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Categories
Category Archives: everyday life
Making comfrey liquid feed without the smell.
I grow tomatoes every summer. I have always used organic methods which involve a high potassium feed made from Comfrey leaves. Well in fact I’ve found that Blue Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens sometimes called Green Alkanet or Bugloss), which grows prolifically … Continue reading
Posted in cultivation, everyday life, recycle
Tagged comfrey, DIY, gardening, organic growing
2 Comments
Culture, information and a resilient community?
Notes from a short provocation for a workshop on Informational Inequalities at the University of Manchester Policy Week day conference on Education Policy and Educational Inequalities. I was asked to contribute one of five brief scene-setting interventions, mine being to … Continue reading
The malign turn: organisational manners under austerity.
I’ve been meaning to write something on this for some months. The observation I wanted to share is about practices in organisations under the current austerity regime. Observations supporting it come from a variety of organisations, mostly public sector, or … Continue reading
Winter
A bit of frost last night (12/13 November) – it’s cut back the achocha that scrambles over the hedge. I picked the last of the fruits – here they are. So we’ve been using them from the end of August … Continue reading
Uncommon fruits
I’ve written before about achocha (scroll down to the bit about the beard and the achocha), a ‘lost crop of the Incas’, also called caigua. I think ‘achocha’ maybe comes from the Aymara and ‘caigua’ from the Quechua. At least … Continue reading
Posted in everyday life, Latin America
Tagged Achocha, Caigua, gardening, heirloom varieties, tomatoes
1 Comment
Too much green growth
An interesting concept, isn’t Green Growth OK? One problem of the idea of ‘sustainable growth’ is that nobody yet has found a way to ensure that the resource throughputs of an economy are decoupled from its growth, whatever the nature … Continue reading
Posted in ecology, economics, everyday life
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A strange little town in England
post updated August, 2019 (corrections and links) I found myself with the task of driving alone to Dorset to join the rest of my family for a holiday. I would much rather go by train (5.5 hours) but we were … Continue reading
A cooker that uses no fuel
Update, 4/7/13. It works! I had to fill the spare space with bubble wrap and toweling, but it stayed warm enough to cook a stew of beans and potatoes that had just been brought to the boil. Carbon saving – … Continue reading
My hand … comrades
I’m just back from a sculpture course which was my birthday present from Carolyn, who came with me. This is one of the things I made. It was a compromise – I wanted to make a human hand and this … Continue reading
Jokes and the unconscious
More light relief from the usual heavy issues of social, economic and ecological crisis. Have you ever made a joke while asleep? Well I’ve woken up singing (sort of operatically!) and shouting. I’ve spoken Spanish (when using the language a … Continue reading