garden structures « Robin Hill Gardens

Spring is supposed to be wet. Here in Wayland, Spring often means flooding in many basements and parts of town, sometimes even busy intersections and the public library. But until today it hadn’t rained for weeks. Drought is a relief from flooding and mud, true, but it brings fire hazard warnings, and having to use tap water in the garden, which I intensely dislike because 1) it has chlorine in it, which isn’t good for the creatures in my carefully tended soil and 2) is costly, in so many ways.

That is why DH and I hurried to get our BIG WATER system installed. This is a system I’ve been coveting for years, now, and it finally came together. Part one is the rain water catchment.

275 gallon IBC totes with two seven-year-olds for scale

The rain comes off our biggest roof, first goes into to two first-flush pipes, which will hopefully catch the debris, dust and pollen, then moves on to the totes.

The top tote fills first, then overflows into the bottom one, which overflows into the bed behind it which has Elders and Lobelia, all moisture-loving plants. We’ll be using the top tote for our gravity-fed irrigation (which is why that is our primary tote: the higher up, the more pressure).

That’s part Two of BIG WATER. I put down the drip irrigation in a while ago. The garden still looks a little like a patient hooked up to life support what with all the tubes and hoses snaking all over the place. Once the top tote is full and we’ve connected it up to the irrigation, we can check for pressure and leaks. Then I’ll bury the tubing in the beds under straw and the pipes in the pipes in the wood chips.

Other news: 1) Success! After two nights and two days in the “broody buster,” Toothless the broody hen is no longer broody. 2) The BEE talk went off spectacularly well. There were 35 people people of all generations above 14, mostly people I hadn’t personally invited (maybe I should stop inviting?). Many signed up indicating they wanted to start bees. 3) I got the news that we (Transition Wayland Foodshed Group) were given two 20′x30′ community garden plots for our grain experiments. I went to scout them out this morning and they’re beautiful, permanent plots on high ground. They’ll need tilling, and then I have to decide what to plant, and then I get our volunteers lined up…

Why get one if you can get eight?

My friend R and I rented a 14-foot truck and drove quite a stretch to pick up eight of these. Only seven fit, and that with some wedging. Turns out that “14 feet” includes the useless little “attic” above the cabin. So we’ll be going back to get the last one – and we’ll probably throw in a couple more, according to how many will fit the pickup. We dropped one off at Rs place (her house doesn’t even have gutters but we’ll figure that one out) and left the other six at my place.

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Here they are, waiting in the melting snow. Three are for the local elementary schools, three are for our place (two for rain water, one to grow fish in it, for eating, if our pond takes too much time), and the one left over is for whomever is interested. I’m sure we’ll have no trouble finding someone. The two friends who came to help us unload the truck were already talking maple sap, honey storage, a water-spray tank to go on their pickup truck…

You can stack two of these (full) on top of each other and take advantage of the pressure build-up to hook it up to an irrigation system. I’m keeping an eye on Leigh’s system at 5 Acres and a Dream and if it has proven itself by the time we’re ready, we’ll ~~nick~~ – I mean copy it.

Back to patterns! Having a plan for the slope has re-opened my mind for the immediate front: the balcony, the level stretch of garden up top, the top of the driveway. This is what it looks like right now:

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I already analyzed one of the more general problems: the negativity of this space. There are some more specific patterns that can be applied, or rather, actualized here to address that. Let’s start with the patterns that apply to approaching, entering, arriving and leaving. Alexander et.al. write: “The process of arriving in a house, and leaving it, is fundamental to our daily lives” (p.554). The first pattern is this:

110. Main Entrance: Place the main entrance of the building at a point where it can be seen immediately from the main avenues of approach and give it a bold, visible shape which stands out in front of the building.

At our place the problem is not so much the lack of an obvious entrance, but a confusion between two entrances. At the moment there is only one way to approach our house, which is the driveway, and upon that approach you see the mudroom door and the “official” front door on the “balcony”.

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As the “official” front door leads straight into the living room, we prefer to use the mudroom door when it is cold, rains or snows. The mudroom has room for boots, umbrellas and coats and acts like a sluice, keeping the cold out. But when it’s warm we usually leave the front door open, with a screened door that allows light into the dark corner of the living room. Needless to say, in all but the situation when there is uncleared snow on the path and the balcony steps (as in the picture), visitors are confused: which door to use? Idea: make it so that in summer and fair weather the “official” front door seems the way to go, and that in all other situations the visitor is directed to the mudroom.

But first, what to do with each of these entrances? I’d like to apply to them the following three patterns:

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112. Entrance Transition: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, of sound, of direction, a change of surface, of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.

130. Entrance Room: Arriving in a building, or leaving it, you need a room to pass through, both inside the building and outside it. This is the entrance room.

160. Building Edge: A building is most often thought of as something which turns inward- towards its rooms. People do not often think of a building as something which must also be oriented toward the outside. But unless the building is oriented towards the outside, which surrounds it, as carefully and positively as towards its inside, the space around the building will be socially isolated, because you have to cross a no-man’s land to get to it. Make sure that you treat the edge of the building as a “thing”, a “place”, a zone with volume to it, not a line or interface which has no thickness. Crenelate the edge of buildings with places that invite people to stop. Make places that have depth and a covering, places to site, lean, and walk, especially at those points along the perimeter which look onto interesting outdoor life.

The mudroom fully embodies the Entrance Room pattern: it is inside the house but also feel like outside, as it is unheated and full of outdoorsy things. The visitor can’t see this, however, from the outside. In order to draw him with the promise of a Transition to the inside, we could place a trellis above the door and grow a vine on it. This would also nail Building Edge, change that transition from a mere line into a place.

The front door satisfies none of these patterns. You walk through and you abruptly find yourself in the living room. This is the case in many ranches, and I don’t understand why any architect or homeowner thinks this is appropriate. It’s disconcerting for everyone! The line between inside and outside here is filter thin, not a place at all. The tiny balcony and the roof above it are not deep enough to create volume.

This is an area that has fantastic potential!

First let’s deepen the balcony. Alexander points out that any balcony that is less than six feet deep will not be used (Pattern 167. Six-foot balcony), and here we have an example if that. It is a mere 2 1/2 feet deep and no one ever wants to sit there. Let’s knock away the surrounding brick wall and add another five feet to the surface. Depending on what material we use, we can make it straight or rounded (think adobe!). We can forego a wall altogether and make it accessible by a step or two, all around.

But this place would be too hot in the Summer, as it’s south. So let’s make it into an Outdoor Room.

163. Outdoor Room. Build a place outdoors which has so much enclosure round it, that it takes on the feeling of a room, even though it is open to the sky. To do this, define it at the corners with columns, perhaps roof it partially with trellis or a sliding canvas roof, create “walls” around it, with fences, sitting walls, screens, hedges, or the exterior walls of the building itself.

Let’s add a wooden pillar and beam structure around and over it, on which we grow grapes and other deciduous vines. The bare vines will allow the much needed sunlight to enter the living room in winter but the leafy canopy will shade the balcony in summer. And they grow food too (permaculture: stack functions)! The rest of the enclosure will be done with potted figs and other plants, benches, a hammock. Let’s fill this new space with all manner of places to sit, sleep, work and play in the sun, in the shade.

This will also bring to life Pattern 168, which to me is one of the most important patterns:

168. Connection to the Earth. A house feels isolated from the nature around it, unless its floors are interleaved directly with the earth that is around the house. Connect the building to the earth around it by building a series of paths and terraces and steps around the edge. Place them deliberately to make the boundary ambiguous.

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This will draw us outside, to the blueberry patch, the espaliered pear tree, the path to the vegetable garden and the apiary to the right. To the left it will draw us to the pond and the dwarf orchard. To the front it will draw us to the slope with its berry bushes and trees. This is really only possible if we get that slope planted: there can be glimpses of conviviality from the street, but there must also be privacy. And even in winter it will draw us out by the eye. When standing in front of the big living room picture window, we won’t be stopped short. One more bonus: that continuation on the same level outside it will make the living room seem bigger and, depending on the material we use, it will absorb the light and heat of the sun in winter and reflect that into the living room.

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Back to our original question: how to decide the visitor’s question which door to choose? When we’re done both will stand out and look inviting? I don’t have an answer yet. Maybe it will come when we look through the patterns at the next area: the driveway and the car place.

It cannot wait to get started in the garden, in particular to start the big Soil and Water Works. I want to plant stakes and dig dirt and maneuver wheelbarrows and roll rotten logs downhill. I even want to roll some of them uphill, that’s how desperate I am to get started. For today I figured out how to tackle our slope. Not the bottom part of the pit (yet), but that will follow naturally once we get that slope under control.

