Permacultulture, Japanese Culture, and Sustainability - Connected and Creative, in Cities

Look who's giving a most unusual presentation at the Japanese Embassy's Japan Foundation: Me.

Here is what Im doing. Come along, if you are in Sydney, Friday May 25th, 6.30.

Permaculture & Japanese Tea culture: 

Design for a connected and creative home life, in cities.

"Pick up a heavy thing as if it is light, and a light thing as if it is heavy" 

With colorful stories and images from her cross-cultural international homes, Cecilia shows these twin design systems in fresh, useful action: Japanese traditional culture and Aussie Permacutlure.   

Home life can be a work of art in progress, and the laboratory of working out how to craft a new, ‘Sustainable’ culture, one that is so attractive, everyone just copies. 

Tricks you will learn range from how to declutter, to how to let your mates know they are bugging you, lightly, so you can just enjoy each other.  Its all just a design challenge. 

Want to come, but you are too far away? Leave a comment with your good ideas. 

What Japanese traditions can we use to make our life gorgeous, low waste, and full of love?

Japanese Edible Balcony Garden, Balmain, Sydney

Linda and her Japanese Edible Balcony Garden

Linda makes things happen. 

She is a computer programmer who decided, just for fun, to turn an old Balmain House into a traditional Japanese Ryokan, or inn. 

When I first heard that it existed, I ran down the street to go and do some blissful gazing. A real Japanese inn, crafted with all the delicately chosen, natural elegance a Japanese inn is meant to have. 

Now how do you think I felt when I looked up from my favourite thing, the rarified world of Japan, to see on the second floor, my other favourite thing - a balcony garden. With the beginnings of a beautiful passionfruit vine, on impeccably-installed, almost invisible support strings. 

Doorway from the upstairs living room to the dappled balcony 

"I've  just found a new friend!', I thought, and put my business card in the post box with a note, waiting for good things to happen.

Inside, a covered passageway leads to the guests tatami-rooms

And we met. 

Orientation 

'I don't know much about container gardening' she said, when she heard balcony gardens were my thing.

Well, I had to inform her that her type of balcony was extremely lucky, the ideal, in fact.

A covered, north-facing balcony. 

Whats so good about that?

They are drenched with the low-angled sunshine in the winter months, but shaded from the withering rays of high summer sun, and largely sheltered from wind.

Constant wind, like constant nagging, is something in which you can survive, but cannot be your strong, productive self.

So it has just-right solar input,  minimum stress, and most importantly, it has You. 

The dappled, sheltered sunniness makes it a place you want to be, gazing, grazing and cherishing the creatures that surround you. 

Its human interaction that causes wild success up there.

She could grow almost anything.

Secret back garden. Shady & suitably planted in moss & fern

Edibles

When I first met Linda she had just planted soft silvery grasses. They looked elegant, coped with drought, and screened the view of the road. 

Three functions is pretty good. 

Not great, but good. 

Grasses are what I  recommend for only the most bleak, windy balconies, where nothing else is possible. 

The next time I visited, a revolution had taken place.  

In just a few weeks, there was a second-story, completely edible Japanese farmyard.   Shiso,  mizuna, komatsu, edible chrysanthemum leaves, were all doing their thing, with lots more on the way.

Be careful what you say to Linda. She will turn your airy words into something 100% real and complete.

I introduced my go-getter friend Mrs Hirano, and and before I knew it, those two had a traditional Japanese sweet making workshop going. Full story to come.

Here are the three nerikiri white-bean sweets I made, posing in the dappled balcony light.

Japanese edible greens, with seeds from 4Seasons Seeds

'7-grass rice porridge' from 'la Fuji Mama' blog

Seeds and Recipies

4 Seasons Seeds is where Linda ordered her seeds, for tiny money. 

Seedy Asian grocer's can also be fantastic, for weirder, more wonderful strains of seed. Just get them to translate the instructions for you. 

All the organic gardeners of Australia tend to end up with the same thing, from the same 3 organic seed companies.  

Monoculture is definitely not what its about!

Komatsuna will be lovey in salad

The fragrant leaves and creamy stems of Shugiku, or 'Spring Chrysanthemum' are one of my favourite green vegetables ever. 

I love them cooked for one minute, like spinach, and dressed with sesame sauce.  Along with a bowl of brown rice, one umeboshi plum, and green tea, you have a 3 minute lunch. 

