Residential Self Expression Goes Beserk - one street in Sydney

Meet Susan Street, Annandale.

Its my little brother's street. It backs onto a canal, but doesn't lead to anywhere in particular, and only takes three minutes to traverse. Most front gardens are a narrow strip of concrete, or a basement where the garden should be.

What I want to know is,



How did everything get so beautiful?



This house only has one plant in its garden.




Yet 'garden' is the world, as it is a little universe within itself.



This telephone pole is homeless. No home, but the furnishings are delightful.


And this old luvvy is Still here!


People bother to Customize


They reach for the tiniest scrap of light, of space


They respect their elders


This house said "Just because I came with boring pillars doesn't mean I have to keep them". Look what they did.
Just because the whole house is narrower than the car parked out front doesn't mean it cannot be magnificent.
I even saw someone playing guitar on the doorstep, and SINGING.


Concrete can be celestial.


And Urban Plein Air painting can be a lovely slice of riverside peace, for the harried teenager.


This is the last picture for now, its the fertility god Kokopelli playing in front of the streets most edible garden, where stairs lead down to the canal. The residents here took one look at the parkland out front and said "Mine"!
Love something, and its yours.
The stairs and slope and path are covered in rosemary and eggplants and mosaics, wheelbarrows of herbs have been trundled into the scraps of light that fall though the canopy.

Too Much!
You will get the other amazing Susan Street pictures in another blogpost.

These photos were taken in August, when I last visited Sydney.

Right now I'm quietly tucked away in my hidyhole in Waverton, having a little Japanese winter of my own, so for me its all quite seasonal.
The whole 0f 2010 was a tsunami of captivating things, and you don't blog about a tsunami while your are in it.

Now, here's my question, and I need your answer, because its a mystery I'm grappling with. Which photograph is beautiful, and whats the beauty make of?

Worlds most astonishing Indoor farm - Tokyo Business District

Conference room, Head office, Pasona Group Inc.

With all my Japan projects bedded down for the winter, I set out for some sightseeing in my final weekend in Tokyo (Dec 4th) with a visit to the head office of the Parsona Group Inc.



Pasona is a stroll away from Tokyo station, a kind of urban desert of towering concrete and glass.
But it looks like someone at the company decided "Life is for spending, lets do something astonishing" and the result is impeccable, improbable 'urban farm'. Plants are grown mostly under human-supplied light and nourishment, mostly indoors.

I saw lush-looking eggplants, giant daikon radish and beans, with cucumbers and roses climbing the walls. 200 kinds of plants are grown, disease free, all without pesticide. When your a farm isolated in urban concrete, there is nothing really to bug you.


Their full-sized ricefield has three harvests a year. You can see the 'autumn' crop drying in the background.
They brighten the 'HELF' lights and drop them down closer to the paddy as the plants desire - about 5 lux most months, up to 10 lux when the rice kernels are ripening.

The neighbouring building is an energy company. Maybe they got mates rates. I've drunk tea and eaten sweets flecked with real gold, but if you did your calculations, a bowl of this rice would outdo such opulence, easily.


My favorite part of the whole building is this tiny 'willow fence' that slows down the circulating rice paddy water as it gets close to the inlet. The clay-soil edges of the paddy are planted with a natural cover of brave little weeds, but the rice itself grows on palm fibre.

Sakuma-san

Here the agricultural consultant, Sakuma-san, tells me how they make it all work. When I ask what his dream job is, he says to be a regular farmer, under a regular sky, with all the disasters it entails. The predictability is heaven for the rice, but humans need more challenge to flourish.

Matsumoto-san

The office staff all share the task of caring for the 'office pets', the plants. They water, remove withered leaves, and havest the produce for the staff cafeteria upstairs. I chatted with Matsumoto-san and asked if she was a farmer. No, a geologist. The cafe, she tells me, is just delicious.

Audry-san

Pasona is a Temp agency, where young ladies come to be sent out for employment. A young, irresistable Audrey Heburn is their image girl.


Quiz: What color light does lettuce like to eat? Why?


The public cafe, a forest of hanging baskets.



One of the meeting rooms. The furniture is elegant and 'wholemeal' with its raw edges and pencil marks showing. The staff are are proud to say that the glass tabletops were recycled from the old office partitions, and that the floor is made of forest-thinnings. The entire building is a retrofit, and infused with 'green' virtue-points, as listed in their PR materials.


