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Paying The Rent
I watch many people walking past my house as I sit on my verandah. And every time I see a First Nations person passing my house I am acutely aware of the fact that I have benefited from the theft of their land. I live in a big old house that amply accommodates me and […]
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Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes have been alternately the bane of my existence and a wonderful windfall. I bought a sweet potato plant and, paying no heed to the saleswoman in the nursery who said, ‘they take over everything’, I put it in the ground. Two years later I had a garden covered in sweet potato, coming up […]
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Paola’s Faerie Garden
I love seeing what other people have done in their gardens and one I admire in particular is that of a friend, Paola. Like me, she is a champion tip-shop forager; unlike me, she actually gives those trinkets a new life decorating her beautiful garden, instead of letting them pile up in a back room […]
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Years of Black Plastic
With hindsight, I realise that weed-mat may be a ‘solution’ favoured by those feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced: overwhelmed by weeds and under-resourced in time and physical capacity. It seems like a good idea because you think your backbreaking weeding days are over, but in fact they are only just beginning. My experience with weed-mat was […]
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Gravel Regret
This was my ‘seems like a good idea at the time’ phase, though I still have no idea what madness persuaded me to smother parts of my garden in plastic. (Actually yes, I do… see the next post). During my first summer, before all the drought, we had a lot of rain and I couldn’t […]