What I do on a rare free weekend
I built a rocket stove, sewed a blouse and adjusted an old skirt for which my ass had gotten too big, and (finally) seeded the potatoes. Then I biked 22 km back to the city. After that maybe I can endure another week of computer work again …
The silvery tape is of course special fireproof aluminium tape, not duct tape … The pot and the “skirt” are from my storm cooker. The grass between the tiles there (that I don’t have the heart to exterminate) is perhaps a bit of a fire hazard, but it’s pretty moist there and I was watching the stove constantly.
It turned out to be quite easy to regulate the heat. For more heat, add more sticks and push them further in, and for lower heat, use less sticks and let them burn closer to the entrance.
It was very easy to make (I got my instructions and design ideas from this post at Milkwood Permaculture), and it’s very efficient. I overdosed fuel at first, not expecting that so little was needed. One stick like the one visible in the photo at a time is enough to cook pasta quite fast. In the summer it’s nice to cook outdoors.
I bought new stove pipes for this project, but all the other materials I had already. I found the big can of vegetable oil in the street last year.
There is no photo of the resulting pasta salad with fresh champignons as well as leafy greens and herbs from my garden, because I eated it before I had a chance to document it.
My brand new piggy blouse – made after this pattern, only slightly modified.
Japanese cotton fabric with the three little pigs and the naughty little wolf … :3
I forgot to take photos of my freshly dug potato patch. I dug out trenches for the potatoes, so I can easily cover them with some more earth as they grow, for higher yields.
Let’s see if the slugs will eat the potato plants completely this year, if I can’t be there every day to feed them kitty food …
Here are some other photos from my garden instead:
Two of the tigernuts have sprouted! V*(oo)*V
Some of the other seeds have sprouted as well. It’s not completely clear in all cases what is intentional and what’s a weed. At least the accidental nettles are easy to recognise … I made the silly mistake of putting flowering nettles in the compost last year. V`(oo)´;V
This oak decided that it’s going to grow in my potential sesame/onion bed! Who am I to tell it otherwise? If it survives, that would be a quite nice place for an oak tree. It wouldn’t shade the garden plots, but it would shade the north part of the trailer a bit from the afternoon sun.
Meanwhile, the piggy bean plot is full of food already. There is of course goutweed, and now the nasturtiums are big enough so I can pick their leaves for my salads. Young fava bean leaves are edible, too.
In the center of the photo you can barely see one of the borages that are also sprouting now.
May – yay
Not much is happening here art-wise. These days, most of the time I’m slaving away at dayjobs. 🙁
Still, once or twice a week I do have time to visit my lovely garden …
Everything is so pretty and in bloom. :3
Piggy beans are growing eagerly. :3
Celebrating Mayday the hermit way
Since I just came back from Stockholm International Comics Festival, I thought I could use some solitude before working my ass off again.
So here’s a bunch of photos from my little May 1st holiday …
Morning light.
Dandelions and this annoying weed that spreads everywhere have taken over the future potato patch. Dandelions are of course edible, but I don’t really like their taste, so they will probably have to make room later on.
I sowed corn and sunflowers along the empty spot next to the fence. Unless the slugs munch them all up, maybe they can provide some shade from my neighbours’ curious eyes this year … The bushes I’ve planted there are still too small to make a diference.
Evening light, not enough to illuminate my Andy Kehoe print.
Fencing
So today Ilan helped me build a new fence in place of the old (mostly) wooden one that was totally falling apart.
We forgot to take a “before” picture, but anyway, the old fence is in a pile under the plum tree here:
Surveying the scene …
