Signs for the future

After several months of rich unsettlement we came again to garden together. Many signs help us in a community garden. Informing, handing over, and gathering knowledges and skills such as 'writing up a jobs list.'

 

Some signs let folk know about the ethics of the garden,

and some about what is going on in places that look like not much is happening,

When new beds are planted they are vulnerable to many things. Our tending and the chance tending of kindly community folk bring gifts to this garden of love.

Some signs give simple insights. It's not that Thai basil is anti life, rather our medical culture, like the dominant culture it springs from, is simplistically human centric. Learning to become hardy and resilient participants of life brings many insights and gifts.

Some signs encourage spontaneous participation,

some sing praise to other-than-human agency and service,

and others alert us to future abundance.

When we water today for tomorrow's fare, fare that we may not even get to eat ourselves, we too become participants in service to the living of the world.

Letting others know when we've last watered is again another way of handing over precious information in order to save precious resources.

Directing kitchen wastes to our community compost hub to make enriched soils for future food is true money in the bank. If the virus has taught us anything, it is how vulnerable industrial food chains are.

We planted this weeping mulberry several years ago for children's play. This little nook doesn't need a written sign to invite children in. 

Reading can reduce our capacity to play and experience life in the present. Some places are better without signs.

Many thanks to Jen, Meg, Andrew, Ruth, Tyson, Fe, Jasmine, Jasper, Woody, Fab, Luna, Archie, Elias, Solaris and Apollo for helping in the garden this month. And big thanks to Patrick for organising and facilitating the working bees and communications in the garden. When we come together our souls and our soils are lifted, turned and enriched.

And when we garden on Djaara land we know that it always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Returning the suburban to the sacred: a commons of apples and people

It's been twenty years since Patrick planted the library apples. Last Saturday, at our monthly working bee, we celebrated these giving trees, the community who have tended them and their grand pruner, Ian Clarke.

The next working bee is on the 12 July.

February working bee in pics

Hello and welcome to the photo documentation of our recent working bee at the Albert St garden. A huge grazie to Mara Ripani for taking these photos that so beautifully capture the people and energy of the unseasonably cold summer's day.

A small offering of beauty and decay:

John dead heads the older plants and lays them down as mulch.

Jacques and Natalia gather fallen apples.

Kirsten and Meg discuss apple cider vinegar recipes.

In quiet praise of the apple trees.

Rosa weeds.

Tom sings up the world.

Oscar looks for Zero.

Together we work, and honour the soil and seasons and strength of our collective efforts.

Mara took a whole heap of the fallen apples we collected and kindly dropped them off to the Jonai Farm pigs to enjoy. The rest were composted on site to help make new soil to feed back to the trees.

Did you know community gardener Patrick Jones planted the apple trees outside the library 20 years ago? To celebrate, we are planning a celebration of community food and honouring of the apple trees. Stay tuned for more details..

See you all at the next working bee on Saturday March 9.

New Years planting day at Daylesford's Community Park

On January 12 we shared tools,

smiles,

and various kinds of labour. You see, we were given a wad of money from Spa Country Events for our participation in the 2018 Daylesford NYE Parade.

We came up with a moving food forest as our float. You can see our shenanigans here. The idea was that our temporary float would be converted into a permanent benefit for the community. The community park garden needed some lovin', so we decided this would be the garden we renewed with the plants. First we had to scratch out many weeds and dead head the perennials.

We also had to be there to receive another big gift from local arborist, Scott Little. Thanks for the mature mulch Scott!

Now with our materials on site it was time to start loosening the terra,

to bed down the gifted plants.

We know from experience that many hands make light work,

and many skyward thumbs popped up over the few hours we gathered for yet another community permablitz.

It was a songful time of peasant labours,

peasant labours reclaimed in a casual sunglasses kinda era,

A hot morning meant broad hats accompanied ever broadening feelings,

and we kept cool with the spray of the hose,

before mulch time to trap in all that moistness. With a wheelbarrow train we moved three cubic metres in no time.

We worked from morning till lunch to finish the job, then posed for this photo:

Thanks (from left) Django, Maya, Sian, Woody, Julian, Meg, Nick, Leah, Patrick, Kirsten, John, Brenna, Jeremy, Josh, Nick, Lyra and Michelle (all pictured), and Scott (who gifted and delivered the well composted mulch) and Pete, who had to leave early.