sorry'.

"I'm regretful that things are not harmonious between us"

Thats what my apology actually means! She has no idea. But it doesn't matter.

Every one alive knows we are all partly wrong and partly right, in mesures we would never be able to calculate.

And everyone alive loves an apology.
Nobody really teaches us how to do it, apart from the rare souls who give us a memorable one.
Words are a bit too cheap and easy, especially with shameless types like me.
Actually doing something for somebody, something that takes a meaningful chunk of time or money, is the way to go.
About 2 hours of our wages or time seems about right to 'clean up' after snapping at someone.

So, my happy mother and I met at Circular Quay. We found a cafe, and shared a very big hamburger without relish, without pickle, without mayonaise, because she likes things plain. All the condiments came on side for me, because I like things fancy.

That's design to accommodate differences, before conflict strikes.

I'm finding that if I apologize EVERY TIME I get annoyed, and make it a 2 hour apology, with flowers, cooking dinner, or a trip, then everyone gets better at putting in effort to avoid going crook (an old-fashioned word for 'get mad').

Yes, this is very Japanese.

My mum, as we cycle under the miraculous Sydney Harbor Bridge

After lunch we got our bikes, and got all decked out with helmets, maps, scenic directions and sunscreen by the lovely man at Bonza Bike Tours.

Yes, Bonza Bike Tours were bonza (thats an Aussie term meaning Bloody Marvelous)

I love it when people put my helmet on for me. I feel petted and 'looked-after.'

We WERE Looked After.

We coasted and peaddled, and saw lots of nice things up close.

Its so cute at The Rocks, with all the stone and wood low-tech buildings.

I like that they are crooked and lumpy and leaning, which makes them organic and alive, as if they had their own gait and calling noise. You can imagine them getting up and galumping down the street.

Some even sprout their very own miniature doorstep gardens.

There are many lovely things in this world, but life in an unlikely, barren place is up there with the best.

Apologies are like that, little miracles of life.

I've got another 60 or so years to refine my skills in this area.
I will be bloody marvelous at it, one day. That's the wish.

Spend one year observing. Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-07T22:34:00.000+11:00

Here the last light of 2011 lingers in my hair.
From this perch on a friend's balcony you can see my new city of Sydney.

I've been here one year now, and this fact amazes me.
Its been the most solitary and quiet year of my whole 42 years.
Maybe it will be decades till I experiance this kind of quiet again.

'When you move to new land', says the Permaculture design manual, 'spend the first year doing nothing. Just obseve how the sunshine falls, where the wind comes from, how the water swirls and flows. Twelve months later, start planting.'

I always thought that sounded lovely from a poetic point of view, but not a good use of time.

If you just plant something, anything, simply caring about its progress will make your observation 100 times sharper.
You won't just be looking for sun and wind, you will learn all about the pests, the anti-pests, the creatures who want to eat or protect your new little family of plants. By being generative, and planting things for nature to interact with, by allowing measured failure, a whole spectrum of subtleties will spring into view.

Getting into creative action is the only way to really see things in this world. As somebody who draws, this is something I know.

A year has passed since I arrived in Sydney, I see that sentence differently.

That sentence was certainly written by someone not young. Someone who had alreadly loved a piece of land and its plants, enough to be able to imagine vividly how a year's worth of life would be playing out on the blank stage of his new garden.

If someone is facing a blank new land, with a vivid picture of what will be there, it is almost certain this person has recently lost a place, a place he knew deeply and cared about.

Maybe it takes one year to get the spirits up, get into action, and start investing in your new life, as if it would be there forever.

After the fireworks, it took a long time to get home to the pretty house I am housesitting, in leafy Turramurra.
The people of Sydney were catching trains with high-heels in their hands, scraped knees, and irrepressable joyfulness. Its inspring, that we can generate this, by simply deciding to.

Then you know what I did when I got home?
I started reading a novel. 'The Glass house' by Jennette Wall, sad and beautiful and funny.
I read it as I read every good book, from start to end in one gulp.

I had to cover my eyes to go to sleep, with the moring light of 2012 in my hair. Decadent.

Happy New Year. It will be a beautiful 2012.
It is already.

8WYRN38MTQKE

Making After-dinner clean up fun - ingenious social design by Mary

2012-01-02T00:38:00.001+11:00

Sometimes my mother is just so clever.

She came to Sydney for Christmas and New Year, with another brother, Dom. The whole mob came for dinner the other night, to enjoy the pretty suburban house I'm house-sitting, here in Turramurra

As I was licking the last of the Christmas cream from my dinner plate, my mother turned to me and said

"Name three tasks you would like done".

"Mmm... walk the dog. Clear the table. Wash the dishes".

"People!' she announced. "I have a game. In the garden is hidden a treasure. Whoever finds it gets to watch the three loosers do one job each. Go!

John finds the treasure.

Thats an inspiring way to look at the tasks of 2012.
To find a way to never every 'power thoug'h procrastination.
Instead, to prepare cleverly, to design a way that makes each task a fun game for myself.

If that takes cooking for friends to get me over a rough bumpy task, wonderful!
I can do that.

Happy New Year

8WYRN38MTQKE

Sexiest permaculture ever: Marry your land, Christmas Eve Mass 2011

2011-12-25T22:42:00.000+11:00

Sydney was getting all festive, at St. Mary's Cathedral last night.

The building was in full regalia.

With multiple costume changes.

The congregation was at full capacity.

The priest may have been overwhelmed.

He didn't seem to have anything exciting to tell us.

Thats okay, because in a church you have 2,000 years + of human striving and aspiring, so there's bound to be something useful to hear or see, if you are patient.

Here are the two gems I picked up from the long, long service. One is a poetic turn of phrase. The other a poetic vision. Both are rather motivating, and both are from Isaiah 62:1 - 5

'Rejoice in your wife'

as in "Come upstairs and rejoice in your wife'.
I could use that line one day. When I'm married.

'Marry' your land

Get a vision for it, one that is irresistably lovely. Commit to it. Get sweaty and active. Call it 'Darling'.
Together you and this land are going to generate new life, and it will be glorious.

You need to know the background story to these five verses (below)

Its way before Jesus birth, centuries.

The Jewish people are in 'Post Celebration Blues'.

They are back from exile in Babylon, working on re-building their very own city.

Its been years now, and its getting tedious.

The spark has gone.

Isaiah is giving the builders of the new Jerusalem a pep talk.

Sexy!

Thats what sells, even back then.

Go for it, Isaiah:

For Zion's sake I will not be silent,

for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet,

until her vindication shines forth like the dawn

and her victory like a burning torch.
Nations shall behold your vindication,

and all the kings your glory;

you shall be called by a new name

pronounced by the mouth of the LORD.

You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the LORD,

a royal diadem held by your God.

No more shall people call you "Forsaken,"

or your land "Desolate,"

but you shall be called "My Delight,"

and your land "Espoused."

For the LORD delights in you

and makes your land his spouse.

As a young man marries a virgin,

your Builder shall marry you;

and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride

so shall your God rejoice in you.

Wishing everyone alive a flourishing 2012

A happy, sexy connected 2012

And most of all, a 2012 where the lost amongst us can feel we have a home and garden, a place we can cherish, do good work in, and depend on.

Wish this for me too!

Chook sitting, yet again - Urban Permaculture for Annandale

2011-12-22T23:26:00.000+11:00

Look whats making its way over our back fence - three burly men, and a chicken coop.

This visitation comes complete with two red chickens, and a hundreds and hundreds of eggs. Eggs-to-be.

Yes, I've got another chicken-sitting gig at my brother's house here in Annandale.

From my Rent-a-chook days, now my 'Chicken sitter Available' Classifides add photo

The 'Chicken Sitter Available' add I put on Gumtree has had 3,000 views.

This means people need chicken-sitters.

Put an add in yourself, and reap the rewards.

The chickens of Australia need you.

Conversely, knowing there is a safety-net of willing chicken sitters out there makes it easier to become chook-owner, and still be free to go on holidays. Soon we will have a culture of A Chook in Every Garden.

Thank-you Harriett, for these well-cared for chickens.

I took the clucking cardboard box, covered with a towel, from its entourage of three strong men and two girls.
One of the men was very handsome, with a pristine complexion and soft redish-brown hair.

Off came the towel.

"Oh, they are beautiful. And they look just like your brother" I said.
It just popped out.

Its not every day you get lovely men home-delivered.

Nadal and Pollo

Now Nadal and Pollo are roaming the Jungles of our back garden.

They dig for grubs with the focus of a gambling addict, and letting out clucks of contentment and excitement every now and then.

You just sit on the veranda, gaze, and thats how you feel too.

And while you sit and watch, you eat buttery-crunchy crepes made with eggs that were layed just as you started fixing breakfast.

Cecilia photo

2011-12-15T19:34:00.001+11:00

Beautiful 2012 Japanese Permaculture Calenders, with a Cecilia soil life illustration

2011-12-15T15:35:00.004+11:00

This calender is beautiful, with cute, home-grown drawings by the permaculture practicioners of Japan, some of whom are my mates from way back, from our Bilingual PDC at Bill Mollisions, 2000.
They have grown so much since then!

Best of all, it has one of my favourite drawings in it, drawn my....me!

'Soil Life Literacy' is a picture I drew while WWOOFing at David Holmgren & Su's home, Melliodora. It shows the world as David sees it. All the tiny creatures and elements in the soil are as visible and important to him as the chickens.

When you know what an amazing universe is under your feet, you feel very differently about wonderful things like composting, and feel passionate enough to do what you can to avoid poison and pressure, the enemies of life.

Rico's permacutlure Calender shows you just how people are doing that, and as a bonus, makes you want to learn Japanese.

My friend Rico said was going to give up making her annual Permaculture calender in this troubled year for Japan.
Then she realized that Japan needs permaculture's message more than ever, so made the effort. I hope these lovely calenders all sell far and wide. Well done Rico!

To buy one of these lovely calenders, and support Rico in her Permaculture work, please send me a message, and I will get you one. Around $30, and cheaper in sets, of course.

Permaculture Calender Japanese

Six Permaculture artists

See on facebook

And then, buy the card or sticker from my online store for a dollar or so.

Merry Christmas!

Mysterious Permaculture Graveyard, bridal tulle, and strange cake at St. Stephens

2011-12-11T21:44:00.003+11:00

The craft of storytelling is an essential part of low-tech Permaculture future, wouldn't you say?

