Category Archives: Neighbourhood pleasures

March 29, 2016 · 10:45 am

More autumn plantings and some plants in progress!

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On a cool, autumn morning I set out with yet more ruby saltbush plants and water to help them settle in.

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Some went in here replacing those who didn’t make it through the summer.

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The truly surprising thing is that many did make it through summer.  Some have held on with the tiniest of plant toenails.  But others have grown a good deal.  Even one boobialla (myoporum) made it in this inhospitable spot!

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Here are some of the many survivors.

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I also planted some more on the border of this space, which was bare earth when I started in on it.  It is so settled now I am considering putting some trees in quietly, among the ground covers and shrubs.

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After that, I headed off with secateurs to start some cuttings. These plants are thriving in local public plantings and they are regularly trimmed off the street by council workers or passing cars.  So I took cuttings from the street side and went home to put them in! Fingers crossed for spring planting…

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March 19, 2016 · 11:50 am

Transformations: Table cloth to top #64

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Once upon a time there was a linen tablecloth.   It was a round table cloth with an overlocked edge, gifted to me by someone who no longer had a round table.

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It went into the dyepot one week, but since the dye pot is only so big, I tore it into strips and dyed it that way, mostly with E Scoparia, but also with cotinus (smokebush) leaves and flowering heads picked when they poked out through a fence near our food co-op.  I really could not believe the purple from the cotinus and I am not sure why it happened.  Needless to say, I will try that again and see if it repeats.  I did also try woad leaves but that was less spectacular.  Pinky but not very leaf printy.

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Some time last year I had a sudden whim to turn it into Merchant and Mills Top #64 and pieced parts together to make that happen, and cut it out.  Then after a while it was rolled up.  Then it was parked for some months.  Just recently I did some cleaning up and thought maybe I should finish some things. I just sewed a seam or two a day in a busy time.

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Since so many readers here were interested in my recent discussion of interfacing, here’s what happened this time.  I cut the neck facing out of a piece of leaf printed calico.  I actually cut it back out of a piece of patchwork, also unfinished.

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The interfacing fabric is a piece of a much loved kimono that has passed beyond the mending interest of my mother-out-law. You can see it layered under the facing here after stitching teh layers together but before finishing the edge.

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I think my mother-out-law is rather enjoying being able to send me her raggedy, beloved things as they get past the point of original use and getting stories of their conversion into all manner of other things.  I stitched the two pieces of fabric together and overlocked (serged) the outer edge.  Here it is pinned on and ready to stitch.

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And finally…

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Here is the back view:

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And some closer views…

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It is rather stiff at present, after its preparatory baths in soy milk mordant.  But that will change with more washing.

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All the little bits and pieces were, needless to say, so interesting to me that I patched them together months before I sewed the garment!

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March 15, 2016 · 9:30 am

Guerilla gardening after the rain

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We had some quite substantial rain overnight last week, the first of autumn.  I took it as a sign!

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These little ruby saltbush plants are destined for a spot along the tram line where contractors have planted tiny plants into deep mulch, so that their roots never touch the earth below (which is packed hard).  It is amazing that any survived, but some did.  And there are lots of barren patches.  The mulch is starting to convert to soil.  So… in they went.

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And then some more.  I would like to expand out from this point into an area that is colonised by pest tree seedlings and weeds at present, but it gets poisoned.  So I am thinking it might need to be done slowly, edging out rather than interplanting the whole patch and risking losing all those seedlings when the weeds get poisoned.

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Some of the little eucalypts that went in here are doing well.  They are almost as tall as I am now.

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Ah, the joy that is rain!

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February 11, 2016 · 10:58 am

This week in guerilla gardening

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This morning, I went out with some saltbush I’ve grown from seed and some other plants a friend has grown and given me for guerilla gardening.  She comes from a coastal area and is growing plants well adapted (and mostly endemic) to her local sandy soils.  They are thriving in sandy areas of our suburb.  So the saltbush went in under a large river red gum in our neighbourhood, the better to protect the root zone of this giant tree.  Then I trundled around to a spot in the neighbourhood where the pattern of what will grow is very different to the rest of the patches I’m working, partly because the new beds created here in the wake of major infrastructure works are very sandy.

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In went several of these native hibiscus, an olearia, a kangaroo apple and a rhagodia (seaberry saltbush).  Out came weeds, alive and dead, and feral tree seedlings.

