midnight ramblings

This is not very coherent, it started as a Facebook status and wouldn’t stop!

I can just about read again now, clearly, without losing the thread of an argument, which I credit the oxygen treatment with restoring, and so I have lots of half chewed thoughts about the past years of terrible Con/Dem government and now worse Tory gov and Labour party wrangles about what party they want to be, and what we actually need in Britain, in the world…and then I saw a link to an Independent story by Samuel Osborne about the Empire’s worst atrocities

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html?cmpid=facebook-post

and realised I had filled in that poll, obviously to anyone who follows me! as someone who thinks the Empire was a terrible mass failing in humanity, comparable to the Holocaust… but I am apparently in a minority, so here is what I say when I have to discuss empire:

The boneheaded arrogance of the British Empire caused so much damage, India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, the transAtlantic slave trade, the theft of antiquities, the crushing of indigenous peoples… ‘manifest destiny’ is normally applied to the ‘American’ Dream, but really the Normans conquering England, then Wales, seemed to be the start of the pattern of greed no longer needing concrete reasons to continue being greedy.

As soon as one group has stolen more than its fair share, it fears losing those ill-gotten gains. The enemies made by all these illegal/ immoral acts must be denied the right to educate or organise… and then several hundred years later, here we are, in a mess where so much is owed, but the greediest of the greedy have stockpiled their hoard off anyone’s shores in non-existent tax havens, and the common people of the UK have barely any infrastructure left with the transport all private except for oh, the expensive roadbuilding and maintenance bill; the healthcare system being undermined and sold off to the highest bribe; the education system set up to provide poorly skilled, low esteemed people without information or the reasoning skills to apply them widely; media owned by the new overlords of consumerist society, pushing useless products at people conditioned to ignore their true needs but to self medicate with whatever suits the market… grrrrr…

How do we unmake all this? not by ignoring those most hurt and damaged by this machine of destruction, or  the choice of profit over nature [people and environment] but by remembering and choosing slowly and carefully who to vote for, what to buy, what to make, what to grow, who to support, who to understand as still hostaged to that machine and needing education and support to disentangle them… media and information sharing are easier than ever before, but reasoning skills and political literacy in the UK and US are lower than ever before… I really hope Corbyn wins the Labour leadership and the PLP who are no longer socialists storm off, so a real People’s party can emerge, a phoenix that burns off the corruption and business-as-usual approach of millionaire MPs. We need Corbyn and Mhairi Black’s fire and conviction and community… we need more too, all the activists who could have been MPs had the system not been stacked against them, imagine Benjamin Zephaniah not pissing on Parliament, but principalling it, being a Black Rod who would shut up the hawhaws and baying pigs… stop the complacency of landowners/ biggest thieves and turn the DWP fraud investigators on the tax evaders, stop fracking and mining and worst of all nuclear and raise more turbines…

Oh, so many more things… but start with remembering, Normans and Saxons made an enormous amount of the mess, Catholic dominion amassed wealth that could fund enormous projects to rejuvenation community in Europe where so many seek sanctuary, and that only understanding we have always been diverse, the people who walked over the Ice Age plain to what became an island were a mixture, and traded all over the world when the seas rose… there is a hidden history of dealing fairly with others before the Norman values took hold, and it can return and inform us, the mixed bag on an island falling off Europe, very vulnerable to climate change, but known for taking on huge challenges… only this time, how about restitution of fairness, commitment to nature before profit? An Empire in reverse, where we went and learned, shut our mouths and listened with both ears, asked humbly for clarification and advice when we did not understand, and changed not others, but ourselves and our dealings?

It can never be fair because the Empire took so many hostages, uprooted and changed forever so many things, so how do make the new ‘we’ truly inclusive? How can power not corrupt? How can a benign dictator [thinking fictional Vetinari here, not Mao etc] be better than a run-for-profit democracy… how do we re-educate, re shape education so it engages people, lets them explore the full history of things the current system wants hidden… What would restitution look like? Jubilee [the forgiving of all ‘Third’ World debts, in understanding that the Empire stole more first] is a start, emptying the museums of all stolen goods and returning to culture of origin, where it survived, and otherwise deciding with closest kin where it should now be held…Banning slave trade, zero hour contracts, companies using the benefits system to fund their employees [Tesco etc]  changing child labour in the textile and fashion industry to free schooling plus 2 hours FAIRLY paid work which would keep the family afloat…Organic farming, fair farming, understanding of heritage farming where sheep manage a landscape etc etc… so many things…

What can the millions of individuals do to become a movement for change?

I’ve just re-started Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken, so more may follow this 😉

midnight ramblings…

 

no dig gardening tips for spoonies

Spoonies are people with energy level issues, eg ME/ CFS/ MS/ fibromyalgia/ adrenal gland issues, parathyroid and thyroid issues, but the tips here might help anyone enjoy a garden – less effort, more enjoyment is the goal!

 

I love my garden and positively droop when weather or illness keep me out, so it has been lovely to spend a few hours over the last week pottering around. I had a false alarm for flu, just a fibro thing I think, though I have tried to be extra vigilant on pacing since, and luckily it is now warm enough to sit in my rollator for longer breaks and gloat over how different the garden is… I found photos from when I moved in, when Ben had cleared a jungle to make a badminton lawn…incredible to look back on 🙂

 

 

Ben and now David enjoy bbqs and the occasional big project in the garden, and Ben is keen on container gardening. The badminton lawn is his major commitment and he mows and waters it and the other 3 flats all play whenever the weather and mood agree. I am the only one who really likes flowers and making a feast for eyes and nose and ears (if you count the many more birds and bees we have 😉 )

With my horrible fall soon after I moved in, gardening tasks are even more difficult than when I gave up the allotment, so I have had to get very serious about no-dig and low maintenance gardening within the permaculture/ landspirit productive woodland glade I am aiming for.

 

I like planting containers to go by the front door and then spreading the love 😉 yes, this does mean two sets of planting, but I get twice the enjoyment, so personally it’s worth it 😉

 

 

The easiest way to guarantee success with bulbs I’ve found, is to transfer them ‘in the green’. This means I know the bulbs I may have bought up in end-of-season sales etc are actually viable, and I automatically space better. If possible, get someone to do the heavy work and collect your tubs and some spent compost eg containers that held things that have gone over now, to top up what you have. Fresh compost is very rich and nearly all bulbs like a poorer soil to flourish. Best of all is if you can collect some leaves each autumn and leave a bin bag full to mulch down 🙂

I have a workbench that helps a lot as I can only just kneel again, so David lifted the well watered tub (previously by the door with violets, daffs and hyacinths, mmm) up onto the bench, next to a bucket of compost. If you’re doing this alone, water AFTERWARDS, to keep the weight manageable, yes? I carefully cut the withered flowerheads off (if the flower sets seed, the bulb will die off) and ease the trowel under the roots loosened by watering. Trying to make sure no roots get snapped, gently lay the plants one by one into a seedtray or pot. Now take a break! Coming back, carry your tray to where you want to plant out. Tete-a-tete daffodils manage the superdry shade on the ivy bank well, so using the point of the trowel I scraped a very shallow drill between two ivy trailers, just enough to make a flat edge on the sloping bank. Arrange the bulbs with their roots on the drill and leaves all laying flat on the uphill slope. Break time?

Fetch a bucket of runny mulch/compost and water, and scoop/pour over the roots.

Press the mulch in gently, enough to be sure it won’t all roll down hill, but not hard enough to squash the bulbs. In two weeks time, water really well and then leave them to settle.

 

This technique works for grape hyacinths, narcissi, crocus, snowdrops. Tulips are a bit more fussy, but the next technique works with them 😉

Meanwhile, make your tubs, do double duty – spring is springing faster than we can keep up, so if you are planting into cleared grounded, lay some cardboard down and stand the tubs on top to keep it from blowing away – giving the tubs a water AFTER you move them 😉

Personally, I don’t find cardboard mulch ugly, because it is so useful to me, keeping the weeds at bay until I can get to that task, and with some soils, it even improves the texture (sticky clays) but I do understand beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

I will go back and snip the heads off the muscari/ grape hyacinth later. Only cut the flower heads off, most propagation strips the foliage right back, but as the leaves on bulb plants die back, all the necessary nutrients go back into the bulb. If you want it to grow again but hate the sight of the dying back, a good tip is to put it next to a plant that will fill out fast now that we are heading towards warmer nights, maybe a sedum or foxglove.

Early colour is very cheering and one of my new favourites are bellis perennis, perennial ornamental daisies, I love that deep cranberry pink edging when so much is pastel in the spring.

This technique is more like planting out a squash/pumpkin plant. Make a mound, flat and shallow, or more heaped for something like tulips, with a dent where you are putting your seedling/ bulb/ in the green/ cutting. The dent for tulips has to be a lot deeper, they like to be a hand span down. Again the mulch should be moist on a wet day through to really wet on a dry day – and it helps if you do it on a drier day, as the idea is to make the worms till/turn your soil for you. On a dry day when the worms have gone further underground, pouring soggy mulch on drier soil will bring them up and the action of turning the soil helps integrate the two. All without use of a spade/ shovel/ fork/ implement of agony for your back/ wrists/elbows or drain on your energy – yay!

Lots more planting will be happening in this area, now the laurels and brambles have been cleared, I want to put in more bee friendly plants, hyssops, sedums, agastache, foxgloves…last year a huge forest of feverfew came up from the dormant seeds, so I’m hoping they will have survived the necessary trampling.

Something I can’t get a great photo of is the violet lawn, it is utterly beautiful and something I’d never seen before moving here, my favourite granny was Violet, named by her brother because they had just come out the day she was born – 110 years ago, amazing…I love the connection 😉

And final gift from the garden,  a very violet/lilac rather than purple/ blue Peacock butterfly was sunning itself on Thursday…

 

 

 

landspirit gardening: raised bed, raised awarenesses

Exciting times in the garden!

and now:

– which made my day yesterday and will be such a joy over the summer!

There were a lot of stages – Spade and Sparrow did the heavy clearing

and left it to overwinter and settle. All I’ve managed to organise since has been replacing the cardboard mulch and a little pruning back. I had a couple of ‘seeing’ sessions where I took time to sit and think about what I wanted, but also what the land wants – this is why I call my approach landspirit rather than permaculture, though I use permaculture techniques. Being still and seeing what happens in a space is really important if you want

to work with the existing patterns and bring out the best in a situation.

The new bed is very central, at a crossroads between different kinds of leisure, growing food, growing flowers, badminton, with paths on two sides used by us and the posties, a slabbed area for the bbq and container garden, access to the carpark, access to the drying yard…

Something I feel the whole garden lacks is a good place to sit and chat. This is a lot to do with being in a city, people stealing garden furniture and not wanting to encourage the sex workers already using our garden and yard…Lots of houses on our street have electronic gates and I get why, but the truth is the more we use the garden, the less others will.

The constant difficulties and obstacles to getting the raised bed in motion had made me question if it should happen at all (the phrase ‘pushing the river’ came to mind 🙂 ) but every time I am in the   garden and feel the joy of its return to colour and

bounty (wildlife and harvest and enjoyment) I feel sure it wants more human presence, not less.. more domestic everydayness anyway!

This is the kind of thing that you either get or you don’t!  And the truth is, you can be a great steward of the land without feeling this. But some extra layer of ‘happening’ tends to occur when listening to the spirit of place, some bonuses come in as though on rails when I engage this process. I feel very convinced by it, because after a lot of work turning round my derelict and poisoned allotment, I saw the results, bushels of healthy fruit and veg, herbs for tea and scent or strewing, bees galore, the pollination rates of the allotmenteers near me shot up… Even the old guys had to concede my ‘messy’ ways worked 😉

Coming back to the garden here, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the transition from kitchen garden to purely ornamental/badminton lawn. The rockery is huge, as long as a tennis court and a couple of metres wide at the narrow end. It has beautiful mature trees and lovely rocks with fossils in and interesting marbled chunks and then a lovely array in July of foxgloves, feverfew, spirea, liquorice agastaches and flowering stonecrops, with alkanet and lush foliages… So looking from my rollator along the curving length of the bed towards the drive, seeing only logs on the raised bed edges would jar.

Instead we went on an expedition rounding up materials from all corners to make a bed that can be a heart centre. Ben suggested pulling some of the rocks lost under ivy from the super dry shady bank that is the front boundary, David found a huuuge sandstone boulder on the edge of the drive and I found big chunky pieces of tree trunk in the wood pile.

David then worked really hard, digging postholes and a channel to support yorkstone slabs on their sides, wedging and shuffling rocks, logs and slabs until it all looked really harmonious. I had suggested that the biggest log, which gets used as a seat on bbq nights became the edge of the bed nearest the slabbed area, and that the boulder made the corner between the rockery and the badminton lawn, and the upright slabs next to it echoed the path, but David had lots of fun choosing where to mingle rocks and tree trunks and big branches 😉 Yes, he ached all over when he stopped!

Called back to view progress I was so touched: a big seawashed chunk of chalk we had used as the top of a miniature quoit in the garden in Hucknall has been put at one corner and the copper, steel and stone mobile that hung near it were fitted in to the corner! So lovely of David to think of this! I put an amethyst and some hyacinths (Andy’s favourites) there too. They had emptied compost from the bin round the corner and the empty container garden over the cardboard and horse manure, so with a bit more topping up, I’ll be all ready to plant 🙂

There will be rose bushes and hyssop for the bees in the centre and then beans, squash and tomatoes roundabout, though I might sneak beetroot and lettuce in to catch crop 🙂

Being able to dream gardens again is so satisfying! And with all that sorted I feel more connected and committed to tending the rockery, which has been possible but not an attractive option when it meant walking past all the  looming ‘beyond my strength’ reminders. It has been a gap, a lost friend even…I feel gardening to be an integral part of my life, my healing, my politics, my art, being at home in the world, a place where the balance finds itself and energy flows… paying attention to my changed capabilities means I have to listen even harder now. Working  with neighbours who have never worked this way before was a challenge! This garden that is a woodland edge in a city needs to be a place where we can play to all our strengths, and yesterday, we did 🙂

fibromyalgia, the mirror

I am making the kind of art that makes me the most happy at the moment, making beauty from discards and gifting it as street art…this is so lucky, as I have just finished my first 6 monthly review for ATOS assessment form. 6 months goes really fast, it felt like forever when I won my appeal to be put in the non-work group for ESA, but it has flown. Having the recognition of the organisers of an exhibition in London, being invited to show more than I originally submitted is very validating, and when I have also been listing my increasing health problems on a form for someone paid a bonus to discount that and ignore my distressing history and try and force me to let go of my right to welfare support after paying into a National Insurance scheme… it has been a life saver.

I have felt angry and annoyed and stressed and belittled, but I have not felt suicidal. When I had to fight for a year to get my Disability Living Allowance re-instated in 2005, I felt suicidal almost weekly, I felt sick with fear every time another letter dropped through the box, it was a very heavy burden to carry through the first year of my marriage. Without Andy’s support I would never have made it. How do people manage with no partner, no family of choice or origin, no outlet for their skills and energy? No validation of their worth to those around them?

And this is why I am so angry about the refusal of the mainstream media to carry the news of just how many people commit suicide within 6 weeks of being refused their benefits. (yes “theirs”, if a doctor signed them on the sick and they paid N.I, a private insurance company would be in court for refusing to pay the promised benefits, why isn’t the Government?)

We know it’s over a thousand in 9 months, but the Government then instructed the records to be closed, even to Freedom of Information requests. How scared are they? How big is this dirty secret? How will people feel when they realize this was the boiled-frog syndrome moment for those not using the benefit system? How did ordinary Germans go along so willingly with Nazi atrocities? By believing propaganda, by letting themselves be divided to rule…

We must stand together.

We must look in the mirror and like what we see.