Shungiku and sesame sauce photo from JanCanCook blog

In winter, they go into the hotpot 'nabe',  cooked and served from the middle of the table, and seasoned with Yuzu, the amazing Japanese citrus.

I jumped out of my seat when I saw Linda had Japanese Beets (they are nothing like that bane of my childhood, turnips. Don't call them that). 

When I'm in Japan, I eat beets every single day. 

Just slice them raw, sprinkle salt and vinegar, and you just can't stop. 

Their flesh is sweet and melting, the most seductive vegetable I know. 

See my Tokyo urban beet story, its a lovely one. 

Cloak and Dagger - Managing Pests

The reason everyone doesn't have edible gardens is that every creature alive wants to eat them. Disappointment and resignation hit about 2 weeks after the bugs do, for most people.

How would I manage aphids?

1. Wait for ladybugs and lacewing to turn up,  attracted to the party of sweet alyssum flowers I planted for them. They should then eat the aphids.   

But in all the years, these predator-bugs never showed to my carefully-planned aphid-eating party.

2. Plant things that aphids like in small pots. Pick the whole pot up and run the plant under the tap. The aphids go down the drain.

If you wash them off onto the soil, you can then watch them climb right back up again. 

3. Wipe the plant with a tissue dipped in my cup of tea dregs. Yes, squash them.  

Don't worry, eating is never an innocent activity.

Japanese Garden dreaming.
Thank-you Linda, for being such an inspiration.
I've ordered my seeds, and the beet seeds you gave me have sprouted already, on the roof-garden here in Edgecliff.

I will tell the story of the Balmain Ryokan Gojyuan, next post. 

Be amazed. 

Toronto Balconies Photo Competition - Guest Judge interview with Cecilia Macaulay

'Torronto Balconies Bloom' are holding their annual balcony garden photo competition, September 30, 2012.
This year, I'm a guest judge.  A kind of armchair judge

Below is my interview with Fern, the grand balcony master. 
If you have a lovely photo to inspire the gardeners of Canada with, send it in to their website.
You might even win a prize. But if you live too far away, they will just keep it till you visit. The real prize of course is having a beautiful balcony garden bless your life daily.




Fern: What inspired your passion for growing edibles in pots? 

Cecilia: Pot-plants are pet-plants, especially the edible ones. You have a relationship with them, and the more you love and attend to them, the more beautiful and rewarding they get. 

Garden plants don't need you as much, and they don't sit beside you as you eat your breakfast each day, and give you their 'news'  - a new bud, a surprise creature. 

For me, balcony gardening is cubby-house building for grown ups. Despite our 21st century wealth, we have very little say in how our surroundings look. Mostly they look like the shops in which the stuff was purchased. But a balcony is small enough to have full artistic say over what happens there, with borrowed vintage chairs, mail-order seeds, rare breeds and a 3D lively universe of your own.

I probably fell in love with porch-gardening as a child at Nellie's house.

Nellie was the relative in the country I was sent to say with when my mother had a new baby, which was every year, for years and years. 

Nellie ran her house on 19th century technology - a wood-fired copper to wash the clothes, with blue bags and a wringer, the lot. She would send me out to the veranda to get mint for the mint sauce. Even though she was surrounded by acres of empty land, she had a full orchestra of plants in pots. Not pots though. Old tin cans. Big ones, little ones, with the quaint lettering and bright graphics of the 40's and 60's, and mint and geraniums spilling over the tops.

What is your favourite time of day to photograph garden plants?


Anytime is good, so long as there is no strong sunshine.  The deep shadows and glary light of direct midday sun makes things look 'dry', you cannot see the details or textures, everything looks the same.
But if you are doing a close-up in full sun, and make a shadow over the pot with an umbrella or just your body, the ambient light makes the subject look beautifully sculpted. Try it.
Of course, the slanty sun of sunrise and sunset makes things look spectacular. The problem with balconies is, they are always best-lit from the other side. We need flying cameramen!

Have you a most fascinating or surprising 'crops in pots' sighting to share?

When I first moved to Japan I had almost no money, but sometimes treated myself to a marvellous traditional breakfast at this tiny, ancient shop. Their doorstep was only as wide as a shoe, but hosted an 'edge garden' of great generosity. 
Mountain herbs grew through spring. In summer, a water-filled polystyrene box appeared, with a sign in beautiful calligraphy: 'World's smallest rice paddy'. In autumn, astringent persimmons were peeled and strung up to dry, looking all festive, and in winter, every now and then they scraped together a little snowman. 

