Stick weaving in Helen's garden

It's near the end of winter and we pruned and wove the mulberry just in time before new growth. Some inspiration from seeing Patrick Dougherty's work at the Children's Museum in Portland Oregon, but more modest objectives. From this angle you can see the tree is hard pruned and bare, but you can't see the way the tunnel behind the Queen of Liberty (beanie and wool dress for winter) continues to be shaped up.

Photo below: the vertical sticks of mulberry are hard, last year's prunings. They are fixed to the gate by wire. We needed to lift the height of gates and fence in the front yard to contain our precocious promiscuous poodle.
The lateral sticks of mulberry were pruned two days before these photos and Helen has woven them together. They are at this point flexible, will dry hard.

a work in progress

and another work in progress, by Xiao Ran (Mike) the Beijing WWOOFer.

Mosaics in sand, work of wwoofer Mike

Everyone with a house will have some corner garden, under a roof line, where it is difficult to get anything to grow.

Helen had two next spaces like that. Also Helen was concerned not to have wet garden growth up against the house, encouraging pests including termites.

So with a plan, we assembled our collected tiles and broken plates and we entrusted the project to Xiao Ran (Mike), wwoofer from Beijing, after some basic training in mosaic work.

We knew Mike was clever, we knew he had never done a project like this before. The results are wonderful.

Mosaic work is interesting because it allows you to play with shapes and forms. It allows you to smash plates. You shift into a creative mind-space. As design develops, you begin to see more and more what is possible. And Mike's creative mind ran and ran. Imagination! Discipline. Hard work too. Place pieces, step back, look, have a coffee, look again, pick up most of it, rearrange, and then again...

This work is not concreted in. Earth and weeds were removed to a depth of about 75mm (3in), cloth put down flat on the ground as a weed barrier, then sand... and the mosaic pieces laid on top. Rain will alter this, as will wind, birds and lizards. Really part of the garden, subject to change.

Thanks Mike! 

click on any photo to enlarge all

 We used a lot of tiles but we still have some more.

in the middle, a few harvested passionfruit and macadamia nuts. 

Photography offers some opportunities like mosaic work, assembling forms.

Magic in Helen's garden

We had two house minders to cover absence for five days, they were actually with us almost a month. Kimberly and Jeremie from Montreal became WWOOFers you dream of: excellent company, imaginative, happy at all sorts of work... family.

They very happily took on a creative project for Helen, to demolish and replace a sink base in the backyard, that which I had constructed in 2013 (with doubts evident from Helen and two French WWOOFers, David and Nicholas in photo below) had succumbed to its own ridiculousness...

The way it was. 

Jeremie is a landscaper who had done a lot of dry stone wall construction, but had never worked with mortar. He built the required structure. Kim's experience has been as an office administrator. She approached the business of making mosaics with an intense focus on the intricate, a delicate sense of style and ... and a discovered enthusiasm for hitting tiles with a hammer!

We used some of the demolished blocks, some wood on hand, and some old bricks we had.
Dennis did some slave work cleaning bricks.

The mosaic work was designed and laid out on tables and then covered with 'Contact'
- clear plastic sheet with one side adhesive, generally used for covering school books.
This was then cut into liftable manageable sized pieces and after putting tile adhesive on the vertical mortar bed,
the sections of tile were put in place, leaving the Contact sheet in place until tiles firmly stuck..

Some special items, like this half cup, need placement last,
for which a little polyurethane glue is used

To grout, you put a bog of the grout, toothpaste consistency or thicker, on the tiles,
after the tile adhesive has set very firmly. Rub carefully in and clean off the tile surfaces.
Compare (two photos back) with how this end looks before grout.

And a week later, some more photos.

We still have to grout the right hand side, Kim's mosaics. With light coloured grout, yet to be organised...
Already it has withstood high heat and storm.
We think we will probably leave the top without tiles, along with some areas with just mortar or bare brick.

Detail of Kim's work. Fine and light... we will have to get the grout right! 

The rooster has been hanging around Helen's front door since being found years ago, now has a proud situation.
Jeremie's work adopts a theme from Helen's mosaics elsewhere, which feature turtles.
Storm has sprayed sand on lower tiles, landscaping of ground still to come.

Jeremie's work continues up and across, from sea below to sun and birds.
The wiry lizard was a gift to Helen several years ago, finally has a fitting home.
The live lizards think the space below this sink is an excellent social gathering place,
with water run-off and pond below.

 Here's the whole structure again. Thanks Kim and Jeremie!

Summer arriving at Helen's garden

 Only a few weeks ago, Helen was up in the mulberry, artfully crafting the launch tube for the Queen of Freedom.

but a few weeks later the artful craftiness has been swallowed by spring growth.


