dear diary - mid june

WEATHER

Worst of the cold snap seems to be past. Has been some frost on the ground, but otherwise sunny and dry. No rain for about 2-3 weeks. Some of the potted plants have been looking a bit dried out, so having to water them.

CHOOKS

Moved them to the northern stretch between house and driveway, they're making decent inroads on the grass and greens in a couple of days.

Backyard, they're on the CREPE-APRICOT bed, haven't been spending much time there because they've been in the triangle bed. They're stuck in there today (19th June), so hopefully they'll do some decent digging up and sratching away.

Cleared their coop, put the new poop in a bucket and covered it over. Transferred the older poop into another bucket, can't remember what I did with it...

PRUNING & PREPARING

Bee bed needs heavy pruning ready for spring. Fruit trees need a good prune back too. Was going to happen at the permabee but didn't happen because of cancellation. Finding out when next opportunity is and integrating it will be the tricky part.

Started making a leaf-mulch, need to collect more leaves. Perhaps from the house right down the end.

PLANTING

Did the potato-pumpkin bed a la limestone permaculture in the cheap metal bed in the middle of the triangle garden. Purple Congos, and some cream coloured potatoes that sprouted. The chook manure might not have been the most broken down, though.

Planted some of the indeterminate BRASSICAS in the LOUNGE ROOM WICKING bed (kept the EGGPLANT, too), haven't sown any mulch there. Probably should.

RIPENING

ORANGES, KUMQUATS

HARVEST

Oranges? Lettuces need to be eaten, they're crowding out the garlic on that side.

NOTES

Feeling despair about the state of the building economy, the increase in price of housing materials, and the difficulty of getting good workers. Had a chat with a building/housing project manager about our plans, looks like the whole deal will cost double what I thought/hoped if we do it all at once. Issue is that I don't know that we'll be able to do anymore if we don't do it all at once. I'm no longer convinced that we're headed for a crisis, I think we're headed for a collapse. And that's an entirely different set of concerns: some form of self-sufficiency is going to be necessary. I need to talk to Jess and Phil about their renos and what they could and couldn't do. Also need to look at the Undercover Architect 'get started guide' to have a general idea of the what can and can't be done, the things to be concerned about, and how to keep things from getting out of control.

Dear Diary - early June

WEATHER

Cold cold cold fricking freezing cold.

CHOOKS

Have been in triangle orchard, clearing the weeds and trimming the greens.

PRUNING & PREPARING

I sprayed my trees with Lime sulphur last week sometime. Can't remember which day it was - Thursday, maybe? So the 2nd. Which means it needs a re-do on the 9th.

DUAL STONE, PEACH & NECTARINE, APRICOT & APRICOT (in front picket fence and container), some CHERRY, OLD APRICOT,

PLANTING

SPINACH, LETTUCE, one KALE, one ???

RIPENING

ORANGES, KUMQUATS

HARVEST

ORANGES? LETTUCE from dining vegepod.

NOTES

Was going to have a permabee on the 11th, came down with a chest infection, had to cancel. Don't know when I'll be able to do it again. Have asked about times and dates, but we'll see.

Dear Diary - 3rd June

WEATHER

FRICKING FREEZING MR BIGGLESWORTH (5C-8C)

CHOOKS

Noticed some reluctance to roost: have Alphamite watered last night

In triangle orchard, have done a decent job of scratching things up, particularly on south side

No laying

Scraped off some of the chook poop to the floor, need to scrape the floor off and bin/box for fertilising

PRUNING & PREPARING

Cream-coloured potatoes to be planted in triangle bed with mustards/radish/turnips as green mulch - a la Limestone Pumpkins-to-Potatoes

Limestone Pumpkins-to-Potatoes
1. pull up pumpkin vines and leaves, put down over beds - chop and drop (early june)
2. cover vines with decomposed chook manures and leafmulch (early june)
3. seed potatoes laid in two rows, one either side of mound, on top of manure and leafmulch, then covered by hay mulch (early june)
4. loose hay mulch applied as cover (early june)
5. compost strips applied along centre of mound at depth of mulch, planted out with cover crops and green maure (early june)
6. Once cover crops/green manure mature, pull-and-drop while still young (late august?)
7. Mulch around young potato plants (late august), laying potato plants in towards middle (where pull-and-drop happened), can also scavenger.
8 Prepare for pumpkins/squash - fill dug out 'pods' with compost for seedlings (early sept)
9. Plant out pumpkin seedings in pods. (sept)
10. Pumpkins will start taking over (~Oct)

Video link here.

