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No Worries Concrete at Asabas Permaculture Garden

The secret to laying concrete seems to be this:
Don't worry.

Just like making a cake

Living here and running workshops with the incandescent Asaba-san, I started seeing that most of us worry INSTEAD of acting.

Asaba never worries. She just gets into action, doing whatever preparation is needed for whatever festivity she has freely chosen to dive into.

Today, it was cement.


Plus stringing up some Summer Vines, and a practical lesson on reppotting orchids. Happy Participants, happy plants, Happy Asaba, watching her garden transform itself. Just ask Cecilia over to Run workshops, teach her 'Don't Worry', and it all happens.
A few adjusments, compromizes and mistakes will be made along the way. Don't worry.
That's the deal with creativity, after all.

Tempting gourd and cucumber vines

onto the bridge with a tasty ball of string.

Guests came from around the corner, and around the country.

Mrs Morimoto and the gang collecting Fuyoudo soil from our mountain.

The wonderful Morimoto family drove the 7 hours from their old farmhouse in Gifu to attend, all on their tempura-oil powered vehicle.

The elegant Nishibayashi Family drove 5 hours from Nara.

Guys, that is such a complement!

Bento lunchbox lunch in our back, back garden at Shyomyoji Temple.

No Chairs, no wrappers, no bills, no worries. So long as you decide to enjoy cooking your bento box lunch the night before. Inspiring company and settings help.


We started the morning with a presentation introducing the wonders of Permaculture, and how it can make life riveting.
We saw David Holmgren's ingenious passive energy house,
the beautiful universe of Rainbow Valley Farm,
and the inspirational story of Famer Iwata, who really doesn't DO anything to his kiwi orchid now - he set it up to care for itself. And we can do that too, with our lives.

After lunch and garden creation time, we ended the day with a presentation on balcony garden design - tricks to get yourself into action, get rid of the uglies, and surround yourself with only things you love. Without designing love into it, balcony gardening is just too hard to be worth it, or to succeed.
Just like life, maybe.

Ready to build on the foundation we created in Workshop #4 last week - the Daku wall.

This wall solves a few problems

• How to get rid of the unattractive yet useful cinderblocks
• How to keep Daku the dachshund out of the edible garden
• How to keep the raised beds raised.

Don't cry Daku. Weve planned a special little digging spot for you, where all the interesting composting and hidey-holes will be happening. You will love it.

It was Fun: Balcony Garden workshop, veggie village

My favorite way of spending a couple of hours would have to be giving balcony garden workshops. You meet people at their most interesting, hatching up schemes for achieving the improbable: paradise on concrete. And see how happy they get when they hear all the tricks that will allow their fuzzy balcony aspirations to become crisp, leafy reality.

This 3 hour workshop was originally planned for the local permaculture dynamo, the wonderful Yukari Desjardins. We have lost Yukari. No matter how much we wish it to be different, she is gone. But continuing on projects she started, that's something we can actually do. For this day, I just had to hop on the Melbourne to Sunshine coast aeroplane, and do my thing.
I was so happy I could do this small thing.

Participants are always so different from each other, which makes break times the best kind of parties. Who turned up this time? Included in the mix of 40 could be found a soil life expert, heaps of artists, a horticulturist, architect, a few grandmothers, a professional Permaculturist, and another Japan-addict like myself.


Here's Shannon, helping me model the sign that tells me where we are. This one got herself a nice Japanese husband. Maybe my turn is next...

Barry Mcfee, Cecilia, and creative Pizza Oven

The event was impeccably organized by the Veggie Village Maestro, Barry Mcfee. Barry is one of those Engineers that the whole world wants, so it was wonderful staying with him and his dear wife Frances, and hearing all their stories of life lived out in exotic locations.
It took me about half-a-minute after meeting Barry at the airport to guess his profession. Engineers are my favorite people: concise, relaxed, yet accurate. They happily do the groundwork required to make things succeed, while the rest of us skip the little things like confirmation phone calls, etc saying 'She'll be right, mate". But she won't.
Whats the best thing about engineers? Maybe its their flexible attitude to the surprises that life insists upon dishing out. Engineers, like ideal Permaculturists, go with how reality IS, rather than how we think it SHOULD be.

Barry, you were an inspiration.


And I loved your old Citroen.

Permaculture Keyhole garden at Veggie Village

Veggie village is the neatest community garden I have come across, and I've seen them all over the planet. Neatest of the pretty: neat and dull doesn't count.

Reed bed design by artist Glenda Hennig

I especially loved this man-made 'creek' that the volunteers reconstructed from a diverted spring and swamp. Its almost Japanese, the natural placement of rocks, reeds and flow. And how is this for a good story: the reeds get almost too thick by the end of the season, and that's when the lady artist who created all this says 'Harvest time", and turns them into handmade paper.


What did participants think?

"Most enlightening. I loved the possum theory i.e. 'The problem is the solution'".
Linesse

"When you were born, the world made room for a little more fancy - love your approach while providing vital info".
J& D

"I loved your positivity and I will create a garden! I also loved your Japanese-ness. If you have any nice wwoofers who want to stay in Noosa, give them my address. If my garden isn't established yet, they can couch-surf!"
Shannon

Well, I really hope they find a way to invite me back next year.
For now, I'll make do enjoying the 'before' and 'after' balcony garden photos that have started trickling in from the participants. That's the desert.

Millet cuisine for a Peaceful World: Interview with the Millet Sisters of Melbourne

Maki's Millet cuisine

I had my introduction to delicious Millet cuisine when the Guru, Otani-san, came from Japan to hold a workshop at the Melbourne Friends of the Earth Co-op. She travels the world, cooking and speaking about how eating less meat and wheat can create a peaceful world. Who would have thought?
For a start, Millet grows well in poor, dry soil, so requires fewer resources, less fighting over water and good soil.
Some people say eating less meat makes you more gentle. Just think about the eating and fighting habits of people you know, cultures in history. (No, I'm not vegetarian. Yes, I'm extremely attracted to gentle people, for balance).
As for wheat, it is usually eaten in a highly refined form, nothing like the grains our ancestors' bodies evolved on. All that sticky gluten - our bodies don't really know what to do with it. Some of us have obvious ill-effects. The rest of us...we don't know. But scientists say something to the effect that it coats our cells and makes us old before our time. I'm too inefficiant to get old before my time!

Interview With Maki,
Melbourne's Millet Sisters

Here is an interview with Maki, one of the most talented and active of my Permaculture students. Maki is holding Millet creation workshops at CERES, East Brunswick, April 26


Cecilia: Can you grow useful cereals on balconies or courtyards?

Maki: Yes!
Here is my own first Indian millet growing in my tiny veggie patch. I planted three seeds and they're all shooting up with very little water. They seem to have the same strength and vitality as sturdy herbs.

Maki's urban Melbourne Millet

C:Whats so great about millet?

Maki: They're delicious and versatile. They have high nutritional values and low Earth impact. They've always been a major part of our diet in many different cultures throughout the World.

Once people know how easy it is to cook with millet, they will never turn away. I must admit that I myself had been a helpless cook in the kitchen for a long time, but with millet cooking, not like any other cooking, it's quite difficult to spoil a meal. It's simple yet there is a variety of ways to cook. Most importantly it can be turned into something else even when the unexpected happens.

Cecilia: If millet is good, why isn't it more popular?

Maki: I guess, people think millet is too boring for them. They aren't aware of how good it is and also how easily it can be prepared at home. Well, I was one of those people until my friend Miwa showed me this style of millet cooking three years ago. She learned it from Ms. Otani, the founder of Tsubutsubu cooking in Japan.
Cecilia: So, of all the good causes you could devote your energies to, why did
you choose food?

Maki: Well, I love nature and nature loves me (^^).
When I heard that the amount of energy we consume for everyday life, number one is for growing, packaging and delivering the food we eat, secondary for a shelter, and thirdly for transportation, I thought eating habits could be changed simply by knowing better alternatives which are available right here right now.

Cecilia: What is your favorite recipe for when you come home tired and hungry?
Maki: If I have left-over millet or any grains already cooked in my fridge,
I often make millet burgers using some seasonings and chopped onions.
Pan-fry and rap them up with fresh leafy vegetables.
Otherwise, a bowl of soup can be a full meal with some grains
such as sticky millet, oats or quinoa together with some vegetables.

Cecilia: What are the three top things about Japanese culture you would like to
share with Aussies?

Maki:
1. the magic of developing extra senses to appreciate gentle tastes.
2. the importance of feeling content when you're 80% full(hara hachibu).
3. the belief of everything has a spirit, even a grain of millet.

Cecilia: So, what's your most ambitious dream for your millet work?

Maki: ummm..at the moment we, the millet sisters, are taking baby steps, but one day if we could meet Jamie Oliver we'd be happy. Just kidding(^^).
Well we believe good food can heal people's bodies and souls, and ultimately, along with all the other great deeds around the World, it may help the Earth heal.

Maki endevors to use local ingredients wherever possible
(photo by Cecilia, Sustainable Living Festival)

http://www.lesliebeck.com/ingredient_index.php?featured_food=9