Balcony Garden Step 1

So finally I've decided that with our pending move, it was time I did something with our balcony!! How's that for logic?? Receiving Food Connect boxes each week has made me lazy and I want the kids to connect more to the process of growing food - besides, who knows when we'll find that perfect home?

Enter Scarlett Patrick. She's one of those strangely nice bureaucrats, while living this double life of a permacultural environmentalist... actually her professional status is Horticulturalist. She's very talented and has a wonderful history of interesting projects, like introducing Cuba to the concept of permaculture and saving them from the brink during their oil crisis a few years back. She's got lots of ideas about helping people establish home food growing, so get in touch if you're interested in talking to her. Oh and she runs a great social networking site called Brisbane Local Food.

The first meeting was based on designing the balcony garden, mainly along feng shui principles, with a permaculture-style diversity, and in line with practical matters like access to water. We're seven stories up and the balcony is narrow but long. It's east and south facing, wrapping around the two sides of our apartment, and it can get pretty windy at times, so I'm a bit worried about my plants drying out quickly. While a bit old and tired, we do get some nice sunsets and views of the Border Ranges. Here's a couple of before pictures... oh and a lovely sunset ;-)

The addict’s guide to 1938… or how to escape from oil

OK OK it's been aaaaages, but we're a busy mob - lots of ups and downs in the last few months, but we're still here! Here's something we're involved in which made it to the papers this week. Enjoy the read and we'll attempt to fill in the gaps of the past few months in the next little while!!

THE year 1938 should have a significant place in the lives of two of the world’s largest groups of addicts - two collectives which whether we like it or not, we’re more than likely a fully signed-up member to at least one of them.

1938 is the year when the founders of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement first established their very godly 12 steps to unravelling lives from the demon drink. That same year - within just a few weeks of a key meeting in the life the AA movement - US geologists struck oil in Saudi Arabia, a country which more than any other has fed the world’s addiction to cheap fuel. While one group work on a cure, another finds a wholly more substantial and pervasive substance to get addicted to. More