Fibromyalgia is a mirror for me: I see what is truly necessary to me more clearly than ever before in my life, because when I mess up, the cost is very high. Equally, because life is increasingly limited, I can tell very easily what makes a satisfying life, what generates stress, what makes me sick to my stomach… and the thought of the MPs in Parliament getting £400 for lunch, saying working families must queue for support at a food bank truly does. As people are pointing out, how much housing benefit goes to benefit claimants and how much goes to landlords? 100% goes to private landlords getting super rich off people terrified to complain when there is mould growing on the walls, getting sick from damp, while their landlords build another heated stable for their horses… (interesting conversation with my landlord the other day –  I am his only tenant on benefits, I am the ‘deserving disabled’ mascot and to be fair, even he was genuinely horrified when I explained that using a rollator, paying for a homehelp, being on tablets galore with a therapist specializing in trauma recovery and a GP who understands fibromyalgia, in no way guarantees any support from the benefits system…I just hope I didn’t give him any ideas about evicting me…)

However hard daily tasks are for me, I must still try and make art or risk losing my ability to cope with the stress levels of my situation. I am very lucky – I have skills and talents and interests and many lovely and diverse friends who help me in many ways, including keeping me amused 😉 Humour is a life saver too! If I made art on a tablet though, perhaps given to me by caring relatives or bought by a charity, I would be under suspicion, how have I come by such an expensive item? Welfare News Service reports some people are being investigated for just such a thing…but at the same time people on benefits have to have internet to access services and apply for jobs… we are moving into a world of double think and distrust and it all needs to be wiped away.

Look in the mirror: you see a human

Every human deserves support to stay alive in a caring and compassionate society

Every human deserves to express themselves and make a contribution to the greater community and be respected for that and not be made to feel suicidal for having become ill, disabled, and in need of support

When you hear the ignorant spouting rubbish about scroungers, ask them if they pay NI (National Insurance contributions) and ask what would happen if they were in a car accident and needed a wheelchair and time off work and how if it turned out they had irreparable spine damage would they like to still be considered human and be paid the benefits of the insurance scheme and use the services of the fantastic National Health Service? or would they like to be treated as human waste and spat at and have their windows stoned and be shouted at in the street as greedy, feckless scroungers? Hmm?

Dr Seuss: Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Be a human, respect other humans’ needs, protect and support other humans’ right to dignity in life and death.

looking with new eyes: solstice garden

Well, it’s actually just over a week since solstice, but it’s been windy here, so I’ve been staying in the warm and dry 😉

Today has been lovely and calm, with bright sun and blue skies, the kind of day that reminds me just how solar powered humans are, and me in particular. I came home from Quakers and returned a blown away tub to its home, and spotted these:

They’re quite big, maybe 5cm/2″ to 12 cm/4″ and thin, with no gills, but very crozzley (crumpled and bumpy) through to completely smooth. I put the photos up on facebook and someone suggested Peziza Vesiculosa, as they like compost and leaf litter. She thinks they’re poisonous, but I was interested with my eyes only, no plans to eat mystery funghi at all 😉 Some of them look like Wood Ears too, but they aren’t growing on wood 😉 they were near the cardboard mulch that has been drawn in by friendly worms though. Hmm…

I associate funghi with autumn and early summer – fly agarics, chanterelles, puffballs and blewits, so it was a real eye opener for me  😉  And having nipped upstairs for my new-to-me camera (so fast my shake hardly matters!) and taken these shots I had an explore to see what else might be happening. The hard frosts are making some of the herbaceous plants look a little sad, but I picked my last lettuce today (Webb’s Wonderful! it is!) and checked the garlic and leeks, which are coming through nicely. The blackcurrant sage bush is still fine, with little green leaves and happy looking. I was warned to give it plenty of drainage and even after heavy rain the last few days it was only moist, not sodden.

Then I wondered down the drive, which of course I hardly ever see, and was really pleased at how the little wood piles are beginning to look natural. I’m assuming they have

some wildlife in there,

beetles etc but I don’t think we have hedgehogs

There are vines growing up the biggest trees, which I hope is ok, as they are listed! Beeches are pretty sturdy though.

Then I saw something else I’ve never seen before, a foxglove growing rosettes on itself. What do I mean? Well, foxgloves are biennials, a seed produces a basal rosette (which you can lift and transplant to a more convenient spot quite easily in the winter/early spring.)

These rosettes seem to be growing out of the stem that flowered in the summer. It’s only one plant, next to a very, very muddy drive, and it occurred to me that it might be that mud had flicked up into leaf curls and the seeds had rooted from there…Is that possible? It looks like a foxglove, the top end of the 1.5m/4′ stem has dead flower head/empty seed heads on it…but it’s behaving more like a buddleia 😉 Aha! Could it be a different variety of comfrey than the officinalis I am used to?  That might be it, there are at least 3 sorts of comfrey in the garden…

I will keep watching, keep my eyes open 🙂

garden works

Oh, I gave myself such a nice birthday present this year! A hardworking team called Spade and Sparrow (spadeandsparrow@gmail.com) came and spent 2 hours making this:

I forgive you for asking what exactly this is…it’s an unhappy wilderness that has overtaken the north end of the big Victorian rockery. It is a mess of spotted laurel (ugh) brambles with not very nice blackberries (the ones on the other side are lovely) and tatty undergrowth. Under which, but I accept you have no reason to believe this 😉 is a lovely ring of rocks and an interesting old sycamore trunk!

