Well it's Saturday and for once I have a free day. So many possiblities. Mum came with me to water the garden last night at Woodside and harvested some tong ho (it's a leafy green) but she did have her eyes on the courgettes/zuchinni and asked if she could take one, but I said well, maybe leave it for others as you don't work in this garden.
She ok with taking the weeds nobody else eats. They sell them at the market and aren't as fresh. Mum also placed the jasmine she bought on the deck and said it was for my brother. Who already has one.
I'm not envious but why is she giving a plant that cost $17 to my brother who already bought one when we don't have that plant here? Oh but its not as big as the one she bought. So I figured if Leyton doesn't want the small one since mums giving him a bigger one, he might let me have it?
It's ok I know daughters aren't given anything special...we just have to be content with crumbs from the table but sometimes I feel like I can't live on crumbs.
I have applied for Ecomatters Love your Neighbourhood funding for our church garden to get underway in the new year so fingers crossed that goes through. We also need to be thinking of the Mitre 10 sausage sizzle fundraising we booked for Woodside. I was at Mitre 10 yesterday and had a walk round the garden centre, it seems the place is booming. Every thing is in flower, it's a riot. The front of the store is loaded with sacks of compost. I tried to look for lavendar 'grosso' but couldn't find it, there's princess lavender, and ghost lavender, but no 'grosso'. Maybe Kings has it, haven't looked there yet.
I have been reading 'The Humanure Handbook' by Joseph Jenkins. It's all about composting your own manure, the stuff that comes out of your rear end. Now after reading that book, which is packed full of information that it makes my head hurt a little, I feel a bit guilty everytime I go use the flush toilet. All that water flushed away that could have been used for the garden! And free manure for the compost! They had a compost toilet at Earthsong eco village but I'm not sure how they work that system whether it's someones job to empty it or it composts directly where it is, but I do know Cathy Angell told me I couldn't use it if I was on antibiotics or other medication. I did wwoofing once staying out near Bethell's and the property did have a brand new composting toilet that was perched up a bank and the compost would be collected beneath the retaining wall but I did remember the owner saying it was expensive to build one.
Basically how it works is you do your business in a bucket, cover it with sawdust (from fresh lumber, not treated) or some other organic material, and then when its full empty it into a hot compost pile, cover it, let it sit for a year or so, and voila compost for your garden. Sounds simple to me, but wonder how in reality people are going to learn new toilet habits when we are so used to using flush ones.
Well, I hope it happens in the future cos I would like to be able to still enjoy Auckland's beaches. In some other countries the beaches are not free and you have to pay to go to them, and they are crowded and polluted as anything, so if you go for a swim you end up with a rash or looking like the wicked witch of the west, it would be like swimming in the Thames of London when it was just one big sewer. The urban myth is that all the water there has gone through seven people before it gets to the tap. I heard that in recent years they cleaned it up so much that there are actually now fish living in there. So next time my sister calls from London I might ask her if she has ever tried fishing (or swimming) in the Thames.
