My "Help-Yourself" Garden

Ryan has been helping me with gardening again and today we organically came across a cunning plan for utilising the space at the front of my house.  You see, where Ryan is standing in this photo, there used to be a planter.  It wasn't getting enough rain and I (being a serious non-green-fingered person) failed to water it.  So Ryan and I hatched a plan that we would move the planter to somewhere more conducive to getting rained upon.  Sounds simple but there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done along the way.

This is the planter making its way to it's new home.  And along the way we had to saw wood, move logs, get ds to stand on the contents of the green bin so we could fit more stuff into it, photograph frogs (see below), watch hot air balloons go overhead (see photos below), sweep the path, relocate one of the clumps of comfrey from the planter to the back garden, move more logs, move other logs to the back garden and clean the car (which had nothing to do with the cunning plan).  And whilst all this was being done their were vague ideas being discussed of making the planter a herb planter and transplating some of the plants from the raised bed next to the front wall so that that too contained only edible plants.

And from these discussions came an idea of sharing this produce with my neighbours and friends.  And so the help-yourself front garden was born.
The great thing was that during the day whilst tidying the front garden (I wish I had taken a proper before photo so you could ahev seen how untidy it was) we came across black plastic sheeting from when we had the woodburning stove installed.  This will be perfect for creating a pallet-based vertical garden system.

I also got around to cutting up our Christmas tree and that kindly donated by a neighbour for us to burn.  That donated Christmas tree generated another idea for the "help-yourself" garden in that as well as being able to help-yourself to some of the yummy edibles, maybe it could also be a "help-yourself" in donating unwanted trees, wood, and maybe even spare plants to others.

Anyway here is the planter in its new home next to the raised bed. Both beds are going to be planted with wholly edible foods over the next few months and hopefully a fuller system of raised plant pots with various yummies will sit in front of both beds.

There is space under the planter for unwanted wood and people will be invited to drop of wood if they want.



Dd is already designing some signs explaining the concept and there are also ideas for putting out information leaflets for what is being grown as well as recipe ideas.  All this from needing to move the planter to somewhere were it would get more water because I am too forgetful to water it.

Exciting though.

Pretty stuff made for York Incredible Edible Bike Rides

There are a series of Incredible Edible Bike Rides planned for York to coincide with the Tour De France - read more about them on Facebook here.  To make these rides more fun Ryan, my kids and I decided to make some fun hama bead things related to growing fruit and veg and the Tour De France.  Here are the results:

Here is a yellow carrot

Here is ds's interpretation of a marigold and Ryan's version of a flowering chive

Here is ds's interpretation of alpine strawberries and carrots

Here is ds's interpretation of a marigold and Ryan's version of lavender

Here are all the things that were made as if they were in the ground.  From the left there are:
alpine strawberries, carrots, alpine strawberries, yellow carrots, lavender, carrot, chamomile, carrot, pea, swiss chard, yellow carrots, chive and a deformed carrot!!

Here is then the full lot of what was produced by ds, dd and Ryan.  Ds made the bike in the colours of the French flag as well as the TIM logo which can be seen below next to the actual logo.  Dd made the Minion and horse.

Where is my life going in 2014?

I was one of the Transition Town Summer Competition winners back in September (read my entry here) and over the last few months what I wrote for that competition has got me thinking about what direction I am going in with my life.  I have found as my children have become older (as they seem to do scarily quickly) that my needs as their mother and home-education facilitator have changed dramatically.  I still drive them to home-ed gatherings, meetings and organise them seeing their friends and occasionally we even spend a day at home just the three of us, but they are very self-reliant and so I have more free time.

When the decision was taken by my husband and I to start the home-educating journey I was aware that as the primary carer (with my husband working full-time) I wanted to keep my brain active so that when the time came I could find some fulfilling activities to fill my time once my children didn't need me any more.  This started in the form of formal education via the Open University (OU) where I embarked on some Mathematics qualifications when my ds was 6 months.  Since then I have passed the following courses to work towards a Diploma in Higher Education getting a 1st class Certification in Mathematics along the way:

Course code and title	Year	Grade
MT121 - Using Mathematics	2002	1st
MS221 - Exploring Mathematics	2002	1st
MT262 - Putting computer systems to work	2003	1st
M225 - Object-oriented programming with Java	2006	2.1
ME624 Teaching mathematical thinking at Key Stage 3	2009	2.1
DB123 You and your money: personal finance in context	2010	Pass (ungraded)
U101 Design thinking: creativity for the 21st century	2012	Pass (ungraded)
T307 Innovation: Designing for a sustainable future	2013	2.1
MT264 Designing applications with Visual Basic	2014	expected 1st

I thought doing this sort of qualification would be helpful and it has in some ways.  For example I passed a PTTLS course at my local college (York College) in 2012 so that I am now happy to market myself as a Maths Tutor as I have my Certificate in Maths as well as a teaching qualification.  However over time I have become increasingly annoyed and frustrated with the way that educational establishments and especially the OU treats its students.  I was aiming for a degree with the OU, however after some issues with discrepancies between the marks that you get for continual assessment versus the marks you get for examinable work, I am of the opinion that I would be better served finishing with a 1st class Diploma and continuing my education via the various free websites out there like:
coursera
codacademy
Khan academy
Future Learn
EdX - (got this recommended by a friend who also says that Alison is not good at all!!)
Alison to name just a few.  Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are becoming more and more common as is hacking your own education.  Dale Stephens did a TED talk here about this very subject and obviously it is dear to my heart as a home-ed mother but also as a person who used to love academia and now is rather disillusioned with it.  I will be investigating this type of learning over the coming year and may do some posts about my findings.

So here I am at the start of 2014 having not really managed to get too much of what I set out to do at the beginning of the year (see here) but looking back at that blog post has made me realise that one of the resolutions I didn't really articulate but which I made to myself was that I would try and get more involved in my local community as part of my overall well-being.  I have managed to do that and I am now an active member of:
TIM in York - acknowledging the incredible things already done in York and making sure more incredible things are achieved - come and join in the community hub here if you want to know more.
York in Transition (YiT) - come and join us at the Sustainable York event at the Residents First weekend - read more here
York Environment Forum (YEF) where I do administration work for the group
York Timebank - where I help with admin with the database, website and communications
as well as regularly attending the Carr Connectors coffee morning at my local church which I am hoping to get more involved in with the children.

So you can see why some of my other NYRs went a bit awry although I reckon I did do over 10 crafty things although some of those were from scratch.  For example I made 5 pairs of gloves!!!  I also read over half the books I was supposed to but then got side-tracked by the course I was doing with the OU.

I am going to list the books I want to read this year and add a reminder to my phone every month to get my back on track with the list.  I am also going to do this with the craft activities too although this should be a lot easier as the house gets more zoned, de-cluttered and generally sorted (I am hoping to do a separate post on the zoning of the house as it is going really well).

I am still working towards a healthy BMI via martial arts classes with the family and regular Ceroc and climbing activities all three of which I really enjoy so attending doesn't even seem a chore.

Anyway basically my life is going well and I feel very positive about 2014 and looking back at the year I have achieved way more than I thought I was going to.  2014 looks set to be just as exciting!!!!

Happy New Year everyone