Stretching across a distressingly large swathe of the area nearest the house, and with fibromyalgia, offering no way in… which as I wanted to plant the end of the rockery and next year aim for another raised bed to match the lovely one Ben in Flat 2 built… made for a feeling of failure and disempowerment. The team came and worked wonders, revealing exactly what I’d dreamed of, interesting rocks, lovely rich forest garden soil, and a way to expand the veg garden with a cottage/potager area 🙂

They were really happy to work in my landspirit style, where as little as possible is made someone else’s problem or wasted. Some particularly vicious brambles and holly were bundled up and put in the dry shade top border to add some nutrients as they compost, the laurel was put in a corner I want to knock back (laurel is toxic) as it is growing the wrong things 😉 and the friendly weeds were put in the compost heap. One compost heap was brought across and spread on the cardboard mulch where a raised bed will be, and a second will be set up in this area ready to feed and fill the new bed. Containers that have been in the way elsewhere are now holding the mulch down and I have lucked into some paving slabs and a friend has gifted me another hour of Spade and Sparrow time to re -lay the weedy slabs and the new ones with sand or gravel in the New Year! So exciting 🙂

waste not, want not: dates on food, food on plates 1

Food waste is a huge problem nowadays, all the way through the chain, from animals eating prime proteins to make weaker proteins and ruining rainforest/ prairie/ pampas etc  while they do it, to the overflowing bins emptied into smelly bin lorries going off to landfills that belch as much methane as the animals at the other end…(stern reminder: POSITIVE, OPTIMISTIC outlook please! adjusts headset and continues 😉 )

If you eat meat, you probably like it and don’t want to change that aspect of your diet, but do be aware there are plenty of reasons and recipes to be meatfree at least once a week! And you’re not a CARNIVORE, you’re an OMNIVORE (eat everything!) unless you’re a vampire (eek! run away!) so the rest of this post might still give you useful tips 😉

General waste: there is so much an average person can do to streamline their buying/ eating/ waste management, from loose to detailed planning of meals for the week, pantry inventory (sharpen a pencil or fire up your psion spread sheets, all welcome here!) home production of herbs, the wonderfoods known as sprouts, fruit and veg grown in containers or mixed in your borders, cottage style, and your own compost (which if you follow my instructions will NOT smell 😉

I grew up in a family where pantry inventory was taken for granted, it was a 20 minute round trip to the corner shop and an hour to the town centre and back, so keeping an eye on levels was automatic for my mother. The women on both sides of my family were good cooks and on my father’s side were in catering, so I took in a lot of information I now realise I am very lucky to have – which I am really pleased to share with you too 😉

WHICH BEST BEFORE DATES MATTER:

MEAT, FISH, AND ALL PRODUCTS CONTAINING THEM unless it has been smoked or salted or dehydrated. Basically if it has been preserved using a method an in-tune indigenous/First Nationer would use, it’ll be fine. Freezing is fine, if you are sure the meat has never gone above -7, you can go past the date, the flavour will just be a bit less, but make sure you are cooking it in a stew and boil it thoroughly. Last dead flesh advice! Apart from, avoid it, it’s the biggest risk for bringing food poisoning into your home, there’s a reason for kosher rules/halal etc, they’re about staying alive in a hot climate when eating high risk items…meat attracts flies and flies spread germs, I put my cat’s dish in the fridge between feeds in the summer and still get flies, a problem I’ve never had before, grrr, something about the evergreen forest out the kitchen window…

DAIRY AND EGGS

EGGS If you’re not sure, salt and water test: mix 2 tablespoons of salt in a pint of COLD water and gently place the egg in, the further it sinks, the better, if it FLOATS, discard it, it’s old and potentially growing salmonella, yuck…

CHEESE/YOGHURT/MILK smell test first: if milk smells sickly, it will make you sick, pour it down the outside drain/toilet and you’ll likely see curds (gag). If cheese or yoghurt have pink or green on them, eek! PINK will make you ill, chuck it now, preferably in a sealed nappy bag! BLUE/GREEN this should be a flow chart! is it stilton or gorgonzola? enjoy! (but far away from me, heave…) is it cheap cheddar? cut the white and blue off and use the rest in something TODAY where it is baked or boiled – eg macaroni cheese. Is it dark green/blue? Out now…

When food dates came in, people were expected to still know how to use their own senses to check for signs of danger. With compensation culture, the dates are being made shorter and shorter until some common sense is beginning to rebel at the mountain of waste made by people who don’t know any better and sling the lot.

Try not to use perfume or smoke before you cook or gather ingredients, smell is your best friend for fresh or chilled food – of it smells wrong, it probably is, eg if it smells of fish (but isn’t!) it has a particular bacteria whose name I forget, but you don’t want inside you, take my word for it, please!

Wash fresh fruit and veg slowly (it’s enjoyable, honest!) and you will spot bruised or infested areas – eg butterfly eggs on cabbage leaves, those grubs that like berries will float out upside down and you can put them all in the compost bin where they are your friends!

CANNED/ JARRED FOODS:

these are the ones where the dates are normally a nonsense….

Anything preserved in a pint of vinegar is going to keep 5 years, maybe 10. It may lose some texture or be less tasty, but it isn’t going to hurt you. Make stew/ broth/ casserole and enjoy the tang! It will make your stew keep on top of the stove without refrigeration for five days unless you live in a sauna.

Anything stored in vegetable oil is going to keep a long time, eg garlic, olives, ginger etc. Again, it may lose a little flavour or texture, so check it and adjust amounts, but it is unlikely to hurt you, but if it smells the least bit fishy, out, otherwise, in that stewpot 😉

Anything stored in brine (salty water) is going to be ok for ages past the date most companies give it, though it may go a bit soft. Sluice the beans/sweetcorn /whatever and then stand in cold water over night, drain and use in a boiled soup/stew.

