I’ve added a new photograph of the herb spiral.
All posts by Angela
The apprentice wizard
Merlin and Gandalf are starting to recognise the benefits of brotherly winter warmth. Merlin is usually content to ignore the kittenish Gandalf, giving him various cat glances of disdain and impatience. Note how a nippy September night changes the dynamic. 🙂
This is how they remain when I get up for work in the morning. I usually wake up with one cat wrapped around either side of my head like giant ear-muffs.
Planted 7 Trees
Planted 6 Eucalyptus fasciculosa and an Acacia in the tree lot yesterday in the rain. Was pleased to get these in because we couldm’t buy them last time we shopped at State Flora, Belair.
Good planting weather though I think. Look ed around at all the salvation jane and thought “I need Angela out here to help me do some weeding”.
Planted 4 sheoaks today
Planted 4 sheaoks saplings between old fence at front femce and new gateway.
It was raining heavily.
Richard
Echidna
Saw our first echidna outside our farm gate on the neighbours land. It was around 6:30pm and was burrowing down into the grass (I would too if there were a group of humans standing around looking at me).
Hopefully there are more out there.
First permaculture project!
At last:- our first forays into permaculture.
Herb spiral
Building a permaculture herb spiral
Permaculture is an amazingly deep field of ecological design. The more I read, the more fascinated I become and I have been been keen to try out some of its principles on our property. With a few books from the library and a quick look online [as well as good time invested staring longingly at the $100+ Bill Mollinson’s Permaculture: A Designer’s Guide in a bookshop over the weekend – I’m waiting on someone returning it at library] –> here is our very amateur progress today at building a permaculture herb spiral.
As far as I can determine, the purpose of a herb spiral is to create a climatic microcosm of the surrounding area and to use your understanding of these features in a compact and energy efficient way to grow healthy flourishing herbs.
From my reading, the key aspects seem to be:-
the spiral arrangment of stones to shelter herbs and assist drainage
the use of gravity to feed water down through the soil from the middle height of the spiral
utilising the location of the sun by understanding the needs of each herb when planting
First, we chose our site –> an area in the back garden that had previously been home to some too-large half-dead shrubs. This is near to our kitchen door and I had been eyeing this up as my kitchen herb garden since moving in, particularly because it has existing irrigation. We don’t yet have our own compost [a long story] but last weekend we prepared the soil by adding two bags of mushroom compost. I have no idea if this is a ideal herb spiral location, but the good thing about this small space is that most people probably have one.
Next, we put down some cardboard in the general area of the planned spiral. This is approximately a 1 metre diameter circle. It looks rough, but the idea is that it should help supress any weeds. Most guides say that the cardboard can just be put under the spiral walls, but we just went for the whole area. We of course have no idea what we are doing and this may actually be a bad idea.
Then we got the structure happening. Again, we had no idea what we were doing really, but we have a plentiful supply of stones in a paddock from a once-cow-shelter, so a few trips with the trailer and much bending down later, we had stones a-plenty. Most guides say that in the southern hemisphere you build your spiral so that the water runs down in an anti-clockwise direction to account for the summer and winter locations of the sun, and so that is just what we did. The photograph shows the start of our spiral. You should really block the end off with a stone or a pond as this is where the water will collect as it drains through the spiral.
We positioned our drip irrigation in the centre of the spiral, holding it temporarily in place with a common garden cane and bit o’ string. I must admit, we didn’t read about this anywhere and Richard had this idea as we were building the spiral. We don’t know if this will be useful, but it seemed like logical forward-thinking for the summer. We also put in a load of rubble for drainage which seemed intelligent, but wasn’t specifically referred to anywhere.
We started filling the spiral with soil, building it higher as the spiral wound in. The idea is that at the bottom of your spiral, you plant water loving herbs. The well-drained top of your spiral is for the dryer mediterranean herbs. So, you just build up the height of the soil, whilst building your walls up too.
It’s at this time, when the structure starts to get interesting that you might get one or two interested visitors. This is exactly what happened as one of our chickens came over to have a look. Who knows, maybe she even add a little nutrient to the soil while she was there. [She’s the one on the left next to Richard].
