Gardening in road gardens

Hi, there, Gardeners We’ll be gardening this Friday from 9 to 12 noon and some things we’ll do include: Auger and aerate the compost bins Remove any compost and distribute on gardens Put up some contact point signs on the bins Transplant a fruit tree that’s not getting enough (six hours) sun Put some ‘Pestoil’ that we’ll make ourselves on some fruit trees... Read More

Food scarcity in Australia soon

The ABC has initiated a terrific documentary on food production in Australia and worldwide and the first installment, Selling the farm, is here: www.abc.net… Some data in the program comes from Julian Cribb in a new book to be published this week, The Coming Famine, by University of California Press and the CSIRO. As far as my research shows the only government exploring Australia’s... Read More

Stormwater control on billion dollar project

Billion dollar stormwater control Walking back down Broadway today I checked the stormwater pond on the north western corner of the billion dollar Frasers’ Broadway project.  The photo shows world best practice stormwater control which is directing muddy water off site to Blackwattle Bay.  A pit in the centre of the muddy pond has some fabric pinned into the mud by four... Read More

Painting Chippo’s bins and signal boxes

Painted signal box in Brisbane A project has been going in Brisbane for several years where artists paint traffic signal boxes, called Urban Smart Boxes: www.urbansmartprojects.com… I’m going to start things moving to have ours painted by artists, too, and wonder if anyone would like to be involved and help me? I’d like to have our compost bins painted, too,... Read More

Brown muddy stormwater in Broadway

Brown mud in grate from Fraser's building site, Broadway On Saturday, yesterday, I took a photo of brown muddy water in the stormwater grate on the southern side of Broadway at the intersection with Abercrombie.  The pollution was from the rain last week. Now the stormwater from the Fraser’s site has been piped underground along the footpath to discharge into the grate... Read More

Two stories, one planet

Well, last week China set a price on carbon pollution as this story from a Chinese paper (The China Daily) notes: Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon... Read More

New car share car for Chippendale

My Car Club has a new car share car coming to Chippendale at the corner of Myrtle and Rose streets: see the map for the new location and locations of the company’s other cars in Chippendale and elsewhere: View MyCarClub’s Sydney Parking Locations in a larger map I used to use Goget car share but found it too expensive and shifted to My Car Club to save money.  There’s... Read More

Earlier sun, colder water at Bronte

The sunrises before 7 am now as the days grow longer again.  At this time of the year the longer moments happen in the morning, not at night – several additional seconds of daylight each day.  Later the days get longer at the end of the day with later sunsets in roughly equal proportion to the earlier mornings. But the sea is a degree or two colder most mornings, around... Read More

Pyrmont rain gardens

This is a view of the rain gardens in Pyrmont. The gardens have been constructed between 224 to 308 Harris Street by Sydney City Council to address issues on: stormwater runoff management eg to address both water quantity and quality issues from the roofs and footpaths keeping the runoff near where it falls, thereby roughly restoring the natural water cycle using gravity to store... Read More

Inspiring city planning

On ABC  iView for a week or so there’s an inspiring example of city planning at Portland in the US where the city: is reducing city traffic, increasing public transport making the car a guest on many roads cutting transport related pollution and much more. To visit it on the web: ABC iView E2 Transport: Ep5 Portland: A sense of place Enjoy, Michael  Read More