SPRING HAPPINESS PARTY – PART 1

September 23, 2013 1 Comment

SPRING HAPPINESS PARTY

PART 1
Come celebrate with us!

honey-comb-newspaper-recycled-sphere-ball-decorations

In a week of downpours and plummeting temperatures the weather saved up its sunshine for Saturday, and well it should for it was the Spring Happiness Party at our sharehouse! We bade people leave their winter blues at the door and dress in their spring finery for a very special garden warming party. Almost two years since our Permablitz our garden was filled with laughter and the delicate scent of climbing roses and savoury treats. No one came dressed as a squirrel or possum, but a very busy bumble bee fairy made up for it.

I’ll be the first to admit that this was an outlet for a full blown girlish childhood relapse for the three of us, crochet flowers and jasmine wreaths and all, but despite this, even the gentlemen of the house had smiles on their faces, but this might have had more to do with the icy beers than the colourful paper lanterns. And a lapse of a day into shenanigans can be endearing, where as a lapse into hello kitty bedecked bedrooms would be far more alarming. Let’s all be greatful for small mercies people!

It was the perfect place for a party.

I was proud and delighted to see earthbag garden beds, so carefully crafted to create intimate spaces, being so happily used for a myriad of little catch ups and introductions. I hope a lot of new friends were made on the day and old ones strengthened.

Jess and Carly has to be shooed from the kitchen to enjoy the day, but their efforts were appreciated by the masses. Mini quiches were washed down with pineapple punch and every inch of the house was decorated with flowers that looked amazing next to rainbow fruit skewers. My carefully monitored, food intolerance based diet, took a major fall when a chocolate mousse, dairy filled, sugar fueled, gluten glistening delight arrived, but if your going to fall you might as well fall gloriously like that! I’m only human!

More photos tomorrow, there were too many lovely ones for one post, stay tuned!

Garden

Our Permablitz Garden on BH&G

June 2, 2013 2 Comments

Jo's Permablitz Permaculture Inner City Home Garden on Better Homes & Gardens with Jason Hodges

[mm-insert-title]

better homes and gardens australia
segment on community gardens featuring
our inner city permaculture garden

For anyone who missed it here’s a link to the Better Homes & Garden’s episode featuring our inner city permaculture garden! (We’re on second, third if you count the ad) I was away hiking at Wilson’s Promontory so missed the whole thing and came home to a whole inbox of messages from friends saying “you have bees?!?! what….why????”, they obviously haven’t tasted homemade honey before, or been frustrated with unpollinated pumpkins (we permaculturists have slightly left of centre concerns don’t we?)

Here at the Desert Echo we like to spread Permaculture 1.5 minutes at a time. hee!

Easily digestible in length, I hope this segment showed people that a beautiful, productive edible garden is possible for everyone, no matter what their budget, no matter their level of inexperience. Stay tuned to see our latest design for a garden in Pascoe Vale on a tight budget that aims not only to produce enough food to keep the cash strapped host fed, but also create a lovely garden for them to relax and entertain in!

If you want to help spread the word about Permaculture send BH&G a message that you’d love to see more of it on their show!

Check out the behind the scenes photos of the filming.

Garden, Recipes

BUILDING AN EARTH OVEN PART 5 – LOOKS LIKE A COCONUT ROUGH

May 30, 2013 1 Comment

earth-oven-insulation-layer-rendering-seat-superadobe-bag

looks like a coconut rough

building an earth oven part 5

This is the stage we affectionately call the coconut rough, it’s not that attractive but inside it holds unexpected delights!

Forgive the delay between stage 4 and 5, it is oh so tempting to put your feet up once you’ve made a basic earth oven. You can cook a most mouthwatering pizza in it, so you can get lazy, putting off the insulation layer. But if you attempt to cook pizza for the masses, your first pizza and maybe your second will cook like a dream in under 5 minutes, but by the time you get to your fourth or fifth the oven cools and you start getting nasty doughy uncooked centres.

Time for the next stage! Let’s make an eski out of this mudpie!

STEP 11: MIX IT MAKE IT

Make a sludgy mix of equal parts clay and sawdust and add water until you get that nice mudpie consistency, use a shovel to chop up any clay lumps. Apply it just as you did in stage 3, no need to pack it down too hard, you want all those air pockets made by the sawdust to trap the heat inside.

STEP 12: FIRE IT BAKE IT

Then all that’s left is to light a fire to dry it out and once it’s hot enough, why not push the burning embers to side and cook a delicious wood fire pizza!? There is nothing like it! Although warning once you try it you might become a pizza snob and those second-rate takeaway ones will never do! Perhaps a good thing for the health and the hips!

STEP 13: DO IT DOOR IT

Of course if you want to get into sourdough bread baking you’ll need a door. Pizza’s cook merrily fast in a super hot oven with the door off, but bread needs too cook more slowly and evenly so you’ll need a door. The bright sparks among you would have made the door first and then built the oven around it so it fits like a dream, but that’s not how we roll here. We just grabbed some timber off-cuts and banged them together then carved it to fit. Hey, it does the job! The bread needs a cooler over so remove all the fire embers before you bake it, once the dough is in shut the door and return in 15 minutes for a mouth watering delight! But don’t be too greedy let it cool a bit first, it’s still cooking once you take it out!

Garden

Better
Homes & Gardens

May 3, 2013 5 Comments

behind the scenes of a permaculture home garden

The sky turned from white to crystal blue as a hot air balloon gently rose to greet the day. Creeping slowly above the treetops and up, up and away. Surely such clear skies and glorious golden rays of light would be a film makers dream! But not so, they piled through our door at 8:30am one by one horrified at the hot spots and wishing for overcast skies, a mini crew from Better Homes and Gardens…it was no ordinary day.

Here at The Desert Echo Permaculture Design HQ we are exicted to have our flemington permaculture garden feature as part of the Community Gardening segment on BH&G on 31st May this month! A great big shout out to the Permablitz team for suggesting us for the show.

Dylan did his very best to avoid camera time by acquiring a black eye two days before filming at Jujitsu practice (Accident or intentional? we’ll never know!) Which removed my fear of being relegated a mute nodding head in the back of every frame, to a new and far more terrifying prospect of being the main talking head! The English language (my native tongue) leaves me at the best of times, but in front of a camera! Eek! Luckily Jason Hodges, the host, and his crew were so lovely and down to earth, chatting so warmly with us between takes, it was actually an amazingly fun experience. It didn’t stop me from making some clangers, (my attempt at saying “reciprocity” a highlight), but it really was so so cool seeing how a show is made.

I hope you all tune in 4 weeks from now to show how popular Permaculture is, it would be so great for BH&G to pick it up in a big way! I might even gift you with some unintentionally terrible soundbites, hopefully some good ones to, but definitely a great close-up shot of me picking an eggplant! Hand modelling, with my gardener’s hands?…. probably not.