A Bit of Earth

One of the things I told myself I was absolutely going to do once I moved to Dalby, was grow an edible garden. Other things on the list included ‘learn the ukulele’ and ‘write a novel’, so I guess we can say it was a fairly ambitious list. But despite having bought then abandoned a ukulele and lol don’t even talk to me about a novel, I have in fact, been rather successful at cultivating a small garden. And yes, some of it is even edible.

Please don't look too hard at the sad basil on the left, the sad basil and I are working through its issues

I had a few rather disastrous attempts at it, and then suddenly I just got into the groove of it. Every time I go out there, something is a little greener, a little bigger, a little better. I water regularly, I re-pot as necessary and I am always adding little things to it. Unfortunately, my real estate agent is a ruiner of dreams, which means I can only keep things in pots, but despite this hurdle, I really have cultivated my own little corner of Dalby. I grow things I would like to grow, I try things that seem ok. It’s mine, and this one little thing makes me happier than I can possibly express.

I’ll try though, in blog form, no less.

There is a deep satisfaction in making something from nothing. I think it’s one of the reasons I like knitting so much. You start with string, essentially, and you weave that shit together in a complicated little knot over and over and the next thing you know you’ve got something functional. In my case, that’s always a scarf, because I haven’t quite progressed to anything more complicated than that, but shit it’s still something new that didn’t exist before. Writing is much the same. Pulling words out of your brain and twisting them into some kind of story, or even just a sentence… that is some amazing stuff right there. I’m doing it right now, every word I write did not exist in this particular order before I came along and put them here. Isn’t that a truly fantastic thing?

I figure I can just grow the plants *over* the ugly shit in the yard, and pretend its not there

Gardening is that fantastic sensation PLUS the feeling of helping something to grow. It’s not just making something; it’s making something live, it’s creating life, and it’s friggin awesome.  Knowing that I made this thing, and that it wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t applied myself, if I hadn’t tried hard, and persevered, gives me a really big sense of accomplishment. And I know that it’s just a little thing, I didn’t save a rainforest, or grow a whole human inside me or anything, but it’s empowering, it fills me up with a giant ball of happiness.

View out our back door

It’s funny actually, but I’m sure this is the feeling people have when they do make a whole human, except multiplied by about ten thousand. But to be honest, I’m just content with zucchini plants and flowers for now, lol babies seems too much. I’m full of joy and bouncing with happiness about a bunch of plants, can you imagine if I made a baby? I’d be hysterically jumping on the furniture. It seems too much, and I’m very content with my herb babies and my vege babies, and anyway, they are much cheaper to feed, and they don’t poop themselves… and if ants get on them I’m not the worst person ever.

And I won't be sent to jail when I hand pollinate this zucchini plant in Spring.

33 Week Challenge Week 1 – NYWM and Herb Babies!

And so it begins: my foray into starting stuff for no good reason. First let me tell you that I kind of did 2 things this week. So I don’t know if that just stuffs it up – or whether it gives me a nice bit of grace for the week where I’m sick (inevitable at least once during winter) or the week where I suddenly get busy with gigs and work (hopefully this will happen at some stage) or the week where I can’t be fucked (guaranteed). In all likelihood it won’t matter because I’ll get bored at some point and give up anyway.

This week I did number 1 (plant and look after some herbs) and number 12 (register this blog for National Young Writers Month). The list is not yet completed, I will be updating it here – feel free to continue to contribute.

Challenge Number 12 was suggested by Alex Neill, whose blog I have been following for a little while now. She’s pretty excellent. She writes for GNW-TV (which makes her a god in my mind) and also writes another blog about TV that features Dr. Who a lot, which should put her in good stead with a lot of my readers. You should check her out. Alex is a rep for National Young Writers Month, which is a month in which young writers… write. Ok, I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about it yet, but I’m about to find out. Every Monday in June I’m going to write a blog about my challenge adventures and the good people at NYWM are probably going to berate encourage me along the way. I’m hoping this will get me into a good routine for the rest of the year.

So ultimately, number 12 was pretty easy. I just had to fill in a form. NO WAIT. I still managed to fuck that up. Name: easy, contact: easy, state of residence: easy, writing goal: fail. I wasn’t quite sure what to put down and spent too long typing something and then deleting it (should I have a word count goal? Should I choose now what challenges I’ll do? Urgh, look a typo – the writers will judge me!) and then suddenly, just as I hit on the right thing to say… I must’ve accidentally clicked submit. So now my writing goals say something like, “to write a blog every MOndf….”. YEAH! I’m going to write a blog every MOndf and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! So challenge 12 is done, if poorly. Challenge 13, actually seeing Young Writers Month through, is another story entirely. I’m sure there are some amongst my readers (Hilde?) who might enjoy this too if they were so inclined.

Challenge Number 1 I came up with all by myself. But you know what’s kind of boring/ not a good blog post? Planting herbs. Nice work, genius. So I will record this challenge primarily in pictures.

First, I went to the shop and bought a pot, some seeds, and a whole lot of dirt. I did not think to buy a trowel (I hope you’re paying attention class, as this will come up later). Stoked with how easy it was to get these items, and with myself for actually doing this just one day after making the decision to do this challenge, I set off home with a spring in my step. I did not take a picture of this moment, as within 12 seconds of leaving I realised just how freaking heavy my newly acquired dirt was. The next 5 minutes were fairly heinous. I was trying to write this blog in my mind and you should be grateful I’ve had almost a week to think about it; otherwise it would have been something much like this:

Ow

Fuck

Heavy

Fuck dirt

Ow heavy dirt

Heavy ow fuck dirt

This is the dirt/pot combo in question:

They look so innocent don’t they?

These are my herb babies:

Adorable no? Wait, flip them over…

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FREAKING INSTRUCTIONS??!!

I didn’t take any of this into account at the shop, so I’ve managed to get herbs that like different environments to each other… and also want a lot more room than my pot can offer. Still angry/hot from my dirt walk I made the decision to ignore the majority of these, arguing that I said I was going to start planting herbs, I never said they had to be happy or healthy herbs.

I took this picture to demonstrate that I was wearing leggings as pants while doing this. Please refer to my first ever blog post on the subject… and understand that I was hot and angry, and no one else was home, and this was a perfectly acceptable time in my life to not wear pants.

Even the bastard dirt has instructions! RAAAAAGE. Haven’t plants been growing in dirt for millennia? Can it really be this hard?

I poured the dirt in to my pot. This is when I realised that I didn’t have a trowel. I used my hands and got absolutely filthy in the process.

This photo also captures the moment when I went “huh, these coriander seeds look heaps like…. Coriander seeds. Oh.” That is to say, that I have cooked many times with coriander seeds but it’s never occurred to me that they would look the same if you bought them in a packet to plant. Derp.

I planted all my little baby herbs at intervals that suited me, not them (they have to learn to respect me), patted them down, and then came up with a cute way of marking where they are:

And that is the story of how I planted some plants. I’ve remembered to water them every day this week, so provided that keeps happening you’ll get some photos of their progress as time goes on. RIVETING.

Stay tuned next week – I still don’t know what challenge I’m going to do. So it’s a surprise for me too!

L