Busy and not so Busy

We have been busy and not so busy here at Dream Seed Farms. I took a few days off to watch some movies and generally loaf around. It was cool, but once I ran out of stuff not to do, I took up farming again. After all, I am retired. And we live on an island. Things happen on island time, at a much more relaxed pace...or so I have convinced myself!

We borrowed our friend's toy pick-up truck and found a patch of susuki to mulch our garden. Most of it grew twice as tall as me, so it was fairly easy to harvest a heap of it.

Harvesting susuki, a wild grass alternative to straw

Soon-to-be mulch for our first mandala garden

Actually, we got the susuki a few weeks ago before I was bitten by the lazybug. Since then we have been working on upgrading the amenities of our garden, all while our veggies get lush and green. All that time spent inside was a really good chance to let my designs incubate. I think I hatched a decent plan...

Rain catchment at our compost bin

These should fill after a good day of rain...

...or sooner. Ya never know!

 

Shuckin' bamboo for compost bin cover

Bamboo Loom?

Verticle. It's the new Horizontal.

I only missed one course, but fixed it pretty easily

Not bad for my first time weaving bamboo, or anything for that matter

Let's see if it fits

Before long the bamboo will totally match the beige sun-bleached wood

Let's see those crows get through this...

At our first Permaculture course a while back, we learned that as soon as more than one person gets involved in a garden, there will be more than one way to do things, and eventually a separate garden will sprout up for each person. Sure enough, we started with some basically rectangular beds and then made our first mandala garden. Form there, creative differences fostered the development of a second mandala. We are amenable adults, and hopefully cordial mandala neighbors. Jesting aside, the double mandala is a sweet design, and we are even planning an herb spiral (stay tuned!) for the common ground between our two plots.

Michie's mandala and a pile of rocks for a future herb spiral

A woman after my own heart...and definitely after that sukanpo!

I am taking off for an earthbag house workshop later today. So, yesterday I wanted to get another raised bed done to plant a bunch of seedlings we received. After chopping down all the weeds by hand for mulch, my usual procedure is to then dig up the more persistent sukanpo roots. This one did me in. To say nothing of my poor shovel... 

Rick: 0, Sukanpo: 1

I've read you can eat sukanpo, it has medicinal qualities, it is used as an alternative source of resveratrol (as in red grapes), and has many other fitting names like: Japanese knotweed, monkey weed, donkey rhubarb and German sausage. It is also listed among the top 100 worst invasive species in the world. I am not sure how it measures up in the greater plant kingdom, but especially in our little herbaceous fiefdom here, I would rank it...right...about... #1!