Categories for Gardening
Sunday afternoon
This Sunday afternoon i worked in the garden. I helped clearing out the round square in front of the garden and the sides. So many plastic wraps are thrown to this side. I know, i didn’t used to be so into this myself when i was younger. I smoked and i am sure i threw away cigarettes. But still, i was careful my whole life.
Last week when i walked past the bridge center down the street i talked with the two people standing out there and smoking. I pointed at the twenty or thrity cigarette points lying on the street. Why is there no ashtray standing outside. Someone will clear it up, one of them said. A way to move aside responsibility to someone else. Not good enough.
Such a little thing. So many little things all together.
I hope you have a nice week. Do good things! Believe in yourself!
Hmm, am i saying this to myself? Or to you? Not sure to be honest. Doesn’t really matter.
In the garden
Working in the garden is a welcome addition to my life. I started working there April last year and met many new people there. Most, if not all, with the same attitude towards living in this world as me. Not buying too much. Eating as good as possible. Not too much meat. Reading the news with a critical eye. Enjoying life as much as possible!
I want to thank everyone working in or visiting the garden. The people i wave to when they walk by and i catch their eyes. I have no idea for how much longer i will work there, but this past year was a good learning experience for me and an excellent time with the garden itself and the other people working there.
Salute!
Some more photos i made over the last weeks. I did publish a few on facebook. I also want to show them here.
A walk in the cold
Another cold day. I went out for a walk through the Kralingse Bos. This week i had looked up gardens on the other side of it. I planned to visit them.
The view on Rotterdam, with the partly frozen Kralingse Plas, the birds all huddled up in the few bits of clear water, the whiteness of the trees and the sky, the low hanging sun shining was magnificent.
I visited the Venhoeve. This is a collection of separate allotments, mostly grass and flower gardens. Since it was freezing cold, there was nobody around to talk to. I went on.
Further along are the Educational Municipal Gardens Prins Alexander. Mainly school gardens. Quite a large area really. I was lucky, since there was somebody there. We talked a bit. The man, maintainer of the gardens used to work in the Kralingse Bos. Cutting cost did come up in our conversation a couple of times. I will be sad if these school gardens will be let go. Not sure what i can do about this. If ever i got loads of money, setting up a foundation for these gardens will be high on my list of things i want to do.
A lovely great garden. Cold, yes. Nothing growing there, everything covered in frost, sure. But still, everything seems to be waiting for the first spring days in a couple of months, and everything is preparing itself almost unseen to burst into leaves and flowers and fruits and vegetables.
Published on January 19, 2017 at 6:00 by Ellen
A chat
Last week, on New Year’s Eve, i had a talk with Ronald. I have said the same thing to him times before, and i said it once more: I will be famous! Soon! So he said aha! i will bring some paper and a pen, so you can put your autograph on them ten times. Last Friday i reminded him of that. So today he did bring some paper and a pen with him. I did bring some paper with me today as well, anyway. So ten autographs he got! Dated.
I gave all the others an autograph as well. That was a quick decision. Not really thoroughly thought out. Someone commented on it, at the end of the afternoon. Hmmm. He questioned my strange behaviour of giving my autographs away. I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Without bringing the world into it. But i did say i would become famous in the next couple of weeks. Which is more me saying something so i could believe in it. To get used to it maybe? I also said that having that talk with him at that time was helping me.
It is strange. How each and everyone of us is living in his or her own world. How each and everyone of us is believing something to be true. We all need to take care of ourselves. Nobody else will help us. We all need to work. We all need to earn money. To pay the rent. Or mortgage. To pay for food. To pay for internet access. To pay for energy.
Now, i got my work. This website. This website is the center of my life. What i do here means the world to me. These five posts a week, published at six CET in the morning, they are so important to me.
But for me it is very difficult to tell the whole story from start to finish. I lose the structure so fast, get distracted in an eye blink. But i do see the structure rising up from all my posts. To me it makes perfect sense. Because i know all the posts i have made here, in the past two years.