The slope is too steep and was filled in with bad soil after septic works before we bought the house. Because it is too steep it erodes from the excess roof and hilltop run-off. This makes planting anything on it or adding good soil difficult. We terraced it three years ago. But the “path” was too broad and, because unchanged, still too steep, so it kept on eroding. Because it is so steep it is hard to mow, and the weeds overtook what grass was not washed away. Result: the path is unused and the beds off to its sides are inaccessible and untended.

The solution? Hugelswales!

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Hugelswales are on-contour swales filled with wood. The swales (trenches, ditches) intercept runoff and store it while releasing it to the soil underneath (video of a swale plume). If you fill them with scrap wood (of which we have a lot, in all stages of rot), turning them into a Hugelkultur, that wood will break down and the cellulose will create an even better sponge, releasing not just the water but also all the nutrients from the wood. It’s only strange to call this a Hugelkultur (“Hugel” means mound) if you can’t imagine the mound turned upside down.

The swale will be packed with wood too rotten to burn, twigs, and everything in between. While packing it in, we’ll fill in the gaps with wood chips, soil, compost, leaves and all the nitrogen rich stuff we can get our hands on (find some neighbor who mow their grass and don’t use chemicals). On top we’ll put wood chips that our neighbor is happy to supply us with. The swale will thus become an on-contour, level path, about three feet wide. As the wood breaks down these paths will settle and sink, so we’ll simply keep filling them with more woody debris.

The soil from these trenches will be moved downhill to form a small bump up, then a gentle slope down toward the next swale. I’m guessing these will come to about 5 to 7 feet in width. I might add a bit of wood at the bottom of these as well, but considering that we’ll eventually plant perennials here I wouldn’t want too much settling here since we won’t be able to keep topping it up. We might have to bring in soil for this, since we know the dirt on the slope is rocky and none too good, though the soil in the terraces should be in better shape by now.

This is a 2009 image. Some of the trees have been cut down in the meantime (marked by red X-s). I wish I were a little more savvy with the visuals, but you get the idea.

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On the top right you see the pond we’re planning to dig into the slope there. The idea is for the top swale, if it overflows, to overflow into the pond (so that swale will have to line up above the pond) and for the pond to overflow into the second swale (which will be underneath it). I’ll have to think of a way to connect the swale paths on the sides.

What to plant in this massive Hugelkultur? This will be a woodsy (carbon-rich, fungal, acidic) environment, so woody perennials is the way to go. A mix of blackberries, blueberries and elderberries in the top two beds and a mix of currants, gooseberries and elderberries in the bottom bed. These latter three are shallow rooted, a must because we’re close to the septic leach field at that point. And in between, some small fruit trees, perhaps? Most of these will be for 2014, however, since this system will need settling and the soil will need work. We’ll start with cover crops and woody mulches.

I can’t wait to build me an A-frame and get digging. It’s going to be -4 F tonight, though (-20 C), and all of the town’s ice skating rinks are in business, so I’ll bet the ground’s a bit too frozen right now. But this is what it looks like in Plangarden, which is very un-permaculture straight.

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Ah, it’s 2 degrees out, but bright and sunny and in between running out to swap out the chickens’ frozen water I am dreaming of the garden. My goal for 2013 is to do more work on the homestead, because I realized what an opportunity we have here, to build a place that is a model of resilience. This it can only be if it is integrated into the community, and that it can only be if I do do a better job of balancing my community work and my role as a homesteader.

One important facet of the integration of my garden into the wider context is its place in the food shed. Our 2012 CSA just ended, and we have to wait until March 20, when our new, 48-week farm share starts (at Siena Farms). I want to grow food here with that in mind. The CSA box is always packed with lettuces, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squashes and fennel, more than a family of three needs. But it is low on some favorite foods, proteins and carbs, and has no fruits. Those will be mine to grow then! But first…

Irrigate – irrigate - irrigate!

I shamefully admit that the failure of much of my garden and especially the tomatoes and peppers in my hoop house last year was due to my neglect in watering. It is especially shameful because we had a small irrigation system sitting in the shed. All we had to do was assemble it and hook it up. This year we’ll invest in more tubing as well as in the 275 gallon ICB toters that I have been meaning to buy. The idea is to irrigate the entire vegetable garden, the elder, currant and gooseberry bushes in the back, as well as all the new plants, bushes and trees that are going in. Two additional parts of the water catchment system will be swales and a pond with an overflow.

I also need to put in a good water solution for my bees. Some of my neighbors had too many winged visitors to their bird baths.

And fence – fence – fence!

The chicken wire fence we put around the veg garden needs to be replaced with a fence that is stabler (read: posts sunk in properly), higher and sturdier (needs food growing on it). This fence could be more chicken wire or it could be something natural – only we don’t have enough materials here on the property to do that… I would love to learn how to build a brick or stone wall – preferably brick, for trapping the sun’s heat.