We continued to fill and build until the spiral was complete. The mound is supposed to be 1 metre high, but we had limited soil and our is probably a little lower. Once the soil was in place we removed the garden cane and string, leaving the irrigation dripper poking out of the top of the mound. The photograph shows our finished spiral. I really don’t think this will win any design awards, but our heart has gone into it and it looks kind of cool.
In fact, building this spiral shaped mound made me go all mystical [not a rare event]. I couln’t help taking a little inner thought journey about how ancient the spiral symbol is. Its old meaning is rooted in natural growth so it’s not suprising to find it strongly recurring in the philosophy of permaculture. Even looking at our tiny amateur spiral mound reminded me of Newgrange, an impressive megalithic stone burial chamber in Ireland which we saw a few years ago which is full of spiral patterns, as is celtic mythology in general. Our little herb spiral seems connected to the big patterned cosmos in even the smallest way. Nothing is arbitary.
Back to the practicalities –> finally, we planted out our spiral with the herbs we had, which in fact was not many. We graded the herbs from driest to wettest. Some of this was guesswork, so please don’t use this as your own planting guide – check a reputable permaculture guide. I’ve indicated the direction of north and again, I feel a disclaimer is needed that our plantings are based on the happy ignorance of amateurs. We may or may not be right about this – only growing time will tell. I’ve left room for a bay plant at the top which is good for sheltering the lower herbs. I’ll be adding more herbs to the spiral in future.
In building terms, I’m sure if our structure was the size of Newgrange, it would be condemned. I think we’ll have to watch out for some boulder avalanches over the next week while it settles into place. Also, we can’t protect the spiral from Gandalf, who unlike the wise mature wizard of his namesake, is our mad grey kitten who we have just discovered, has a penchant for climbing spiral herb gardens.
We couldn’t have built this spiral (nor could Gandalf have climbed it) without these sites:
Mitra Ardon’s – How to build a herb spiral
http://www.mitra.biz/howto_herbspiral.htm
This site, which shows a photograph or a well grown spiral (sometimes drawings aren’t enough):- http://www.gardenguides.com/articles/herbspiral.htm
Australian permaculture: more than organic gardening
http://www.kavenga.com/subperma/permaculture%20featfive.htm
There are a huge amount of sites out there and these are just the quickest I found that gave me the groundings to start our herb spiral.
Angela Brown
on 5th June (World Environment Day) 2005
Close encounter
Last Sunday, for 20 David-Attenboroughesque minutes I held a dragonfly (or rather it clung to me) on my hand. I watched as this frail thing dried its wings while perched on my hand and put its trust in my clumsy human hands . It has been resting on the net over our olive tree when my hand came into its life.
It was hard to tell whether it was deliberately moving its wings to dry them, or whether just the breath of wind made them move involuntary. They fluttered like long grasses in a storm. How can wings so fragile withstand such gentle violence?
It’s stick-like abdomen was resting on the tip of my fingers, passing on the vibrations of its tiny wings. The sensation of buzzing through my fingers was the same sensation as when a purring cat rests in chin on your neck – its like communication on another plane, felt and not heard.
I’d never seen a dragonfly this close and it struck me, that although they’re not related – just how like a fly it seemed. However, flies are associated with maggots bacteria and germs and I don’t think many people remark at how beautiful they are when you get down the macro level. Yet here is a fly-like head, fly-like legs and even a fly-like face and eyes, and yet so delicate and beautiful.
I tried to convince it to move off from my fingers onto a tree, but in the end I convinced myself that it’s tiny legs clinging to my fingers were intentional. It didn’t mind spending the dragonfly equivalent of a few years in my company. Maybe it grew old in my company.
I watched as time passed by and it moved on, straight up into the air – hidden against the sky before I even had time to wave.
Almost icebergs
My favourite time of day is twilight. You know, the only time of day when the worlds of possibility and imagination seem nearest. Tonight was beautiful. February usually isn’t this rainy and cool and sunsets are usually fiery and dramatic – the hot colours of a hot day — and yet here we are on a night filled with autumnal promise. The green man seems restless with the seasons this year.