I don’t where i will end. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how his or her own life will end. Nobody. I know right now i’m pulling things into the extreme. A bit. A bit much. But i am forcing myself to get something out of me. Something i need to say, or do, or show. Of course i know i can fail. Terribly. But still, i live in the Netherlands, one of the safest countries in the world, for now anyway. I won’t die. So i’m going ahead.
I leave with this photo i made last Friday. It does show the garden and the people all in their own world. And each head has its own space. I love this photo. I hope you do too.
A jumble of a day
Tuesday is the day i usually go to the market. This Tuesday i had to empty my compost bucket at the garden first. I stayed for a bit longer and made some photos. One photo of the Christmas tree standing besides the greenhouse. No idea how it got there! With the one shiny garland nonchalantly hanging from it.
It is cold. A blue sky. Lovely.
I’m surprised by the amount of vegetables growing in the garden still. It is December! And still we seed plants, spinach, endive, lettuce, purslane, chervil, amsoy. I did ask about the cabbages. Last year though they were eaten by caterpillars. So they were not planted that much this year.
I do know we lost many veggies this year to rats, the corn, beets, carrots, tomatoes. All eaten by rats. So next year my attempt to fight the rats is planting catmint. I did read that rats don’t like catmint. Very different from cats, who absolutely adore it. So yes, i will put a plant on my balcony too!
I brought the empty compost bucket home and went straight on to the market. I still look at people’s faces a lot. Some react almost surprised when they see me looking at them, some don’t see me looking at all. Most wrapped up in their own world. Their own stuff. Their own smartphone. It is these choices we all make. What we think is important. What we want. What we buy. What we throw away.
Yesterday i helped a lady who was trying to get an old chair out of a large litter box standing outside. I helped her with pulling out the chair. Once i was done i looked into the box to see if there was more. I saw some empty plant buckets. I pulled one out. Broken. Another one. Also broken. Another one. Whole. A woman past by and said to me “you sure you want that? It is from a weed plantation“.
I don’t mind that. It did make me look a bit more careful at all the stuff in the litter box and yes, i could see it.
I wasn’t sure what post i would make today. I was thinking about my page on Patreon. Still standing empty there. It is not that you get something extra. It is simply a gesture of niceness, a gesture to see what i am trying to do here and giving me a thumbs up, so to speak.
Anyway, i will add the Patreon link to the footer of this website. Gotta try something, don’t i?
Published on December 21, 2016 at 6:00 by Ellen
A gardening meeting and a celeriac apple salad
Today, Wednesday, i had a gardening meeting. I felt more in my place than the first gardening meeting i had, around six months ago.
There was a basic dinner before, with the request for anyone participating to bring something extra. I made a celeriac and apple salad, with half an onion and chopped walnuts added. I had also made my own mayo, with some yoghurt and mustard and a lemon added. It tasted really nice. Very fresh and zesty. The raw celeriac finely sliced on my mandolin. The apples sliced the same way. The mayo homemade. Hmmm.
So i got home just yet, a bit later than i had planned. Of course.
That is it for today. Bye bye!
Gardening in education
Since April this year, 2016, i have been working in the Peace Garden. I got to know the people already working there, first and foremost Daniel and Rutger. But also many other people working there, other people making a film in Europe and Asia about urban agricultural projects. I try to wave as much as i can at people walking past and looking down on the garden. Sometimes there is room for a small chat. People stop and enter the garden and talk with us. I love it.
I have also made a couple of walks to other gardens.
A walk in Rotterdam: the Essenburgsingel
A walk in Rotterdam: from Marconiplein to Dijkzigt
A walk in Rotterdam: the Old North
A walk in Rotterdam: the Oude Noorden and Blijdorp
A walk in Rotterdam: Feijenoord
Making these walks was a good combination of walking, which i love, getting to know this town a bit better, in which i have lived for the past thirty years, and getting to know the gardens, especially the vegetable gardens and allotments. In some gardens i met some of the people working there. We had a casual talk usually, but it felt good. It was good.