PLANTING

Those damn brassicas!

RIPENING

A handful of kumquats, a handful of oranges

HARVEST

Oranges, maybe?

NOTES

Permabee next weekend (11th June) will involve:
- trimming down fruit trees (dual stone, peach-neko, plum, donut peach)
- digging up some badly-placed trees (lemon, lychee, kumquat - multi-citrus? kaffir lime?) and putting into pots
- trimming down and pulling out perennial shrubs (salvias, thai basil, mexican tarragon, lavender) and putting into pots
- digging out compost bays and sieving the contents for use
- digging up and dividing rhizomes (arrowroot)
- chipping the trimmings and building into a compost pile.

suburban permaculture house

One thing has become painfully clear in the last couple of years: we need to sort out the house.

I've done temporary work on it, but it's not enough - the environment inside mimics the environment outside to within a couple of degrees, no matter the weather, and that's just not viable long-term. So, this means renovations. And soon.

I used to think we'd make it to at least 2050. Now, I'm not so sure we'll all make it to 2030. Climate extremes - floods and fire, drought and gale-force winds, power going out and down, gas becoming so expensive. War in Ukraine. Entrenchment of conservatism and a refusal to do anything to improve the general quality of life for the many rather than the moneyed few. Coronaviruses and other diseases. And, of course, the eternal racial bigotry that might someday see me lose my citizenship and personhood in Australia.

Things are getting expensive - have already gotten expensive. And they'll only get more so. So, now is the time.

How long it will take and how much it will cost are the big questions in my head. Also a consideration: the logistics of getting it done in as permaculturally as possible. Reusing old hardwoods, considering the lifespan of the things we're using in the build, and how much work we can do ourselves.

List to be done:

1. strip fibro, seal gaps, insulate walls, cover with weatherboard/colourbond
2. replace tile roof with colourbond
3. expand house and redo insides
4. replace wooden fold-out windows with sealable ones

There's a part of me that heavily regrets not thinking of all this when we first moved in; even having to borrow money, we'd have been a lot better off over the last eight years. But that's in the past, can't change the decisions made then. And now we know a whole lot more about passive houses, energy ratings, and good building, as well as having people who've already done it.

We're a little hampered by the fact that we'll probably have to move out for at least some of it. And stripping the asbestos is going to be a fair piece of work. I just have to confirm that my work is going to rehire me for the year, and we can maybe look at making a start.

Some links:
Greenyflat: a fibro rebuild down in Mittagong (2014)
Fibro Cottage Deep Energy Reno - the cottage behind the fibro rebuild

buckle in: this is a big one

Nick Ritar of Milkwood once mentioned something in a conversation. He and his partner had been living on David Holmgren's property Melliodora down in Victoria, and David confessed that, at the time that Nick and Kirsten moved in, he didn't have a 'succession plan' for the property.

We are, as individuals and as a society, very reluctant to talk about endings where there is no beginning elsewhere. And death is an ending with no assured beginning. Our personal beliefs may consign us to an afterlife or to rebirth or to oblivion, but nobody is sure. And so, we don't talk about Bruno...uh, about death at all in our society.

But all things die. We know that, as permaculturists. Sometimes they just grow old and find the end of their time. Sometimes they're cut down in the prime of life. Sometimes it's an illness that takes health away and life thereafter. Sometimes there's no reason that we can tell. (And sometimes we deliberately cull things, ending their life sooner, for the good of the whole garden; but that's not ideal when it comes to human beings.)

I've been thinking about death and succession myself lately.

Maybe it's the "doom and gloom" of the science: extreme weather conditions, climate warming, COVID recurrences and mutations, the polarisation of society through social media discourse, the growing gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots', and all the pushback by the people who just want things to go back to "normal".

"Normal" was a crust of thin ice over the cold and treacherous waters of existence, and climate warming means it's growing thinner. Those of us reading this started life off on a glacier we thought would be here forever.

Well, we were wrong.

Change is here.

Personal family changes are making me contemplate the future. My parents (all three of them) are old, stable and able to look after themselves still, preparing for the future, yes, but still, old. My sisters both have COVID this last week and the sister I live with isn't doing so well. It's not hospitalisation level yet, but her health has never been great. Thus far I've avoided it, and I hope to continue to do so.

Two brothers (one half-, one step-) have had children, and both seem intent on cultivating us as family. My dad's stepfam wants to immigrate from Vietnam to Australia as soon as his MIL dies; and my half-brother (via Dad) in HK is looking to come to Australia b/c things in HK are looking iffy.

