Willow and other materials for making baskets and plant supports.

What a boring title. I've been on two 1day courses for working with basket making materials.
Firstly, here in Bristol making plant supports and a willow ball (much enjoyed by Molly & Flo's two kittens Nim & Trixie. Imogen & I repeated the willow ball (with a small sponge tennis ball in the middle, removed once the structure was self suporting) and she made an excellent willow ball for her guinea pig. The plant support is holding up the huge pink Peonies by the front door. The larger, taller plant support will be for runner beans, transplanted yesterday.
The second workshop this April was given by our friends Jane & Peter at their place near Mirande in SW France, where they have been for 11 years now, teaching & practicing permaculture. A walk through their woods revealed many differnet materials which can be used for making things using basket weaving techniques. We gathered Hazel (thick & thin), Butcher's Broom (prickly with red berries but wonderfully straight and green), wild Clematis (old vines make excellent basket handles), Broom (covered in yellow flowers) and noticed the difference made by managing the woodland (also, badger setts, old tracks, ditches and  the remains of a large pit alledgedly used for an arms cache by the Resistance during WWII). I spent a morning with them coppicing two old Hazel coppices, using some of the material for a bean frame. Yes I know we should be harvesting in late winter when the sap is not rising. After an excellent lunch, (we all brought food to share, amazing how this always seems to work with no planning), we made frames for the baskets and then set about weaving them. Jane had plenty of dried bullrushes dampened and wrapped in old wet towels. I have never used rushes before and found them to be a wonderful material to handle. She also has rows of different willow growing, some of  which had been harvested, stored and then put in an old bath to soak for a few days prior to use in order to soften them. I made a little basket from fresh Hazel, Butcher's Broom and old dried (redampened/softened) rushes. We swapped some different willow cuttings.
It is hard to convey the atmosphere of joy and frustration, satisfaction and wonder amongst the group mostly making a basket for the first time. I am more determined than ever to teach the grandchildren how to make things themsleves using natural materials (often found) and basket weaving techniques.

What a mixture - wabi sabi, Tesco, non-linear pedagogy and Globalisation.

Convergence today of a number of very diverse findings. Or are they?

I am "Exploring non-linear pedagogical approaches to ESDGC".

"Oh no Tesco!" New Internationalist Blog about a Tesco supermarket opening in Keynsham near Bristol. Read the comments.

An article on Pelican web about "The biology of Globalisation".

LESSONS OF NATURE

• All living systems self-organize and maintain themselves by the same biological principles, which we can identify and abstract.
• Among the principles essential to the health of living systems are empowered participation of all parts and continual negotiation of self-interest at all levels of organization.
• Humanity constitutes a living system within the larger living system of our Earth.
• Essential to the health of humanity is empowered participation of all humans and negotiated self-interest among individual, local and global economies as well as the Earth itself.


An e-mail about wabi sabi with a quote from "The Soul of Rumi".

How much longer will my poor old shed last?
The decay, weathering and changes after a hard winter.
The soil crumbly from the frost. Weeds enjoying freedom.
Clearing dead leaves from the pond. Sorry sleeping frog!
Cutting some willow.
Make something with the grandchildren over half term?
Raking up windblown rubbish and have a bonfire.
The snowdrops and croci emerging.
Catkins on the hazel bushes. Birdsong.

Only the good die young

If I had enough time, I’d work on the barn more slowly, say no not today, maybe tomorrow I’ll help you sort out *&%^$** .

I’d play my saxophone every day, use my rowing machine and lose that extra stone, play the guitar again, dig over my allotment more thoroughly, not in such a rush, enjoying the moment, the smell of the broken soil, watching the worms, the earwig scuttling off, carefully picking out every last bit of fragile, white bindweed root …..

but in fact I’m trying to practise Permaculture, so I don’t dig over the whole allotment ever, usually I leave it covered perhaps with a green manure such as field beans or cardboard, composted leaves or leave the stalks with seed heads for the birds and the untidy joy of the seasons displayed, first frost on browning leaves.

Yes it is autumn now, the leaves so colourful have started falling in earnest now.

Each time I drive to Rob’s deserted deathly hush flat there are more leaves on the pavements of Redland, leaves being removed from green Clifton lawns and yes our Green has been covered, overshadowed, lost, yet not gone in our hearts. Molly his just teenage daughter still senses his presence.

For 15 days I’ve been stirring up his immaculately organised stuff, delving into his affairs, stopping his life with letters, death certificates, phone calls, moves towards probate, an ever approaching finality          ,     that my son-in-law and friend is really dead, his goods and chattels dispersed, his life deconstructed.

Beautifully shaped yellow maple leaves waiting to fall. The red leaves on the Japanese maple next to the Buddha in my garden who gently smiles at me.

Robert Leslie Green 12^th August 1964 – 8^th October 2010

Making your own timber and furniture oil

Been treating the barn framework with a mixture of 60% linseed oil, 40% turpentine and a drying agent 2%. The old timber beams and uprights needed wirebrushing and cleaning, but now they are all painted with the oil, the colours in the wood stand out. Some of the timbers are pre1750, most from early 1800s, all very local I think. Many had already been used a couple of times at least. 5 new timbers were from local oak trees cut up by Phillipe Abadie at the saw mill less than a kilometre away, and delivered as green oak in Sept 2008, when we started the barn renovation, so lees than 2 years old. The oldest timbers are nearly black and deeply grained, the 1800s uprights are deep red/brown and the new oak as you would expect still very pale but darkening even after 2 years. Great pleasure to see these warm colours come alive from the dust and years of use.
I  have used this mixture on floors (chestnut), the stairs (turkey oak) and garden furniture.
The beans and tomatoes planted in late May are going crazy now, enough for some everyday.