I never lived in a house with a garden. Not when i lived with my parents, and not when i lived on my own. I didn’t miss it terribly much, no, but my experience has changed me. I see now what i have missed. The simple knowledge of gardening, maintaining the garden, the ground, the earth. Having a compost heap, eating what you are growing yourself; i love it. And now i do gain the knowledge i could have gotten so much earlier.
I started to think about education. Especially primary education. For me personally, i loved school. I loved learning, i loved mathematics, chemistry, physics. I loved to learn how to read, how to add and subtract numbers. I never had any difficulty with any of those subjects. The only difficulty i had was with languages, which to me were very illogical and mystifying subjects which i dropped as soon as possible. I did have swimming at school. I liked that too. And sports. Which i didn’t like. But never did i have any gardening lessons. No cooking lessons. Nothing so practical. One thought did pop up, schools should have a vegetable garden. Communal or single, doesn’t really matter. Kids should learn about plants growing, about the earth feeding the plants, about compost brewing into usable earth with enough nutrients for plants. The simple facts of everyday. Which of course today are not so simple anymore.
A few weeks ago i came across a post on facebook of all places about Henk Oosterling. He was one of the participants on the special evening for Sexposition, the exhibition Annemarie and me organized in 1992. Oosterling has started a project on a primary school, combining judo, philosophy, cooking lessons and gardening to be taught to children. This all is combined under the name Rotterdam Vakmanstad Skillcity. This project is trying to function in the world of rules and regulations of primary schools. Outside of this experiment i read about rules forbidding primary schools to hire cooks, only money is provided for educational staff. (Source: Rotterdam Vakmanstad als voorbeeldmachine). I don’t know the ins and outs of this project and i don’t know much about current primary education, but this does worry me.
I do find this project Rotterdam Vakmanstad/Skillcity very interesting. On the site there are many books, articles and videos linked.
A new book written by Oosterling is released recently: Waar geen wil is, is een weg (Where is no will, is a way).
Published on December 1, 2016 at 6:00 by Ellen
Storm
A grey Sunday
Today, Sunday, it was a clouded day. Not wet no. But cold and grey. Only a few people turned up at the garden. It was still good. Further on we went with the wood chips. I filled a path between the rows. Soto filled the bit at the compost heap and the newly dug path at the side, between the hop and the newly planted raspberry plants. It was warming. I did keep on my fleece sweater, but it did get warm while working. I do feel my body right now, yes. Nothing that hurts much, it’s a good feeling.
Last week many thoughts crossed my mind. I finally went through the party program of the Party for the Animals, Partij voor de Dieren. I still need to read it more carefully. But i do think this party is closest to my own thoughts about our planet, about us humans, about all the animals and plants living here. Our current economic system is too much focused on making a profit. We humans, we are clever, we are knowledgeable. We have our science, our desire to learn everything about all the details of life, of the inorganic world around us, of the universe and the stars surrounding us. But i do think we need to learn how to control ourselves. How to take care of ourselves and everything around us on this still beautiful planet.
So yes, teaching our children about nature, having them learn by working in a small garden themselves, is one thing that crossed my mind. There are already schools doing this, there are already people working on getting this done and working. I’m also thinking about schooling older children and young adults get. I’m not sure, but i do think it is too much focused on making children learn skills they could use in our current working environment, not make them learn their own specific skills and broadening them with the help of their teachers and other students. Make work less taxable and make profit of companies more taxable. Return our working culture back to a more regional area, make all farmers work ecological, make communal vegetable gardens all over the country. Those are simply first thoughts in my head. Nothing is fixed yet, and so many things are already being worked on by so many people.
This is all so much a bunch of loose ideas, tumbling over each other. It’s good, thinking these thoughts. They will settle down a bit more over time. I’m happy i am thinking them.
More later. Salute!
Published on November 14, 2016 at 6:00 by Ellen