Unstuffed: A Few Things

Friday, June 3, 2011

A Few Things

Salad in a basket: peppercress, chives, dandy greens, waterleaf, spinach, kale, violet leaf, bishop's weed, sorrel, clover leaf.

Here's how my polyculture, cherry tree bed is starting to look after getting it started in early May. On the shady side I've planted chickweed, and another attempt at cleavers, we'll see if this one takes. On the sunny, south-west side, I transplanted yarrow, sage and St. John's wort.

After such an incredible turn out for the weed walk last month, I decided to run a longer, more in-depth workshop later this month. You can find the details about it here:
Wild Food in the City: Urban Foraging for Food and Medicine

I also created a public document of what I think are some important Principles of Ethical Foraging and Wildcrafting.

I'm really excited for the Fletcher Wildlife Garden's Annual Native Plant Sale tomorrow! I missed the last two years. Here's a list of what they will have for sale. There's quite a few edible and medicinal plants that I would like to add to my garden.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

3 comments:

Amanda said...: Thanks for posting this document with the accompanying resources. I was wondering how to get started and hopefully this should help. I would have loved to make it to the Wild Edibles Walk, but I was working at the Landsdown market. If you do another, not on a Sunday, I hope to be there.; June 4, 2011 at 6:45 PM
sherry said...: Hi Amber,
I have a silly question but where did you get your straw? I have a small urban garden in Westboro, I've pulled out all the grass and planted vegetables and flowers like crazy but don't have anything good to mulch with. Would you recommend straw? I don't really care for garden centre bags of mulch...; June 5, 2011 at 2:05 PM
Amber said...: Amanda, I'm so glad you found the info helpful! The resources listed are definitely a good place to start, very accessible and filled with loads of good info.

If all goes well with the workshop coming up, I was thinking of doing another one in the fall, during root season. I won't schedule it for a Sunday!

That's a great question Sherry. Not silly at all! I actually got our straw by doing a search on usedottawa and kijiji. Quite a few farmers had listings there.

Alternatively, you could ask around at the farmer's market.

Straw is much better than hay, as hay contains a lot of weed seeds.

You might also want to look up lasagna gardening or sheet mulching for ways to use other materials.

Good luck with your garden. It sounds lovely!; June 6, 2011 at 8:52 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali