Tag Archives: compost

June 27, 2025 · 5:53 pm

Waste work and unlovely mending

This morning I went out to guerilla garden. First of all the sedges (cyperus gymnocaulos) and the knobby club rush (ficinia nordosa); going into the banks of a culvert. The suburbs are full of these unloved places where native plants could grow and habitat could be created, bare earth could be under a blanket of beautiful plants. Yet so often, none of these things happen. This is my third planting of sedge in this spot this season–last season I thought every sedge I planted had died, but this morning I found two that had survived.

Once planted, I picked up the fallen leaves from nearby culvert, made of concrete, and piled them up around the sedges. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have with people who pass in the street, about fallen leaves. Rich, amazing bounty, regarded by so many as an inconvenience and as trash. I have literally explained to people many times why I am picking them up (because I want them) and then had to explain how I will use them (compost, mulch, weed suppression, you name it) and sometimes even how (you can lay them on bare earth and they will return to soil, but better than it was).

On outing 2 I finally planted the last of the bottlebrush and tea tree, alongside the public transport corridor. And picked up the litter there. I took a bag that sheep manure came home in specifically for the purpose because there seems to be nothing quite like public transport infrastructure, for rubbish. Sometimes it just blows there, I guess.

Then I went to the local cafe and collected their scraps and coffee grounds. At home, in go dead street tree leaves to bring the carbon needed for composting to go well, plus this bag of paper towel from my “work” place. I’ve just decided it doesn’t make sense for it to go to public waste systems when I could bring it home and compost it. Yes, I’m taking my own hand towel and using one I can wash and use again. Meanwhile, these went into the compost bin too. The bag will go back in my bike bag for next time.

And then I have spent part of the day re homing things other people don’t want. And that neither they not I want to go to waste. This coverlet has found a new home via local Buy Nothing, and I have several other items waiting.

I don’t know quite what to say for myself today. Why am I posting about all this?? But it did strike me eventually that it has been a day of perfectly pleasurable waste work, which I am now capping off by mending yet another of my not-too-glorious undergarments, with part of someone else’s dead t shirt. I cut a pattern from a piece of used paper covered in text (that goes to the compost here too), and pinned it on; cut out two patches and pinned them on, folding over to reinstate some fabric where it has worn away. This garment is so worn, it seems a bit ridiculous to mend it. But I have not yet managed to let it go; and it is an old fave. So I decided to do it anyway.

Two patches, one under each arm; and then–as I am going that far–a little patch at the hemline (*cough* this was overlocked with no hem when this garment was new–long, long ago) where I have never noticed it has come adrift.

And after a long phone call and some instructional video watching… here it is. I tried two different threads–didn’t love the first one (perle cotton) in use so switched to the blue thread (sashiko thread).

And if nothing else, I guess I will learn about how that feels to wear, and how it washes. As well as–how long before more of the garment wears right through! And that is a wrap on my waste work day.

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June 12, 2025 · 4:00 pm

Guerilla gardening

Hello dear readers, if any of you are still out there! I looked into the blogroll on this blog today and found that almost every blog I used to list has gone. In fact, blogs as they were when this one started are pretty much gone, wouldn’t you say? But my urge to guerilla garden is not gone. So here is my deadly treadly last week; bucket of compost on the back, plants, water and tools on the front. Ready to go. Honestly, friends, the bin fire of the world at the moment is so utterly devastating and makes me want to cry and rage so much–it has been hard to post. But sources of solace are important, and continuing to do what we can is also important. Now that much of what I do is organising, this might be a strange choice of post. But I’m sharing anyway on yet another heartbreaking day in the life of the world.

The plants are native mallow; ruby saltbush and dryland tea tree. Here is their new home. Clearly designed to be planted–nothing growing there. And not much soil. I have carted compost here with the help of my beloved, as well as adding mulch as it collects in the nearby drain, over some months. So now there is soil there.

In they go! I love the way that free mulch just lands on city streets most times of the year. There for the taking and using. I collected a wheelbarrow load yesterday and one of my neighbours was incredulous. “What are you going to do with it?!” “Compost!” I said. Honestly, I am incredulous more people don’t do it.

And here I am on site… (and I apologise for my phone advertising itself so relentlessly. If you know how to make that stop, please do tell me how it’s done!

And here is one of the plantings and its stake, made from part of a hard rubbish deck chair and given a pointed end by my beloved, who has power tools to contribute to the team. Thanks for reading, lovelies.

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February 11, 2020 · 5:49 pm

A trip to the composters

This is an image of my Dad’s trailer. When my parents return from their annual journey as “Grey Nomads” across the wide brown land, they always have a lot to do to get their garden into its usual neat and tidy state. That leads to a trip to the waste transfer station some years, and this year it led to a trip to a commercial composter. They asked if I wanted anything and of course, if I wanted to some along. So this is my Dad’s fine handiwork. He knows how to knot and I live in awe, without having enough practice in my life to be able to really learn his skills. I believe this is what he calls “the truckies’ knot”.

Naturally I was participating in an efficient trip to the composter (that’s how my family roll), so I was untying the load and unloading the cuttings on arrival and then loading up and… the long and short of it is, not many photos. The scale of this place is rather amazing, and the equipment they use to tumble and grade the compost is impressive.

Here is the display of all the grades of compost they sell, outside the office. A load of compost for me, a few bags of potting mix created onsite, some pea straw and some organic seeds and we were back on the road toward home! A most interesting place.

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January 7, 2019 · 8:08 pm

Wasting less while travelling

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The last few months have included some travel for various reasons. I think it’s obvious that air travel raises my carbon footprint and should be avoided when possible. But perhaps I’ve already mentioned that my life is full of contradictions?  I’m trying to do what I can, when I can. When I went to Brisbane I was lucky enough to be able to buy vegetables and fruit at the local farmers’ market.  It was luck!  I had no idea it would be close to where I was staying.  I’d selected accommodation so I’d have less traveling each day I was there, and so I could travel by ferry when I needed public transport. In another spot of luck, I’d been saving my peelings and pits in the fridge for a few days trying to figure out whether my only option was to put them in the bin, when I realised I was walking distance from New Farm community garden.

I was convinced a community garden would have a composting system I could sneak my scraps into, but imagine my delight to discover a community composting hub! I went back a couple of times because it’s mango season and there I was making cold rolls for dinner and eating a mango every day.  And because the community garden was brilliant. My other travelling with less waste discovery was in Melbourne, where the lovely out-laws took us to Coburg Farmer’s market. There was live music, there was delicious food–and there was a no single use policy on cups, plates and utensils.  So there was a serious washing station with clearly explained steps, and lots of people large and small using it.

My other big carbon footprint management strategy is to protest when travelling whenever possible.  Brisbane is the heart of opposition to the Adani coal mine–which is a bad idea on so many fronts–Indigenous owners oppose it, we already know we need to keep existing reserves of coal in the ground to have a hope of keeping climate change to tragic rather than catastrophic levels, the water this mine will take is shocking, coal will be shipped out right by the Great Barrier Reef–you know what I’m saying.  I’m saying Stop Adani!

It’s also good to see what people in other places do–I caught up with an activist I met over 20 years ago and we talked up using music in protest (and did some singing, of course). And it was fun being deputised by my beloved and her parents to be the one going out to save the world while they stayed home providing loving care and being unable to get out much, respectively.  They needed to check that I would make sure I came home again.

I managed to come home both times–and there were some very funny stories of members of the family opposing Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war, and being arrested during the Premiership of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, when the right to assemble and the right to march were themselves the things people were protesting to achieve, because they were criminalised by Joh.

And in closing… some photos of fabulous Brisbane wildlife!

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