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The tiny E Scoparias that my friends and I planted months ago are thriving here but still small.  The council has planted a random eucalypt and a Manchurian Pear since we put them in, and they were much bigger–but they left the E Scoparias to live, bless them.  Let’s see how it goes.

Where previously nothing grew, now there are a lot of boobiallas (myoporum), some good sized olearias, a few saltbush and a couple of feijoas as well as the trees.  One saltbush is loving it here and has set fruit.

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As I finished watering the new plants in and set off to weed invasive grass out of a very successful patch nearby, one of the cyclists whizzing past called out ‘good work!’  It was a good way to start the day: kneeling in the earth and planting things that might help it heal.

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January 28, 2016 · 3:10 pm

More summer preserving

The harvest is continuing round our place.  One friend dropped a bag of figs and grapes on the front doorstep.  I took a bag of plums over to hers on a run!

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Then I went to visit another friend who is house-bound after surgery, taking a care pack of salads and mains.  She asked me to deal with her nectarine tree.  It was so heavily laden!  I collected a huge bucket of fallen spoiled fruit (things such as this are known at our house as ‘chicken happiness’).  Then I picked fruit for my friend and another visitor, and then two more buckets.  Then I cleared fruit out of her neighbour’s gutter!  The tree was still covered in unripe fruit.

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I shared nectarines with two other households and then put our share in jars, since we have a young nectarine tree which is bearing enough to keep us in fresh fruit.  Oh, and there were more plums. Just one jar this time.

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There was also a handover of a HUGE bag of frozen hibiscus flowers from a dedicated friend, bless her heart!  They had to wait a couple of days, and then I decided it was time to use the only dependable looking big jar I had for them.  I wasn’t sure they would all fit, but in the end, with defrosting and squeezing … they did.

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In went fermented citrus peel water and aluminium foil water (thank you to India Flint for yet another ingenious use of kitchen discards that are neither worm happiness nor chicken happiness)… fabric, threads, and so on… (last week’s batch are here for size comparison).

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I filled another, smaller jar with kino from an E Sideroxylon I had been saving, and another (slightly less) large jar, albeit with a rusty lid which might not seal, with my mother’s dried coreopsis flowers. That was all the dye pot would take for processing.

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Three more for the pantry shelf.  It is so interesting to see such a deep green already developing in the hibiscus flower jar…

 

 

 

 

 

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January 25, 2016 · 12:35 pm

New year’s guerilla gardening

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Some of the guerilla plantings from last year are coming along very well indeed!  Shrubs are looking shrub like.  Ground covers are bushing out.

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I made two trips with silver leaved saltbush plants (two trips doubles the amount of water I can apply, and there is a parched planting nearby).  This is prime growing time for saltbush so hopefully they will take off!

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I have continued adding to this area. I think it is looking great, and I have larger plants in seedling form that I can add now that they will be protected.  There is another spot in the neighbourhood where a house has been bought and sold and the new owner really likes the plantings I have made beside his driveway.  He has given them little sticks so that no one can miss the fact of their existence, and my beloved has seen him watering them–and had a chat!  They are really growing well now.  And all of this is a comfort because last week the council came through weeding and tending, and the next day an entire planting of twenty or thirty plants began to wilt in the way that plants that have been poisoned do.  I have no idea why they decided on poison after almost a year in which they have come by several times.  The plants were getting to a nice solid size… and perhaps they were judged to be too big.  I guess a guerilla gardener has to take casualties in her stride and keep propagating…

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January 4, 2016 · 9:14 am

Propagation for the guerilla garden

There have been a few questions about how I propagate plants for guerilla gardening.  So here it is, with pictures!  I collect seeds, often from public plantings, and then I plant them.  Preferably in spring.  For plants I haven’t tried before, spring is my first choice to grow from seed.  I plant close to the surface, because so many seem to me to come up at the edges of garden beds, beside rocks… some of them are coming up without being buried.

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I was originally planting seed direct into each pot.  However, I’ve had a lot of success with pricking them out, something I have never bothered with doing for vegetables!  So in the front here you can see tiny nitre bushes that have been pricked out at two leaves.

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In the front here there are wattles that have gone a little further.

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From there I just let them grown until they are big enough to hold their own if planted out into the world of passing dogs and foot traffic and the council poisoner.

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I am really pretty amazed at what I have been able to grow so simply.

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And now for quite unrelated eye candy of eucalypts flowering in my neighbourhood, and some bee happiness.