There are several lessons and learnings:

• we despair of the mulberry producing good fruit. Despite its label when purchased, it's not really fruitful... but by golly it's brilliant at vegetative growth;
• The pruning of the upperworks needs followup now in summer, when it's not raining, as it is right now, every day;
• Viewed from above, from the front veranda, third photo, you can see that some under-pruning soon will provide a valuable summer shade space.

DETAIL: In the third photo, you will also see a trap to catch Indian Myna birds. The problem is discussed here, in a 2004 report. The problem has grown since then. This YouTube link is to a discussion of how a cage (of slightly different design) works. We have a problem with getting Mynas into this cage. While a lot of mynas come round, especially when there are chickens here and expectation of stealing chicken feed, the dominant bird at Helen's house is the vicious pied currawong. To get Myna birds into the trap we put dried dog food in the  entrance. While the currawong is boss of the garden, no one gets to the dog food before the currawong. They have no concern for mynas going for chicken food, the currawongs are meat eaters.

Helen's garden is sloping. The soil is rich dark red, volcanic. This is a contrast to the soil at my place, which is shallow and sits on top of a sandstone plateau, through which water is easily lost... mulch and development of a depth of good humus soil requires work. At Helen's place, this single dig with a fork reveals a very different, richer soil:

Which makes everything flourish. 

Helen's garden is packed with plants. 

With the addition this morning of two guavas and a kiwiberry, Helen advises that the fairly small garden now contains 31 fruit trees, bushes and vines, plus a macadamia nut which has its first small crop evident now. 

For the rest there are many herbs and vegetables, seedling trays and a chook house and run (the beach house of the chooks shown at my place, previous story. They need to come to Helen's soon to give their space at my house a rest.

Help today in planting (and shifting locations of a blood orange and a quince because of their sun needs) from Japanese WWOOFers Kanna and Daisuke, ballet dancer/model and engineering graduate... so well equipped! 

For the rest of this entry, a quick walk around:

Up from the street

Along the street

We have difficulty getting the thyme and other herbs established in these front steps,
because this is west facing and very hot in the afternoon.

This needs a bit of a trim. Helen has developed a keyhole in this front hedge,
through which you can see lemons and a chilli bush.

This garden above, beside the steep driveway, has begun to thrive since, with the help of WWOOFer Tatsuya we built a swale in January. 

Water previously just ran away. Now it enters the ground up there below the (grown larger) grapefruit and is retained in the soil below.

The swale is very simple. Most discussion online is about huge swales. But micromanagement of water is very easy. 
Rules 1-10:Get the water under the ground! There is no Rule 11.

Here is a photo from January.

This single passionfruit vine extends over ten metres along the side fence and also feeds the neighbours.
You don't pick passionfruit, you collect them when they drop.
A pleasant thing to do after coming home.
Necessary also to check downhill for the runaways!

healthy cuttings of prostrate thyme, for further reducing grass areas...

on right, banana passionfruit

 Because the house is cut into a slope, there is an area of concrete and a brick wall embankment behind the house, imposing on design, but whose severity of look is reduced by plant vigour.

Helen's garden, January 2014

 click on any photo to enlarge all

Helen's garden has become luxuriant this summer.

• In part because the garden reaches towards maturity, more complex, more edge, diverse light and shade.
• In part because more work, more feed, more water. Water supply assisted by installation of water tanks and pipes and taps to distribute rain water from the roof.
• In part because more design work, more shaping of the earth with swales, which get water into the ground rather than running away off the sloping block. 

This is an urban engineer's view of swale building. Ours are simpler, simply troughs along a contour, more or less, above a garden or potential garden, to catch water running downhill and put it down where roots can hurry down to find it.

There is one departure from organic principles which will be evident in photos: limited use of glyphosate to control kikuyu at lawn edges. Seven years ago the garden was an even slope entirely covered in kikuyu, which constantly sends runners more than a metre ahead, underground, in seeking to dominate territory. Surface weeding of it of little value, also spreading seed. You will see the grassed area, the kikuyu area, much diminished.

Here are some photos taken on 7 January. Also a couple of photos 15 November with WWOOFer Tatsuyasan, who did lots of work on the swales.

Also, at the end, an accidental movie in the front yard 7 January. Taken ay 8am, this also includes the voices of rainbow laurikeets, feasting on Callistemon [bottle brush] flowers.

Here photos with captions:

This is the view from front steps, away westerly to hills and towards Kangaroo Valley. Callistemon trees with red flowers on left, hear rainbow laurikeets feasting there in movie below.

This is virtually the same photo, exposure to show foreground of garden, shadow line of house roof, sun behind house behind camera, 8am

This from the same step. looking to right. The chip on ground is area of slope levelled three years ago. The mulberry tree throws new branches up two or three metres each year, is pruned and placed in traction to provide increasingly more recreational afternoon shade in this garden area.

