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.

Small actions; little things

What litte things can we do to live a bit more simply?
"Live simply, that others may simply live." A 1970s sound-bite..
I picked some fresh mint to make tea and thought about the zero food miles, packaging.....
For years I've been planting cuttings from herbs, growing them on a bit and then giving them away or selling them at school fairs etc. I've planted out a few sprigs of rosemary and lavender descended from parent plants from 1986 in Cornwall, now growing in France and heaven knows where else.
I filled a raised bed, made from salvaged timber, with compost which must be at least 5yrs old. I'll plant beans in one and tomatoes in the other. All the old garden rubbish had completely broken down. The ash tree benefitted from all that rubbish we piled next to it in 1994, such as layers of ancient chicken muck we initailly mistook for lime rendering it was so hard. I use a shredder now to reduce all the hedge and orchard prunings to small pieces. I store them for a year or two before using them as mulch.
The weather has been getting colder 20, 19, 18 ....15 degrees C. So put on another sweater. Once I get working I soon warm up. It is interesting how quickly the body gets used to a dwelling at around 15 degrees C. No central heating here to turn down in these C18th cottages, but thick mud and river stone walls hold the heat. I knew it was colder inside because the butter was hard.
Snowed today so had to cut up some old wood and light the woodburner. Old hand riven oak roofing lattes, salvaged when the barn was re-roofed 10 years ago, must be well over 100 years old nearer 200.

 

Spring is on its way

The cold weather has broken down the soil into a fine tilth; just hoed with a push-pull hoe, cuts the weeds well. Burning rubbish, hope to make some charcoal to incorporate into the soil, great benefits and easy to do.  Get the fire going, put on the wood or organic matter, waste, cuttings... cover up with weeds or soil to excluded air. Next day open up the reduced pile. There should  be charcoal (bio-char) amongst the ashes. Rake shovel out and work into the soil. Planted shallots, easy to grow, keep well and a high value crop. Half my onion sets in now rest in later. Very early potatoes in now.
Met my friends John & Sarah Snyder, from the Sahara Project 1986 - 1992, after 18 years. John has just digitised the 35000 images he took in Mali and converted them into a film. A copy of the 43G file now sits on a tiny 250G external hard drive that easily fits in my pocket. Oh how the technology has changed since laser vision disc of the late 1980s. John is still working with Dr Mark Porter of "Muscat" fame (an early  probablisitic search engine). Their current project is "Grapeshot".