Permablitzing Elwood

Our client, Jane, was nesting. With two young children and a third on the way, she and husband, Claes, are definitely on a mission to build some food security and resilience into their lives. As the designers, Seila and I were very pleased to impart some permanent-culture. Jane had a good idea what she wanted, having been to a couple of blitz's: wicking vegie beds, an area for chooks in the front yard, to remove some ornamental trees and plant fruit trees. And that is basically what we did this second Sunday of September 2011 in Elwood.

        Ornamentals out, fruit trees in.

      Wick beds being made.
      They work like the plant pots with a reservoir for water at the bottom.

 Before the day; meetings were held, a base plan and design was drawn up, materials specified, how the blitz would run was discussed. The day was upon us. "Oh no - it's going to rain"... but luckily it held off. What I enjoy most about blitzes is the characters you meet. Young, old, male, female, Italian, Malaysian, Israeli, single, gay, married, divorced, tradies, professionals, retired, sad, happy, funny, peculiar, you name it. (I'm the sad peculiar one). We all had smiles. And then there was Cathy, who kept saying "Here, I love digging holes...". When your back's starting to ache, that was music to my ears. Many hands make light work, as they say.

                           Lunch

 I ran a quick workshop on how to chop a tree, and Seila ran the master-class on wick beds. Lessons for next time? If we had pre-cut the timber for the wick beds, we may not have run over time. It's also wise not to use power tools on the day.

                      Oops! Something doesn't fit

Thanks to the Permablitz Collective

A thought for the day
Did you know, there's 500 containers of e-waste arriving in Ghana every month.  Lots from Australia.  Have you thrown a TV, CTR or printer out on the nature strip in the last year?  We should be more thoughtful.  Manufacturers should take some responsibility also.