From my house, I can see down to the sea across the vineyards about 10 kilometres away. Ten minutes ago, everything was still, except for loud happy verses of frog-song. It is as though they are singing the rains in. Gully winds are starting to pick up. They seem to come from all compass points and meet us in their epicentre on our hill. The trees across the hills beyond, still wet from earlier showers, shake their wet leaves sparkling like daytime stars.
I notice the clouds next. Bits break off and float, but with life, they seem sentient as though purposefully directed as they scud happily across the hill. Fragments seem to be falling lower, nearly touching the tree-tops on our hill, little cloud arms reaching out to catch a leaf or two. A black cockatoo flies over, keening and I hear sea mists and rain in its voice – they sound like old spirits.
The southerly sky darkens and fades in a gradient towards the north. I feel as though I’m standing on the precise shadow-fall of the sun on the earth – in between day and night and two weather systems. To the north, the blue sky hangs clear – the clouds speed towards the blank canvas of the north, like a loose iceberg seeking open sea.
Shards of bark that have been shed from trees scuttle along the ground sounding like footfall of hidden denizens. The trees shake their leaves in the air looking like mad tambourinists. My hair curls around my face, and I let nature tousle it into a basketwork of eternal knots as remembrance of this unexpected cool February twilight.
Dizzy winds get crazy now, lifting up bark and leaves and dancing whirling dervishes by my feet. I step out from under the veranda to meet the rain and turn around to be hugged by a rainbow arcing over the sky behind me.
Then a low growl, almost indiscernible but perhaps thunder or maybe the hill sighing in content about what now falls on its dry skin. Rain in dust-like motes falls across the hills. Pushed horizontally by the winds as though someone is sifting cloud down on the land.
The seeking cry of the black cockatoo sounds again, a herald – the rain piles in. I retreat as the sun sets on this February day when summer held its breath and let autumn in.
There be dragons
For a person, who until about 6 years ago had never really noticed even one dragonfly, I recently seem to be having beautifully close encounters with what are my favourite insects. I am generally fascinated by insects and even the ugly ones and the ones that can kill you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not inviting cockroaches to live in my house or anything (unless they pay rent!) – but I do get excited by bugs and beetles. I’ve done the “white sheet” thing where you hang a white sheet on your clothes line at night, shine a light on it and watch the freaks arrive! It’s great fun! In fact, the only thing I haven’t done is eat one, at least, not intentionally.
I digress. I can’t remember ever noticing dragonflies in Australia, and it wasn’t until I was in the UK and found those winged dryads living in my garden, that I developed my fascination. I used to spend time trying to convince them to land on me. I must have looked dumb – holding out my hands like a would-be-landing strip. It wasn’t the most scientific excursion into dragonfly observation, but then again, I’m not a scientist (something I keep forgetting obviously).
That’s right, dragonflies and I are purely an emotional/spiritual connection. When I think of my favourite places there’s probably a dragonfly in there somewhere. By nature, I’m a symbolist (the Yeatsian in me) and the dragonfly symbol is pretty strong in my house space.
You can never have too many dragonflies I’m guessing. Do they plague? They are so short lived that I can’t imagine that. I’ve seen hundreds at a time, dizzying me as they crazied around the cool forests in the late evening sun in Tamil Nadu in India, and yet still – a single dragonfly can make me feel at the door of wonder. I step through ever time , hypnotising myself by watching sunlight sparkle on their wings – the pattern reminding me of the solar panels you see on solar garden lights.
So, longingly I hoped that we’d have a healthy population of dragonflies here, now that we’ve moved here on the hill. Of course, they are here and maybe they know I want them around. It took me 4 years in the UK to find a dragonfly at rest long enough to take a photograph, and now I have photographed four within the space of less than three months.
Not only that, but today, behind the chicken sheds, at twilight, near to the water-lilly covered dam, a newly emerged dragonfly flew past and settled on the grass by my feet when I was walking along with my camera. So delicate and so transparent – such a random meeting with a tiny frail not-yet-straight- body. All worlds came close in those moments as I watched this fleeting short life beginning.