The Japanese make so much of so little. 

People are beautiful when they do that. 

Its the beauty of the gardener's spirit that touches people, not the garden itself. 

Please offer one piece of advice to prospective contest entrants:

Make Families. Consciously choose and gather together things that are varied but related, things that become their best selves in each others presence.  Don't put things there that don't contribute, that feel out-of-place and lonely in your arrangement. You know what they are, those default things, the plastic pots that were there, the spider plant that just won't die. 

Restrict colors, materials. Families don't let just any-old-thing in off the street.

Make a phrase that describes the 'family' you are making: 

Wabi-sabi rust & wood Zen edible garden. 

Lush, 3D Singapore fragrant garden. 

or 

Happy-cat catnip and napping-spot garden. 

Make sure every pot, every bit of mulch material, every plant and its insect-attracting companion plant are essential to this theme, and everything that is essential is there. That will be one strong garden!

Blue, green and terracotta. Flowers attract mantis to eat the caterpillars. 

Pots are like 'siblings', related yet different, made by a loved friend. 

Water is on-hand in the water-pond, to scoop onto plants as you sit nearby and sip tea.  

Tea might be the lemon balm you are gazing at. and the rocket might be in your lunch too.

Right mess in the Right Place - beauty, truth and love at Mario's house

Yesterday was ANZAC Day Holiday, a mid-week day off, to remember serious and sad things.

After a breakfast of fresh dill and salmon crepes at my brother's place,  I strolled down the sunny dappled road and called out at the door of Mario's 

"Anybody home? Its Ce-ci-li-aaaa"

"Cecilia! Come on down' floated up a voice.

Downstairs I went, to the strangely darkened living room.

"Cecilia, come and see this!"
Mario was playing with a blowtorch, and bits of silver.

Making jewellery is one of his jobs, but I had the impression he was doing this for the first time, and just discovering what silver was.

"Look, you heat and heat and suddenly, it shows its alive. It stretches out."
So it did. The off-cut bits of silver would suddenly go the colour of stars and stretch like a cat. That meant it had turned to liquid.
Then it curls itself up,  into a perfect ball.
Why it does this, I don't know, but thats the only thing liquid silver wants to do, after a stretch.

Predictable in its tastes, just like we are.


While Mario is marvelling over his metal, his wife Akeri is busying herself in the orderly kitchen.

"The bananas were on their way out, so I'm making banana bread' she said.

Banana bread! This is the first time in over a year, first time since the Queensland cyclone that I've seen anyone making banana bread.  Except for the Permaculture mates who grew their own and suddenly had the most valuable currency in Sydney, golden fragrant bananas.  

Nothing is forever. Not bananas, not the lack of bananas. 

Akeri and Mario's house demonstrates my conviction that if you get your kitchen sink right, the rest of your life will fall into place. 

 Look at it - beautiful, orderly and productive.  Everthing has a home, all the colours are friends with each other, and there is no printing, advertising in sight. 

As the banana bread bakes, a Japanese housemate wanders in for her breakfast. 

There is always a Japanese housemate, its a house suited to harmoniously hosting visitors. The beauty inspires them to be on their best behaviour,  maybe to say 'thank-you' to the house for delighting them. Everything is easy to use and clean up after - how lonely a pile of dirty dishes would look in this house, you wouldn't want to let that happen.

He has painted a mural on the concrete wall that lets in light from the street, where Mario has his balcony garden flourishing, spilling down sun-side and shade-side. 

Every surface that can be played with has been played with. 

I first met Mario as he sat on his doorstep in the sun, just him and his guitar, having a little sing together. 

Here are last year's stories, and more stories giving you a glimpse into Mario world.

Mario's books tempt me - he wants to know what life is about, this man, and doesn't give up. 

The book topics are in 'families', and even the knick-kanks that surround them are a team. 

Owls, for wisdom.

His studio is action-eliciting. 

Why leave the materials in the crummy plastic bags they came in? You don't have to. 

Mario gets his beads to seduce him into working with them, putting them all available in pretty wicker baskets, ready to be worked with.  

As I go upstarts and outside to live my Anzac Day, I see Mario giving his Japanese wife a big hug as we pass the kitchen.
In all my years of living in and loving Japan, a hugged wife is a sight I have never seen.
It must be tough living in Mario-world, if you want to live in your own world.
But the Love, that gets you staying.