Both my parents were good storytellers, a useful skill for keeping seven little children hushed, when needed.

Even I have one or two tales I can tell on long car trips.

But like gardening, you can't do it without practice, and its difficult to get from beginning to end smoothly. Good storytelling needs to be part of your culture, part of your surroundings.

The true tale of Eliza Donnithorne

Here is a story I was told this morning, while chatting with a parishoner over tea and biscuts. The Man who told me the story, after much prompting, is the gravekeeper of St Stephen's Church, Newtown. Well, he has a more modern title, but that will do for now.

This is what he said:

The story starts with Miss Eliza Donnythorne, daughter of an eminent man in the colonies. After an encounter with a young shipping clerk, and another encounter, maybe more, Eliza fell in love.

'Daddy, Im going to marry him" she said.
"No darling, he's not of our class"
Daddy, I um... I HAVE TO marry him.
'Oh. I see'.
So the wedding was arranged, the table spread with a lavish wedding luncheon, the church brimming with Sydneys leading families.

The bride waited. She waited
The groom never, ever appeared.

The poor girl went mad with grief. She didn't let anyone touch the plates of food, she kept her wedding gown close to her. When the baby came, it was given to the servant to be raised.
One of Eliza's very few visiors was a lady named Caroline Chishom, who kept a friendly correspondance with a London writer, Charles Dickens.

Yet another Australian who makes it bigger overseas than at home.

The story may be a little wanting here and there. This history site tells other versions of what really happened to Eliza, the model of Great Expectaions' Miss Havisham.

Today's Great Expectations story at the church tea came complete with:

Strange Cake.
Made by the children at Sunday School, the candy represents the heavy burdens of law the Pharisees heap upon the people.

Very pretty little girls.
They were very very quiet, during the sermon, while the cakes were being made.
Less so after they were eaten.

Strange creativity by kindly, working-class men

Here is the headstone for John Leys, a foreman-Engineer from the docks.
He must have been kind, like Great Expectations blacksmith Joe, as his men loved him enough to piece together this for him. I think from an old propellor.

Just because the men of 1883 didn't smile in their photos doesn't mean they were any less playful than we are today.

Its a truly beautiful Church, built with large donations from Eliza, who, like Miss Havisham, was heiress to a great fortune.

Community Garden

The sextons cottage, beside the church, is surrounded by a community garden. There is a bunny called Kevin, there are chickens, and quite a few edibles.

Corn Wall

The corn looks happy.

Broccoli turned to lace by white cabbage butterflies

The brassica's less so.
That's why I'm not to hot about community gardens. They don't get the love, the observation and attention that an owned-garden can have. Things get quite...cobwebby.

The Morton Bay Fig was planted in the time of Eliza. It now looks over girls who have quite different options for their lives.

Including me. I'm almost ready to launch myself into the world, start some real work, start a real family.

Preparations nearly done.

My, I'm slow though.

Perilously close to being another Miss Havisham.

Uses for Cobwebby Bridal Tulle

Yesterday I bought some of the most useful stuff for a permaculture life: Bridal Tulle.

Today I used it to keep the cabbage moths off My sister-in-law Laura's edible gardens. Prettily.

I also used it as the ballerina-style cover for sprouting the fenugreek seeds that I found lurking in the spice cupboard.

As I was buying the tulle, I explained to the shoplady.
"It looks like the most ornamental, airy and insubstantial fabric in the shop. In fact, the opposite is true".

Just like me.

If I may say so myself.

Edible landscapes outside, beautiful 'life-scapes' inside. Patrick and Dawn's inner Sydney House

2011-12-03T19:07:00.003+11:00

Strolling around my new neighbourhood in Ananndale, Sydney, I got stopped in my tracks.
A blue-and-green edible garden, created with love and fun.
I had to meet the creators.

Dawn, with a new baby in her arms came to the door and let me in, with her blue eyes sparkling.

Front Garden

What did I see?
Shopping baskets that fill themselves with produce - you just have to wait for it to grow.

Table and Chair
No gorgeous edible garden happens, unless there is a table and chair, a hands-reach away.

A edible garden is part of you, your love and attention and spirit keep it in existence.
Its not like a room you furnish with plants, then leave.

Without you, its soon gone.

Broom.

Every successful balcony garden has a broom a hands reach away.
Without it, the downward spiral of neglect sets in.

In all my years of photos, a faithful little sweeper guards every beautiful balcony garden.

Beautiful Interior - families of things

Dawn and Patrick's kitchen, with guard-flowers.

Inside, the beauty and order continued.

I had just knocked on the door of a new mother of two, at dinner time, on a weekday.

Yet the house was beautiful.

I wish every harried mother could be taught this:

Don't force yourself into make things tidy.

'Tidy' takes endless, hard work. its boring, and can't be sustained.

Willpower is a non-renewable resouce, you have to use it sparingly.

Instead, give yourself permission to make things beautiful.

Arranging things into color-coordinated "life-scapes' is actually playing, not 'tidying'.

Dawn and Patrick just filled their home with 'families' of objects, arranged like stilllifes, like landscapes.
You can tell there is no forced tidying.
They set up their life so that when they find a stray item, it gets irresistibly put back with its family, and everyone is happy.

Bottle-scapes

Toy-scapes

Dummy-scapes

Pre-dinner table-scapes

And even Nappy-scapes

Looking up, here is a colored paper-fall

Just paper and thread, but look how the colors grow out of each other, as they do in natural rainbows.

Order and wildness, in just the right amounts, right places.

Back garden

It turns out that Patrick once studied Landscape Architecture, and still does select little design jobs, community-style gardens, in his spare time.

So,what makes this garden lovely?

The rythym of circles dotted about, like dancing - squeezy buckets, round painted logs

The way living things and other objects speak the same language, colorwise. They commune.

The way even the produce, the edible borage flowers, match the squeezy buckets

The absence of unnecessary boarders or straight lines

The playful surprises, and how nothing is alone

Things are allowed to flock

And the way eager strangers are allowed in, to delight in it all.

Thank-you Dawn and Patrick, you guys are a blessing xx

Fermented Sunday lunch and ginger beer, Sydney

2011-12-02T12:42:00.011+11:00

Edible violas with dill, sage, rocket and more

By a wending river in Suburban Sydney is a sometimes messy, sometimes beautiful productive garden.

Though the tall sweetcorn and edible weeds of this messy, beautiful productive garden is a culture-creating share house, full of people, young and intrepid.

Shaw, amazed by his home-brewed beer

Here, for Sunday lunch, this gang invite their mates for a fermentation party.

Ginger beer begins

Last weekend, I got invited.
Why ferment things? To live a long, successful, rich life, of course.
First I will show, then I'll explain.

Here we are, making real fermented ginger beer. Not REAL real ginger beer, but close.

Here is the recipe:

Ginger beer recipe, click to read big

How to make ginger beer

Put lemon juice in water. Add yeast, add dried ginger powder. They also added grated fresh ginger. Add a little sugar. Then keep adding every day for five days. There will be all kinds of interactions, transformations, potential for explosions, then you drink it.
Lashings of it.

Cecilia's garden design for Home Hug, Thailand

I had better practice my ginger beer skills, as I've just designed an edible, climbable garden that makes Ginger Beer for 'Home Hug' orphanage, Thailand, and its getting closer and closer to becoming a real project.

Shaw and his edible garden

From this Sydney garden, Shaw picked some mauve Kholrabi, to pickle.

Ingrediants for home-made Kimchee

From the shops, everything you need to make Korean kimchee, an addictively delicious fermented cabbage. Chinese cabbage, spring onion, katso boshi (bonito flakes) and garlic

Kimchee will make your beautiful too.

Look... Its Japanese Shiso, or Perilla.

Shaw potted me up a bit to take home to the Japanese 'doorstep' garden I'm trying to make at my brothers place.

Aw. Thanks Shaw.

I did some harvesting, boiled some up in water, then added sweetener to make almost instant shiso drink.

Cecilia's Shiso drink, Asaba Art Square, September 2010

I'm just a little theatrical, so I held off adding the lemon juice till we were at the table.

Then with a flourish, in it went, and everyone went "Ah", seeing the murky brown turn vivid crimson.

It was delicious.

J.P. and Emma enjoy shabby-chic beer

Thank-you Changemakers J.P. and Emma, for inviting me

JP, Buti and I, plus fermented lunch

Lunch was messy, with 5 chefs from about 5 countries, and delicious.

I ate Dosa for the first time. Anything fried in butter I love.
Dosa turned out to be very attractive, crisp and chewy pancakes.
They are made from a very unattractive ferment of rice and lentils.

Why go though the trauma of fermenting them?
That's what makes them sticky and all the ingredients bind together.
Its also how you turn food that is against you, into food that is for you.

Here is the story.
Grains evolved to be willingly eaten by other creatures.
However, every grain hopes that it will just get transported to new places, and sprout there, unharmed and undigested.
To make this likely, each grain comes with a protective layer of anti-digestion chemicals. But when we start the fermenting, or digesting process before putting grains into our body, grains think its time to sprout. They put down their defenses, they start creating good enzymes and new nutrients.

We win.

Its so obvious, I can't believe I didn't work this out myself, years ago.
The message: We are always fighting battles that we just don't have to.

Know the nature of things, go with, rather than against nature, and life gets so much easier.

Graceful

Lateral permaculture - preventing falls, design that takes care of clever old ladies

2011-11-26T23:56:00.002+11:00

These cats were drawn by my friend Norma, the artist. She uses her left hand when she wants to be more creative.

Try it. When you use your right hand, the clever & competent hand, it goes into autopilot, and draws what it thinks should be there.

Not what is actually there, and not the most beautiful or useful choice.

Norma just gave me another lesson in looking beyond the obvious, in designing a fall-resistant garden for herself.

Norma and Cecilia winter 2011

She sometimes has dizzy turns walking in the garden. I worry, everyone worries.

So what I did was ask around for a carpenter to make up a pretty rail.

An institutional metal rail will not do, as this is an artists garden.

Twig fence from Twigology

Garden handrail sketch

Some natural sticks, sturdily assembled, to be a natural-looking presences in her graceful, Japanese-influenced garden.

So the other day while passing by, I popped in.

No Norma.

