It’s a 7 thing

Seven. It shows up everywhere, from major religions to popular book titles. Naturally, the days of the week, the wonders of the world, the continents of the Earth and the colours of the rainbow are arranged into seven. It’s the prime prime number, truly. (Be still, spell check. The repetition is intentional.)

So here’s my big seven: it’s been seven years since I last wrote a post on this blog. There are no excuses – although I could try to not take responsibility for just being tardy by blaming that tendency to over-busyness that may have disrupted my work-life balance. I won’t. It’s a precarious thing, the work-life see-saw. And you wouldn’t really want to keep it permanently level, would you? What kind of see-saw keeps steady? Only a very boring one that none of us would want to play on.

New beginnings: The journey starts with embracing reinvention

And now it’s time. I’ve missed writing for the sheer pleasure of it and hopefully sharing something useful or thought provoking at the same time.     

Some things have changed in seven years. Blogging advice, for example. Back then, the predominant advice was to keep posts as short as possible and to publish as often as possible. Now, apparently, the ideal length of a blog post is 1,600 words, which will take seven minutes to read, because readers are more likely to engage in it. Luckily, the experts still see value in shorter posts, a minimum of 300 words. And they advise publishing quality, not quantity. That part makes sense.

And people change; they evolve. I have changed to become far more focused on sustainable living, finding ways to be kind to the Earth. It’s critical, actually, that we do this. Our home is in big trouble. And so are we.

Some things haven’t changed, like the name of this blog. I did consider wiping the slate clean and starting again. But for me, everything comes back to the milkwood tree/s in my forest garden – its survival on our damaged Earth. The milkwood (I wrote about it here) is a symbol of what I hope to get across, which focuses on recycling and reuse and reinvention of you and me and the things in our lives.

If you’ve read this far (barely more than 300 words), then you’ll realise that the subject matter of Under the milkwood is shifting from post-corporate life to using our own power to make choices in our own lives to stop harming the Earth and hopefully to even see some recovery. But we don't exist in boxes. So I'll share places and people and my ongoing battle to keep that see-saw gently rising and falling.

Join me for the journey.

My happy jeans with karma

Today, I am wearing my most beautiful jeans and they are making me feel happy, so happy that I want to dance. Not even the gloomy weather can get me down.

These epic jeans are going places – again

These jeans have a history, a karma, that is precious. Until last week, they belonged to my beloved friend, Kathy. She turned a regular pair of jeans (Lady Wranglers – that’s how old they are) into a work of art by combining layers of gorgeous fabrics, full of colour, texture and pattern, into something unique.

Kathy wore them for years – and yes, she loved to dance in them. They are full of joyful memories, including the whirlwind days of early romance with Phillip, her husband for the past decade. I can picture her – the blonde bombshell in her sexy jeans blowing Phillip away.

When she handed them to me last week, I was bowled over. With a sense of reverence, I attached another strip of fabric to the legs to accommodate my very long legs. Then I chopped off the waist – these jeans settled into the waist in a way that was once high fashion. I know the high-waisted stuff has been edging back, but it’s not for me.

“Editing”

But I cut off too much and had to sew on a new and lower hip/waist band for some decency. It was a good mistake that enriched the look, and the jeans fit perfectly. My daughter calls it “editing”.

I’m telling you all of this because it backs my conviction that truly beautiful things don’t have to be found in shops: I choose items with karma over the shiny new and soulless anytime. It’s better for the environment, too.

Beautiful things can be discovered anywhere, maybe even lurking in the back of your wardrobe. Often these pleasures – these previously loved things – are patiently waiting for a new life.

• Treat yourself: check out Kathy’s art here.

The power of getting lost

My goal these days is to work (as in do paying work) for half the month and do life things, like garden and be with my people, for the other half. The thing is, I’m no longer immersed in weeks-long, even months-long, stints of working like a fiend. So after a few days of hard work, I really need to clear my head.

An antidote to sadness ... my recycled linen cupboard

When I get let myself go in the garden, before I know it, I’m doing a kind of meditation – I stop thinking. It’s a direct opposite to where I am when I am working – all in my head. And when I have a touch of sadness, I also find gardening to be a great mood lifter, a great healer.

That creative place

But there’s something else that I lean on when I need to still my mind or deal with one of life’s stresses, and that’s working with my hands, preferably in a way that dips into that place of creativity in me. We all have that place – and you don’t have to be an “artist” to be creative.

I find it easy to lose myself in making a mosaic, for example, or fashioning a dream catcher out of swirls of wood and beach pickings. They’re not masterpieces, but they are mine, they come from me, and that’s enough.

A complicated patchwork loose cover

Close-up details

In one particularly stressful time of my life, I threw myself into making a loose cover for a big sofa. I’d never made such a thing before, and, of course, I didn’t choose the simple route. Instead of using regular fabric, I made a patchwork and then made the cover out of that. It became very complicated indeed. Maybe that’s what I needed to do at that time.