I don't know how to tell them that things in Australia are looking iffy, too. That they're better off in the long-term buying a house with land in a community than going for an apartment like they have in HCMC and HK city. That our democracy might only last a decade more before it takes on the tinge of an authoritarian democracy (it'll take less time if the conservatives get in this weekend).

Right now, my sister and I are the only ones who own land in our family. And it's not much: One-sixth of an acre, but fertile and in a community of fractional acreage with houses that are decent if not well-built. There's space for gardens and for rethinking the way we live. But with everything going on right now, I'm not thinking about an exit plan so much as a succession plan: that is, what happens if things go downhill as badly as they're predicted to over the next thirty years of my life?

I've been wondering if we could persuade my father and/or my half-brother to move in here: a house rebuild and restructure would give us a little more space, and better use of the space (less waste with storage) would allow us to fit a couple of families in, particularly if they're accustomed to living in close quarters. It's unlikely - both dad's family and the half-bro's family are SE Asian city-dwellers; so that means apartments rather than land. Stepbro and his wife are likely more open to land ownership - she's from a semi-rural background with a medical degree, he's from suburbia like us. But the image they'd have in their head is of one house, one family, not the multigenerational thing they'd imagine. Also, if they had to, they'd probably prefer to move in with her family: they have the farm down south, after all.

Right now, if anything happens to me, then my significant assets are divided between my sisters. The stepbro and halfbro can take a memento or something, with the willingness of the sistren, but they don't get a share in 'the inheritance'.

Thinking about the end times requires thinking about 'after'. There's a story told in the bible about a rich man who put all his riches away and then thought he'd celebrate with what he had. And God tells him, "you're an idiot; tonight, you're going to die, and who will inherit all this?"

Life is always temporary - a little match flame that reaches the end of its fuel and burns out. So today I'm thinking about what happens to my land and my house after I die?

Dear Diary: 12th May

PLANTING

Finally planted out a Romanesco BROCCOLI in the LOWER STEP BED with arcs of GARLIC (Valiant and Monaro) and SILVERBEET surrounding it.

NOTES:

I'm having a real problem with grasses in the soil this season. Don't know if it's just that the rain brought them all out, but seriously, such an issue. Might have to put the chooks back on the PLUM-STONE.

FUTURE THOUGHTS:

A thought for the future: what if I let the backyard go back to lawn again. Keep the chook tunnels and the fruit trees with a circle of space around each fruit tree for the chooks to 'fertilise'. Solidify the tunnels with fence metal (also straighten them), and put a wooden seat on sections so one can sit and bask in the sunshine (also shade for the chooks, potential growing spaces for seedlings). The front yard would be the all-year-around growing area, with the backyard the contemplation space. The fruit trees have been good there, but not great, and probably won't ever be great. Trim them down? It's a thought...

dear diary: that went well, didn't it? - early May

I've been struggling to keep this up, to work in the garden, to not feel like I'm completely failing at permaculture and permaculture design.

The house is cold and draughty and I don't know how to fix it: that takes money and while I have some, I have to clear it with my sister. Also, light mould around the windows, need to wipe those down at some point. *sigh*

WEATHER

Sunny days this week, projected rainy ones next.

CHOOKS

Moved to the triangle orchard, happily digging away right now. Not sure if they're still experiencing mites; a bit worried about how they're all clustering together.

PRUNING & PREPARING

To be pruned: the salvia hedges along the front, even if it disturbs the bees. Start with one of the red ones.

I guess the chooks are preparing the soil around the orchard trees - I'll dump some straw and other things in there after they've had a couple of days of being moved around there...

CAPSICUMS: backyard set will need pruning down for winter

VEGEPOD: will need chickens on it to give it a good scratch-and-dig. Then some edge composting for the winter cropping.

PLANTING

GARLIC: Valiant and Monaro (in light seaweed solution)

GARLIC: Spanish Roja (in light seaweed solution)

PEAS: dwarf snow peas - sprouting

PEAS: bush sugar snap - sprouting

ONIONS: creamgold and north holland red -

CABBAGE: Red Queen (hybrid)

RIPENING

Pumpkins still ripening on the vine. Also LUFFAS of eating size. Possibly CAPSICUMS.

HARVEST

Pumpkins? Silverbeet in CARPORT VEGEPOD. Tomatoes in front orchard.

NOTES

Doing my sit plan and 'bubble design' for my PDC, I'm struggling with What I Should Have Done vs What I've Actually Done and how different they are. But it's too late to go back 8 years, do the renos that would insulate the house and make it better so...now we're just stuck with a lot of work and an impossible task? UGH.