I asked the workers in the house down the road if I could borrow their mesuring tape, and quickly drew up a quick plan with mesurements, for the fantasy carpenter to work from.

You can't get volunteers to do ALL the work.

This will do, as a rough guide.

Just find sticks from a tree lopper, find the volunteer carpenter, someone young who wants to try something new.

Help him make it, and Bobs your uncle.

But I didn't find the volunteer carpenter.

So a few days later I turn up at Norma's.

Look at what she had done to the back garden:

Before
Uneven, beautiful cobblestones, precarious to walk on.

After
The cobblestones are still there, but blanketed by 10 cm of cushiony mulched tree trimmings, a present from the tree-lopping man down the road.

Now the walk-way is more stable, and if she does fall, its so much softer and safer.

And it just happened.

What a good story of 'share the surplus'. Or more correctly, 'availablize the surplus'.
Material that was 'waste' to the lumberjack neighbor could save Norma's life.

Norma's shady back garden

Still, if you are a young carpenter wanting to try something new, come and have tea with Norma and I, and see what can be done.
See what lateral inspiration happens, when you enter Norma's world.

Norma's sculpture in the back garden

Sweetpeas by the front railings

Sydney's Sculptures by the Sea, inspiring 'Edge gardeners' to create new worlds

2011-11-20T18:39:00.004+11:00

Domestic Bliss by Peter Tilley

A little sculpture, Peter Tilley's Domestic Bliss turned out to be the one that went straight to my heart.

It is a blessing to consider this rocky, windswept world, from the comfort of cat, chair and a well-cut coat.

My cat and chair are far away, in another city, waiting for me to find my next beloved house.

Hang on in there, Galliger!

Lion Sculpture

Galligher?

Spiderweb and Sea

I liked this because:
   * Its pretty and dainty
   * I don't wear jewelery myself, so have to enjoy what tinkly, sparkley things come my way
   * I get this sculpture made fresh, every winter morning, in my own gardens. For free!
And mine catch mosquitos and bugs.

Love your spiders.

I liked this Dr. Seuss style way of constructing a tree.
Poor tree, poor cyborg tree. All alone.

We are no good alone.

Thats the way.

I was so happy to see this, a flotilla of boats, sailing though the forest.

What are you doing here, looking so lost?

Oh my!

Steve Webb, children's garden designer & Family.

This excursion was one of my Tim Ferriss Meetups, a way for me to find interesting new friends in my new city of Sydney.

It was great having Steve Webb and his big family come along.

Steve is a Permaculture Designer, doing work I love. He creates edible children's gardens, full of improvised gadgets, constructions, and real-life artworks. I love his Chicken Palace/Pirate ship with subterrainian 'telephone' pipe that you can really communicate on.

Steve, it was a lovely surprise to have the company of you and your beautiful family.

I haven't eaten fish and chips on the beach with children, since it was us 7 Macaulay children.

Our family had crazily happy times, with all those lovely children.
Parents are special people.

If you live in Sydney, Id love to see you at the Tim Ferriss Lifestyle Designers Meetup, for plotting and doing extraordinary things.

Ask for help: Lucky visit to the Culinary Studio of Japanese cuisine with Hideo Dekura

2011-11-16T17:49:00.004+11:00

Visiting Studio Dekura
I had no trouble finding the home-studio of the Dekura family.

'Welcome Cecilia-san' said the Verandah blackboard.

I DID feel welcome, and I felt important.

Before I'd even walked in, I decided "Next time I have a garden of my own, I'm definitly including a message-board'.

That's the purpose of gardens, to connect us to nature and each other.
Get the props that help.

Inside was the marvelous studio of Dekura-san, where I was lucky enough to be invited for a light lunch with Mr Dekura and his lovely wife Keiko.

Isn't he radiant?
See more of his story Here.

Book Launch & culinary demonstration
I first laid eyes on Dekura-san only a few days ago, at a very well-attended cooking demonstration, held to celebrate his latest book launch.

Sushi dance with the Japanese Consul-General

His soft, smiley expression enchanted me straight away, as I watched him work with fondness and playfulness for the things he handled, and the people around him. Wonderful people - a famous potter, great chefs, including Margaret Fulton, and my go-getter friend, Hirano-san who invited me.

When clouds of smoke came from the oven where the squid was roasting, he didn't fret or freak out his assistant.
"Mmm, this will taste MUCH more interesting" he assured her.
Positive. Adaptable.
That's what you need to do new things in this world.
I must remember this.

My second favourite part of the night was how he playfully persuaded the dignified Japanese consul general into doing the Sushi Dance, and forming lovely gentle bundles of rice for sushi.

My #1 favourite moment was watching him skin the ocean trout. His knife just 'swam' through the fish, instinctively listening to where it had to rise and fall, perfect. All while he chatted on to us.

As he was busy signing books that night, I slipped him my permaculture pamphlet.
I had this fantasy of he and I demonstrating permaculture balcony garden cooking, here at my brother's grand kitchen in Ananndale.

My heart was racing when I got a phonecall the next day.

"Cecilia-san. Here in your pamphlet, it says "People with organizational skills wanted to collaborate on Creative Projects". I'm organized!"

Daikon Japanese Radish, with a okra garnish and bonito stock

So here I am in Dekura's house, eating his food, and doing a show-and-tell of my last decade of Permaculture projects. He likes It. I knew it!

Green shiso, in the garden of Mr Dekura

Potplants Galore

After lunch, we visited their impeccably-tended potplant garden.

The freshly-made raised-bed garden gets plenty of compost, with all the food scraps a fussy chef generates.

In return, it gives hard-to-find japanese herbs such as shiso, myoga, and even the first yuzu citrus tree I've seen in Australia.

Smuggled in by seed, I wonder?

Myoga, a kind of ginger, in the edible garden of Keiko Dekura

Mr Dekura did the carpentry of the wooden raised bed for Mrs Dekura's garden.

Every day, in every way, in action, making his wife happy.

Cha gama, for boil water for tea

Look out for our event, in February 2012:

'Zen House - how to use Japanese Tea Culture and Permaculture for a lush, action-inspiring home life. Force, virtue and willpower not needed.'

Haunted Cafe

2011-11-14T23:54:00.001+11:00

Visiting a wise old friend in the next neighborhood, I stumbled upon a big find.

A Haunted Cafe.

A stylish ghost from decades past said 'Come in for Tea'.
So I did.
I carry a Japanese thermos with me always, but I came in anyway.

Of course I did.
Wouldn't you?

A man came out. He probably grew up here.
Now he is an old man.

I said 'a Cup of tea please'. Then things started to happen.
He delved into plastic-covered shelves, slipped away. He some measuring, some fetching, some assembleing, some searching and finding. I was getting a bit worried, because my parking meter was expiring.
Then I decided that you are meant to experience risk and loss at haunted cafes, so I settled in to do what his cafe is expert in.
Wating for the minutes to tick past. Without interuppting.
A good long stretch of minutes.

The tea came. There were many vessels.
A haunted house tea ceremony.

He rang up 2.90 on the register.

Then he carefully wrote a figure in a big book.

He sold ice cream, sweets, cigarettes, and tea. Just as promised.
That's how he lives his life.

I've been marveling at how resistant I am to doing new things in the first year of my new life, in my new city of Sydney.

Maybe if I come back to the haunted tea room, the man of my dreams will walk in.

Of the bus, maybe.

All my resistance to life will melt into sweetness.

But the chances aren't marvelous.

Start at your doorstep, and keep on going - Harborside picnic with apple pie mistress Natsuno Kotori

2011-11-09T17:11:00.004+11:00

Its Natsuno San!
Yellow is exactly the right color for this sunny lady, who I just met today.

By day she is a writer for Sydney's Japanese News Magazines.
In her 'other' life, she bakes golden french-style pastries and cakes, from her home in harbor-side Sydney. 'Arielle's Organic Cakes'.

She is also a master of 'Value adding'.
Why just have a grey interview in an office building, when you can have a picnic at the park in front of her apartment?
Why just two people?
She invited Mrs Umeyama along too, who is doing beautiful work getting the Japanese Seniors of Sydney connected and having fun.
Then I just tell my story once, and have more time for important things.
Like Apple Pie.

How was her pie? It was amazing. The pastry was flaky and stretchy, the chantilly custard was delicate. The apples fragrant, not soggy, and because it was high in deliciousness, low in sugar, it tasted like food.

That meant I could just keep eating and eating it.

For my first 7 months in Sydney, I stayed in Balmain, which has a reputation as Cafe Heaven.

Its true there are excellent bakers, but most of them spoil everything with toxic amounts of sugar, so I only get to eat a mouthful.

Going back up to her apartment, she invites me to nibble the street trees. Lovely mulberries!
There was another rather wonderful surprise on the ground, sweet-scented sweet peas, just rambling around.
What do sweet-peas smell like? Easy! They smell of childhood Christmas. The dizzyingly wonderful smell of fresh plastic: barbie doll hair and blow up swimming pools.
So terrible, that when you grow up and can do anything you like, most of the childhood desires have vanished.

Permaculture design: Stacking, increase edge, useful diversity

But I think there is something kid-like in Natsuno's delight in baking.
Her equipment cupboard is a kind of toy box for grown-ups, all these lovely tools and treasures.
Note the 'stacking'.
You just have to look at someone's cupboards to see if they enjoy cooking, or actually cook.

If you don't know where things are, or spend all your time searching and failing, cooking is a discouraging act.

Helping people re-arrange their kitchen so that harbor side picnics happen every day, that is one of my dreams in life.
Little by little.
Lets see how long it takes me to hold such workshops in my new city of Sydney.

Natsuno and her husband have moved 3 times, each time her kitchen getting smaller, and her view getting better.

What can be seen on her balcony?

There are herbs in pots.
There are punnets of Asian greens, sprouting from seed.
There are colorful lorikeets flying in for a feed and a squark, and there is a view of a very, very beautiful city.

Keep your surroundings as beautiful as you can.

It just might be that it makes its way into the taste of your cakes.

Order cakes from Natsuno:

arielles.cakes@gmail.com

Cremorne Point, Sydney.

Thai Orphanage garden, powered by Permaculture

2011-11-08T23:50:00.000+11:00


Ginger beer, passionfruit drink, Watermelon, and a place to enjoy it all

Like a lot of people in Sydney, when I heard of the work Detective Inspector Baines was doing for orphans in Thailand, I wanted to do something myself.

