Edible verge gardens

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Growing edible plants – as well as or instead of purely ornamental ones – is something that many, many Australians have been doing for decades. A recent study by Australian Institute quantified just how many ‘many, many’ actually is. According to their research, 52% of Australian households produce garden crops of some description. Most of these crops (74%) are produced in back (or front) yard veggie patches and include herbs, vegetables and/or fruit trees. A much smaller number of households have developed verge gardens (13%), grow balcony plants (12%), or are involved in community gardens (1%). Whichever way you look at it, there’s a lot of productive gardening going on in Australia.

Until fairly recently I fell squarely into the 74%; my raised garden beds and mini orchard keep us in cherry tomatoes, basil, mint, spinach, citrus, plums, pears and a few other seasonal crops. Maintaining the mulching, fertilising, pruning, crop rotation and watering keeps me and various lucky minions well and truly out of free time. So why on earth have I set the whole attempt-to-develop-a-verge-garden thing in motion?

Party it’s the endless, pointless and unrewarding mowing of the verge. Because we have a corner block, it’s a very wide verge, and because we’re on a hill, it’s a very steep verge. It is also ‘graced’ with a couple of Corymbia ficifolia (red flowering gum trees), which drop a surprising number of large gumnuts. These factors combined make mowing it a slightly daunting prospect (for me) and seem to carry a surcharge (for contractors). Then there’s the ongoing damage to the reticulation when parents doing their school run drive over the well-disguised sprinklers (yes, we live opposite a primary school), or the infrequently used mower does the same.

Having attended a number of permaculture and water-wise workshops over the past few years, I eventually concluded that it might simply be easier to remove the grass. Not only would I not have to think about mowing/finding someone to do it affordably long-term, it would also mean that our helpful neighbours wouldn’t feel that they need to randomly employ a contractor on our behalf from time to time to tidy things up.

mulch pileAs phase one of Operation Verge Garden, I ordered five cubic metres of mulch. The overly enthusiastic contractor delivered 10. That’s a lot of mulch. A lot. By the time we’d spread about half of it around our fruit trees, on the veggie garden and on part of the verge-garden-to-be, our backs were stiff and sore and enthusiasm was starting to ebb. Then one of the gum trees succumbed to long term (untreated) tree rot and had to be removed from the middle of the remaining mulch.

mulch pile2More help was recruited to get the rest of the seemingly never-ending mulch pile moved and spread. In retrospect it would’ve been a good idea to put some cardboard down under the mulch first, as this would have limited the amount of light getting in and probably killed off the grass more effectively. If I’d found this publication by Russ Grayson  a little sooner (or listened to my permaculture/greenie daughter), things may have been a tad easier – but, as with many things garden related, it’s been a learning curve for us all.

A few very hot months have passed since the project started and not a lot of verge garden has emerged in that time. We did plant a loquat tree, however, and that’s thriving quietly. We also planted a variety of seeds, just to see what sorts of things would make it through the summer with very little water or attention. It turns out that sunflowers and pumpkins are the stand out winners.

I did give some thought to the possibility of theft or vandalism to plants and crops when we started on all this, but decided that I’m not really too concerned. I’m reasonably confident that most locals who see veggies growing on the verge will be interested and engaged, rather than destructive and vindictive. Perhaps they’ll even fell inspired to do something similar on their verge. I remain perennially hopeful about the nature of the human animal.

Now that the weather is starting to cool down a little, it’s probably time to start cropping the pumpkins and thinking about what we want to grow through the autumn and winter.

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The Book Pitch II

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A packed lecture theatre with air-conditioning set to Arctic+, three publishers and 15 opportunities to pitch – what could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, nothing and everything…

At the start the daylong publishing seminar, everyone interested in pitching their book was encouraged to put their name down on a list – and many did. The list was closed mid afternoon and the names were put into a large box as individual strips of paper. Once the actual pitch session started, 15 names were selected at random across the course of the hour. This meant we didn’t know if we’d been chosen until our name was called, at which point we had no more than three minutes to impress.

The best possible outcome was for one or more of the publishers to say something along the lines of ‘I’d like to hear more; send your manuscript to me’. Next best was to be asked questions that showed engagement and interest of some sort. Less good was if the comments showed either no interest or were really feedback to say that the book was an unlikely contender. Worst was to stand up and freeze – or simply choose to not pitch even though your name was drawn.

One person left before it even started and one other chose not to pitch. That left thirteen slots – and a room full of anxious hopefuls. As I listened to each of the pitches I was reminded of a number of things: speak clearly, don’t ramble, be prepared to answer whatever questions are thrown your way, don’t try to tell the whole story, and use humour if you can (but only if you can do it well!). Of the thirteen pitches I heard, four appeared to get the nod – I wasn’t one of them

By the time the second last name was to be called I’d accepted that it was unlikely that I’d be pitching. Then event MC read out my name – and the world got a bit fuzzy for a moment. I could claim that my chronic sinus infection and (very) annoying cough played a part in my less than stellar performance, but it was probably nerves more than anything else. I rushed through my piece and was left in a well of silence for a moment before anyone responded. My brain went into meltdown trying to figure out whether the silence was a good thing or a bad thing, so when the questions finally came my answers took a moment or two to formulate. The questions the publishers asked and the comments they made led me to understand that my pitch hadn’t informed the audience in the way that I’d intended. Although I spoke clearly, didn’t ramble and was more or less prepared for questions, I hadn’t provided enough detail – or perhaps the right sort of detail. Just as well I’d avoided humour… and possibly a pity I didn’t resort to cookies!