My beautiful former Melbourne housemate, Naoko is visiting Sydney tomorrow, to celebrate her successful jewelry exhibition.
For sure, I bring her along to see this sight, life lived in full creative liveliness.

So today I'm remembering the Young Anzac soldiers who never got to live their lives.
Today I'm reminding myself to live my life, on purpose, and in full colour.

What is life for? Its for you! Profile writing workshop in Balmain

Lunch: smoked salmon & lemon cream pasta,  greens and garnish picked from the
guerrilla garden I planted last year. Vegetarians had mushroom and sage cream, bless them. 

Looking at these photos from our profile-creation workshop the other weekend, my mind says 'this looks familiar". 

Yes, I know this is our second go at it, as we found in the first workshop in Annandale that writing a profile is HARD. But super-absorbing. 

It forces us to rewrite how we work and even why we work, and that kind of re-framing doesn't happen in a day. 

But thats not the 'familiar' that I'm talking about. My 'familiar' memory is heaps older.

What would I have been doing on a typical Sunny Saturday,  34 or so years ago? 

Eight year old me, with flowers pegged to the swing,  suburban Chadstone  1978

I would have been doing something constructive with my six little brothers and sisters, out in the suburban garden.  Something that we ourselves took the initiative to do, and would do for 8 hours at a time.

We would dig a bunker to hide in, in case there is another war. We would  dig for dinosaur bones, and find them. We made curry-powered mud pies, and layer them out alluringly, taking a covert position as we waited for the bad big boy down the road to stumble upon then and irresistibly eat one. 

Vanquished!

Those are the things I did 34 years ago, and really, nothing has changed. 

Here I am with six creative people, different ages and types, but cohesive,  all engrossed in something we don't want to stop doing.

Vince the website Designer of competence and focus

And 34 years later, I still ensure I am always surrounded by flowers. 

Rebecca the wholistic health practitioner

Vince setting the tables

What I loved about the day is that I had an idea that I would help my guests write profiles, but I didn't know exactly how, or the timing. 

Everyone make their contribution, just like when we were children - someone would start the singing, someone would find he lost tools, someone else would go and fetch icypoles.  

Furniture re-arranging was always on the menu.  

Back then, if we wanted a nice house, we just thought one up. 

Thats kind of what I did here, but real - I'm now in my second autumn of house-sitting, and I am grateful.

Rebecca brought food for the vegetarians. 

Eimer the chiropractor brought her fiddle, and played it as a kind of mental sorbet, to refresh our minds after intense writing. 

Vince and Kerry-Anne re-arranged the tables on the verandah, making a kind of pretend restaurant. We resisted the urge to cover it with a blanket and eat underneath it though. 

 Laura brought her professional photographer husband to share, calling us out one by one for a shoot in the harbour-reflected light.  We all went home with beautiful photos, taken in no time, and put right onto our laptops. 

Not even photoshoped. Alex Larumbe, you are darn clever. 

Alex and Laura have a small, creative Aids Prevention charity. 

I think its not just me. The things that gave us joy as children are probably the things that will make us happiest now.

Whats life for?
Its for you! 

Thats the line to tell yourself when times are tough,
Being eight again, and finding mates to do it with will all help.

To do fun things in Sydney, join the Tim Ferriss Meetup group To do fun things all the time, register for my 2-day 'inside Permaculture' Design workshop, at the Permacutlure Sydney Institute, Sept 22 & 23, St Albans NSW

Deco san brings macrobiotic playfulness to harborside Sydney

Deco Nakajima is the Audry Hepburn of Macrobiotic cooking teachers - tiny, lively and loved.

She lives a rural permaculture life with her American photographer husband, and has five, FIVE children.

Anne and Deco Nakajima, with Cecilia

I heard she was in Australia, on tour.
Then suddenly yesterday the family turned up for dinner at my place, here in Sydney.
What a surprise!

I was a bit worn out after running a workshop, but Permacutlure people make the most of what they've got, so the four of us (and a good fridge and good gurilla garden) came up with a lovely dinner.
Ingrediants included millet, sorrel, mushrooms, purple carrot, and dutch cream potatoes with rosemary and smoked salmon, and some greens from the Orange Grove Organic Market.

Here's how it looked:




Oh no, we've already eaten it!

The food gets us all flirting.

Miki the yoga translator from Byron Bay, 

Cecilia the Permacutlure Fairy (why does everybody call me this?) 

and 

Nakajima Deco the macrobiotic legend. 