Hydroponic lettuce floating on polystyrene

These plants requested a little more breeze.

Roses love light. In this season, early winter, the plants on the exterior balconies are mostly climbing roses, braving the cold, thin but elegant.



The tall young Japanese are not particularly aware of any food crisis going on. Urban farm's educational posters fill everyone in a bit.
Above are their ideas of of how to solve the food crisis.
The more closely you read it, the more interesting it gets.
They admit its a bit uncertain if all these solutions listed will work.
So, my goal for next year is to have fun events at Parsona, and watch them change that list, with Permaculture in big letters.


The Japanese are astonishing.

I'm showing you these pictures in the Permaculture spirit, that is, that you can find something positive from this story of Pasona, something that gets you into action.
Creating a new culture is hard. Nobody can get it all right in one go. Its okay to do amazing things that have big flaws. Have a lovely vision and make it real the best you can. Others may come along later, get inspired, and finish the work you couldn't.

The power of flower: Play a bigger game?

Last week was the first tough week since I left my beloved Melbourne home.

It started with Jackhammers just under my bedroom stairs, which I found out would be going all week, due to leaking. Rainy season had just begun.

So I gathered my thoughts as best I could and took refuge at another freind's in Tokyo.

On arriving I found out that friend #2 also had a few days of noisy construction planned, with a builder due to visit my room at first light. Quite Quite unlucky.

I resemble a normal person, but arranging my thoughts in a straight line is a lot of work for my brain, even when things are quiet. One 'bang' and they all scatter like dandelion fluff, needing to be gathered back again.


I may be house-poor right now, but after all these years in Japan I'm getting rich in mates who let me come and stay. So I got my work-gear and life-gear together again, setting out in search peace and productivity.
"Dare to Play a bigger Game' Urged my glossy laptop bag, a souvenier from the NSAA convention last April.

Things didn't get better. My gear, myself and my frilly umbrella spent much of the week in trains, moving from house to house to internet cafe, feeling completely beaten in a very small game that is not the tiniest bit fun to play.

"Never feel sorry for yourself" is a basic rule for having a good and sane life, but I was indulging.

"What a pity you can't die of misery! All my troubles would be over!" These were my thoughts as I struggled though rush-hour Shinagawa Station towards the dreaded ladies room.

Then look, just look at what I saw:

Bougenvillia, Carnation, Geranium leaf and
Take Away Container, Shinagawa ladies Toilets.

Someone had bothered to do this.
Why did they do this?
I was so excited, I ran back to my luggage to get my camera, the dying of misery plans all canceled.

More!

Someone had picked flowers in the rain, happily carried them in the crush of a Tokyo train, devotedly washed out old containers, and arranged them with care and flair.

I bounded back to the restroom with my camera, and just look who I found:


Typical Lucky Cecilia, I caught him in the act, making his corner of the world absolutely sparkle, deftly transforming things for a city's worth of sad and overburdened people.

Hero of my week, and uncontested winner of 'Play a Bigger Game'

lilly pilly eco christmas tree

What happens in a decorative Permaculture garden for an Aussie Christmas?
Well, the rhubarb is frilly and heathly, with its lovely pink legs. Sage has just started blooming with mauve flowers, fitting right in with the violas, that make their way into festive salads.

Tiny pansies to make salads nourish more than just our bodies

Chives, chamomille, and strawberries and mint give us things to eat (or drink), but the lettuces are spindly - not enough sun and water where I've put them.

Lilly Pilly christmas tree, with Dutch passers-by

I was Eating a quiet Christmas breakfast behind the lilly-pilly christmas tree, when Diana wandered into my garden, all the way from Holland. Diana lived here a few years ago, and is now a freshly-graduated architect, with a lovely new architect man to work with and love. Like the other two Netherlanders who have stayed with me here, she is as sunny as buttercups, and has endless capacity for cheerful hard work. Knowing her character, I'm confident they will succeed at building beautiful buildings together.


