Wander around the garden with a handmade basket collecting a wonderful array of herbs, flowers and leafy greens (and purples). I take a leaf from this and a leaf from that so I don’t harm the plant, and can come back again day after day for more. It's a peaceful way to garden and harvest.
I collect things like soft pumpkin leaves and shoots, sweet potato leaves and shoots, mustard spinach, any brassica flowers and soft flower stalks, many varieties of kale, welsh onion leaves, the bolting shoots from coriander/cilantro, tulsi leaves, garlic chives and garlic chive flowers, Brazilian spinach ...there’s so many things to collect, even pea leaves, bean leaves, beetroot leaves, young chia leaves, young amaranth leaves, weeds - chickweed, dandelion leaves. The more diverse the selection, the more diverse the nutrients in the food.
|
The magnificent red mustard spinach is making it's way into every meal in these cooler months. |
I love this time in the garden, watching the birds, noticing things - new shoots on trees, self-seeding veggies, subtle changes and simple beauty. I think about what I can add to the garden to increase the diversity or adapt to the changing season.
|
Brassica flowers are a wonderful treat. I often snack on them in the garden. |
I notice where I need to add some more compost or mulch. The compost is made from the chicken bedding, and the Azolla we harvested by hand from the lake. The mulch is often chop and drop materials, but we do also go and pick up some local bales of grass straw that another neighbour orders in bulk for us all to use. The kids love to ride in the trailer with the bales slowly back along the little internal road within the ecovillage with the wind in their hair, singing in the breeze, watching for hawks and kangaroos.
I could ask the kids to harvest the greens too because they know where all the great greens are at any moment - the garden is their playground - and sometimes I do, but I just love this time in the garden pottering for a few minutes.