So I did what my skill is, and I drew up a pretty and useful garden.

Now I have to work out how to make it real.

Its a permaculture garden, designed to catch its own water, and attract the love and harvesting it needs.

Most of all its designed as a 'best self' garden.

While these children are creating and tending it, enjoying it, and watching others admire and enjoy it, they are saying to themselves 'Im pretty amazing, to have made all that'.

And it will be true.


Wicking bed design: Dr. Ross Mars. Artwork: Cecilia

There are now a long list of things that must be found, before this drawing becomes a real garden.

To Find

Someone expert, or about to become expert, who will build it.

Another reason to go to Thailand, so I can help.

Some corporate types who will donate us their frequent flyer miles to go .

Someone to source suitable, beautiful plants that the children will love.

And ways to overcome 100 other challenges, so that the children actually spend time there.

Designing for bare feet.

Designing so HIV affected children don't get wet.

Designing so that fruit doesn't go unharvested - in Yasothon, when fruit rots, it really 'goes bad' attracting snakes and scorpions. We want sweetness and light.

Designing so that willpower is not needed to keep things going.

Curving, 3D garden for children to clamber in. Click to enlarge.

Please give me your ideas.

I sent out a request for ideas a few weeks ago. The water design below just turned up from Dr Mars, in Perth.
I nearly cried, I was so happy.

Then I started drawing.

Dont do things alone. It won't work, and its not Permaculture.

Don't let me try to do things alone either. Thats my problem, you know.

Permaculture Design Strategies

for Yasothon Orphanage Thailand

by Ross Mars
The following ideas solely examine the use of rainfall as a method of irrigation of annual vegetables, small herbs and other shallow rooted crops.

Assumptions

• Buildings do not have gutters

• Local materials such as small stone, soil, timber or larger rocks are available

• Plastic sheeting can be purchased, donated or sourced

Rainfall patterns
The following data was used in the design process:
• Yasothon in NE Thailand has the annual rainfall of 1350 mm, much of this in the ‘wet’ (winter months).

• There are two extremes – drought in the ‘dry’ from November to March (worst in December and January) and floods in the rainy season April to September.

• Pan evaporation is high in some months. e.g. April, the hottest month, has a daily evaporation of 7mm (220 mm for the month).

• Daily rainfall events typically are less than 10 mm. (If this amount fell in April then only 30% of the water is available as 70% evaporates away).

• The monthly rainfall patterns are in table below.

• There is a high degree of variation in rainfall – both what falls each month and yearly. • There are about 68 rainy days and 297 non-rainy days (historical data since 1952).

Conclusions from data
It is essential to capture rainfall and store it. As evaporation can be high, rainfall events are infrequent and precipitation typically low when it does rain, trapping water in a reservoir that allows plants to pull some of the water as required is an important strategy for irrigation of food plants.
Some variation of a wicking bed is proposed. Essentially, this is:

• Garden bed, with water reservoir built above-ground or below-ground, is lined with water-proof plastic sheeting to hold water. Capillary action enables water to slowly move towards the surface where plant roots can absorb and use effectively.

• A piece of plastic pipe, or other, enables a person to examine water level and top-up as necessary (assuming some water is available from elsewhere).

• Bed retaining by timber or rocks, which ever is available.

• Large stone used to direct rainwater into reservoir, and prevent splash against building walls.

• Small stone placed on bottom of bed to enable spread of water quickly across to all bed. Slotted piping would also help.

• An overflow pipe (or more for large beds) is required to allow excess water to move from the reservoir. Water could be directed by piping or channel to a sump elsewhere where it could be used by other plants.

• Bed will naturally fill with rainfall, as well as from the roof.

Japanese School Sydney Fete - Ikebana, tea ceremony, and Halloween scaryness

2011-11-01T14:14:00.004+11:00

In Permaculture, its the edge where two different ecosystems meet that the treasures are to be found, that life gets lively. Riverbanks, Boundaries, exchanges.

Flowers Kuniko Nakano, of the Ohara School of Ikebana

This weekend my sister-in-law Laura and I trekked up to North Sydney, to see what treasures we would find at the Annual Sydney Japanese School Fete.

At this school, children of all backgrounds are immersed in a bi-lingal, bi-cultural environment.
Not just language, but other blessings of being Japanese seep in too.
What would these be?

My sister-in-law Laura at the Sydney Japanese School track

Being keenly observant.
Cultivating tiny pockets of beauty.
Putting in every effort till a desirable goal comes true.

Tea Ceremony Cubby House
I needed to lay low that day.
So after a quick survey of the noisy and exciting areas - flea market, festival food stalls, drumming - I retreated to the Tea house, and offered my services at a 'carrying girl'.
Being a useful participant is generally more rewarding than being a passive recipient of entertainment. Once you are over 25, anyway.

The fresh sweets were made my new friend Hirano-san, and other clever mothers. White bean paste, rice powder, and green tea are used.

The hot Macha tea itself is bitter.
Instead of adding sugar, you ready your mouth with a sweet, and the contrast is wonderful.

Here are little girls and their teacher. Today they helped carry sweets and tea to the guests. They practiced the skills of moving with micro-awareness, so the tea doesn't slosh or spill. They practiced being aware of their bodies, being in-the-moment, so they can move gracefully in a very small space.

From the ikebana display. Tea flowers are even more modest.

A tea party at a tea house is usually intimate, just a handful of guests scrambling through a hole in the wall, rather than a full-size door. Its like playing cubby house, for grown ups.
But its also a way of life, way of being and relating to the world around you.

I first met 'Sado', or 'The Way of Tea' 19 years ago.
Without it, my daily life would have been cluttered with unnecessary difficulties. I would have missed so many moments of pleasure.

Treasures

So, did I find my treasures at this fete?
I did.

Mitsuba sits on the bench at my Balmain house-sit

From Mr Abe's stall I bought mitsuba, a hard-to-find fragrant Japanese herb.
It will star in my next balcony garden, when I find my next home.

If you want to put together a Japanese edible garden, I recommend you put in an order to handsome old Mr Abe, and his lovely son:

Mascot, Sydney
0414 313 461

My second treasure was a radiant lady in white, Asami Gough. She is a Reiki master, which is probably how we found each other in the sea of people. I will attend her meditation on Friday, at the Balmain Hospital.

My life expands in lovely ways.

Cecilia avoiding the Japanese
Haunted House.
Too scary.

Name this elegant cat - Couple's balcony garden brightens Balmain

2011-10-25T15:41:00.002+11:00

A prize for whoever guesses the name of this cat of distinction.

This doorstep garden features two chairs, two standard roses, two black-and-white cats.

It is all held together by a fine layer of AstroTurf.

Even colors are limited to two: red, white and blue.

Well...

I pass this house more often than necessary. The door is often open, with music spilling out, and lovely art to be seen on the walls.

This couple are enjoying their life, and so am I.

Time warp in the streets of Balmain - the Weekend Report

2011-10-24T00:52:00.002+11:00

Scooter. The most charming, clever polite dog in the world

Scooter and I went for our morning walk. The destination this time was Lynn's house, two blocks away.
Lynn is Scooter's former neighbor, and firm friend. Her laugh is lovely to hear, and her eyes smiley, both good reasons to visit.

There it was, a storybook stone house that was once the corner store, with dotted cotton net curtains. The door was open, the radio on.
'Yoo-hoo', I called out, because that cry seemed to fit the era of this house.
No reply.
Then from around the corner strode Lynn, with a jug in hand - she had just popped out to the neighbors to borrow some milk.

I'm in a time warp here, in amongst the little houses of Balmain Peninsula.

The public sidewalk drinking bowl

People extend hospitality to strangers.

'Free to good home'. Just the door. Never the dog.

People share their surplus.
This door would make a beautiful cover for your balcony garden wall-tank, if you have one.

Someone in this house will sign affidavits - just pop in, for free, anytime.
How lucky is this. I look at my 'to do' list for the weekend, and it says
'Get documents signed for Laura's Visa'.
And around the corner is where you can do it.

They might be my gardening mates too.

Now I'm inspired to go and ask for a cup of milk from one of My neighbours, just to activate the connections.

Inspired in theory, but obviously timid, as I haven't done it yet.

Do you think I will do it?

A nook of Lynn's festive courtyard garden

Permaculture Creativity Galore, Blue Mountains Style, with Jane and Tony

2011-10-18T18:43:00.002+11:00

I came to visit Jane and Tony's wonderland, because my hero Professor Hill is retiring.

To be precise, I had volunteered to be his WWOOFer, and assist him moving his office.

Here we were, delivering a stack of his old papers, decades of Social Ecology Wisdom, for his neighbor Jane Lennon to turn into her artworks.

Jane's husband Tony Lennon, Botanical Sculptor, is similarly industrious.

How is this array of his quirky pots?

They aren't the elegant style he is famous for, but they make a collection of whatever is planted look like a lively family, different, but connected and supporting each other.
Thats the kind of ecosystem I'd want on my balcony.
Or in the social ecology of my friendships.

Jane's colorful work is full of words, recycled paper words.
We will never ever know for sure what these words were.
'Joy' 'Usefulness' 'Diversity' and 'Play' are probably in there though.

Behind the studio are a larger 'family' of raised garden beds.

Tony says the tanks keep the herbs up close to where he can harvest, out of the way of small creatures, and its a good way to use up old tanks.
There are many generations of self-seeded onions, tomatoes and greens, evolving into stronger and stronger versions of their grandparents.

The 'families' in this garden get eerier and more interesting.
Towards the bush end of the yard is a flotilla of ghostly covered gardens.

They solved their kangaroo problem by swathing the gardens in a dashing, evocative fashion.
We don't have do disfigure our gardens with cages. The problem can be the solution.

Reduce useless diversity

Just make all the ragged, the disparate things pink, and they will all relate to each other again.

I do this too.

Disaster or compliment?

Jane was telling me that yesterday she got an email from a U.S. shop selling her work. One of her pieces was stolen.

I'd put that in my C.V. :

'Someone was willing to turn themselves into a criminal, out of desire for my work'

Here is my favourite. Fruit is turned into a kind of Cecil B. de Mille extraveganza.
Which is what fruit probably is to Jane, who is locally famous for her cooking, and a vegan.

If this home were in the WWOOF book, they would be the aristocracy of WWOOF hosts, crazily popular. Good food and creative expertize attract the best working travelers, every time.

