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17 March 2010Queenstown comes to the Country. Despite my repeated warnings, good men and women from Queenstown and surrounds gardening clubs did come south to view our orchard garden at 20 Thames Street and none of them followed my advice and bore a machete! Never the less, the visit was an enjoyable one, by most accounts. Certainly Sparky, our sociable and increasingly lazy dog, had a wonderful time, sniffing everyone up and down. The styles of footwear worn by our visitors gave me some pause for concern when I saw the well dressed team alight from their tour bus. “This could go badly wrong”, I thought, as I failed to spot even one pair of gumboots, but there were no casualties, not even a tumble into the spring of a trip into the brambles, so full marks to the nimble Central Otago-ites! The weather did it’s very best to convince the visitors that our garden is a satellite of the Garden of Eden and, despite the obvious damage wrought to our fruit crops by the birds (this is our worse year ever for sustaining damage from those flying
in our alternatively styled orchard. They left behind, not accidentally I hope, two bottles of very fine made from grapes grown in their own drier, sunnier region and we were very grateful to them for that. Ellerslie By the time I’d walked from the shuttle van to the NZ Gardener Speakers Tent at the Ellerslie Flower Show, I was drenched! Cold too, and very surprised, having left Southland and it’s clear skies only an hour or two earlier. It took several coffees and a hot pie to get my temperature up enough to begin my talk on heritage fruit and vegetables, but the audience was warm and the marquee kept the rain off my head. It was a lot of fun, describing the old orchards we’d visited down here as part of our Open Orchard project and to hear about similar, though far fewer, I’d have to say, orchards like them in Canterbury. The level of interest in the audience was high and by the time I’d finished two talks, Friday and Saturday afternoons, I had none of the thick wad of SCES business cards I’d bought with me, left. I bet the number of hits on the website will have swollen over this week. I stayed on for the wryly named ‘Panel of Experts’ talk afterwards and some of the speakers that had talked earlier joined me in trying to answer curly questions from the gardeners in the crowd. I took the opportunity to look around the show whenever I was free and met a number of Rivertonians and other Southlanders while I wandered. We should organise a train next year and save some travel costs and fear for those who dread flying! The displays were marvellously fresh, thanks to the rain, which stopped over night, thank goodness. I especially liked the ‘sustainable home garden’ display by the Good Gardeners of Canterbury and so did most of the crowd, it seemed, most of whom had questions and praise for the elderly Good Gardeners of duty in the garden. I also enjoyed the performances of a band on bicycles (it looked dangerous, blowing on a tuba, weaving through the crowds!), the limber ‘flower girls’ doing their un-flower (and un-girl-like ) contortions, and other seemingly impromptu performances in the open air. There were some marvellously artistic displays both inside and out and the crowd was loving it all. The show seemed far better organised than last year and the quality also seemed to have gone up a notch. Again, my feeling was that the people visiting the show looked and sounded very happy. I know I was, and I was there to work, but it was fun to be part of the show and meet people from the NZ Gardener team and well known gardening celebrities from around New Zealand, all of whom said they would like to come and live in , if not, visit Southland. At least that’s what I believe they were saying. Harvest Festival It’s less than 10 days now, until the weekend of the Heritage Harvest Festival and everything is slotting into place nicely. The halls are booked, the advertising under way, (including features by the Southland Times’ Michael Fallow and some impromptu promotion at the Ellerslie Flower Show by an enthusiastic Southlander with access to the microphone!). The workshops on offer are all that we hoped they could be, ranging from bee-keeping to corn-dolly making and we’ve secured excellent people to lead those workshops. Bookings can be made on-line and there are enquiries coming in from all directions. If you are planning to do one or more of the workshops, you could be of assistance to us, by volunteering to keep an eye on the time and let everyone know when it’s time to pack up and move on to the next workshop. We want the system to flow without a hitch this time and ’timing’ is the key to that. Let Robyn know if you are able to keep watch. The Harvest Feast is set down for Saturday night and will take place inside Fleck’s hall, on tables groaning with the weight of harvest food (we expect!). The meal is a combination Pot-Luck meal with extras provided by the committee, something to drink, some delightful sweet things to sample and music to enjoy. Feasters are asked to bring $5:00 towards those extra special things and to cover the hire of the hall and so on. If you are unable to get to the festival and have other things on that weekend but still want to support