This slope beside the front driveway, facing west, has a history of being dry and killing anything planted in it. With great assistance from Tatsuyasan, we built a very simple swale, incorporated peat moss and compost into soil and added lots of seed from old seed packets. Into the swale we chopped nutritious trunks of banana from the backyard.  This photo 15 November, 8 weeks ago.

Approximately same location, see chook, photo 7 January. The sunflower population much increased this year by purchase of 5kg sunflower as bird seed for $8. Many of the plants potentially food productive, many as living or choppable mulch. New growth to citrus not so evident as have been pruned recently.

Actually a view from the backyard down the drive. With that huge passionfruit vine doing well now on north facing fence, it's possible to get out of the car and pick half a dozen passionfruit from the ground any day. Passionfruit are best picked up off the ground daily, rather than picked from vine. Nearer the camera a loganberry grows on the same netting, but is making a slower start, more in shade of house.

A garden is constantly developing. These mosaic steps have been in development for three years now!

In a busy garden there is a constant search for niches. To the right is a swale-aided garden bed, end of cauliflower crop evident, to the left three tamarillo trees, seedlings from Dennis's garden, which will do better when they get out of the shade of the fence. Very resilient and productive in this climate, likely to produce thousands of fruit over a few years of life.

from near point of last photo, looking back to house, via the Queen of Freedom as named by Hong Kong WWOOFer Julie, summer-swimmer clad by Helen, past one of the three paulownia slab gates, timber from former property at Reedy Creek, to work and front veranda.

Potting up these seedling papayas, seed from very tasty fruit eaten several weeks ago. Started in a mix of peat moss and the wonderful compost from zoo near Dennis's place. Note the bush basil seedling which has emerged from a hole at the bottom of the big planter. Wonderful herb which even grows from concrete cracks here, no doubt the seed was in the trough when I put the soil in it. The new pots contain peat moss, wetted and watered afterwards with a watering can soup of a couple of tablespoons of aged, composted horse manure in water, the manure from roadside purchase, left in bag for a long time in the sun, moist with seed hopefully long digested.

Mosaic work on table in shade of mulberry. Note goose in cage, one of the traction devices hung in tree to make branches stoop to provide shade. Helen's turtle mosaics middle of this photo and in last photo, Dennis's on sides in this photo. Every element in a permaculture garden serves multiple functions. The mulberry prunings are great as garden stakes. And–noting again the mosaics and other frivolous elements–it becomes worth doing if you pay attention to the aesthetics of fun.

Before we leave the front garden, tour again in the accidental movie! Click on the arrow doover between HD and vimeo for full screen viewing. Take carsick tablets if necessary  :-)

 

 ... and now to the luxuriant back garden.

This photo taken by the giraffe (photo above) looking uphill and east.

 The concrete living space behind the house lends itself to pots

... note the water tank down near the lion, some landscape work to come. Two tanks on this wall collect from roof; water pumped to tank at back fence, top of block, from where gravity fed to five outlets front and back yards. Also note the wall of herbs (and bush basil from concrete under table) and strawberries, also the Chinese elm, top right,  planted 1.5 years ago, needing constant shaping, providing increasing protection from harsh sun.

The arch, photo above, supports beans, passionfruit and pumpkin. Some shade and overwatering causing some leaf unhappiness on pumpkin, but if not set back a bit this plant might cover the house by next month!

View above the arch, looking north. As mentioned, some roundup used to control kikuyu. Nice slates from council tip, as also wire and steel supports for beans (and pumpkin)

view from the north. The fancy umbrella busted by Gerringong's notorious winds, function being overtaken by the Chinese elm. Fish cleaning sink in foreground. Back left is a self-sown shrubby wattle, behind the sunflowers. This is about to bloom, after which it will be cut back very hard, to make garden space, also because this is how we manage wattle in the garden. Like legumes, acacias fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, but where legumes lower pH, the wattles advantageously raise pH. And the prunings make good nitrogenous mulch, while the reduction of plant mass above ground causes death of comparable root mass below ground, adding to soil carbon and releasing much nitrogen deep in the soil the plant has ploughed.

Backyard swale, his labour produced it, obscured by Tatsuyasan, 15 November last, feeding water runoff to this new garden with some flowering annuals just planted. See wire mesh for beans, behind.

Approximately same location 7 January. Chicory went mad in swale, now about to flower, petunias thrive, lettuce finished; beans climbing, almost to 2 metres behind.

Still waiting for bananas to finish, compare 22 October. Slower ripening provides more taste than most commercial Queensland bananas, provided the season allows the ripening to finish. Well on track to good result this year.

...and finally, where's there's a niche, plant tamarillos en masse. Banana passionfruit to left.

Well, now we have a benchmark for the future. Gardens change, that's much of the fun, excitement from surprises and learning.