Alluring ladies, practicing their charms, and the Sydney Harbor bridge. 

Cool Nakajima Titbits

Deco's daughter Anne lives in Bali, and goes to the amazingly beautiful Green School

Deco's son goes to to CLCA at seaside Odawara, where I designed the Permaculture garden and ran workshops

Deco's Farm Brown's Field takes WWOOFers, and they speak English. 

You can go there, grow rice, take deep baths, and sip tea, joyfully. 

She gave me a myoga root, which I have already planted. 

Myoga is one of the reasons I always try to be in Japan in June. 

We really, really have to start an edible Japanese 'doorstep' garden project here in Sydney. 

Good Idea!

Sunday's workshop - Refining your profile, not as easy as it looks

Last Sunday's workshop was fun, super-useful, and attended by my favourite kind of people. 

So its on again - This Sunday, Harborside Balmain. Tell your creative mates. 

Who came? 

How did we turn our fuzzy descriptions of self and work into a haiku of deft, persuasive communication?

Lets see... 

 Cast of Characters (left to right)

Laura the graphic designer multi-talented permie, 

Eimear, Music therapist, fiddle-player, chiropractor, and permie-to-be

Rebeca the Naturopath & organic co-op founding permie

Vince the Wordpress website designer and Permie from Singapore

Cecilia the international woman of mystery

and not seen, but heard,

Paul Boundy, monumental Permaculturist of Sydney

Around the corner, Annandale Village, the place for hot cross bus

Roasting bunya nuts, toasting buns, turning fruit into salad

The mission was to refine our descriptions of what we do and who we are, to attract and keep high-quality customers over 2012.

If this was easy, we would all have clear and compelling profiles on our websites.

We don't. 

But with practice, with each others feedback, and with The Matrix, we are on our way.

Here it is, the positioning matrix, developed by Matt Church of thought leaders. 

I first saw it in 'Fast, Flat and Free,' by internet marketing guru, Gihan Perera.

How did we go fitting into the Matrix? 

It was a darn big challenge. 

We found we were not just describing what we do, we were re-defining and re-creating who we are and how we will work in the future. 

Wholistic Healer, co-op creator, and natural Permie, Rebecca,
with a generous bag of tricks including bunya nuts for teatime

Because this is all too confronting to do at once, we tried practicing the model with a 'Lie Boldly' version of our amazing selves and our extravagant achievements.

Here is a fine example, with the categories from the matrix above in their own colours.

All about You:

Your obsession, Category, and history:

"For the last 19 years I've been a pioneer of social Permaculture design, with a mission for helping the over-priviliged create exciting, energising home lives.  Im author of 3 bestsellers, including  'Design power, not willpower' and 'Tantric dishwashing - tango though daily life with Permaculture'

All about your Work:

Uniqueness: why they should choose you and not another, an analogy that clarifies what you do, and a story that illustrates it.

Through years of travel and research, I have lived in the homes of some of our centuries greatest achievers and seen the design 'tricks' these essentially ordinary people use to arrange the support for their astonishing results. Like a skilled chiropractor I can immediately see the whole picture, that while pain might be here, but the problem is way over there. With a small, disarming adjustment, the pressure is taken off, and your life blossoms. After a kitchen and communication 'declutter' session, one client-family went from years of ignoring each other, to raucous shared dinnertimes, 3-5 nights a week.  

All about your Clients: 

Their true purpose in work and life, their pressing problems, and what they can buy from you to solve these problems  (This helps them see that you understand them, and see them in a good light)

My corporate seminars,  home consulting, and how-to guides rely on design-power, not will-power, to help you and your staff and family be the most cared-for selves they can be, with a home that supports and inspires them to go out and make their creative contributions to the world.

 Being the most posh house in the street was, after all, groaningly tedious. 

There you go! 

Thats' the lying version. 

Now we know how to do it, we just have to write one that could really be us.

Our very best selves.

Please have a go yourself. 

I'd love to get an email of you results, even just your drafts.

Afterward 

Sharing the surplus - Rebecca's whole street had a garage sale that morning. Here the unsold goods are on their way to the op shop, via us.
Festive!
Everything this lady does has 3 - 5 multiple benefits.
Just by becoming a master wholistic health practitioner, she turned herself into an unwitting social Permaculture virtuoso. 

Completion Day
We will be holding a completion session this coming weekend, in Balmain. 
If you know someone culture-creating who should be there, send them along. 

Back at my Balmain Home, watching the ships go by