Botanical Art

He used to be a city lawyer.
Now he lives in a kind of fragrant paradise, and is following in the steps of his forbears, who for centuries have sculpted.

He works towards one extravagant exhibition a year, I have heard.

This kind of transition many city people dream of, but just don't know how to get started.

Maybe I should have asked how they did it?

Lots of love, I suppose.

Creative home lunch with Sydney Fashion Designer ladies - Millicent Darling

2011-10-18T17:09:00.002+11:00

When I was little, I started making dresses for my dollies that looked like this.

Photo: Gavin O'Neill

If you squinted really hard, they looked like this lovely lady, anyway.
I had to use sticky tape to start with.
But I got better. I became able to sew anything.
Which makes you think you can do and be anything.
(Its quite persistant, that illusion of mine)

The other day on of my Permaculture students introduced me to the Lovely Creative Ladies of the Fashion Label, Millicent Darling. They made this dress, and much more.
Their daily life is lovely.
Here is a peep.

Mindy and Emma's day

Emma rides her bike each day, past the trendy cafes of Darlinghurst, to her long-time friend Mindy's where they have a Design and sewing studio for their label Millicent Darling.

Lights on

Lights off

These gloves are from Cyclette, their cycling gear collection.

I find them permacultural in their multitude of functions - they keep your hands warm, young, entertained, and then in the dark, they flash back the energy of whoever is shining on you.

This sash bag too - It uses Minimum material for Maximum carrying capacity and unobtrusiveness. Your phone goes in the mesh pocket at the front, and can light things up - 'Right thing in the Right place'.
Real lights shine from the back mesh pocket, and your puncture kit is inside. Its reflectors are the accent tape that lights up passively, and the whole thing is poetically correct, with proper bike DNA in its shape, lightness and blackness.

Very old things, Very new things

Grandma's sewing machine in action

Being fully in the Present is said to be they key to a joyful life.
I agree.
Sewing demands full attention, presence. Its a favourite source of 'flow' for me, and maybe for Emma and Mindy too.
While the present is good place for consciousness, for life's other good things, being in the Far Past and the Near Future have a lot of merit.
The vintage sewing machine, snippers, pins and other tools they use were built to last. They remind us we too can build things that will still be useful a century from now.
The clothes the ladies create are from the future, to be 'lived into' by culture-creating wearers. They also hint at the past, with Sherlock Holmes style patterns and lines, sexyed up and playful.

Assemble, don't cook

Lunch was a party of excellent hard goat cheese, harissa, delicatessen goodies that I don't come across here in Balmain. They just lay it out, all this old-style unprocessed Slow Food, and eat like a Shepard-Queens, every day of the week.
I should explain.
It is classy where I live, here on the Balmain Peninsula. But the road rage that my driving creates when I venture out to buy this stuff has me eating from Woolworths for now.
This will change.
A bike and a salad garden would change it....

The ladies showed me their sunny courtyard, with the beginnings of a delicious edible courtyard garden. We've planted some ideas in each others minds for a beautiful edible garden at their daughters' school...good food brings people together, and then they get inspired to grow it again.

I like that.

Invest for the future - creativity, and Cecilia by Norma

2011-10-14T21:03:00.005+11:00

Norma, my artist-friend just sent me and email of her latest painting.

Hey. That's me.

In every way.
My character is almost all air, I have come to realize. You can feel that through the breeze she has blown though my hair. This airiness is why I love stable, earthy people, and Permaculture. They stop me being blown away.

I'm always flying to and from things, migratory, even though I'm on the fragile side. Maybe that's how the butterflies and small bird got in there.

I like being surrounded by plants, and so I am, most hours of most days.

Even in this picture.

She even got the 'Cecilia' Simon and Garfunkel connection, but with a neighboring song about parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

How I met Norma
It was her pretty, treasure-filled garden that 'introduced' us, when I was living across the road at my first Balmain house. The story is here.

Norma watching the harbor from her balcony Photo: Mark

Whats next?

I'm planning to visit her over the weekend, and plant a bit more parsley in her front garden, and a few other things.

Actually, I asked a friend to get me some as he would be going past the nursery on his way to visit me.

I should have been more specific - my friend turned up with a bunch of supermarket parsley.

No worries. I'll just make parsley soup.

Now that Norma is 80, she doesn't get around as quickly as she used to. But when I sit on her balcony with her, there are a procession of people singing up 'Hello Norma', and bringing her titbits of news and other things.

It confirms my thinking, that it could be good to have superannuation for your old age.

It could also be good to have children for comfort and support.

But its definitly useful to be good at creative things that you enjoy doing, and can do, irresistably.

Things like painting, and gardening, or even just knowing about gardening, and getting a team to help with yours.

Talents like these can connect people, and make those who pass by your house feel deeply seen, and cared for.

Thank-you Norma!

Flowers at Apple Store Sydney: why are we so sad? Missing Steve Jobs

2011-10-12T12:12:00.000+11:00

I've loved Japan for 19 years, but I didn't cry for the Tsunami. I've only loved Apple for one year. Still, the minute I heard the news, tears sprinkled themselves all over everything, all the morning, missing Steve Jobs.

Since I moved to Sydney, the Apple Store has been my cathedral.

Surprise and delight

I would get clarity and inspiration to do creative things for the rest of the week.

Amazed at how Apple design principles mimic Permaculture Design principles, I dug up their designers manual.

Everything you need to know about making life simple, rich and interesing is here.

Google 'Apple Web Design Guide'

PDF and I don't know how to link it in this blog

A kind of Paradise.

How can I thank Steve Jobs, for filling every day of my year with elegance, with simplicity and with power to get things done?

I could use my Mac to live an amazing life.

There is nothing else to do.

How can we create a useful, strong orphanage garden, with 'Hands Across the Water' ?

2011-09-28T15:22:00.142+10:00

The Challenge

To draw up an amazing little garden. One that will bring surprise and delight to the world of these lovely children, while costing everyone as little as possible.

Thats Permaculture, and it can change the world.

If we do a compelling design, then it will become real. Materials will be donated, and the good people from 'Hands across the water' will actually create it with us.

Their third working bee is coming up, mid November.

Maybe you will take the plunge and join them.

Who its For?

The beautiful children of the Suthasinee Noiin Orphanage, who want so little but need so much.

Mrs Noiin has been loving and caring for HIV affected children for 20 years, doing her best to make their sometimes short lives beautiful.

"More than 1,000 children have died in my arms"

Recently she learned that she herself will not be around much longer.

The kids had been 'doing it tough'. But since the capable people at 'Hands across the Water' committed to looking after these children, daily life has become so, so much brighter.

How joyful these children are. Where does it come from??

This project is mostly for us though.
To remind us that life is temporary, for all of us. To remind us to put as much love and joy into each day as we can. And to surprise ourselves with how capable and resourceful we can be, once we get started.

Tools and 'How To' ideas

Fantasize. Draw up a design that will kind-of fit the template below. Go over the edges. Use unlikely colors, put visiting creatures in, and artworks if you like.

This looks a likely spot for a loved, loveable garden

Double click to enlarge, then trace in your own ideas

Trace

Double-click this edge-garden template, to enlarge. Put some paper over your computer screen, turn out the lights, and trace it, gently.

Make three copies, so you can mess the first ones up, with joyful abandon. At first, don't erase mistakes. Make multiple layers of mess. Rich layers of mess, let them meld and produce offspring. Let your pencil lines go thick and wild.

Select what works best

Lift out the good ideas, maybe trace them again. Here are some helpful low-tech tricks for drawing up expressive garden plans.

Think about clever (or silly) ways to manage the yearly floods and dry spells, how to attract children's help, what to plant that they will love, and that will survive. Here are some ideas from a Japanese childrens garden I made last year, on getting the water, plants, love, and resources that will make a garden flourish.

Share with the world, see what comes back
Post your heroic drawing efforts on your Facebook page, for your friends to giggle at. Maybe they will find whats missing, and put it in. Email your pics to to me - I have no idea how to make a tropical garden, thats why I'm asking everybody. Just take a photo of your drawing with your camera, and send.
I sent the first draft of this story to water expert Ross Mars, and look what came back - Rainfall data we need, to design a water system that works.

'Ready! Fire! Aim!" is the correct order, for getting totally new things done.

This Video shows last year's volunteers in action, doing their magic at Yasothon, in 2010.

Feeling Daunted?

Design never comes naturally, don't worry.

Unfamilar with tropical Plants?

Just make up fictional plants.

Whirligig flowers, leaves like petticoats, if you like.

Just write notes discribing what your fantasy plants DO, and what they need.

A plant-lover might read it, then suggest the name of something actual.

Like ice-cream bean, or dragon fruit.

Tropical plants all sound made-up to me anyway.

You can't mess up

Nobody, NOBODY knows how to do this.

Last year as part of their renovation blitz, the 'Hands across the Water' team had a go at planting an irrigated garden.

Tradies, businessmen, teenagers all volunteered their time, effort, resources, and flew all the way to Thailand.

The building renovation was amazing, but the garden didn't survive first go.

Did they fail? NO, because now we are hearing their story.

We have Permaculture, and they didn't.

Now they have us.

As every artist knows, you always need a few rough drafts when doing something totally new.

Your capacity for embarrassment is equal to your capacity to change the world. I really believe this.

Spend an hour, watch the impact

Its doing the things we don't naturally 'feel' like doing that change our life, set our orbit on a wider trajectory. If you get out the paper, the erasers, and a friend to help, you will be a new person.

Your garden, or your friends garden will be next, because you have set up a new 'tram tracks' of the mind. Your world will change. After just an hour of trying.

Connect

Contact me with your good ideas, suggestions, and offers of help, I would love to hear from you.

0412 474 cecilia.macaulay(at)gmail.com

Contact the team at Hands across the Water, offer your smarts and strength, make some great friends.

About Hands Across the Water
Hands across the water is a Boutique charity, established by Detective Inspector Baines and his colleagues after the Thailand tsunami. A year after completing his work for those who had died, he found the children orphaned by the tsunami were still living in a tent, with an uncertain future.