Flick-flacks 

I’m quite pleased with the outcome of one of my most recent forays into creativity. We needed somewhere to store our linen, and when Cindy tossed out an old TV cabinet, my mind started doing flick-flacks. No wonder she was throwing it out. It was quite ugly: dark imbuia wood, it was a heavy, oppressive piece. But I liked its lines and the little ball-and-claw feet. Plus, it was solid and strong.

I sanded the cabinet, coated it in wood primer, and then painted it in a deep charcoal blue called “Everest Blue” (by Plascon). I scratched out a tin of silver paint, and used that for the top, the beading and the feet. I used the principles of decoupage to cover the doors: instead of paper, though, I cut out shapes from fabrics, chosen largely for their colours. And then I replaced the old wooden knobs with shiny glass balls. Pretty.

V added an extra shelf for storage, and now the recycled unit stands proudly at the front door. People don’t need to know that it is storing linen. It’s just something that is rather pleasing to the eye. And a bit of therapy too.

Spreading the joy

Gardens are made to be shared – not just through sight and the other senses, but most importantly, through cuttings, roots and seeds that spread the joy and peace that only a garden can give.

One of Mary’s pics, of herself and her cousins, with her own inscription

I learnt that from one of the wisest people I've known – my paternal grandmother, Mary. She was a true plantswoman, among many other things. Some of my happiest memories are of running around her rose bushes, chattering to her while she marvelled at a bloom or fussed over a stubborn weed. It was in her various gardens that I got to know the smells of lavender and rose geranium, the feel of soft and furry lamb’s ear leaves, the taste of cherry guavas.

Generous spirit

Beautiful, kind Mary

She would always be handing out seeds or cuttings from her garden. Simple yet beautiful nasturtiums were among her favourite flowers, and four gardens later, many of the nasturtiums in my garden have grown from seed that Mary originally gave me. She seemed to gain such pleasure from knowing that a cherished plant would now also be treasured in someone else’s garden. It struck me, even very young, that this was a true generosity of spirit.

So every time I take a cutting – for use in my own garden or to pass on to a special person – I think of Mary. And I like to think that she would approve of my attempts at propagation. In fact, I know that she would have many words of gentle encouragement.

Army of new plants

My system seems to work quite well. In a tucked-away spot behind the washing line that gets afternoon shade from the ngwenya tree (wild plum, Harpephyllum caffrum), an army of plastic pots brim with new plants. These cuttings are mostly from my own garden (I also raid friends’ gardens), and they include geranium and pelargonium, scabiosa, fuschia, daisies, lavender, rosemary, felicia, plectranthus and osteospermum.

All of these grow really easily from cuttings. Aloes and other succulents do, too, but they will usually grow from cuttings that are shoved into the ground; best to let them dry for a few days to avoid rotting, though.

There’s also row upon row of baby clivias, growing from seed. These will take about three years to get to flowering stage.

Secret

A perfect mini greenhouse

And here’s my “secret”: I cut the top off a plastic cold drink or water bottle, and invert it over a new, watered cutting. It forms a perfect mini greenhouse. You seldom have to water the cutting again. The plant takes care of that itself through transpiration: essentially, the cutting takes up water from the soil and then releases it into the atmosphere, kind of like sweating.

It’s quite a thrill seeing the water droplets form on the inside of the bottle and run down to sustain the plant. I remove the bottle when I’m certain that the cutting has grown some roots.

This method has increased the “strike rate” of my cuttings: four out of five, instead of two or three out of five, usually take. It lets me experiment with more demanding plants, like roses, and it gives me a constant supply of plants to fill empty corners, without having to spend a fortune at the garden centre. And one of the nicest things about it, for me, is that I give something meaningful to people I care about. Thanks to Mary.

It’s okay to be potty

Our old wheelbarrow has worked so hard that it’s truly on its last legs … um, wheels. And I can’t wait for it to call it a day. I can picture it, parked in its final resting place in the garden, overflowing with flowers and pretty leaves. It will make an excellent container for plants.

The wheelbarrow’s next life is all planned (with Isis’s permission)

I’ve had a fixation with containers, you see, since I first started gardening. My first garden – in Westville, Durban, if you recall – was on such steep land that I hit on the idea of planting as much as possible in our courtyard in containers. Anything, absolutely anything, even an old toilet cistern, was turned into a home for plants.

Whenever I had spare cash (not often), I would buy a pot. Over the years, the obsession turned into a sizeable collection, most of which has followed me to my various gardens around the country.

Habit of frugality

Potty things in my garden ... ceramic head by Steve Meise; pretty pastels from Gen

And my frugality (born of necessity) became a habit (because it feels right in our  throwaway society). So I’ve just turned a 5 litre olive oil tin into a plant pot: I cut away the top with a can opener, punched holes in the bottom with hammer and a large nail, and planted a trailing pelargonium, grown from a cutting, into it. It stands on a chipped side plate from the kitchen.