Protein

I can’t tell you how happy I am with my chickens. The four hens are still laying three eggs a day, on average. What more could I ask for? Two more hens, of course! The idea is to add two new chickens every day and in year three to start culling two. We”ll also up the learning curve and the fun by hatching our own as of now. Extra eggs will be used for bartering with friends and neighbors.

Seems like the only reason I go to the grocery store nowadays is milk. It hurts to have to buy it in plastic jugs too. Two tiny goats would do it. I’ve got room for them. DH is warming to the idea, but I doubt it’ll happen in 2013. Still, doesn’t hurt to research.

We have always wanted to put in a pond to catch the significant run-off from our roof after the rain barrels have filled, and because the presence of water is soothing and inspiring. But ponds can also mean FOOD: edible water plants and fish, of course. This year we’ll work on putting the pond in and establishing the plants, getting the hang of that, and researching fish for 2014.

Starches, beans, grains

The CSA is short on some of the foods I really love, like potatoes. Once in a while there are some fingerlings, but never enough for a family of three that includes one potato-lover. So I, the Integrated Homesteader, might make the radical decision to grow NO TOMATOES, ONLY POTATOES. Due to them being the same family and sharing the same very bad blights, it’s not a good idea to grow both of them in a small garden anyway. Also entirely missing in the box are dry beans and drying peas. I’ll grow many of those.

As for grains, I’d like to grow corn again. I tried it last year but they went in too late. Nevertheless they are very interesting plants to grow. Maybe a bed or two of corn would be a worthy experiment? As for other grains, like wheat, I know we don’t have the space, though I could possibly plant a whole patch in our town’s Community Gardens?

Spring and Fall gardens

I have that wonderful hoop house and have as yet to really utilize it to have grow outside of the season. Task one: add doors! Then, grow cold weather crops – lettuce, spinach, and even plant some peas in there. Outside the hoop house I’m planning a big crop of fava beans and peas. As for Fall, thanks to my CSA, I’m no longer afraid of parsnips and turnips. I love them roasted or mashed and they are such good keepers. I also want to give carrots another go, as well as the brassicas (broccoli especially).

Some veggies that will make a comeback: LOTS of escarole (for cannellini bean and escarole soup), tromboncino squash (which is turning out to be a great keeper), our favorite haricots verts, celery, chard, and perhaps 2013 will be the year I conquer spinach.

Fruits

But this year I mainly want to make work of fruits. Grocery shopping is for milk and fruits (I buy local and in season as much as possible): that is just a clear indication of what we need to grow here. Also, most of my canning is of fruit: jams, jellies, sauces. Last season’s blueberry jam and peach butter, apple sauce and peaches-in-syrup are finished already. Time to start doing something about this.

We already have lots of berry bushes in the ground - hundreds of strawberries gone wild all over, 5 gooseberries, 4 elders, 5 red and 5 white currants, 1 highbush blueberry, 1 jostaberry, 2 serviceberries, 4 roses (for rosehips), 6 grapes. But almost none of them are doing well. The currants, elders and gooseberries in the back need more water and are defoliated every year by I-don’t-know-what. Even last year, when I covered them in remay, they were eaten. This will be their third Fall in my garden and I feel it needs to be a good one for them to survive. All the other bushes – along with the witch hazel - will need to be moved to better spots, yet to be determined. I also need to find way to protect them from defoliators and chipmunks stealing all of the harvest.

The sour cherry tree has not grown very much since it moved in. It needs a good pruning and a guild around it (around all of them, really), with 90% nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators. I have four hazels, two of which are doing marvelous, two of them not so (need moving), and each year all of them get defoliated as well. The raspberries can stay put in their patch, but need pruning. (I got this pruning book, by the way). My two female kiwis are going absolutely berserk. No flowers or fruits yet, but any year now. They very much need pruning! The male kiwi, however, which is needed to pollinate the females, needs to be moved to a better spot and also given a planter. The grapes too need to be pruned, moved and trained. In pots I have two figs, which will need pruning, and two paw paws, which can be transplanted into the garden.