the increasingly popular festival, you could help us out on the Thursday and Friday before the weekend, with setting up the displays in the Aparima College hall and a number of other tasks. We’d be very grateful if you would help out at that time, as it gets very busy and a load shared is a load halved. It’s going to be a wonderful Harvest Festival and it could well be that crowds of Southlanders from outside of Riverton will come to our town to join in, so it’s of great benefit to us all if we can put on an excellent show that everyone can enjoy. Check out all the detail with this link: http://www.sces.org.nz/pmwiki.php/Content/HeritageHarvestFestival The banners that flew from the power poles up and down the main street of Riverton over the summer season have been taken down … and put up again, this time inside of the Environment Centre, hung from the rafters. They weathered the rough summer weather very well and if you’d like to get a close-up look at the work of the Aparima Highschool students and their views of the estuary and its inhabitants, call in and look up! ''' Bee Keeping Course - 18th of April.''' Peter Aalders, experienced bee keeper and bee whisperer, is running this course on the care and maintenance of bees and their hives. Peter knows what he is doing, for sure and has been doing it for years. If you would like to benefit from his experience and begin a hive of your own, contact the Centre and get your name down for this excellent workshop. Don’t bee late in signing up. Beekeeping is a surprisingly popular topic and there are already names on the list. Make Your Own Cosmetics. For those of you who went to the recent natural cosmetics course, there will be no need for me to talk it up - you know what fun it was and how much you were able to learn. It seems a pity that men aren’t so taken by such a course, as they’re missing out on some hilarious experiences, like having your face plastered with delicious fruit pulps that you can eat the leftovers while their magic beautification duties are done, or the equally fun experience of applying such unguents to the faces of your female friends! The next cosmetics course will be held on Wednesday the 21st of April, starting at 7:30pm. Maybe you belong to a group and our team can come to you! The Peninsular Permaculture Group from near Dunedin will be down south on he 17th of April, visiting the Centre and the Guyton’s orchard garden and sharing experiences and ideas for greening the planet, one garden at a time. They know it’s end of season and most fruits will have been picked, but they’re coming any way. They’ll be calling into the Centre to find out why that’s so successful as well, so if you’d like to meet with enviro-gardeners from the north, call down and mingle and we will complete their visit with a pot luck tea round the fire at the Centre on Saturday night. Home Made laundry Liquid 1 cup grated sunlight soap 1 cup washing soda crystals 10 litre bucket 10 litres of hot water Put the soap and crystals into the bucket, add the hot water one litre at at time, stirring each time until well dissolved. Leave overnight (the mixture will firm up), give it a good stir to re-break it in the morning. Use about one cup each load. I put a few drops of Tea-tree oil on a sock or clothing tag too for extra goodness. Volunteers News A big welcome some new volunteers, Leah, Lyneke, and Anna- they all have lots of energy skills and ideas and the centre is feeling invigorated . We are holding a working bee at volunteer Debbie McGarry’s place on a sunny day in April. Debbie lost her husband last year Lyndsay AKA Granmas Growers to Motor Neurone disease and we thought it would be nice to give her a boost by mowing and weed-eating and tidying up her place before the winter. If you are interested in helping out let Robyn know and Debbie is providing a barbeque and drinks for those who are willing hands. Freecycle Here’s a great opportunity for anyone who likes to trade up and down, swoop on garage sales or play at Trade me and know how to use email - you can now ‘freecycle’ in Southland and its as easy as sending a message over the web. Let people know what you have sitting around at home, looking for a new place to hang out (not husbands please!) and read what they have to offer. You can donate or trade, whatever suits you both and it works, very well! Free cycling is, not surprisingly, rapidly growing in popularity. Be in to win! Visit these sites and find out more. Southland District Freecycle: http://www.freecycle.org/SouthlandDistrict Invercargill Freecycle: http://www.freecycle.org/Invercargill Gore freecycle Soup Nights Start again Friday 16th April every Friday night (unless advertised on our web site) we will have a soup night round the fire. It is a great chance to meet people and share ideas and we always have a convivial and interesting evening You bring soup or bread or $5. (This has gone up sorry as last year we had a gold coin which didn't cover the extra food purchased and we made a big loss!) Movie nights We have some great 'eco movies' to watch for a gold coin donation with our data projector and big screen! Which night suits you - email and let us know we want to start these as a fortnightly event in April. We may throw in an art one every now and then too for a bit of culture. |