Old colanders have found new life in my garden as containers for plants. So have rusted and holey three-legged pots, a lot of strange pinch pots from my pottery craze days, tightly woven baskets, a coconut shell, hollow pieces of wood, and a couple of cracked clay basins. I’m considering the possibilities that the old bamboo steamer holds.

Fabulous pots

In my Irene, Pretoria, garden, I found a stash of old chimney tops, and they made fabulous pots, especially for fuschias.

In friends’ gardens, I’ve seen plants growing in pretty teacups (drainage would be an issue, I think), old shoes, and even the skull of a large wild animal. And I can just see how lovely my pink roses gumboots would look if a plant – a small trailing aloe, perhaps – came frothing out of them. Frankly, though, I prefer them on my feet.

Anything goes, really, as long as it is aesthetically pleasing to you. It works in my garden because most of my pots are conventional and painted in various earthy colours, even though a few have fallen victim to my occasional mosaic frenzies. Mostly, I think it works because I think it is pretty. And that’s what matters, isn’t it?

On paper

Usually, we buy three newspapers a week: the Mail & Guardian on Friday, the local Daily Dispatch on Saturday, and the Sunday Times on, well, Sunday. The rest of the time, we read the news online.

Butternut plant, courtesy of the worm farm, sprawls over newspaper

Still, the newspapers quickly accumulate into big heaps. Recycling points seem to be somewhat scarce in East London, and until very recently, there were none out here on the east coast. 

We would cart stuff to a recycling point in town and, often, find that it had: a) been moved somewhere else; or b) was no longer functional. We are delighted with the neat and nifty recycling station that’s just been installed at the little supermarket up the road.

Meanwhile, we stumbled on a few ideas that keep yesterday’s news alive. Note that we use actual newspaper and not all that shiny paper that adverts are printed on.

1: Worm food

Strawberry and borage with a paper lining

V uses newspapers, as well as paper like egg boxes, to line his earthworm farms – he has two farms now – and layers it between the vegetable and fruit cuttings. The busy worm workers turn it all into a kind of black gold that makes stuff grow like mad. 

It also spews out a few surprises, like butternut seedlings that grow vigorously.

2: Soil enricher

I’ve been using newspaper to line holes for new plants in this sandy, coastal soil. It seems to help retain water and food around the roots. Also, as it breaks down, it enriches the soil.

First, I shred the paper: my sense is that this would be important for drainage, and it would also help it to break down quicker. Then I add any compost or manure that is handy and a bit more of the original soil (don’t want to burn those new roots) before placing the plant in its new home. I top it all with a mulch of dried grass clippings, leaves or half-ready compost. 

3: Weed killer

It all gets covered in mulch. The broccoli don't mind

Newspaper is my best friend when it comes to clearing biggish areas of weeds. I’m also quite a lazy gardener and this saves a lot of hard work.

I pull out and chop off whatever I can, dampen the soil, and lay down thick layers of newspaper, dampening that too. Then I toss mulch or compost over the top to stop the wind from blowing the paper away.

The earthworms quickly start eating the paper (result: better soil) and the weeds are smothered, more or less. If I want to plant something before the paper is all broken down (it takes a few months), I tear holes into the paper, which then doubles as mulch.

I am eyeing two patches of grass that would be so much nicer as beds of plants, perhaps with some pathways – lawn is just too much work. Newspaper could be the answer.

Easter bounty

... Easter weekend has just begun

Easter eggs, Swiss chocolate and a house (and garden) oozing with family from all over the place are not the only joys at this time of the year. All that quaffing of wine under the trees and around the fire pit produces a bounty: a great big crop of wine bottles for the vegetable garden.

I started planting wine bottles in what would become the vegetable garden years before we actually moved into this house. So there must be thousands of bottles there now – and this project is still not complete.

Some of my friends keep their bottles for me, and even dump them over the fence when they are in the area. I don’t allow “anonymous” bottles – those from a pub, for example – into the garden. I like to think that each one contains a story for me or someone I care about.

More than a pretty face

They are buried neck first to a depth of about a third of the bottle. Of course, I think they are very pretty indeed, especially when the light catches them. This is why only coloured bottles are allowed. 

But they do more than please my eye. Packed close together, the bottles form a brilliant edging for the beds, holding in the soil and compost.

A fabulous and unforeseen benefit of all these upside-down wine bottles is that they are believed to keep moles away. I read this somewhere fairly recently, and I think it actually works. Apparently, they don’t like the sound that is created underground when the wind hits the bottles.

And as K, my bang-broek (scaredy pants) sister from Geneva, points out with a big smile, snakes can’t slither on glass. Or can they? 

Now if only someone would figure out a way to get a bottle or two to grow …