Once we’ve cleared the last of the downed tree trunks for firewood, we will have a lot of room for more trees and berries. That was our promise: for every tree we took down, we’d plant another one. I am also going to devote some beds where veggies won’t grow for fruit trees and bushes. I might buy and plant some of these this year ((*) in the list), though for some others the timing probably won’t be right and we’ll take a year, first, to work on the clearing and the soil first and then plant in 2014. So far, my general shopping list is for:

2 pears: 1 to espalier against our house facade (*), 1 next to driveway (*)

2 apples: next to driveway (*)

2 peaches: north side of veg garden (*)

2 plums: next to driveway (*)

2 Asian pears, 1 quince, aronia bushes, blackberries, honeyberries (also called hascaps)…

I’d also like to start learning the craft of taking whips, cuttings, and grafting.

Flowers

So far, I was never able to grow sunflowers, for munching seed and seed butter. Chipmunks would behead them even before they flowered, let alone made seed. This year, though, I want to try again, maybe put some protection around them. I have a lot of perennial medicinal flowers going already, some of which (in the large medicinal herb bed up front) I’ll have to move, cut and divide. I want to add more pollinator flowers for my bees.

Trees for firewood and tools (coppicing)

I’m also starting to research trees for coppicing for stake and other materials, including hardwood for tool handles. I’ve been recommended the black locust, mulberry and hickory: all hard and fast growing. They also burn really hot, and firewood too is on our minds. If we are careful and the climate cooperates (cough!), we have enough fuel (firewood and two tanks of oil) for three years. We’ll need to do more clearing up front to plant the larger orchard and the biomass trees, and that might give us another year worth of wood…

Outdoor living and working

If we’re going to make this place work as a model of resilience, abundance of food, life both human and other, we’re going to have to spend more time outside. Hence the recent obsession with the Pattern Language for redesigning the front of the house on top of the hill. One of the larger parts of this project that we want to accomplish is the extension of our front balcony, about which in a later post.

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Seems feasible, no?

We’ve not had a frost yet, but we will, this evening, and a hard one too: 28 F. I have my thermometer out in the coop so we’ll know cold it will really get. I’ve harvested all there is to harvest, brought in all my potted plants, drained my rain barrels. But, being a brand new chicken keeper, I am most concerned with the chickens, since their coop doesn’t have double walls or insulation (there is just particle board with siding).

In between drizzles I cleaned out the coop for the last time before Spring. I put down a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth to kill creepy crawlies like mites and fleas that may bother the birds. Then I shoveled in a thick layer of pine shavings, and on top of that I put straw, all adding up to about 5 inches. This is the beginning of the deep litter method. I will simply add more shavings and straw as needed over the course of the Winter. The lower layers will decompose and give off heat, warming the coop. I also made sure that, apart from the ventilation which comes from the eaves, the little coop is draft free. I put extra bedding in the nest boxes – though I’m sure they’ll clean that out. Our breeds – Rhode Island Red and Black Sex Link – are cold hardy, so they should be fine now.

We’ve been getting three eggs a day, and three days out of the week, four. So they’re good, consistent layers. The little pullet eggs have also been growing bigger, and yesterday we had a huge one.

Today I found a weird egg: the shell is all soft and crumpled and not entirely fused in places. The shape is squished. I hope this is a one-time problem!

To help with egg shell/calcium problems we’ve been giving them crushed oyster shell (in a separate feeder). In the meantime I was saving up the egg shells and yesterday I had enough to crush. I washed them, then made them brittle and cooked whatever egg was left in the microwave, then ran them through a coffee grinder we don’t use anymore. What a great way to close the loop!

TO DO before Winter in the so-called “Ladies’ Garden”.

clear weeds, brambles
put in path from house to woodpile (to the right , not in picture) and stake
make bed for strawberries
transplant strawberries from front bed to here
reinforce coop roof for snow load
finishing touches to coop
buck, split and stack more wood
collect and stash kindling

The ladies, they love water mellon. They ate the rind!

Two elements in this image, actually. One of which we set in motion a couple of months ago, and one that I just strung.

We had a clothesline until two winters ago, but the trees it was under leafed out so much it stopped being a very good spot: too much shade, too much stuff dirtying the laundry. This is one of those retractable clotheslines, attached to our shed (which still needs its barn doors – why is that when I look at a picture all I see is “things to do”?). Amie and I got all the laundry from one large wash hung up. Amie loves hanging clothes.

Still, I need to rethink it a little. There’s enough line in the roller to add a stretch, but the locking mechanism isn’t very food so the line sags quite a bit. But I want it to be retractable because this side of our yard – the “utilitarian area” with the firewood (off to the right) – gets quite a big of traffic.

In the background you can spot the other element. Our four chicks are two months old now. Hopefully we’ll have eggs come September. Their coop needs a nest box, siding and paint.

