The Green Life

I found this awesome image online, think it is just amazing, as it sums up everything we want to achieve and all that we strive to do.  Thanks to the creator of this picture.  It is positive and powerful!

Spence, my little enthusiastic Bugerator

I was sooo excited yesterday with the smallest of discoveries.  I have an explosion of sap-sucking shield bugs in the garden, perhaps they are the only ones who could survive the deluge of rain we have endured over our usually dry summer!  They have an incomplete metamorphosis, emerging like little black pin-heads, mini-versions of the bigger, less appealing stink bugs they grow into.  So I have these ugly guys all skulking under veggies.  I know they are not beneficial insects and so with great revulsion, I grab at them, trying to minimise the contact time they are in my hand to stink it up, drop them and try to stomp them into their next incarnation.  Only trouble with this method is a) they stink you in the merest contact time, b) they sometimes sense your approach and just drop - so well camouflaged in the undergrowth that you can't relocate them, c) once I've dropped them, I can't always find them to stomp them d) my new gumboots have huge tread and so there have to be several stompings to actually connect with these little wee buggers!  And this method is just gross!  Sometimes you find copulating bugs still stuck together and you just know they are going to be producing hundreds more unlovable offspring.  Disgusting little fellas.

 Anyway, yesterday, I happened to have a small container in hand, and a pocket knife, which I use for harvesting zucchini.  I found a shield bug, which I swept into the container with the end of the blade.  He lay on the bottom, no means for escaping, so I gleefully repeated the action with the next villain.  When I had 3 entrapped stink bugs, I hurried over to the chook house and emptied the contents onto the ground.  In a flash, Spence had gobbled them up.  Whaaaa?  I tried it again.  Truly amazed that the chooks would eat a stink bug, and then repeat the action with no obvious repulsion, was amazing!!  I spent the greater part of half an hour, harvest forgotten, as I stink-bug hunted, thrilled with my new discovery.  I felt deliciously evil as I fed my problems to the ever expectant chooks who were by now, waiting for each delivery with anticipation!  The adage came to mind "one man's junk is another man's treasure", from now on, my bug-culling days are over and my chook-treat gathering days have begun!  Bring it on!!  Yeeeha!

The Harvest

Last night's Nature Supermarket haul

Summer's finally here!  The garden has recovered from a battering of bad weather and is starting to produce abundantly again.  I picked our first kamo kamo (Maori squash), zucchini, beans, strawberries, tomatoes, cystal apple cucumber (little white orb in foreground) and blueberries last night.  We are really enjoying a fantastic strawberry feast every 2-3 days.  I have started freezing beans for winter consumption as there are too many to physically eat at the moment.  I planted up 2 more tepees of beans, in the hope that we have an extended mild autumn - they are doing well.  Last weekend, my friend, Eva, came over to help do some collaborative weeding.  What a great time, to be working and socialising the day away!  I taught her how to play ukulele in our 20 min tea break - it was great to see the concentration on her face give way to sheer joy.  How easy it is to learn, and how great that the world is embracing this tiny little instrument originating in Hawai, introduced by the Portuguese!  The answer to World Tension!

Eva discovering her inner child's musical joy

We have glutted on Globe Artichokes, so the last bloomers were left to bloom and this is the result:

The semi-fluorescent indigo of a flowering globe artichoke

no photo-shopping, just true blue

We have had several helpxchange requests over the "festive" season, and finally, a Belgium couple will be arriving tomorrow for a week.  It is always fun to discover new ideas and share thoughts on life and living with people from all over the world.  And a totally sustainable and beneficial way of living, for them (accommodation and food) and for hosts (work exchange).  Who knows what we will accomplish this week with an extra pair of hands?  Sadly, my holidays finish and so it's back to work for me next week but I go with the knowledge that our helpers will be toiling away back home.  And anyway, I love my job so it's not all bad!

There is an event happening in Auckland today, as I type, called The Big Day Out.  Basically, it's an all day music concert.  Tickets cost about $160.  My daughter was stoked to be asked to work, unpaid, in the Hare Krishna food stall there, after working at the Exodus event in Papamoa.  She managed to get her friend a work spot too.  My son wanted to go too, but as is the Capricorn way, he left it to the last minute.  He was willing (against our good advice) to cough up his hard earned cash to buy a ticket.  11th hour and the ticket had not yet been purchased online, when my daughter sweetly informed him, she had secured him a spot working in the Hare Krishna food stall, One Love.  The look on his face as he beamed at the thought of not having to spend his cash, and still get to be at the event was unforgettable!  Sweet!  He actually hugged her!  Another unforgettable moment.  Doesn't happen often!

Disaster Strikes in Threes

Gardening is not without it's disasters and this summer we have all but lost our passion fruit, nectarines and now our fig tree too.  But hey, what's that bumper sticker............"Sh*t happens!"  We will give our nectarine one more season to bump up it's immunity to fungal brown spot rot, if it doesn't, it's the Queen of Hearts treatment "Off with your head!".   Luckily we have 2 more fig trees so if the third one doesn't recover and set down some deep anchoring roots again, same treatment.  And our passion-fruit - we can always plant another.

Our wind battered fig tree which was all but flattened twice,
finally dealt a severe blow (pun) and we had to prune it right
back to bare trunk as it couldn't hold up it's weight anymore.

The victims of an untoward summer - our passion fruit
are doomed!  It was looking so healthy and I anticipated all
the lovely fruit we would be eating but it dies daily in front of our eyes.

Garden Images from yesterday evening

Garden disasters aside, I took a wee wander around the garden last night, marveling at how light it was at 7pm!  Summer time for real.  Took these images below:

Yacon  growing in the garden, a celery/granny smith apple-tasting
root vegetable from South America.  A new addition in our garden.
Click link if interested in more information.

The first of our day lillies.  Beware the clothes-staining stamens!

Our recycled kiwifruit bin planted up in kumara (sweet potato)
starting to take off.  There is a special Maori way to planting these.

The tomato and basil bed inter-planted with marigolds.

Dwarf beans in the hothouse provide plenty beans for freezing.

Yellow zucchini peeking out

New Banana bunch silhouetted against the darkening skies

The area weeded collaboratively by Eva and I, with sawdust pathway

The giant seed heads of sunflowers attract many yellow finches

A treasure peeking out from under the foliage...............mmmn,
I love a spicey pumpkin soup in winter!

Our purple pole beans

Plums starting to blush-ripen reminds me I will have to bag
them from the birds soon (recycled onion net bags).

So all in all, the garden has had it's fair share of disasters this summer but it continues to produce prolifically and there is always plenty to share with visitors, friends and neighbours.