Death of Duck n Swan

The Duck n Swan Hotel closes at the end of this May – this weekend. Many of us miss it already. Unpretentious.  Good food. A place where we could talk. Quiet enough for conversation. Imagine that. All the staff will go. We’ll miss them, too. The new owners are apparently from the UK and, according to some who have met them, have some knowledge of the class system there. And so it goes, M  Read More

Enough of me, what about you?

The Sydney Writers Festival runs from 16 to 22 May.  In the city it’s at The Wharf, and out at Parramatta, and at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. The venues and program has been published and is on the Net here: www.swf.org… It’s a terrific moment in Sydney’s life and there’s so much to read, listen to, join in and enjoy. You’ve been invited to tell others how you would save the planet.  The event is called, You save the planet.  The spotlight... Read More

Clean up Chippo this Sunday 6 March

Clean up chippendale A new local, Thais, has set up a group to clean up Chippo this Sunday 5 March  Read More

How to repel stink bugs from citrus

Auntie Fran, an elder from the Dharawal people (aka Frances Bodkin, author of Encyclopaedia Botanica, etc), walked with me around the gardens here yesterday then emailed me today about the stink bugs on the fingerlime tree: “The Stink beetles on the citrus, one sure way of getting rid of them is to hang an empty plastic bottle in their viciinity.    When the sun shines on the plastic it gives off a vapour that repels the beetles.  (If it does that to StinkBeetles, what... Read More

Jessica’s Xmas story

Jessica Perini edited the second edition of my book, Sustainable House.  During the editing we became good friends.  Jessica’s professionalism was a delight.  Her editing greatly improved the book.  We discovered a mutual interest in food, gardening and nature, and it was partly through that friendship I discovered the Asylum Seekers Centre in Surry Hills and gave them the native stingless bee hive we split at my place – for more info search using the tag, bees. Now... Read More

Asylum Seekers Gardeners

Asylum Seekers Centre gardeners and friends L to R: Teresa, Robyn, Stefan, Vera, Michael, Jessica, Figgy the bird, Auntie Fran When the newly planted food forest at the Asylum Seekers Centre in Surry Hills was launched in December a photo was taken of the gardeners standing in the garden at the front, including Auntie Fran who suggested indigenous food and medicine plants, Figgy the young Figtree bird who was pushed out of its nest by the bully bird from New Guinea, the Koel,... Read More

Terrific photos of the house

Lottie’s put some terrific photos of the house, chooks, bees and things up on her blog, here: aplaceaday.blogspot.com… Thanks, Lottie, may the photos be with you, Michael  Read More

Arbolito signs up

Michael, A sign for Arbolito, Beth, Beth's hat, Andres Close up of sign Arbolito, ‘The little tree”, has signed up and is fully ‘out there’. We put a sign up made of a used plastic drink bottle;  we laminated an A4 sign, used duct tape to affix it to the bottle, then placed the bottle over the stake for the tree and . . . voila, a sign. Andres who planted and named it left Oz on Friday for Taiwan on his way back to Ecuador. He has set up a facebook... Read More

Costa calls me a ‘weed’

Costa calls me a 'weed' Costa explains what a 'weed' is Last Thursday I gave a talk at Ultimo Tafe and Costa (the gardener on SBS TV) gave one, too. Costa warned me that in his talk he was going to call me a name and I shouldn’t take offence at it and wait ’til he explained it. He called me a ‘weed’. Ahuh. He then said something like, “A weed is the first to establish in poor soil.  It puts down strong roots.  Others plants follow... Read More

Emotions can cause physical illness, and restore health

Dr. Gabor Maté is the author of the book, “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection” The Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Maté argues that too many Western doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption—that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness and in the restoration of health. Based on medical studies and his own experience with chronically ill patients at the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver... Read More