Living History

No, this is not a post about American politics, as historic as this day might be. It's about Aussie back yards.

When I was as young as my son is now - four years old - I lived in a tiny little outback town called Jericho, west of Rockhampton. We were only there for two and a half years but that experience of country life had a big influence on me.

I have some very clear memories of that time, like getting my first bike and the first day I rode it without training wheels. I recall going for a day out in the bush, catching yabbies (crayfish) from the creek and cooking them up for lunch. I remember visiting a property where two huge bulldozers were dragging an enormous chain between them, making one hell of a mess as they tore down the eucalypt forest, clearing it to become grazing land.

Just down the street from us lived another family whose children were too old for me to play with, but Mrs Bonham and my mother became good friends and I spent quite a bit of time playing around the Bonham house and yard. The yard had one particularly distinguishing feature: a thriving green bean vine growing on a free-standing trellis. This so impressed my younger brother and I that we came to gigglingly refer to Mum's friend as "Mrs Bean-Bonham". (Gosh four-year-olds think they're funny.)

We were free to pick and eat the beans as we wished. Sometimes we'd be given big bags of them to take home. Formed in my earliest years, that simple memory epitomises the notion of a bountiful garden. In the past 18 months of mucking about in my own back yard I haven't really come close to recreating that ideal.

But just recently, something special has happened.

The friendship my mother formed has been a lasting one, and from time to time she and Mrs Bonham will exchange a phone call or find an opportunity to meet if travel plans are favourable. In one of their recent conversations, Mum happened to mention that I've been playing about with veges and the like. And this past weekend, Mum handed me a padded envelope which was postmarked in Jericho.

Mrs Bonham's beans have been growing in her garden for nearly 30 years since I used to pick them as a boy. Inside the envelope was a paper-thin, dried out husk of a bean, its green flesh now turned creamy pale, itself acting as a natural envelope for the seeds contained within. Six seeds: richly dark, almost black, except for a bright white protruding ridge running about half way around the centre line.

Joshua (4), Caitlin (7) and the neighbour's boy (7) helped me to plant them. Each pressed two seeds into the moist potting mix and I put the covered tray outside where it will catch the morning sun. Three days later, a living piece of my own childhood is forming roots and shoots which - if I don't manage to kill 'em - will bring that remembered bounty back into reality for me and my kids to enjoy.

Yes, I'm getting all sentimental about bloody beans. I've talked for ages about growing some beans in the back yard. But it's just so special to me that these aren't something which came in a packet from a shop. These beans are living connections for me, to community, to my own history, and to the natural providence of the Earth independent from modern industrial society.

Mrs Bean-Bonham, thank you so much for your gift. Wish me luck as I try to grow these seeds and get the vines scaling up the side of the chicken coup. I'll keep you posted.

Gardening update

It's about a year now since I first decided to try and grow some food in the backyard. Last autumn I was posting about the my first attempt, the tomatoes in a pot. Time for a review and a look at what's ahead.

So what have I got to show for my past year's efforts? Dead tomatoes. Dead capsicums. Dead cucumbers. Dead strawberries. Dead carrots. We did get to eat a few handfuls of tiny cherry tomatoes, several strawberries and a couple of capsicums, but on the whole... I'm really glad the shops still have plenty of food in them.

There is good news with the bad though, because I've learned things through these failures. Most of what we planted was grown in pots with soil from the garden bed I excavated to make way for one of the tanks. My conclusion is that that soil sucks. It really didn't hold water well and appeared to be lacking a great deal in nutrients.

The plants which grew the best were the capsicums, and they were transferred into the ground as seedlings with a layer of home-made compost and mulch on the top. They grew vigourously and fruited like mad - only to have the fruit flies destroy almost every last one. That garden bed is now seemingly lifeless, with the nutrients depleted, the sun keeping it hot and dry and the mulch (woodchips, really) still keeping even the weed seeds at bay. I have an experiment forming in the back of my mind to do a soil improvement project over winter using comfrey or something and then have another go at the capsicums since they seemed to like that spot.

Taking heart from the way the capsicums responded to the compost and mulch treatment, over the past few months we've converted a weedy, wet corner of the yard (just in between the fence and the patio) into a herb garden. It was full of clover and some other leafy weeds and a bit clay-bound so I took a garden fork to it and churned it up. Not much "soil structure" there to be destroying, don't worry. I then mixed in a generous amount of well-aged compost, and promptly ignored it for weeks. The weeds grew back with renewed vigour of course. And then we got serious.

Lots of weeds got ripped out and fed into the new compost bin. A thick layer of newspaper covered the ground with holes left where the chives, sage and marjoram (gifts from a friend) were planted. On top of that went a layer of recycled pine bark mulch that a neighbour was throwing away. Since then we've expanded the crop with basil, parsley, rosemary, challots and a little chilli bush. And they're thriving!

The chillis quickly became infested with what I think are aphids... complete with the "farmer" ants tending them. The plant is still flowering, fruiting and looking generally healthy but I'm sure it would be better off without them, so this arvo I took action. I found a recipe on the net for "white oil" - a mixture of vegetable oil (I used olive), water and dishwashing detergent. This has been sprayed liberally on the plant and as far as I can see the aphids are in fact now dead. Fingers crossed that the plant will survive.

My other proud success is the quality of the compost that I've made. OK, it's not that hard, but it's still deeply encouraging to see the cycle of life playing itself out with such calm assurance, relentlessly renewing. It makes me realise that my main responsibility is to learn how life works and just facilitate it. The new bin accelerates the process and takes some of the manual effort out of it. And in the spirit of facilitating, earlier I scooped out a few handfuls from the bottom (mostly material which I had transferred from my previous heap to get this bin started) and introduced some of my worms.

Yes - my worm farm is still alive! They don't eat anywhere near as much as I'd hoped but they're still going. Maybe the compost bin will be a more appetising home for these worms and certainly they can't do anything but contribute to the process... even if it's just by becoming raw material.

The compost that I removed, I sieved to get rid of the woody bits and then took a close look. It's dark brown, but distinctly not black. It's light, spongy, and if you squish it it retains its shape. But it's also "crumbly", in that you can break it apart into light, spongy pieces again by rolling it between your fingers. And it has almost no odour at all. From the descriptions I've read... this is exactly as it ought to be.

I'm going to grow food in my backyard. It's just a matter of time.

"Obscene" profiteering causing global starvation

Please take a few minutes - right now - to read Greenpa's post about the murderous impact of food market speculation on the world's poor and needy, and follow it up with an action.

I'm going to write to my member of parliament.