Carnivorous Plant

Plans for Spring

So far I haven't penned anything that is pertinent to Urban Organics.

I have been growing my own food in several small plots in my courtyard over the last eight years. It is a sacrifice in that I have to take out ornamental plants and flowers, wherever there is any full sun. Oleander and Foxgloves cannot be eaten and I wouldn't recommend it anyway.

I have left the main plot to fallow and fester for a year because I have gardened it to death for so long. There is a limit to what I can harvest successfully but leafy greens and oniony things will grow profusely.

I have three compost piles which I turn alternately every three days. Everything that grows in the garden gets mulched and composted which keeps the whole process self-sustaining. I add the kitchen scraps and have noticed with amazement how much fresh produce a one person household can consume. I added a bag of Red Wriggler worms and they have multiplied 1000s of times and the neighbours get them as well. There are so many they are having orgies in the eggshells and avocado cups. When the compost becomes soil again, it all goes back to the plots, while I keep some of the wormy stuff for the next lot of compost - a bit like keeping some yoghurt as culture for the next batch.

I know it is pointless to fertilise during Winter but the garden gets a good dose of Blood and Bone or Dynamic Lifter anyway. The Faeries like it as an atmosphere deodoriser and it keeps the Trolls and Orcs aways.

The garden needs shit.

STRIPPING IS VERY SATISFYING

Just when I thought that today couldn't be more mundane, I looked at the numerous wooden planters in my workshop, all covered in paint in colours according to the era in which they were tampered with. I took out the 'Cream and Green' planter and decided that some work had to be done.

Hooray for it having only one flimsy coat of paint. I have spent the most part of the afternoon stripping and needed only half of a small can of paint stripper. I also enjoyed a bottle of Mateus and I am heading down to the bottle-o for another. It is the closest I can get to Lindauer Fraise without the extortionate cost or the headache or the burps.

There is one planter that has at least six coats of lead-based paint on it. When I do eventually work on that one, some octogenarian miscreant will probably be sitting on his roof with a stubby in his hand and watching me with the heat gun, thinking "I'm the prick who painted that thing in the first place."

I feel pity for his missus who has to cook in the Cream and Green kitchen. Paint it yourself, sister! Better still, let me help you. He would be too inebriated to recognise it anyway.

Better start sanding and waxing. There is a luxuriant Maidenhair Fern in the workshop in need of a splendid resting place.

Most Magazines Really Suck

We have mags that tell us to love our bodies as they are, complete with a size zero emaciated greyhounds wearing lipstick and bikinis on every second page. There are periodicals full of useless information about celebs and luminaries to divert us from the real issues - our own lives. What about teen mags that promote way too much information about womanhood? And what's with the blue euphemism that is poured onto sanitary pads. What is that stuff? Then there are my favorites - the sad mags.

These mags have names such as Sh** Happens! and Time Out! I perused one and after counting 286 exclamation marks by page 4, I nearly lost interest. However the magazine had puzzles and I looked forward to a challenging cryptic crossword, only to be confronted with two minute wonders which if completed could land you a tidy sum of money, gifts or a car. All you need to do is fill in the blue bits.

Back to the excessive punctuation. What are the editors thinking? Do the readers of these magazines shout at each other when they chat in their day to day lives?

• HEY I SAVED $50 THIS WEEK BY NOT DRIVING THE CAR!!!!!!!!!
• MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER MADE HER WEDDING DRESS FROM A PARACHUTE AND I WORE IT AT MY WEDDING!!!!!!!!!!
• WE TRAVELLED AROUND AFRICA ON A TANDEM BIKE!!!!!!!!!
  

The worst part about these vile publications is the fact that the readers can publish their trivial, insignificant dirty laundry and get paid cold, hard CASH!!!!!!!!! Yes, if you tell the whole nation about your sordid, tawdry and repulsive past you too could be $500 RICHER!!!!!!!!!!!

I remember the New Age periodicals from the 1970s which my parents subscribed to. They had names like Living Easy and Nature Consciousness. They were glossy and were complete with dancing dolphins, requisite rainforests and the worst of the worst, the ubiquitous rainbow. I detested the nutrition pages and my 8th birthday was the pits. A bran and currant cake drizzled with lashings of sugar-free apple juice and 100% wheatgerm lollipops. Oh, and filtered fresh water. My presents were filtered likewise. I wanted that Barbie doll. I wanted to stick her head first in the bowl of Pal on the back steps.

I don't mind magazines that appeal to an audience of modern scientists and conspiratorialists. At least they leave the deductions to the calculating intelligence of the individual who reads them.

I've saved the most deplorable magazine for last. It has a name that sounds like Dustbusters and it is an effective way to teach the world how to enmesh their psyches in things that don't matter, which is not their actual objective. It tells us how our Mental Environment is tarnished by advertising and brainwashing. It promotes subvertising, which is yet another clever way to sell a burger. It tells us that if we were not born in a pool in our parent's living room and home-schooled, then we are stuffed for life. It is also a perfect educational tool for the marketing students all over the world. How advertising numbs people's intelligence and sexualizes everything in our faces. How stupid do they think the world is? Don't get me wrong, these people have their opinions and I respect that but when they are telling the world that we don't need psychoactive drugs, they could eventually lose a huge proportion of their readership. They hate all drugs, legal as well as illegal.

I have been on drugs for 12 years. I have tried and tested so many drugs that I have lost count. Have they been tested efficiently and ethically? No. Do they have potentially lethal side-effects? Absolutely. Are they marketed as the universal panacea for everybody's mental and emotional ills? You'd better believe it!

I think I am a pretty fabulous individual and if I didn't take these drugs when I started to, I would be dead now.

Tomatoes never were poisonous.

Centuries ago both the peasants and the non-peasants ate from elaborately decorated pewter trenchers. They devoured anything that was edible and if it mattered, presented to the fitness of a king's tastes. This included tomatoes, usually imported from Spain or grown in the fields and palace gardens.

Unbeknownst to the consumers, the acids in tomatoes extracted the lead from the trenchers and made its way to the guts of these overfed and understimulated courtly people. During the experience of lead poisoning, death was wished for and for many it was the only outcome.

Before this crudely scientific discovery, it was the kitchenhands, chambermaids and gamekeepers who were accused of intentional poisoning, in fact, any 'nobody' who wasn't of regal lineage. Unfairly, it was these people who were given the death penalty, much to the amusement of everybody since life was rather boring and anything that was not so mundane was a welcome change.

Remember, never eat or drink from lead utensils. Keep them with Aunty Nancy's paintings in the attic.