Little bits of self-sufficiency

This year we have eaten all our own rhubarb, but due to dry weather it has gone to seed (first time in 7 years). Don't buy shallots or onions, grow my own from sets, the shallots keep for up to 2 years, just gathered them in before the welcome rain of the last two days. Must get onions up and in soon. Ground still very hard, big cracks in clayey soil on allotment. Wonderful red and black currants this year. The bushes are not expensive to buy as small plants, don't need a lot of work, weeding, feeding, mulching, pruning maybe twice a year, netting to save the fruit from pigeons. Just put away many pots of redcurrant jelly and blackcurrant jam, make good  presents. French friends sometimes a bit bemused by my concotions such as rhubarb and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, chinese plum sauce... Trying to grow angelica again.

 Potatoes this year a disaster, very dry weather and some late frost. Beans looking good and enough for some nearly every day, will get boring soon. Years ago used to slice with a little machine and then salt them in big earthenware jars. Remember having a complete cupboard filled with Kilner jars with mainly fruit in. No freezers in the 1950s only a small fridge. luxury (you were lucky... young people nowadays...). Bendix washing machine my dad bought to cope with the nappies after I arrived in 1945 cost over £100, a small fortune, you could survive on £200 a year, lasted 30 years. I digress. We used to have fruit picking parties with all ages involved, a huge picnic lunch. I remember lots of people sitting round the kitchen table preparing fruit for bottling or making into jam. A joint endeavor, laughter, singing, drinking, playing "sardines" in the garden, a lot of cigarette smoking (both parents smoked 50 a day).


What is the point of all this you might well ask? It feels good to produce some of your own food, to be able to give it away, to cook and eat it, to share it. I get great joy from watching my grandchildren pick fruit as I did when small, to look for beans to pick, where they gathered the bean seeds, dried, sorted and planted them. I'm trying to reconnect them to the soil, the earth on which we all depend for our survival. To feel a part of nature not apart from it. To develop a sense of place, belonging, heimat, at-homeness. To come to know the seasons, the weather, the need for rain and frost, as well as sun and warmth. ho hum

Chief Seattle's Testimony

I  came across Neil Spencer's "looped cursive" handwriting book from my class of 9 year olds in 1976. His handwriting had improved wonderfully during the year in my class and he was proud for me to keep it as an example of what can be achieved. What has this to do with sustainability you might well ask. Well, after using Spike Milligan poems and children's regional skipping games (Iona & Peter Opie + children's own knowledge) for the texts for our daily 4 lines or so of handwriting, I came across Chief Seattle's Testimony. So we used that and spent time discussing what had happened in 1854, what his message to the white man was and what it might mean for us in Colne, Lancashire today. The children were genuinely inspired by his words (even if he didn't say exactly that, even if they were changed at a later date, even if they were invention. See "A native american eco-gospel or Southern Baptist creation?") It made them think about their environment and how it was being spoiled. It helped them to realise the importance of noticing nature across the seasons, during our monthly walk around the same patch of cemetry, riverbank, woodland and abandoned land behind the old Lancashire cotton mills, long silent. That summer term we organised cleaning the river/stream with the help of the local district council who provided, gloves and plastic sacks and a skip. It was a success but deemed too risky to repeat. "Why were they not in school? Wasn't it too dangerous? What were they learning from the experience? "Shouldn't the council clean up the river/stream?... How proud they were of what they had achieved. I told them earlier in the year that if they started and finished each lesson on time saving at least 5 mins. for each lesson, more than 20 mins. a day, and nearly 2 hours a week, they would earn 3 whole days during the summer term to do some worthwhile project that they could choose. Another year and another class, we conducted a local tree survey over a period of  a few weeks.
The good news, some of the trees especially the ones with TPOs (tree preservation order) are still there, the little saplings in danger of being vandalised, now majestically line the road. The children knew they had made a small difference. The bad news, 3 years after the river clean up a local company up stream suffered a fractured pipe on a suphuric acid storage tank. The children now at the local secondary school came to me one day after school in tears to tell me about the dead fish. It mattered to them, it was their river now. The company was fined, and eventually life returned to the little river. I have happy memories watching them play by the side of a sand bank, swimming and splashing after the clean up knowing all the broken glass, old bikes and steel drums ... had been removed. I wonder what their children's experiences have been?. Neil will be 43.
How can we develop a sense of place in today's children?

Might Twitter give rise to Tweets as the new Haiku?

Direct experience before words and language?

Cool morning air touches my nostrils. Am I breathing in
or is Gaia breathing out? Ah!

2 crickets signal the end of St Glace, the warmth returns.
In go the tomato plants.

Watching hairs on my old paintbrush.
How many strokes, cutting in, playing a role to make the edge?

This mouthful, honey's silky sweetness, nectar gathered from many flowers,
incessant work for my one  lick.

Nothing to lose but my insanity.
Memories of playing a kazoo on the train. Just be. Now.

The candle is burning down. My gap year is coming to an end.
I need to use my time wisely.

Transient birdsong, blackbird, cuckoo, dog barking, traffic, my breath,
bell chimes 9.

When spitting, spit, with a balance of tension and relaxation,
with intention, deliberately, mindfully.