9 Garage sales in Chippo this Sunday and counting

So far 9 houses in Chippo have registered their garage sales this Sunday. There’s a few in Myrtle street and others within ten minutes walking distance. It’s easy to register your garage sale, it’s free and there are handy tips on the web page about how to do it. For a list of garage sales, and a map of where they are and what they’re selling or giving away, you can enter the postcode 2008 when you visit this link: www.garagesaletrail.com… The project... Read More

Things that grow up, things that grow down

Things that grow up may (beautifully) be planted with things that grow down. For we city gardeners,this is news we may grab with both hands. It means we can grow more tucker in less space. This natural intensity, easy as it is for us to apply in our urban farms, can bring: plant, insect and bug diversity more competition between pests, and perhaps the triumph of those pests we prefer – the ones that predate the pests which destroy our tucker more birds, particularly the... Read More

Sydney Council’s ‘Ethical food policy”

Sydney City Council has created guidelines for buying food for Council purposes. The Guide says: “The City of Sydney recognises the importance of healthy, safe and sustainable food to the general health and wellbeing of our community and our environment. In line with Sustainable Sydney 2030, the City of Sydney intends to lead by example in promoting and providing sustainable, healthy and cruelty-free food choices to our employees, residents and external visitors.  By choosing... Read More

32 new bike parking O rings for Chippo

New O ring, Shepherd street Sydney City Council has just installed 32 O rings for parking bicycles in Chippendale. The streets where bikes may be parked with the new O rings include: Rose St, Shepherd St, Myrtle St, Buckland St, and Beaumont St. May the bikes be with us. Thanks Council – terrific work, and much appreciated. Michael  Read More

Beaut doco on waste solutions – free screening

WASTE NOT you are invited………final pdf At 4 pm, 7 April Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP will launch the 26 minute documentary, Waste not, produced by the Total Environment Centre. The screening is free, at NSW Parliament House, Macquarie Street. The flier and form above includes this description of the doco: What keeps a 21st Century metropolis like Sydney clean and sparkling? Even as we hover on the brink of a monumental ecocatastrophe, an army of truck drivers, scientists,... Read More

The art of being grave

Hidden sculpture walk, Rookwood A friend and artist, Ro Murray, has sent me this invitation to the opening of an art exhibition called, “Hidden”, at Rookwood, Sydney’s major cemetery. What’s interesting about it to me are the hours: from “sunrise to sunset”. Those words got me thinking. This reminds me of a friend I had (once) who mused aloud to me (once) that she gave up drink when she woke up one morning draped across a chookshed roof. I... 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

Mayor Moore’s letter about making Chippendale sustainable

Final Letter On January 2011 Mayor Clover Moore MP wrote to let us know in Chippendale about the plan to make the suburb sustainable.  The Mayor’s letter is in this blog, above. May the sustainable streets be with us, Michael  Read More

My plan to secure Australia’s food

In a column (Bathurst Burr) I write for an online magazine called, The Fifth Estate, I’ve offered a plan to secure Australia’s food, and it’s here: www.thefifthestate.com… Enjoy; may we have action from all that we’ve got in government now and from ourselves, no new committees or agencies  . . . beginning now, Michael  Read More

Bob through the window

Bob looking through my window Bob and Bert, the chooks in the run outside the kitchen window, love to see what’s happening inside the house. Who knows, some cooking may be underway and some tucker may be about to be thrown through the kitchen window to peck? Lottie, who has the blog, A place a day, took this lovely photo through one of the windows (it’s got raindrops on it, so you’re looking through a glass sparkly).  It’s Bob checking things out. Bob... Read More