nurturing my spirit

i think it's great that our council provides us with 'green' bins but i've chosen not to have one and it's not because i don't have green waste because i do..in fact i have lots of it..i've chosen not to have one because i'm greedy for all the compostable material i can get my hands on..

nothing goes to waste..i have three compost piles on the go at once..two at different stages of maturity that get watered, if necessary, and dug over weekly and one that's being added to regularly..my system isn't very sophisticated though but it seems to work really well..my compost initially goes into a really large wired concertina like canvas bucket (i found it in a hard rubbish collection and cut the bottom out of it)..once it's full i lift the bucket off and move it to another spot close by..all kitchen scraps, cardboard and paper, non invasive weeds, leaves and spent vegetable material is added..i cut larger material up into smaller pieces to facilitate quicker composting..anything woody or prickly like rose prunings that's not easily compostable is cut into manageable sized pieces, tied in bundles, and stored for use as kindling..smaller stuff that's not easily tied or that's infected such as black spot and rust affected rose leaves gets put into paper bags and used as fire lighters..and the ashes from the fire then get dug into the garden..i bag invasive material such as kikuyu and 'solarise' it..a month or two in the sun and it's then ready to be cut up and used as mulch..i've hung onto the couple of buckets of soil full of the very invasive oxalis and star of bethlehem bulbs, that i've been carefully digging up, to feed to chooks but i'm still undecided whether i'll get them again or not..

solarised and cut kikuyu ready to be used as mulch

when i moved to my new house five years ago the front garden was an expanse of half dead kikuyu lawn with one camellia and the back no better..out the front instead of lawn i now have curved gravelled paths bordering beds of tall growing hybrid tea roses, herbs, and taller deciduous and non deciduous fruiting trees..the garden out the back is still a work in progress but i now have four vegetable gardens..the soil still needs lots of work even though i added trailer loads of compost in the initial stages of the garden's development and i continue to regularly add my own compost..i expect it will take many more years of work before i am happy with my soil but it will be a labour of love..

considering globally what's happening to the earth it might seem inconsequential for me to care so much about my own little bit of turf but i've found that if i don't live according to my own values, regardless of what others are doing, then i'm not at all happy with who i am..and also in looking after my soil my spirit flourishes and blooms..

papa meilland
i fell in love with this rose when i first saw it
 in the kitchen garden at heide  several decades ago