'Results not Excuses'
Detective Baines is young, and quiet. He doesn't smile much, but gets things done. One year after he and his colleagues established 'Hands', the million dollars for the children's new home was raised. Not only do they have a colorful home. A palm oil and a rubber plantation were acquired. The children play and picnic there now, amongst trees that will be income source in their future.
Detective Baines and other directors pay for 'Hands' administration out of their own pockets.
Every cent donated to Hands across the water goes directly to caring for the children - food, medicine, and education.
Detective Bains won the Australian of the Year award recently, and lectures to Corporate groups on effective leadership.

Hands across the water 8-day fundraising bike ride though Thailand

How to do something New - invite a friend to help with Bagna Cauda

2011-09-19T16:25:00.004+10:00

Bagna Cauda was tremendously popular starter dish in Japan last time I was there, but rarely seen on menus here in Sydney.

Bagna Cauda from Bon Appetit

Its simply an array of fresh baby vegetables, dipped into a hot buttery sauce of anchovy and garlic. Like a seventies fondue party, a candle is lit under the sauce, to keep things moving.

Minimum shopping, Minimum washing up

I've long thought: What a useful, low-energy Permaculture dish.

You just go to your balcony garden, pick a few stalks of celery, florets of cauliflower, or baby pea pods, as they come into season. You blanch them by pouring over water from the kettle.

You hold a piece of chewy Italian bread under each vegetable stick, to catch the drips of sauce, then instead of washing the dishes afterwards, you just eat the bread

Since I have a farewell party coming up, with a 'Paleolithic' theme, I decided on Bagna Cauda, or 'hot bath', as a somewhat suitable hunter-gatherer dish.

I know, I know. They didn't have grain in caveman times, so no bread. No domesticated animals either, so no butter. But its close.

Garden Bath, illustration by Cecilia

Next I had to decide on a friend to help me cook the new things I had planned.

Yes. Like everyone ever alive, I'm hesitant to do things I haven't done before.

The further I go from my playful kittenhood, the more conservative I become.

It took me a few years of running "Inner Permaculture' workshops to realize, that nobody 'changes' behaviour all by themselves. But they do mimic people they like and trust, doing things a 'half step' from where they already are.

I like Nigella Lawson, so I got my Bagna Cauda recipie from her.

And I like Risa Koyama, a new friend, so I asked her over for a cooking session, so she could learn something new too.

Risa and I enjoy tea on the Veranda

Risa gathers her cooking energy from the Harbor Bridge view


Bagna Cauda Caveman Style

I chose the most 'primitive' veggies I could find, such as kale, flowering Asian greens, and the tatsoi I'm growing on the veranda.

The 'gurilla garden' we are cultivating around the corner made some contributions too.

All you have to do is pour boiling water over the vegetables to soften them, then arrange. No cooking.

I fried up a little polenta for her, as she had never seen it before. This crispy-fluffy way to eat corn-meal is one of my staples. She marveled over it, especially with the velvety-salty-pungent sauce.

Share the Surplus

I sent Risa home with flowers, new recipes to try, and something a bit strange, but good.
A three-quarters empty bottle of Rice-bran oil.

For ten years I knew I shouldn't fry in olive oil, that it has a 'low smoke point', and that all its health benefits turn to poison when it gets too hot.
Yet I continued using it.
I pretended I would be careful and not let it burn, though it always did.
Why do I do this?
Because people like to keep on doing what they are already doing.

We are scary.

Giving my friends the little bit left from the bottle gets them started on the new, better habit, so the next time they shop, they recognize and reach for their new friend - cheap, high-smoke-point oil.

There are so, so many 'surpluses' like this that we can share, rubbish to us, but life-changing when put in the right hands.

Here is a useful oil guide from Whole Foods.
Enjoy salty bagna cauda with your snappy little vegetables.

September 11 and the Lemonade Stalls of Spring - Sydney Children out saving the world

2011-09-11T17:31:00.000+10:00

On my way home from the Strathfield Spring Festival, I had the highlight of my day - Children out in front of their house, selling lemonade and coconut ice.

Very blue, sugary coconut ice, just like I used to make when I was 10

Very happy children, with a purpose to their day, and to their life.

They are raising money for a village in Kenya. Look what good business people they are, with seductive specials in their pricing strategy.

When I asked them if they had a lemonade stand website I could google, to tell my friends about their lovely project, one ran and got a poster from her mum, across the road.

Look how the bike out the front porch matches the project.
Sometimes, when we just do what we love, our lives become 'All of a Piece', with every part fitting into every other part.
Her brother greeted me at the door with his paint-spattered clothers.
Another generative, useful and happy kid, changing the world. Or at least, changing the living-room wall.

Peoples dreams always make them beautiful.

Kipepo means 'Butterfly' in Kenyan. You can learn more about the Kipepo Project here, and maybe buy the greeting cards they sell.

I want to buy the children, take them home and do projects together.
Maybe I should make my own.

I love doorsteps and edges, quiet curbs, and how creative projects can bring people together.

Kitchen sink dancing - Life after Michelle Bowden's presentation skills workshop

2011-09-09T14:43:00.000+10:00

This is what happens when you do the 'Advanced Presentations Skills' workshop with the amazing Michelle Bowden.

The rules and structures she gives you for clear, persuasive speaking don't just take over your brain. They take over your kitchen walls.

It gets worse, because she choreographed a dance, so the kinestetic learner in us remembers the 13 steps, even if our brain doesn't.

"Pace, Pace, Pace, Lead! Reduce, Maintain Increase..."

So now I've got a new kitchen sink dance, to entertain the passing ferries with.


The hardships of harborside life: you need sunnies for breakfast

I'll tell the story of how the presentations are going, its a big one, for another day.

For one more week I have this lovely house to enjoy, and must continue preparations for my next exciting episode.

If you want to make your life interesting and easy, visit Michelle's generous and inspired website, subscribe to her free magazine, and say 'If only I knew all this years ago"!

xx

Help me bring Spring deliciousness to Norma's jewel-box garden, Balmain

2011-09-07T21:08:00.008+10:00

I have a new friend, Norma, who lives across the road.

Minkie the cat introduced us just last week. I had chased him down for a pat, outside her house. There she was chatting to other neighbors, in her jewel-box of a garden.

She is an artist, and 80 now. She talks about real and interesting things, like love.
Actually, I just now realized something.
She doesn't complain.

She mentions how she misses her husband, how she misses seeing him in his chair, reading the paper. "He was such a lovely man. With an eye for beauty". Or about how she just buried a possum, and maybe it was made homeless when the big trees got cut down. She lends me books about Japanese gardens, and books about what makes beauty beautiful.
But she doesn't complain. She doesn't seem to have the 'chemistry' for it.

You know what she said yesterday, while we drank green tea on her balcony? That I should quickly find someone, get married, and have a child, or I will become a boring old lady.

Yes Norma. I will do my best.

"Its like a bad haircut"

Norma has desires for her garden. She wishes there was less straggliness, that there were herbs to eat.
Most of the plants just made their own way to her garden, presents from friends, things that landed from a seed in the wind.

Lets get some herbs for Norma

Gardens that are loved and already part-beautiful call out to me, as a part-unwrapped chocolate bar calls out.
Here are the main things I'd like to help her do:

Put in the parsley that she fills her soup with, and other herbs and salad things.

Continue the bright pink and vivid green theme, avoiding other colors

Continue the Japanese theme, with its stepping stones and mondo grass

Somehow disguise the bins yet keep them accessible. How?

Make a sturdy, beautiful wooden hand-rail, so she can walk safely over the stepping stones

Find a wooden chair, and made a dappled a sitting area, so that she can spend time in this pretty place, connecting with passers-by who need a chat.

Like me.

'Observe and Interact'
To get started, today I got Norma to take photos of 10 things she thinks are beautiful, and 10 that she doesn't.
Actually taking photos helps you see things you have become blind to, I have discovered.

Here are some of the the winners:

Doorstep river stone from her son

Lots of pink flowers in terracotta

Her daughter found this on the street

The loosers include bare bits of ground, withered hanging baskets, rubbish bins, and plants that 'don't do anything'.

This Saturday is my Balmain harborside gardening day.
If you are nearby, and have some things for Norma's garden, you would make two ladies very happy.

Share the surplus - tree felling and a good use of Twitter

2011-09-03T22:20:00.002+10:00

I sometimes tweet on Twitter. I don't know why I am doing it, nobody cares, and this leaves me feeling a bit silly.
I've just had this strange scene unfold under my kitchen window. If we tweeted the right things to the right people, we could become black-belts of permacultures 3rd goal 'Share the Surplus'.

Some trees had to be cut down, to start construction on the new Harborside Park. Limbs were lying around everywhere, uselessly.

What if the owners of fireplaces were all 'following' the tree loppers on Twitter. 'Come and get it!' they could tweet. Neigbours would appear, carry home the logs, and the muscly guys could knock off at 10am instead of 1pm, saving three smokey, stinky, ear-splitting hours shattering it all into wood chips.

The pile of chips started composting, rapidly. Steam was rising. Somebody panicked. Foam was sprayed all over the place, by a new set of burly men. They tell me the foam is made of detergent, and will help keep oxygen out of the pile. I wonder if the chips are now too toxic for gardens?

The imaginary gardeners who follow the tree loppers on Twitter could have come and taken away the mulch, for free.

Then the gardeners who follow the firemen on Twitter could have give them some helfpul advice, and let them leave their truck at home. Advice such as 'Make smaller piles' or 'Syphon off the heat'. The compost-powered showers of the Permaculture Convergence was one of the highlighs of my 2010.

I wonder what other uses for a smoking pile there are?

I wonder what truly useful twitter connections I could be making, to dive in and share someone's surplus, while its hot?

Fireman outside my Balmain House

Blokey, isn't he. Actually, rather hot.

Please share with me your good advice on how I could use Twitter, with purpose and dignity in my tweets xxx

Flirting with the chicks - Sharing the surplus and Urban chickens, Sydney

2011-08-31T15:06:00.003+10:00

Before

After

My brother John's quality of life just keeps on climbing.

In December, he got bride.
Today, he got a chicken.
In fact, Five chickens.
Five gorgeous girls, his for a whole fortnight.

You might have heard my story of meeting Steve Webb though my 'Chicken Sitter Available' classified.
My brothers garden is too shady to grow vegetables, but replicates almost exactly the South-east Asian forests that Jurassic chickens evolved in.
If you want to make anything healthy and happy, replicate its native environment. A few minutes after Steve came with his cardboard box full of chooks, this is how they looked:

This garden is chook heaven.
And here is a useful tip for increasing the amount of happiness in your life: just make the creatures around you happy, and borrow theirs.
Its such a joy to watch these fluffy girls sail around the garden, hearing happy 'brrrook' every time they strike yet another tasty treat in the leafy ground.
Half the rent is suddenly redeemed, now that the Twilight Zone of the massive garden is being shared with new friends.

Steve had just bought the chooks and this 'Three bears' style house, for $100, second hand.

Assembling it gave us a afternoon of being kids again, playing cubby house.

Over the next few weeks, Steve will be creating his own Urban Chicken Palace, and once its ready, we will give them back to him, and know if we really, really want chickens or not.

Postscript

By the next afternoon, we had seven eggs.

The plainest chook, the speckledy dusty one, had gone on an adventure. Jumping from tree to tree she went over the canal, and left her 4 companions wondering.

My brother trotted off down the street, calling out for her. He found her in a distant neighbors garden canoodling happily. What are the chances she had landed in a house with the neighborhood's only rooster?

That's exactly what happened.

She came home to her friends eventually. Maybe the telling the elopement story to her cackling friends was more satisfying than the bloke himself.

Quirky Doorstep Garden designers of Sydney - I found one!

2011-08-16T21:50:00.007+10:00

If you want to meet unique people, then do quirky things.
Here is how I met Steve, a young daddy of 4 and a real, culture-creating Start-At-Your-Doorstep Designer.

Stephen Webb at his inner-city home, where things flourish

I met him through the add I put up on Gumtree Classifieds, "Chicken Sitter Available'.

Like many things I do, it sounds weird, but is eminently sensible.
Try-Before-You-Buy is a low cost, low burden, low angst way to ease yourself into something new.
Into, and then out of it again, if it doesn't go as hoped.

Chicken sitter available - my add

My brother has long wanted chooks for his jungle back garden. Spring is coming, and is the time to take action.
Steady, flamboyant action.

Well, yesterday my chicken add got a reply from Stephen, who thought it was a good idea too.
He has plans for a renovation to his Urban Chicken Palace, and his ladies could do with a holiday.

After checking out his website 'Edible Kids Gardens', his low-tech, improvised designs, I dashed right over to meet him. That very night.
He is a real Doorstep Garden Designer, someone who starts a garden - tiny, urban, useful - from where people actually are. From the energy and resources and dreams they actually have.

A person very well placed to save the world.
I wasn't going to wait.


Gumboots for his children as they stomp about the garden

Maximum productivity from Minimum space

This Permaculture design principle doesn't just describe what he designs, it also describes how he does it - minimum drawing, with maximum communication to the future garden owner as to how it will all look and feel.

He draws alternatives, with the stories of all the elements he want to include, and why. There are tunnels to transition from adult area to children's secret fairy garden, clipped mini-hedge edges to protect herb garden from children's ball games, multiple reasons for everything.

Allow for Evolution

His designs are light, quick and flexible, with alternatives. He can re-design around the obstacles and opportunities that appear - Finding great rocks as you dig, or a pipe that sends your riverbed in a new direction.

But mostly, he allows for his own evolution.

Garden-creating is weekend job for him, a love since his own childhood.

He studied Landscape architecture, not horticulture, so he is now learning about plants as he goes, asking his mates what will work.

Instead of paying for a Horticulture course, he gets paid as he goes. Not paid much, but enough to keep on creating.


A house of treasures. Children and other kinds.

Maximise useful connections

The gardens themselves are full of useful and thoughtfully-linked playing, hiding, digging, messing areas.

But again, he maximizes useful connections in How he designs, not just What he designs.

Latin is useful for the priestly ones to hand down accurate orders to the middle man, who then does the construction - the owner does not need to interfere with personal plant preferences.

Here Google image searches of important plants show the owner just what will be coming to live with her.

He makes that connection for her, so she doesn't have to wonder.

Dry river bed in a school garden

How is a children's garden different from a regular garden?

This is what Stephen said:

"Adventure, Interest. Adults like gardens for sitting, drinking tea, viewing. Children like to engage deeply, clambering through tunnels, into hidey-holes, constructing little nooks and gadgets themselves. Plants are chosen to be handled, not just looked at.

I don't make gardens to teach children about sustainability. How they turn out depends on who their parents are, really, that's the more constant influence.

I want to make gardens that will captivate and delight, keep their attention. I don't make gardens for political reasons. Ive always made gardens, since I was a child. Its to delight myself, really."

He tells the story of how last week he went to 'Reverse Garbage', and brought a pile of pipes and elbows for a few dollars. His children spend a few days putting them together as a chute for racing their cars. After that they made them into a telephone system for communicating in the garden tunnel. These children are unlikely to grow up boring.

And the pipes and elbows will probably have many more re-incarnations before they are truly garbage.

Being a paid Permaculture designer is something you can start, from now.

Pick up a pencil, trace over a photo on your computer screen, do a google search for plants you think might be happy there.

Find someone who really, really wants a garden, and help them. Take a photo, and put it on a blogger blog - a free website. Learn Search Engine Optimization, and put useful stories in there, to get known.

Then don't stop till you get there.

I will help.

Wonky, rough, but good enough to change the world. Someone's world.

Contact Steve Webb, or get inspiration from his Edible Childrens Garden website: http://ediblekidsgardens.com.au/

I want to live at Vaucluse House - Low-tech Home, grand mansion, and useful kitchen Gardens

2011-08-07T19:13:00.005+10:00

Something people don't know about me is that I grew up in a wood-stove powered, rosary-praying Edwardian-era farmhouse.

Not the whole time, just when my mother was giving birth, which happened every year, or when it was time for a holiday from Chadstone.

Off I would go to Nellie's, at Fern hill.

Beautiful, useful blacksmithing, the old stove at Valcluse house.

This morning here in Sydney I was a bit sad. I had just dropped of my lovely companion at the international airport. So instead of heading 'home' to the vast Balmain mansion, I detoured to the other side, to National Trust's Valculse mansion, for comfort and uplifting.

You enter into the 150 year old kitchen, with the wonderful resin-like smell of layers and layers, decades and decades of woodsmoke.

All from the very beautiful, useful old stove.

Perfect Aromatherapy. I was uplifted.

Here is the drawing room, almost as beautiful as the stove.
It was designed to lure suitors to check out the daughters. Their beloved mother was 'illegimate', so they couldn't enter Sydney society the usual way.

Maybe that's what I'm lacking - fancy chairs.
Get that right, and a betrothal, a family is just around the corner....
Maybe its something else though.

Here is the inner courtyard garden, something I have always wanted, being a cloistered kind of a lady. It recalls the otherworldly convents I visited throughout my childhood, calling on Sister Cephas and the other nuns close to our family. My own mother was brought up not in a home, but a beautiful convent.

At Valcluse, this courtyard's purpose was to separate the kitchen, with its threatening fires, from the main house.

How chaste and lovely is this delicately-lit nook, of floating pot plants.

More Greenery, hanging on in there, on the shady side of the house, in the babies room. Nine babies, I think they had, most of them growing up to thrive and flounder at about the same rate as all of us, it seems.

Oiled eggs, preserves from the garden, displayed in the kitchen

At the 1910's Tea House next door, I had a breakfast so perfect, it almost made me cry.

Photo by Pia Jane Bijkerk

The jam was made from Rhubarb from the kitchen gardens, with apple and vanilla added. The tea was perfect, there was sourdough toast and avocado lemon. They let me sit by the heater, where I read a book by my hero Shaun Tan. The roof was very like that of my grandfather's house in Trentham. I think his father built it himself, in the style of the day.

Making a house like this is about the only thing I really want to do with my life. And a family to bring it to life.

Decrease Useless Diversity - pantry declutter for delicious dinners

2011-07-18T11:39:00.002+10:00

Pantry Declutter, After

Here is how you can de-clutter your pantry, and make dinnertime graceful and light.

We all know the Permaculture principle of 'Increase useful Diversity'.
But because it wasn't written in the designers manual, we forget that we need to 'Decrease Useless Diversity' first, to give us room for all the lovely things we want in our lives.

One of these desireables is delicious dinners.
Meals we enjoy cooking, shopping for, and cleaning up after.

When we learn how to do this, we stop being powerless victims of restaurant meals, and don't have to spend all that time at work paying for them.

Imagine coming home tired from work, opening up your pantry, and this is what you see:


Pantry Declutter, Before

Discouraging, right?

You don't know what food you've got because you can't see it.

Visually, it looks as delicious as your recycling bin, and really doesn't give you any clues or incentives to the next action you must take. Apart from getting out your purse and going to Lou's Take Away.

What do you do, where do you start?
Im a very experianced declutterer, and naturally very messy. I don't reccomend things I haven't fought hard to do myself. Here is the recccommended, reality-tested plan of action:

1. Bungee Jump

Bungee Jump is my term for the thing you do in your mind, when you go against all your existing instincts and do something you think you aren't allowed to do, something that will change the orbit of your life.
In this case, its deciding to spend money on a whole pantry-worth of good-quality matching containers. I buy Decor.
It will cost about $70

It can be so hard! There are 100 reasons in your mind why your shouldn't.
You are keeping existing plastic from landfill....
You are using money for better things....
You are....

Your pantry doesn't have to resemble a supermarket, a graffiti patch or a recycling bin.

2. Reality Check

The decor containers will last you for the next twenty or thirty years. Its like getting married, bringing something quality into the family.

You will save the money within a month, or even a week, by not needing to eat out.

You will have a less stressed, cluttered and guilty mind.
I don't know your particular way of spending in response to stress - it could be Chardonnay, counsellors, shopping sprees, or divorce lawyers.
But its always more expensive than order in the strategic places.

Disorder and wildness bring riches to other places: your art studio, your veggie garden, and possibly your bed.

But not your kitchen.

Separating the Sheep from the Goats - its fun once you get started

3. Buy exactly the right amount, right shape, right diversity

*Oblong - Round takes up too much space.

*Stackable - you don't ANYTHING unco-operative in your house, even objects.

*Diverse size, not diverse brand.
Lots of 'Small', for leftovers in the fridge. A few 'Medium', and a handful of 'Big'. Nothing bigger than one litre - You don't want a big two liter container full of dregs clogging your pantry. If you have a large amount of, say, brown rice, simply put it into two or three containers.

