The drone being used to film installation of the composter

Today was a good day.

Waverley Council, wecompost and farmer John Fairley of Country Valley Dairy, along with Bondi businesses are working together to cut food waste, cut business costs and to grow soil on a farm.  wecompost is a joint project involving myself, Jess Miller and Closed Loop.

Our project to take carbon pollution out of Earth’s atmosphere started when we installed the big composter at Bondi Pavilion.

Food waste will be composted and taken to grow soil on a farm at Picton.

We stop new pollution by stopping the food waste going to landfill.

We take out existing pollution by growing soil with the compost.  When soil grows it takes carbon out of the air.

The new plants will also cool the dairy cows and make them more comfortable, and will reduce the farmer’s use of oil and gas based fertilizers and other costs.

We’ll also reduce costs for the cafes using the system.

Some days feel good deep inside and this is one of them.

More details soon.

May joy be with you,

Michael

PS – for the radio interview with Mayor Sally Betts and ABC Radio’s Linda Mottram please see the previous blog.

The 17 minute interview and background is  here:

May the food waste, the soil and the hope this project offers bring a smile to your face,

M

Passion fruit, Myrtle St road garden

Would you like me to garden for you?

If, “Yes”, then email me here on my website.

I’ve decided to garden for others in inner Sydney who wish to grow food, create an urban farm or to grapple with the garden they have in some way.

When you email please let me know what your situation is and I’ll give you a quote for my gardening: either comment on this blog or to email me from my website go here:  http://archive.sustainablehouse.com.au/contact/

Looking forward to talking and gardening with you soon,

Michael

Bowl, Lombok Villa

Talking to my friend, Lesley, tonight at the bar at the end of a blank, empty lane where the door, when opened, beckons one inside to Freda’s, a bar on Regent Street with music, old timbers, raw old bricks and freshly opened oysters, and beans that’ve been kind of curdled, and much more, she said, “Being human is messy”.

I agreed.

Lesley meant ‘messy’, I think, as in ‘ungovernable’ or ‘uncontrollable’ or a place where we’re not really in control. Or, as the saying goes, “To make the Gods laugh, tell them your plans”

Lombok sunset, taken on the beach outside the villa

Yet these photos given to me this week by a friend I met in Fremantle, WA, Lisa who goes with her husband to Lombok several times a year show the other side of ‘messiness’ in our life; so I thought I’d share them.  They’re taken in and outside the villa I’ll be staying at from 30 August. They show simplicity.

Lesley’s right, I think.  Life just is . . .  ’messy’, like it or not.

And,  it’s interesting, when we seek to control or to head off or to avert ‘messiness’, to look at the choices different people make.  (The thought we can avoid messiness is silly; or as John Lennon puts it in his great song, Hey Jude, “. . . let it out, and let it in .. .”  A great song.)

Some choose to deal with the ‘messiness’ by being different, by being a seeker of things different.

Being a ‘seeker’ doesn’t let us be content with the ordinary or the status quo.  (Yes, I suppose that’s true: reflecting on that sentence that seems a fair summary of a ‘seeker’, yes?)

But can a ‘seeker’ be, in part or mostly, narcistic?

Attached to the act of being different can there be an underlying narcistic motivation?

To be noticed?  To be . . .  oh, heroic, or long-suffering, penniless, or whatever makes the seeker develop a sense of their own difference?

And do those who seek to avoid having a  ’messy’ life by choosing to be narcistic make their own and other’s lives more messier than need be?  Me, I’m wondering a lot about my own narcism these days.  What’s on your mind?

Now, there’s a good question.

May the sunsets and simple bowls be with us,

M

Chippo paw paw replanted north side of Harbour Bridge

Two things from today’s road gardening; a paw paw tree goes north; and a new simple way to compost was swapped.

For this Friday’s gardening, Janet and friends came across the Harbour Bridge to join us.  Lots of ‘We do this . . “, and “How do you find this goes . . “, as we swapped stories of what works and doesn’t.

Together we planted:  chives, vietnamese mint, lemon grass, rhubarb, passion fruit and more.  The compost bins were given some carbon in the form of sawdust by Geoff and a new gardener, Jim, from Shepherd Street.

We had a self-sown, self-fruiting (male) paw paw and dug that up as our swap gift for the Notherners who planted it later today in their community garden and you see it above.

And I learnt about a simple way to compost.

Simple composter - a pipe in the ground with holes drilled in the section that's buried

It was passed on by Janet who told me the Northerners grew food for Waverley Council’s and the Digital Eskimo’s Grow Local campaign.  The Northerner’s food, along with other gardeners, was served up as a feast by Three Blue Ducks:  www.threeblueducks.com/

And there Janet found in the restaurant’s kitchen garden a simple compost solution being used by the restaurant:  a 150 mm pipe about 700 to 1 metre long is used; holes are drilled in the lower 300 mm or so; food waste is put into the pipe and when it’s full a tight lid is put over the top of the pipe.  The result:  no rats, and worms can find their way in from the adjoining soil, the nutrients from the decaying food leaches directly into the soil down where it’s needed at a rate that causes no harm and the pipe can be re-used in a month or so.  Simple.  Great idea.  And apparently they have no soil, just very well decomposed horse manure which grows veggies prolifically.

It’s not just a plan for this suburb; it can be used to make any suburb sustainable – it’s free and you’re welcome to put it to work where you are.

Now the Plan can be read on mobiles, kindles and is very easy to search, use and tweet.  Get it here:

theplan.sustainablehouse.com…

Enjoy.

You can see some of the folks who support the Plan.

Please sign the petition to have the Plan exhibited for public comment.  We want the Plan and there’s strong community support for it from here and other people across Sydney, Australia and overseas.

If we can get the Plan made here anyone may use it as an example to persuade other councils and governments to make a Plan to sustain the suburb where they live – if you’re reading this in Melbourne or Texas, USA – sign the petition for the Plan and you’ll be able to use a Plan like this where you live and work, too.

Michael

youtu.be/SHkMh8wwlXY…

Thank you, Mikey – you’re terrific and so’s your vid.

Join with us to make the Plan happen and watch the vid and go to the link there . ..

M

bit.ly/H7ux2O…

May the mushies be with you,

M

Photo Left to right: Nathan (about a quarter of him), Bob, Paul, Minister Kevin Humphries, Michael, Greg, Paddy, James (about a quarter of him)

Great to see a hands on Minister who understands the power of gardening to achieve many benefits,

Michael