And a portion of Life (TM)

My post about sowing will be late. I spent the night between wednesday and thursday in the emergency room at the university hospital.

Yes, I'm feeling well, however I'm a tad squished. (Why on earth put a telly in the waiting room and then tune in MTV - without sound?)

The Return of the Indoor Gardener

You may wonder what I've done these weeks. I've been thinking mostly, I needed that. Unfortunately one of the weeks was claimed buy norovirus, so I had to postpone the gifts I planned for you. Right now I blogging at my favourite café while trying not to think on what a kliché I am. They got plastic plants, I'll spare you a picture. 'Even a whiltered plant is better than a flourishing plastic flower' to travesty the old indoeuropeans.

I've several plans for the blog. Coming next is my sowing round for Christmas. I'm dreaming of freshly picked tomatoes and green leaves on the christmas table. The next post will be a picture reportage from this event to give you deep insights in these (rather shallow) mysteries. I hope to make more informative posts like that. Another plan is to try out more plants and methods to get higher yields. If I ever build those seedling benches is another question, perhaps some things are better left as they are.

Having said that I wish a Happy Diwali to all who celebrates!



* The original saying goes something like "Even a thin horse is better than a wellfed ass." (I'm translating classical sanskrit via swedish.)

An interruption

I've had a comment that it's few facts on how to grow vegetables indoors in this blog. This is partially because it's hard to fit into the blog format I'm aiming for, but I have to admit that I'm not content myself. I'll take a paus over two weeks to make some technical and factual updates. See you all the 28th of October!

Hate to see waste

Sunflowers and fennel. Will probably work just as well in a sallad as in a bouquet, and in addition to that this picture shows what my worms will wiggle in in the future. I went down to my allotment the other day. I can still find vegetables in the mass of weed. (People are taking liberties with my patch since it looks deserted - not good. I hope to keep the chard, at least.)

The fennel have survived the first frosty nights. My theory is that the weed works like a blanket, and now I have bulbs that are big as handball balls. I picked a few of them to see if they will work in a casserole, and to get them into the fridge I had to cut off the 'antennas'. Then I realised that the 'dilly' stuff at the end would be possible to dry and use as bedding in the vermicompost - thus I spent an extra half an our cleaning them. The old sunflower bouquet had some leaves that seemed to be useful so they went the same way - ie. up to the linnen sheets in the study to dry and then down the vermicompost. Sometimes I wonder if I may be a tad too economical.

The World Bank and Durga Puja

I've had one of those tired weekends, so I have to post both the saturday and the sunday vid today. The first one is from the World Bank, I'm actually subscribed to their channel. From my days in the politics and in various NGOs my view on this institution hasn't been good. In fact I thought for long that I'd subscribed to the channel of an alternative organisation with a similar name. This both proves how rusty I am and how low my view on the WB has been. But I may have to rethink this a little.

I hope so.

This vid is about the Global Development Marketplace competition of the year. The theme was sustainable agriculture and we can see a fascinating lot of projects, and some of them holds relevance to indoor gardening.

The other vid is an animation about Durga Puja. Durga is an indian goddess and her festival (puja) ended this Thursday. I could write quite a lot about Durga, indian religion and festivals, but I sugest you enjoy the vid instead. Some things are best understood with the heart.

That's it!

more animals

Will be back next week, with new and fresh texts and vegetables. Enjoy the saturday and sunday vids during the weekend!

Soon it's time...

...to put some of the potatoes I grown on the "sprouting bench". This will be exciting!

A few things you didn't know

Some days ago I awarded "The Tree of Happiness Award" to the Hunky Gardener with "Guy Meets Garden" (among others). He was so thrilled he passed the award along to all of his readers, as well as a tag. The tag requires me to tell seven quirky facts about myself, so here we go:

1. I´m tooting when I blow my nose. It's so bad that my grandma once asked if someone rang the doorbell when I blew my nose outside her room.

2. One of my jobs on the side was to play ms Santa at a computer company christmas party.

3. During said party the christmas tree went up in flames due to misplaced fireworks, which in the end made me offer Tore Skogman (old iconic swedish entertainer) an icecream.

4. I'm a big time gadgeteer. The only reason I don't carry a pocket blow torch in my handbag is that I can't find any excuse for doing so.

5. When I was a kid I ran and hid somewhere as soon as there was romance on the telly. I had no problem with fights and gory war scenes, but my mother wouldn't allow me to see them. I had some difficulties to follow the story in the shows I was watching.

6. We don't have a telly since we have too many other interests and hobbies. The last telly was thrown out when we discovered that the on/off button had a thick layer of dust on top. (Yup, this was so long ago that the telly had one of those.)

7. I managed to get into the manuscript department of British Library and handle real codexes (medieval handwritten manuscripts) without understanding a word of what the librarians said to me. We were all fluent in english.

(Hm, to be honest on that last fact; I did understand the head curator, which probably saved my day at BL. Still, the portrait on my Readers Pass (taken on spot) displays the most magnificent linguistical panic I've ever seen.)

Well, my friends, the tag is yours! Post a comment if you accept it - I'm always open for new knowledge :)

Against the odds

I spent some time today gathering nettles and comfrey for the vermicompost, which means I passed the allotment area. I can't remember when I visited my allotment, so my hopes were low when I gazed across the field to "my" spot. Of course there were a few eye sores there, like big bushes of weed, but the sunflowers were flourishing too, and when I took a closer look I could see a healthy tuft of swiss chard. Everything isn't lost.

The Canticle of the Sun

A world where all its parts counts as brothers and sisters of human. No, it's not some hippie who wrote this, simply because the author lived long before the term was invented. It's Francis of Assissi, he's gradually becoming a role model for enviromentalists who happen to be christians. Since he lived eight hundred years ago, before most of the big schisms, most of the modern day churches can listen to his words. If you are a christian I advise you to read and learn.

If you're not a christian I hope you can stand this excursion to another religion. [And if you are scared by the words "Woe to those who die in mortal sin" perhaps I should mention that when you examine 'mortal sin' more closely you'll find that it's extremly hard to die in it. You can go there, and that's serious, but it's hard to reach this far and there are a lot of escape doors and second chances before that.]

The Canticle of the Sun was played at our wedding, although to another melody. If you can stand watching the entire mr Bean skit you'll hear it at the end.

Another way to gain time

Yesterday I quit a job. One job. For a while I've had two jobs and a company to care for beside the family. I'm probably not the only one who finds this a tad much, and you may have noticed that I've updated Indoor Gardener irregularly in the meantime. But it's been a good job; it provided me with a steady income (albeit a small one), lots of scrap paper and all those packingstraps I'm now turning into baskets and spare parts for my vermicomposting system, so I can't complain.

Now I'm looking forward to spend more time with my plants. Bliss!

The worms deliver

The bottom tray of my homemade vermicompost has remained dry for a very long time. According to Those Who Know surplus fluid would seep into it, making an excellent base for compost tea. However my vermicompost seemed to have reach the ideal percentage of moist at once, so I stopped checking the tray...

...untill the day before yesterday when hubby accidentally poured some deciliters (cups) of black liquid over the floor while he was tidying the understairs cupboard. This made him a bit tired, not only for the sake of the puddle, but also since he had wasted valuable fertiliser. We decided to not cry over spilt drips, and today we had enough to make the first everyday watering with compost tea.

Thus, eventhough I'm frustrated that everything takes longer time than expected, I'm proud to see that I'm steadily nearing the goal.