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So glorious!

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December 19, 2015 · 3:04 pm

Happy unbundling

Before I went to Mansfield, I had a moment of imagining what it would be like to return from a sewing circle and re-enter the world of work at the crunch point of the year.  So I took some steps to create things to return home to. I gathered leaves and retrieved saved leaves.

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I decided on a well used round table-cloth I’d been given.  Much loved and much washed and presumed (by me) to be linen.

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No round tables here.  It was destined to be ripped and turned into something new.  I added in woad leaves and seeds as well as E Scoparia leaves and continus nipped from a tree that hangs over a fence.  Here is a stuff, steep and store jar of woad seeds where the silk thread within is turning purple, with a continus leaf for colour comparison.  Wow!

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The bundles went into the dye pot on the day I left home.  Just as I headed out to a laundrette to deal with a laundry crisis that reorganised my last day at home and shall not be detailed here.

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I pulled them out of the dye pot as I went to the airport. Finally, some time after I returned, unbundling time arrived.  The Euc prints are wonderful!

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I just love linen!

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The woad leaves and seeds left traces of green and burgundy and purplishness. But only traces.  The bundle may have been a bit too loose. Ah, but those few continus leaves gave purple!  Who knew?  Well, I didn’t!  But now I am glad I bought one on special at a nursery last winter.  It had lost its leaves and was not a prepossessing looking plant at the time, but now… well… I need to let it keep growing, clearly…

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December 15, 2015 · 1:34 pm

Guerilla gardening resumes

It was a modest week in guerilla gardening, some weeks ago.  Action on one of my patches that was barren for years and then suddenly mulched and given a watering system seems to have stopped.  So I decided it might be safe to do some more planting.  Bladder saltbush, which has a lovely silver leaf, was the plant of choice, and I decided to try another creeping boobialla.  All those previously planted here were lost in the mulching.

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They look small in this big space right now.

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However, the weather is warm and this is growing season.  Some of the plants I put in during the cooler months are now a lot larger.

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Someone else seems to have planted a few things in this patch too!  This is all I took home.

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Then–a weekend planting spree after a long break.  We have already had out first day over 40C and there are more coming.  These little plants need to get into the ground.  So, there was pricking out of nitraria billardiera and dianella seedlings.

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I gathered up ‘old man’ saltbush, creeping boobialla, seaberry saltbush, water, and headed out.

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Baby seaberry saltbush went in in front of some I planted about a year ago. Thanks to the council for putting in a watering system, and connecting it to water (hence that brown pipe you can see)!

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Creeping boobialla went in beside a tall fence where some ruby saltbush are coming along.  Here is the close up:

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And here is the fence!

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You can see the new ‘old man’ saltbush in the darker patches near top right.  I have planted everything you can see growing in this patch.  An elderly man leaning on a walker came past, doing what must feel like a marathon through the neighborhood to him.  He congratulated me on my cleverness, bless him.

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With the summer weather, these plants are visibly growing despite the council not having connected the new watering system they put in here to any water source.  Three cheers for the hardiness of native plants!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 9, 2015 · 10:49 am

Workwear for a suburban guerilla gardener

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Some months ago I had an idea.  I thought I would embroider my gardening shirt, or one of them. Once I had the idea, I couldn’t let it go.

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I had my beloved’s gift of Japanese indigo dyed thread and it felt so perfect for the job…

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But when I spoke with a friend about it she gently suggested that investing so much time and effort in something on the verge of falling apart might not be wise use.  She is a wise woman and gentleness is her way.

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I began thinking of the fabrics I already had, offcuts of linen, canvas and stout cottons.  It occurred to me that I had a Merchant and Mills pattern (The Top #64) that struck me as pieced, and that called for quite stout fabrics.  I thought over a kind comment here on the blog about using more than one type of fabric as a potential feature rather than a problem (thankyou!).  I started dyeing more fabric.

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And so two sets of offcuts from different generous friends found their way into various dyepots.

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I found that I didn’t have pieces big enough for the pattern pieces anyway–even with front and back each being made up of 4 different pieces of fabric, some parts of this garment were still pieced together from smaller segments.

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And now, here it is.  Embroidered with dye plants of the neighbourhood and the names of plants I have been propagating and planting.

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And a few other phrases of note.  There may be more yet to come!  And now you know how I came by so many scraps that I needed to Make patchwork as I went…

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