Anything preserved in enough sugar is going to keep for 3 to 20 years.What is enough? Anything marked low sugar is NOT enough, unless it has vinegar or salt in it too, eg fruit compote might have raspberry vinegar in. Jam can keep for several years, if it has no mould, it’s fine. If homemade jam has mould on the top wafer, the waxed circle was put in upside down, the jars were not sterilised, or air got in. Mostly, you can scrape it out, pour the good jam into a bowl and test it by taste. You can now make wine from it 😉 or make an old fashioned steam pudding or make a fruit cake by the boiling method, or add the jam instead of sugar to a cake and bake it, make jammy tarts, porridge, dodgers…or a glaze for nut roast…lots of things as long as it involves heating the jam till it bubbles.

DRIED FOODS

Um, this may seem obvious, but I’ll say it, as a young friend genuinely didn’t know: sugar and salt cannot ‘go off’. Honey maybe just might after several years if there was a lot of comb left in, but dried sugar, kept dry, will last to feed the post apocalypse roaches. Salt can get wet and dry again and be ok, er particularly if is is sea salt 😉 Sugar and salt are the mainstays of food preservation without big equipment, eg de-hydrators, freezers, and the move to low sugar and low salt foods instead of portion control has made for some odd dilemmas and waste problems.

First Nations people around the world (including europeans!) found out very fast that coating things in honey kept them really well, and that sweet enough fruit pounded into bison or deer/elk etc with lard, made pemmican, a dried meat that kept for  a few months, saving the chore of daily hunting in hardscrabble springs.

Fruit/ herbal teas – if it looks and smells ok, it is!

Dried fruit will keep years beyond the bb4date, if it looks ok, it is ok. If it looks a bit dry (currants do this a lot)  soak the fruit in an appropriate fruit tea for 10minutes before cooking, eg apple rings, soak in raspberry tea and bake in a victoria sponge, oh, nom, currants/sultanas  in darjeeling/any brown/black tea or bilberry/elderberry, ever since I learnt to make Irish brack cake I do this anyway, fruit cakes and breads should be juicy not chewy…

Dried vegetables and de-hydrated vegetables (different processes) will keep a long way past the bb4 dates. Again, if it looks ok, it is ok. Beans and pulses are great proteins and therefore attract critturs, even more if they are organic, so keep them in plastic-ware or better yet jars or old biscuit tins. Plastic can be a problem in humid spaces or Edinburgh tenement flats (hiya Em! waves!!) If in any doubt, pour the rice/ wheat/ beans/ broth mix into a mixing bowl and stir. If anything looks nibbled, examine it and if necessary, sling it – mice droppings will give you nasty illnesses, so anything chewed needs to go out, and scrub your pantry and create better storage, set traps, get a cat etc 😉  Cats were revered in Egypt because they kept the granaries – the wealth of the Pharaohs – safe 🙂

Anything with enough ascorbic acid will keep a way past the date. Basically it’s vitamin C, but I just found out the name translates from Latin as no-scurvy…cool! Scurvy is vitamin deficiency that long distance sailors used to get if they didn’t take barrels of pickled limes with them – preserving saves lives, not just jams! 😉 Sorry, I used to be a professional jam maker and still get very annoyed when people dismiss jam as a luxury confection, not a lifesaving food that gave people the strength to farm in the hungry gap of maximum tilling and sowing, and minimum fresh and stored food available. But I digress 😉

Ascorbic acid is used loads in flours and food mixes, vacuum packed tortillas etc and it keeps them fresh and tends to see off the flour weevils – people still throw flour out a day over the date because it USED to get weevils…it can still, if it is organic/ super rustic, but it’s always worth checking. Open  the packet, and pour it through a sieve into a mixing bowl. It may have clumped with age, but if nothing’s wriggling, it’s ok! It may have lost its mojo, so add a bit of baking powder, half what the recipe calls for, and all will be well 😉

However if anything with flour in MAY have got wet or worse, been kept in a damp place, chuck it. It will have the wrong moulds in and you can get nasty fatigue conditions etc from it, so if the paper looks stained, out with it. Another digression – use anti-bax on your showerhead every couple of months for the same reason  http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/09September/Pages/Showerheadsandlungdisease.aspx

In the next installment I’ll explain good storage, good cleaning/ hygiene and give some handy use it up recipes 😉

Meanwhile a link back to the perfect anti-waste foods: sprouted alfalfa seeds are amazing, I place my excellent vitamin and mineral levels (the doctor was politely surprised 😉 ) on their shoulders, and anyone with fatigue issues who got this far, they are so EASY!!! better than salad and no chopping/messing, oh joy!

waste not, want not 1: sprouting seeds, growing potatoes

Big Issue Knitathon: Knit Nottingham has fun ;)

So, much laughter, cake and coffee, all in a good cause 😉

Luckily it was a sunny day, if a tad chilly, but hardy Maria (she’s from Russia!) arrived early and stayed late (what a gem! Eleanor and I so enjoyed meeting her 😉 ) and kept me company outside the shop, to raise awareness of what we were doing. Lots of people noticed us and approved, some to the point of donating and one knitter asked for details to quickly knock off more squares to send in – by the sound of it her local group would be up for it too, so I think it was worth it! Of course the KN shop is not large, and as an agoraphobic I would never have made it through to 6pm inside, but Eleanor brought us coffees and the glow of virtue kept us warm 😉

Inside, there were shifts of knitters and sewers – 168 squares were made into strips of 12, another 100 or so squares are yet to come in, we raised £15 on the day, have sponsors of £250 plus to collect and one huge contribution has been sent direct by someone who hit her whole office up for three figures!