Those green tendrils on the trellis? Hardy kiwi. The two plants are going absolutely wild.

This for the bees. I’m going to make my own hive bodies (boxes, bottom board, inner and outer covers). I’ll buy the frames and foundation.

This for the water catchment, on Craiglist, for $100. Just need to borrow someone’s truck to pick up two of them.

But the majority of fun is being had with this – with Google Sketchup. The footprint is 8′x6′ for four chickens. The plank comes off the floor because I plan to do Deep Litter Bedding and honestly I couldn’t make it come down in the program.

The farmer in his field

A while ago we finally took the step and enrolled in a year-long CSA, starting this Spring, at Siena Farms. We visited the farm in Fall and fell in love with the fields and the farmers. I loved especially the fact that the owner, Farmer Chris, puts effort and money into training young people.

I am very happy we did. Last year, as Transition Wayland took off and I struggled with my novel, I lost track of my garden. I didn’t water it enough, let the weeds and the pests have their way, and didn’t even get round to putting doors on our hoop house for Winter and early Spring growing. Even though the season was mild, our harvests were skimpy, a far cry from the dream of eating solely from the garden during Summer at least.

This Spring we are planning to put in an irrigation system, which I would like to be as low-tech as possible, dependent on rain water catchment and gravity. The shortage of acorns last Fall may have taken care, temporarily, of the chipmunks, squirrels and voles, but the tomato horn worms will be back and the deer seem less and less shy. For the latter at least we’re thinking of better fencing, and for the varmints, traps and ”vole hotels” (you check in but you can’t check out!). I’ve also enrolled in a Timebank and may get some gardening help that way, as well as from visiting grandparents. All of this will be necessary, as we have plans for significantly expanding the food gardens this Spring.

What I am talking about here is cushions, reserves, safeties. These last two months have been another lesson in those for us.

Take the firewood. We have lots of it neatly stacked in the back of the property, but it is not easily accessible for day-to-day use, for which we have a smaller stack on our porch. When we got back from our trip in January, that stack was very low and we soon ran out.

Why? It takes the two of us only two hours to fill it!

Two reasons. Because of circumstances we missed opportunity after opportunity to restock: it rained when we had the time, it was too bitterly cold, we were too busy, one or both of us got sick. But more importantly, we don’t have the mindset for cushioning. That has been bred out of us by lifetimes of convenience. Heating was always available to us when we grew up (to DH because he grew up in a tropical climate, to me because there was always gas heat and good insulation). We still don’t have a “need” for hauling wood. Lo and behold: the oil furnace automatically picked up the slack (to the detriment of our Riot). It is heating my house as I write.

Even with regard to our health we have this attitude. I mentioned sickness keeping us from hauling wood. Both DH and I have been sick too often this Winter (the mildest on record). We’ve been lousy at physical self care (New Year’s resolutions notwithstanding). For the last two weeks I’ve been suffering from sinusitis (not the usual for me). It got to be so bad that my herbal medicines no longer made a difference and I “needed” (pharmaceutical) painkillers and antibiotics. I detest painkillers, and I’ve not used antibiotics for over a decade. They’re all throwing me for a loop, making me too dizzy, for one… to haul wood!

I feel trapped in a spiral of convenience. The garden didn’t produce? Not to worry, there is plenty of food in the supermarket. Didn’t take care of yourself and now your head’s blocked and you can’t think straight? Here’s a spray, it clears you up in two seconds! Yes, you’ll have to wean yourself off. Yes, it makes you dizzy, but at least you can sit at your laptop now and blog…

Ugh.

The cushions we need, that we truly need, have to be inbuilt in our systems. We must no longer be so reliant on outside convenience. I’m talking community supported agriculture, irrigation with rain water, simple fencing, help from friends and community, physical health and fitness with the occasional boost of a herbal tonic or medicine grown in my garden, a better stocked food pantry, a better composting/soil building system… And I could go on.

Why? For decency sake. Because of what’s coming. Because it will strengthen what really matters.

What kind of reserves are you building in, taking responsibility for, taking control of, coming home to?

Robin Hill Gardens

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

Category Archives: garden structures

Rain, Finally: BIG WATER

Irrigation, Coming Up!

Applying the Pattern Language (ii): Inviting Entry, Making Connections

Soil and Water Works: Hugelswales

Garden Goals for 2013 (and Beyond)

Winter Coop Prep and Eggs

The Ladies’ Garden

One Element at a Time

Fun Designing

Cushions

Solar Production