4. Put the old containers in the bin
This is the hardest part, and will bring you the most blessings.
If you keep them, or give them to the op shop, you can still pretend to be 'good' and 'sustainable'.
If you feel the pain of throwing them into the (recycling) bin, you will then be motivated to change you habits, and this next hard-to-start habit will revolutionize your life and your world. It is......

5. Start shopping at a co-op

You bring all your empty containers, fill them up with bulk organic goodies such as quinoa, dates, saffron. You do a Google search to work out how to cook them, or invite your cook friends over for a session.
Your gourmet, slow food life has begun.

If you get creative and efficient about how you time things, you will soon be eating organic meals for less cost than conventional meals, and no rubbish.

I make that claim because I have done it. It took a while. But conventional wisdom is often wrong. Eating organic is only more expensive if you use them as an 'add on' to a conventional food life.
If you get the whole thing right, it is cheaper.

It will take more time in the beginning, until you figure out good ways around it. Get a WWOOFer or volunteer to do the shopping for you, in return for the elegant meals you will treat them to.

Its always just a design problem.

Never, ever give up.

And never, ever put up with things that don't make your life beautiful.
Unless you really like them.

By Kyneton's Campaspe River, after the flood

Imaginary Sydney Harbour bridge Fire - Critics, and other scary things

2011-07-03T21:59:00.008+10:00

Of course its not the Sydney Harbour Bridge on fire, I just imagined it when I woke up.
Actually, something scary happened, and I've been waking up feeling that way for a few mornings now.

The Permaculture Fairy got Swatted.
That's me, by the way.

Some people didn't like a Garden renovation story I wrote on an internet site, and their comments were ...not kind.
Worse than that.
(I've put the link here. I don't recommend you read it though - it might spoil your day)

I should just ignore them, right?
Its only words, right?
The internet is full of snarl.
But I have lived my adult life meticulously avoiding being snarled at.

That's how I got so cute.

But even if critics are blazingly wrong, it registers as pain, for days and days.
It makes me clumsy, not being present to things, important things, like pedestrians when I drive... dangerous!
Worst of all, its contagious. Since the 'Mean People' day, I can feel my skull narrow to a more weasel-like shape, for mentally shredding 'bad' people.

I've had to give my friends a kind of 'Cecilia Hazchem' warning these few days :
"If I start complaining, just say 'Cecilia, you have gone all compacted', and stop me".

As you may know, compacted soil that has been squashed or hardened with chemicals looses its fluffiness and will grow only weeds.

What can I do tomorrow to fluff myself back up?

Morning Journal spot: Balcony Garden, from where I view the bridge.

For starters, prevention - Never read or respond to comments in dangerous websites. Let the productive people know where you can be found and contacted.

Maybe start a difficult, exciting project, digging or something physical.

Request from the Permaculture Fairy to you

Don't verbally punish people who are wrong.
Let them continue on being wrong, and improve your own life.

Or, if you utterly can't resist intervening, then inspire them to change, or ask if they would like coaching.
If you are prepared to invest in the issue, maybe they will too.

You never know how long the residue of your words will linger, and how many life-giving projects and people are silenced.

I know bawling out 'Evildoers' can be semi-irresistible, probably a brain chemical like heroine.
But practice.

The more punishing thoughts you think, the less bravery you will have to do interesting things with your life. Because naturally you will think the world is as unforgiving as you are being.

I will think of other tips for resisting 'pesticide communication', and put them in a blog post one day.
I use them all the time on myself, after all.

Poor humans. We can be such machines.

Queen's Birthday Permablitz, Urban Gardening Party in the Rain

2011-06-14T09:13:00.000+10:00


chives, parsley, purple sage, silverbeet, and cosmos flowers

My hermit-days are approaching their end, I'm starting to make some mates in this new city of mine. Today Catherine came to lunch, a real writer and real horticulturist, who I met though giving a Presentation at Permaculture North. She made me laugh, as we hatched plans for Urban doorstep garden designer's training and workdays.

I had a rather wonderful salad to impress her with, as I'd spent the morning at theAlexandria Gardens Permablitz, and was allowed to take some of the gardens beautiful gifts before I raced home.

The beauty of this young Broccoli captivated me - where are the catapiller chewed bits? This garden must be policed by a marvelous balance of predetor bugs.
That's what four years and a good design can achieve. Its my First time EVER to see an impeccable organic broccoli, without spot or wrinkle.
What a silvery Queen!

A packet of Cosmos seeds is the best ever use of a $3, if you want to make the world beautiful. I wonder what contributions they make to the rest of the garden ecosystem, apart from attracting loving humans?

I'm really hoping someone will send me an answer to this, otherwise I will have to pull up a chair and gaze at them for a few days to discover the answer myself.

Every time I see cosmos, I recall my surprise when hiking the Mountainside around Seoul, to find the slopes turned into boudoirs by fluffy carpets, starry with these swaying pink flowers.

The trick is to remember to plant them before the height of summer, in time for feathery, misty galaxy of flowers in the Autumn.

The cyclone wire fence was made beautiful and useful with this lush passionfruit vine, which enjoyed the full sun - permacutlure stacking in action 'Use vertical space'. Easy to harvest too.

40 Adventurous people turned up, including a lively gang of Brazilians. I wonder if they got stuck into PermaSamaba dancing at the end?
My Japanese students claim that my permaculture workshops lack dancing.
This must change.

More photos of the day are on my Facebook, and here is a pic from Milkwood's collection.

Alexandria Permablitz, photo by Milkwood Permaculture

If you want to make your life colorful and happy, get into permablitz, and have a creative hoard overrun your garden, leaving cultivation in their wake.

Guerilla gardening project 5 decades long - hanging gardens of waterfront Sydney

2011-06-13T22:11:00.002+10:00

'If you love something, its yours'
The longer I live, the more I see that this is true.

The start of the Cremone Point Walking trail

Today I went for a rainy-day walk, and saw the site of a love affair.
Its a fifty-year long quite precarious love affair, between a man and a woman and an unusual piece of land, towards the middle of the Cremone point walking trail.

The trail of Cremone point is a lovely one, with all these varied worlds piled up on top of, around and beside each other.

In one eyeful you can see dreamtime wilderness, 1920's domestic gentility, and the 21st century hovering at the edges, in ipods on joggers, 'astute investor developments' across the water.

What is thrilling about Cremone point, I concluded, is this rich array of edges and margins. Being on edges always thrills.
Different eras co-exist. Other worlds ajoin each other, just lying there together like the lion with his lamb. Private and public worlds. Staid and racy worlds.

Its exciting to see this serene terrace garden pool, sitting right by the free-for-all harbor, with its gawking passers by. Do the owners skinny-dip? Race? Do bombs into that pool?

Entire different species of things hang out together.
On the land is a herd of steady, century-old houses, made of shaggy wooden shingles and fired clay, things that came from the earth. What do they think of the flashy carbon fibre yachts that bob about on the harbor, just meters from them? Flighty creatures, poised to zip out soundlessly to exotic points on the planet, at their owner's whim. Meters apart, but world's apart.

When I saw this quirky patch of living lawn on unyeilding rock, I knew I was in a 'love zone'.
You don't get combinations like this any other way. Landscaping companies or councils can't do it, because your can't just install it and walk away. They wouldn't think it up, for starters, this sensitive responding to the curves of the rock.

Here are the people who did it, who took over huge swathes of cliff, over 49 years of enthusiastic effort.
Les and Ruby.

The story goes that they started in 1959, diving into the thorny eroded rubbish tip, cutting through the weeds, and ending up with a cascade of jewel-box like micro-gardens, running down the slope to the water. Matresses, thousands of bottles, a kitchen sink and a whalebone corset were amongst the trash, which Les strategically re-buried, as beds for his gardens. The first plant planted was a stray 'elephants ear' some kind of bulb, I think, that Les dredged out as it floated by.

There are plenty of homeless plants 'floating by', if we look out. Les picked up agapanthus and clivias discarded by other gardeners, plants that clumped together and held up the soil. Other cuttings and donated plants just make their way to the garden. Les and ruby stared it. They gave it their weekends, and after retirement, their weekdays too. It found what it needed to grow and grow.

"You know you are on the right path when you start attracting helpers' says my Permaculture teacher, Geoff Lawton.

Permaculture's David Holmgren comes to Sydney

2011-05-26T10:40:00.001+10:00

Something big is coming to my kitchen

Its David Holmren, the co-originator of Permaculture.

And his bright beloved, Su Dennett, who is also my friend, and a delicious gardening-cook.
They are in Sydney for Permacutlure Courses, and a weed debate with Sydney's weed experts.

"I'm Dazzeled" says David, "With this Sydney icon just here, in front of me".
I'm Dazzled too, with this Australian icon at my moring tea.

David notices everything. Nothing is too humble to get him riveted, in detective mode.

While I just see an artistically shaped chopping board, he sees a 44 year old **** pine tree, with a branch growing out to the right.

He also sees the little one-year old sapling, from way back in 1967. He loves talking about the sixties.

Pine seeding photo DougWW

Needlewood

"See here, these dots... You know how when the trees are really young, the needles come straight out from the trunk? Here is the needlewood'.

On their fact-fining missions - neighborhood stroll - , they discover only 12 people walking the streets. They did a demographic breakdown, theorizing on their reasons for being there. They re-designed a fantasy Balmain where people where home working during the day, and even more people were living in the office buildings across the water, reducing excessive building.

Homeless possums illustration by Cecilia Macaulay

They came home with hands full of herb tit-bits, and explained Balmain has almost no edible gardens, and that the closest one is, In Fact, just around the corner from me. It is public, it is in sun, and someone already tends it. Perfect. It was also thirsty. They gave it what was in their drink bottle, and made a small withdrawal for our lunch.

Later we went to the Balmain shops, where Su got some seeds and seedlings for the 'round-the-corner' garden.

Balmain shops are cute, classy, but sometimes people yell at you when you try to drive. I will be glad when I can eat from the garden we are planting, so I can shop less and get yelled at less.
Balmain will be glad too, will less appearances from me.

David, Su and I did a deposit, of parsley and corriander, rocket and lettuce seeds.

"Who came trip trapping in MY garden", somebody might be wondering. Wouldn't she be surpised to find it was David Holmgren himself?

Maybe David's books had put her up to it in the first place.

It had been a lonely weekend. I was so happy to have some mates to share my view with.