winter solstice, adjustments with raised bed and mirror

The northeast corner of my garden is a difficult place to grow, especially in (southern hemisphere, June etc) winter. There is a wooden paling fence to the north and the east, and with low sun angle, there is no light on the ground, plants here bolt quickly to seed.

I have now adopted a two pronged strategy:

1. raise the garden bed, with the raised bed away from the northern fence
2. place a mirror to add light.

Here are photos taken at 7.40am on 18 June, almost the winter solstice, shortest day. 

yes, there are tree shadows too

Sun on mirror, beginning to sweep over raised bed
(will continue to left in photo above, right in photo below as sun moves).
Old lace curtain (or net) may be used for blackbird  and bowerbird problems.
Blackbirds  are interested in macro-life (worms etc) in soil more than plants.
Bowerbirds can destroy winter leafy gardens very quickly.

the raised bed is indeed a steel sofa bed base, with chicken wire and hessian and other fabric lining,
then bark and mulch mix (see earlier entry) manures, compost and 150cm of soil from below
(chooks previously ran on this ground).
In the enlarged photo (click) you may see egg shell around bed foot to deter snails.

amazing pattern language for food foresting!

I have been conscious of the way beginning to think about a food forest leads one into complicated ideas, inspiration and adventure. But am stunned to find this:

 

... reported on the permaculture power blog, to which I have also added a link in the right column. Yes, I'm just a beginner. It is important to make a record as you begin, in my view. However naive. Geology provides some metaphorical language about learning: sometimes knowledge arrives with the explosive force of igneous rock, volcanoes and the like. More often it's a sedimentary process. History is best understood as a sedimentary process. I've long advised my children (to varying effect!) that to understand current history they need to begin the record learning the news on day one, whenever it is. So also with a blog, it can only get value as sedimentary layers are laid down. And fractured and folded and made more interesting over time, metamorphosing. The arrival of this volcano of ideas in that diagram certainly will metamorphose my mind as I get through it!

sculpture

Here I am caught, with two blogs, one general, one in relation to my immediate outdoors... embarking on a sculptural garden feature, it has to be in this blog... but my head is not divided!

When driving to Sydney airport last month, we were early and took a back road. There we found a burnt out car. We collected and took along what used to be two alloy wheels and an alloy or aluminium engine head. Here they were on a table this morning. I knew these would have scuptural value but the question was what? In fact the big piece seemed to be a human figure (upside down in photo) but my thought was that it was best to use them in a horizontal manner, like clouds.

I had a large slab of paulownia, from the property down the coast sold not long ago.

My first step today has been to place the metal objects, outline them and using a router, provide beds for them to be fixed to. The paulownia is very soft, easy to work on with the router. My idea is to stand this slab on posts in a horizontal manner, like a railway station name sign, across a recreational space from a window at the back of the house, to bring focus into the foreground and screen off the view of the windows of the house on the next block. And to add a 'room' to the garden design, to make the garden larger in mind by defining a smaller space—that's what happens in the brain.

These photos show this beginning work today. I was interrupted by two friendly visits, one of whom is in fact a great wood craftsman. I asked his thoughts on fixing the metal to the wood. He offered the sage advice that the difficulty was that the metal would expand with heat while the wood will expand when wet. This led me away from consideration of rigid water based putty towards flexible silicon material, plus plugs of two-part 'metal putty' to connect the metal pieces to fixing at the back. That is for another day; meanwhile here are photos of today's work.

This photo below, with the metal loosely in place, gives more of a view of how the cloud picture will be—or how it will be as looked up at by a very small dog! 

Questions arise as to how to deal with the rough chainsawn timber. It has interesting stains now, perhaps I should leave it uncoloured, unfinished, to weather? Perhaps just coloured silicon grout around the 'clouds'. Perhaps earthy pigments rubbed into the wood? My inclination right now, after many ideas through the day, is to avoid adding complexity.

BUT THEN HEY, AFTER LOADING THIS BLOG ENTRY,
I had another thought... what about some indigo coloured pigment, to accentuate the metal.
This is a very rough representation using the Photoshop airbrush.
"Night sky"...  click on photo to enlarge.