Being designers and Dutch, Diana and Rou went straigt to work, reprogramming my automatic dripper system, and planning better ways for me to get my tank water overflow to my thirsty lettuces.
Note the lillies. They were from rejected bulbs my WWOOFer collected and planted while I was overseas. The first ones bloomed on Christmas Eve, giving us a frothy sea of pink above the rocket seedlings to enjoy. To enjoy until the hot day, when the buds were toasted like marshmallows. Had there been more moisture in the soil they may have been fine. So my search continues for a handyperson to help design a better shade watering system for the next 46 degree day we can expect this summer.

Galliger the cat contributes to the Christmas Spirit

How is this for an edible container garden? I found it in the dining room on Christmas morning, Created by Stephan Lau, the German scientist who is staying here over the summer. So next time you are tempted to say that Germans and Scientists are not creative, please recall this snowy scene. It was delicious.


So here's the gist of Melbourne Christmases: they are not white, but blue. Jacarandas, Agapanthus, and whatever Hydrangeas survive our water restrictions. That's what I think of when I picture December, a quiet time for tying up the loose ends of all the years projects and tasks. Merrily.

Finally got Laid

Robert Samuel from East Germany, Photo by Cecilia Macaulay

For so long I have desired this, and its finally happened.
A man of excellence, strength and impeccable taste turned up at my house, and with his bare hands and brawn re-laid my bricks. My regimented, bored bricks.

The first day he tossed away the bluestone steps, and layed a delicately fan-shaped array of finely chiseled bricks.
Then he went to they gym.

Bricklayers shirt.

The next day my mate Frank the Creative turned up with a lend of all the right tools, and my landlord did something landlords are not usually known for, but that's just because there's a trick to it. After seeing the quality of Robert's stairs volunteered money for the materials.

When Permie Paul Bonjoirno visited and saw the action in the garden, he commented "It does my head in seeing a German lay bricks. Aren't they're meant to be busy making Mercedes?"

He's a high-tech brickie though, and found a way to video-skype me while adjusting the brick patterns, while I went to teach balcony gardening in Queensland.
Each day photos like this would turn up, asking
"Are my curves okay?"

Robert, your curves are great.


30s Argentian wrought iron chair, christmas lillies, one white brick, all on currents of brick swirl.

Fanning and swerving, placed as if a former dental technician had laid them.
As was the case.

A prize for the best caption for this photo of Robert, Rugsy the Norwegian Forest Cat, and the beer I told him was appropriate for brick layers.


About Robert
Robert is a vegetarian. For him carrots are something like water, I've never seen such capacity for eating carrots before. He likes to do things perfectly, and happily. When they are less than perfect in his eyes, he just pulls them out, says 'I'll try again', and does it over.
By day 7 he decided 'Cecilia, no more changes', and worked like a he was striking the fear of God into those bricks. Then he finished, and the beautiful smile, the joyful chuckling returned. He likes pink, likes flowers, and likes talking about his next girlfriend. Not his ex girlfriend, his Next Girlfriend - he met her on the internet, arranged for falling in love to happen while he was wwoofing down here in Australia, and will meet her in real in a few weeks.
I hope she adores him as much as we all do.

About bricks
This old dude, typical eccentric New Zealand style, spend a few decades of his life collecting discarded broken bricks, and layed them in these organic, flowing shapes, block after block till the whole street was awash with wild swirling bricks. It was the highlight of my visit to Christchurch a few years ago. By then the fashionable people had moved in, trying to borrow the eros, the vision that this old fellow had, energizing him every every day, never fading.

I caught it.
Here's the 'Before' photo of my back courtyard. The dinner table had just been brought sensibly back inside, leaving a chess game of extra-guest stools, on the seriously unimaginative, yet very nice bricks.
Why are bricks great? Well, unlike concrete, they let rain soak into the ground for the plants.
But the best reason is that you can haul them home, for free.
When I made the Elwood water catching Garden, I was left with a pile of lovely bricks nobody would buy, or even take for free. I drove around the neighbourhood looking for piles of bricks, and asking the rennovation gangs that put them there to if they would take my bricks off my hands. Instead, they tried persuading me to take their own expensive-to-dispose-of bricks off Their hands.

Just go for a cruise, get a big man with a van, and a swirly brick dream can be part of your life too.

Thank-you New Zealand for the inspiration, thank you Robert for the strong mind and spirit, and thank you Lon who's cooking kept Robert going. Thank you Graham the landlord, and Frank for the brick cutter.
Like raising a child, it takes a whole village to get your bricks swirly. But if the desire is strong enough, it happens.