So, my garden isn’t feeding me but it’s ok. I have beer.

(Thanks to a very kind and generous friend who has shared his equipment in exchange for the space. Resource sharing is GREAT!)

Sometimes I just feel like the garden hates me.

Yes, I know. Irrational.

It’s just the winter garden thing and feeling more frustrated than usual about the rain and cold and lack of money. The only solution is to go outside right now and build the new garden bed. Right now. I’m turning off the computer right … NOW.

Photos! Yay for photos. This is my stag beetle shirt. I’m still pretty chuffed with myself but would add that the bold, shiny effect in the final photo didn’t survive washing. The final effect on the t-shirt is more like a strong stain.

Mock freezer paper:

Ironed on:

Final result:

Climate Scientist James Hansen revises his estimate of ten years to turn around the rate of climate change to ONE year: story here.

I don’t hate rats. I just don’t want one living in my compost bins (bins! ha! Because despite my previous compost anxiety I’m doing pretty well on the compost front. I’m even at the stage of trundling up and down my street with the wheelbarrow scooping leaves out of the gutters for my piles and weaving new bins as needed out of scavenged chicken wire and tomato stakes…)

Anyway, I don’t feel the need to kill it; I even admire the clever neatness of the tunnels it has made, and, as I think Lynda Hallinan* pointed out recently, a rat in a compost bin means that the compost is warm in the middle - and that’s actually a good thing. Except I want to use some of my lovely, wormy compost and I don’t really want to put my fork through a rat when I open up the bin. So I’m not sure what to do. I’ve taken the top off the bin so that the local cats can get in and have a sniff and hopefully the rain will make the bin a lot less cosy. But I’m probably just going to have to tuck my pants into my gumboots, take the sides off, harden up and just stick the fork in and stir.

*I think it was in one of her Get Growing Campaign emails. They’re pretty useful and it’s nice feeling like part of a movement of local gardeners ripping up the lawn to plant vegetables. And I’m very responsive to emails which arrive on Friday night with a list of jobs to do in the garden right now. That’s how the garlic finally got planted!

Hoorah! I’ve finally become the kind of person who can do something crafty and then blog about it! (And shout hoorah! a lot apparently. I’ve just read Swallows and Amazons which may explain that one).

Anyway, I’ve come across freezer paper stenciling on a few sites now and wanted to try for a while but because I’m broke I haven’t been able to shell out for fabric paint nor this fancy freezer paper stuff (available in craft shops in NZ). But my mum has let me in on a sneaky secret: the wrapping paper from a ream of photocopy paper will do the trick just as well*. Free! Free and environmentally responsible! Hoorah!

And she also told me I could use ordinary school acrylic paint instead of fabric paint: just paint, alllow to dry and heat set with the iron. I wish I could share photos of my son’s new stag beetle shirt. It looks very cool, and actually very professional. And, can I just say again, free!

I love free craft. I’m planning on doing a lot more - not just “freezer paper” stenciling but anything where I don’t have to spend any money to create something. If you’d like to have a go at the stenciling, these are the best instructions I’ve seen: The Artful Parent.

Photos will come again, I promise.

*it has to be the stuff which has a shiny side. The shiny side will adhear to the fabric when ironed on at cotton setting.

I spotted a new magazine at the supermarket today and I would have bought it except I’d already filled the grocery budget with more non-perishable items to ease my jittery feelings about the food and oil stuff (etc. etc…) Jittery feelings that were not helped by a sign at the supermarket announcing that due to the world shortage of rice that some of their normal lines would be unavailable, and even though the shelves were still stacked full of bags of rice I couldn’t help feeling like I should be at home planting stuff in the garden*.

Anyway, luckily the new magazine has a website: Good: New Zealand’s Guide to Sustainable Living

Maybe next week I can find the cash to buy it, although I have the feeling I should start a collection of one of the DIY magazines instead. Perhaps something that would teach me how to build my own wind turbine…

*That would be planting the 12 silverbeet seedlings which I impulse bought (hey, $2.95!) and will have to plant in the space I cleared for the garlic! Nevermind, must get onto digging out the new garden bed. And then planting the garlic.

things that are “concrete and practical and nurturing and creative”, I’d like to share a couple of my favourite crafty sites with you. After all, who doesn’t like looking at beautiful photographs of the stunning things that other people have made?

I’ve lurked on Tiny Happy for a year or so now and just recently I’ve discovered SouleMama too. There are heaps more that I lurk on, but these are my favourites at the moment. I find them both very uplifting - especially on a cold, grey Wellington afternoon.

Of course, I really need to learn to knit myself. I started to learn to knit last year but no sooner than I’d overcome the obstacle that my needles, wool and book seemed to be incapable of existing in the same place and the same time, my boys discovered that knitting needles make great fencing foils for when you need to recreate the sword fight from The Princess Bride.

A quick p.s. My onions seem to have survived the frosty mornings and are looking very perky. I’m both stunned and pleased.

Maybe it’s just winter, maybe it’s because I’ve started reading the peak-oil sites again, maybe it’s the looming New Zealand election, or maybe it’s because I’ve just received the largest power bill we’ve had in a while*, but I just have to bake. And plant things. Yesterday I planted about 50 onions despite my resolution that I was going to make a plan and stick to it. No more impulse buying seedlings at the supermarket and cramming them in where ever, I am going to make a plan and stick to it. Yesterday though I saw they had onions for the first time in a while and well, I like onions and we use a lot of them and what the hey, I had space where the zucchini and the capsicum plants had come out and it’s only $2.99 for a packet of 30+. So I bought them and planted them and then felt very stupid when I woke up this morning and saw the frost covering them all. Needless to say, my garlic has still not made it into the ground. Priorities? Planning?

*sigh* oh well, back to the baking. I’ve been trying to find the perfect cinnamon scroll recipe but might have to abandon that because I’ve been eating far too many cinnamon scrolls. Baking makes me feel better though. As if I’m doing something concrete and practical and nurturing and creative at the same time. I think I might just turn my effort on to finding the perfect sourdough routine which will simultaneously save me buying yeast from the supermarket and send my earthmother-y credentials soaring.

Just quickly, sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I have some great harvest ones I will share when some technical issues have been resolved.

Keep warm ;>

*We haven’t had one over $100 for a long, long time, and we’re both in shock. I’ve been roaming the house searching for an appliance left on standby or a hot tap dripping. It will be just a couple of winter things adding up I know - the dryer used to dry sheets or that my husband has been sick and so showering at home rather than at the gym - so really nothing requiring drastic action. Yet I think this might the day we start turning off the hot water cylinder for 12 hours a day. The something-or-other law of thermodynamics means (proves? states?) that it takes the same amount of power to heat a water cylinder from cold as it does to keep that same amount of water at a constant temperature, so in theory turning it off for 12 hours a day should save quite a bit of power. There is some debate about this though. I’m going to go and look it up.

I’m certainly not the only one to notice that the price of petrol crept over the $2 per litre mark in New Zealand this week. I’m sad and worried again though. I’m not so worried about the price rise itself (although I was stunned that it happened a lot sooner than I thought it would) as I am about the way so many people seem surprised that it’s happened at all.

My way of dealing with the worry is to plan two new garden beds.