There was a lot of fun in this, at some point people started swapping stories of what tall tales they were told as children, Jemma was very amusing…her grandad was a right card by the sound of it, did you know haggises are only born to Scottish sheep? and they have two legs longer than the other to make it easier to climb hills?

I’d brought cake, mmm, sticky crystallized ginger and Eleanor had jaffa cakes to fuel us, and when I left about 6ish, they were still going strong 🙂

Thanks to everyone who helped in any way, I’ll keep you posted on final figures for squares and sponsor money! Anyone who wants to donate direct, here’s a link: http://www.bigissue.org.uk/donate or text  70070  with the message  DOUBO 1 £10

Working at making it work

TRIGGER WARNINGS: ABUSE AND GOVERNMENT POLITICS

The Real Work

 by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(found on the super excellent http://calmthings.blogspot.co.uk/ a feast for eyes and mind!)

Sometimes making has huge momentum and everything runs like it’s on rails. Other times I have 6 projects out and feel out of sorts and grumpy and like I’m wasting time, but keep playing computer puzzles because I can’t see what comes next. I’ve just had to tidy up for the homehelp coming to clean, and it is sooo lovely to have a tidy space again. I have visitors tomorrow, so it will stay this way for 24 hours. 😉 And it will be interesting to see which project comes out!

The choices are:

Fixers banner: ‘Bring it’ section

Zero Waste: hula hoop rug

Quaker stitching: pulling fabric for social justice applique tablecloths and designing/tracing motifs

complex cloth: next sample, all hand sewing

cradle for stones: playing with raffia and bundles in ‘geodes’

whispering wall: continuing the freeform crochet/knitting lines and loops I’ve been working on

homemaking: making curtains for the small windows from the big chunks left after I extended the main curtains

dressmaking: finish the winter kaftan top I started ages ago

All of these are worth doing 😉 and some are exciting, but none totally grab me, though I was enjoying knitting as adventure and all the pretties gathered for whispering wall

I suspect the indecision is partly because we are due galeforce winds, and I hate high winds with a passion, I get like a spooked cat, all jittery and restless; but also because I am needing to process the new levels of friction in my life. I think the austerity in Britain is really getting people down and the blame-the-benefit scroungers propaganda has been really getting horrible. (0.2% lost spending as opposed to tax evaders 10- 14% lost revenue for the Government, but never let the truth get in the your way, Mr Duncan Smith.) I notice that the bus drivers always have to be asked to ‘drop’ the bus for my rollator now, at first I didn’t mind if sometimes they didn’t, but now I know the level of pain and damage to my shoulders and collarbone lifting the rollator up 3-12 inches (8- 30cm) and sometimes as much away from the curb/kerb does to me, I’m trying to be friendly but firm. And even when you ask they are making a big deal of it, like anyone with mobility issues is asking too much.

Yesterday I had to stand because an ablebodied, non-pregnant (as far as I could tell) young woman wouldn’t move OUT of the wheelchair bay to seats at the middle or back of the bus. In the end someone got off, so I sat opposite her and stared really hard at her, I felt sooo angry at her sense of entitlement, sitting with 5 large bags of fashion shopping ( judgement call, read FRIVOLOUS!) and using her brand new iPhone…and then I thought, well, she isn’t happy…and I don’t know whether she is in fact on her way home before chemotherapy starts and in fact, I should just get over myself, and be aware glowering at her is neither appropriate nor effective 😉

What is going on? I think everyone is feeling short-changed, people on benefits are committing suicide like never before (ATOS deaths are over 1300 I read somewhere, check Welfare News for stats); people at work but badly paid are relying on food banks; middle rate earners are worried about keeping their jobs and paying off their negative house equity; high rate earners can see that the Conservatives have lost the plot and when Labour get in there will be a reckoning for the tax evaders, meanwhile they try and stash as much as they can overseas etc., No one is happy at how the austerity is being handled, whether they think the markets are recovering or not. The bankers must know they missed being properly penalised and some day that will catch up with them, whether by reversion of assets or society descending further into misery and them all being obvious targets for crime…but whatever the position someone is in, no one gets to be really happy, because if you have a conscience, then so much upsetting stuff is happening and if you don’t, everyone else is so negative…

And this brings me back to what motivates me as an artist/maker: art is non-verbal philosophy advocating (in my case) positive change, a return to harmonious coexistence, to the acceptance of a shared planet and responsibilities. The two pieces I am working on are very much about surviving violence and emotional and sexual abuse. Thinking this through now, when I see so much financial abuse wrecking people’s experience of life, I feel I am making this too narrow. All abuse is really bad. To be honest, my parents’ choice to crush my determination to be an artist was just as damaging as being thrown down the stairs. I still get scared on stairs, I still get crushing fears to do with being an artist, but depriving me of my lodestone made me a lost person for years. Once I had art as my true north, nothing was ever as bad again. I am still in recovery from a lot of the abuse because that stuff is in your core self and damaged body parts become more troublesome as you get older. Against this, I have the strength of making, of knowing I am making my life work my way, with my skills in place, and at my service. I have a lot to share with all survivors, on the possibility of coming back and thriving. (Yes, I have it hard, I have fibromyalgia with a ton of pain and limited mobility and I have memories most people can’t survive, but I am here, I am making, I still find joy in the world around me, I share that joy and THAT is thriving when you come from my starting point.) So, when the biggest problem I see is that divide and rule is working so well for stopping people uniting against the awful mess the bankers and pigs-at-the-trough politicians have us in, perhaps I want to become a shade more abstract again and be clear I mean any and all survivors of abuse who are standing for a better world for all of us, and who really mean “we’re all in it together”. (Tory slogan used with withering irony, for friends across the sea!)

Because we are, the Tories just don’t realize that making the under classes so desperate is going to backfire, and it’s going to be a hard enough world with climate change and peak oil without social breakdown and the loss of the National Health Service etc. The current Government are going to be written down as such short sighted fools. We all need to WORK at MAKING IT WORK. So, the American Government can just start itself up and enact its duly passed laws (will the GOP just get over themselves please, they are NOT above the law) and the Brits can just dig down and remember this will pass and it will pass quicker and easier if the bootboys stop kicking people when they’re down.

Now how do I put that in an installation? And can I make it sing?

waste not, want not: 20 things to do with a Tshirt

Not all of the ideas in this are mine, so there are a few links in this post – be warned, you may end up spending a couple of hours wombling round thrifty idea-mines 😉

Before you cut a Tshirt up, look closely at it. Is it faded/dull or truly worn out? If the colour is off, but the surface has no pills, holes or anti-perspirant stains, maybe you could dye it? If you seem to accumulate band/ charity/ slogan tees in white that goes scrubby, this may be enough. Home dying is easy if you have a washing machine, and if you have a large pan and use things like onionskins, you can try stovetop dying 😉

These projects are suitable for second-lifing most states of Tshirt:

T shirt to tote: https://singingbirdartist.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/waste-not-want-not-3-tshirts-to-bags-1/

T shirt to gym kit or shoe bag: cut the neck and sleeves off, and any stained area under the arms, run a line of stitching around the edge and then fold it in, making a deep hem/tube at least 2″/5cm deep. Cut the sleeves into a long  spiralling strip and crochet/plait it to make it stronger, then use it as the draw string. To ease the string through the tube, put a safety pin through one end of the string so you can feel it as you tug it through 😉

in the garden: ‘beefsteak’ tomato and pumpkin slings, soft garden ties

for pets: make knotted bundles for dog pull toys, crocheted snakes for cats

make pet beds from your old Tshirts, they find the smell comforting if you need to take them to stay elsewhere, particularly the vets to stay overnight, it really helps them stay calm

round the house: band/message Tees can make  cushion covers for sofa or hard kitchen chairs/ memory quilts for bed or sofa

homemade dryer sheets: http://www.wisebread.com/make-your-own-eco-friendly-dryer-sheets

decorations/ bunting: any fabric will do for bunting, and you can always cut the motifs/words etc out to make a feature of them, or cut shapes, or make tassels to hang between every few triangles.

garlands: make crochet/ fingerknitting chains from the yarn and then ‘chain the chain’ to make chunky/ fluffy garlands. If you twist different colours together and tie with contrasting colours you can really make something from nothing 😉 I’ll do a tutorial on this when I have someone to photograph me!

draught excluders for the doors/windows – make long sausages from the sleeves and across the torso, stitch the neck together and stuff with rolled up scrubby shirts or plastic bags or newspapers

hand warmers/ heat pads: make little pouches and fill them with raw rice and a drop of aromatherapy oil, microwave for a minute to make soothing pads for sore hands, make larger neck pouches etc

baby wipes: keep a stack of squares to hand and mop off the baby as necessary, chuck in the washer, repeat 😉

make yarn.: cut the hem off a clean T shirt and spiral up and across so that you make one very long thread for as long as you can, perhaps 2cm/a scant inch across. As the pieces get shorter, wind them in a separate ball to use in rugs

what to do with the yarn:

knit pot holders and mugrugs/coasters/hot mats for pans/oven ware on the table

crochet it into simple chains and stitch it in a spiral to make round mats – use strong waxed thread and a really sharp needle!

hooky/proggy/clippy rugs – these are very traditional in the mining areas of Britain, and are a great way to use old fabric and hessian sacks. Clippy rugs can use a scrap of fabric the size of your thumb and made with T shirt fabric are super soft and cosy bedside rugs.

this is a Yorkshire version ( I know the Northumbrian style, where the hooks and proggers were made of bullet casings, filched from Vickers Armstrong munitions 😉 though I also had a hook with a metal door knob as the handle, but a dolly peg, with one leg cut off and everything sanded down smooth is fine and much more child safe.)

Make sure you use ‘soft’ hessian, or for a really easy run, use rug canvas, particularly if you want to avoid overworking your hands and wrists.

An interesting story I was told in a community rug making workshop was that in one old man’s family on Christmas Eve, the new rug went in front of the fire, every rug moved round the house, and the oldest and shabbiest went on the compost heap to keep the compost turning over quicker in the winter 😉 Also, your name was in a queue at the coop to get the next sugar sack, as they were the best size for a big rug 🙂

weave rugs on a hula hoop/frame:

http://www.flaxandtwine.com/2012/02/woven-finger-knitting-hula-hoop-rug-diy.html#comment-form

which I’m adapting to suit what I have 😉 I’m sure Anne of flax and twine would be happy with that 😉 she uses one Tshirt for the spokes, but you can use a lot of Tees if you cut them into yarn 😉

And after all that, I’m now off to lie in a darkened room 😉