Actually, the most entertaining part of the afternoon was seeing the MC dip her hand into the box of names, recoil slightly and then discreetly call the sound engineer over to her table. After a quiet chat, he put his hand into the box and came out with… an enormous cockroach. By now my attention was riveted on the by-play and on the MC’s combination of tightly controlled horror and suppressed giggles. These only increased when the A/V guy looked around, casually placed the granddaddy of all cockroaches on his arm, then turned and walked quietly out of the auditorium. It was excruciatingly funny, particularly as it took place during one of the pitches and most of the audience and all of the publishers were focused on the speaker and appeared oblivious to the entire incident.

It may be time for me to get back into formal public speaking in order to hone the rusty skills and quell the butterflies. Meantime, I have an elevator pitch to work on, and author bio to update and a book proposal to submit.

The Book Pitch

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With all my major edits done for the moment, it’s a given that one of the events I’ll be going to at the Perth Writer’s Festival next week is the one-day publishing seminar. This is a great opportunity to hear about various aspects of the publishing process as well as alternative pathways to publication, including e-books and self-publishing. It also provides a chance, however slim, of pitching my book to representatives from three WA publishing houses.

This means I need to come up with a plausible elevator pitch – a 30 to 60 second sound bite that will provide enough information to engage the interest of a prospective publisher/editor and allow me to give them my business card, at the very least.

The elevator pitch seems to come down to the WIFM principle: What’s in it for me? If I can’t grab a prospective ‘buyer’ in those first 30 to 60 seconds by answering that question, then I’m effectively out of the game. So I really, really need to showcase whatever my unique selling proposition is as quickly as possible. To do this I need to make every word count, to ensure that every gesture and intonation supports my word choices and that the pace of delivery is pitched just right. It’s a package deal aimed at making the audience care, whether that’s one person or a room full of people. Simple, right?

Well, according to my insomnia, not all that simple. It actually reminds me of the first few months of my postgrad project, when everyone kept asking me what my thesis was about. For a while there my answers were a bit rambling and got bogged down in detail, but they slowly distilled to the two or three sentences that captured the essence of what I was trying to achieve. This is no different. I’ve spent the past few days talking to myself in the car, testing out variations on a theme to see what sounds right, what captures the essence of this story, and it’s slowly starting to come together.

Last night I did a test run on some friends – people who haven’t read the book and only had a vague idea of what it’s about. It was very interesting to get their feedback, to hear what caught their attention and what didn’t, where they felt I should perhaps add some detail and what I might want to consider leaving out. The bottom line is that I got them – and not just because I was feeding them dinner either! Although that is a thought… perhaps I could take some tasty treats along to the Writer’s Festival…

P.S. Yes, I do have business cards (now) – and rather attractive they are too 🙂

Market City Adventures

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6am is far too early to be awake on a Saturday morning… unless there’s a darn good reason. Does going to the markets to bulk shop for fish, meat and veggies qualify as ‘a good reason’? Hell, yes! The cost savings are significant and future-me can put her feet up and recover later, whilst congratulating past-me on epic shopping success and bargains galore.

market city3When I first joined a veggie-buying co-op twenty+ years ago it was an economic necessity. I was surprised at how much fresh food cost in Australia when we arrived, and being part of the co-op made including a wide range of fruit and veg in our diet affordable. Our group was made up of four families and our budget per week was $60, although we often spent less than that. We all took it in turn to head off to the markets at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings, armed with our specially made collapsible shopping trolley, a pen and notepad to record the prices, and our allotted $60 in cash. Each week brought with it some surprise items and, depending on who the shopper was, the surprises ranged from a share of a box of quinces to a similar quantity of parsnips… or capsicum… or zucchini or… whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Being part of this definitely broadened my family’s eating repertoire considerably and taught them just how many ways I could disguise zucchini!

 I confess that I initially found the market experience quite confronting. The determination with which people set about their shopping was impressive, the jostling and competitiveness unnerving, and the need for rapid mental arithmetic a challenge. It took several visits for me to get a handle on how to select the best buys and on how to manage the vendors in order to get the best service. In those days I noticed that many market goers were from Vietnam and China; as time passed there were more people from the Philippines, then from Middle Eastern countries, then Africa – a reflection of the changes to Australian migration policy, no doubt. These days it’s much harder to pick an ethnic trend, the markets having become a multicultural microcosm in action.

Over time the numbers in our co-op have diminished. Families have grown up and moved on, with the result that we diehards go to the markets less frequently. Since we’re down to two groups of people, we now take it in turn go every three weeks instead of weekly. This makes going more of a novelty and, on our turn, we now choose to go a little earlier and incorporate other outlets into our market adventures.

Our first stop is usually the fish market, where great crates and crates of fish stare up at me accusingly with their googly little eyes as I sneak past. Even with plastic gloves on, handling whole fish is not something I do willingly. The stench of fish, the slippery floor, the occasional splash of fishy-goo on my feet – all of this is highly unappealing. The meat shed next door is next, where the sheer expanse of raw meat is unsettling in a different way. Bags and bags of vacuum packed beef on trestle tables, piles of ubiquitous bones lurking menacingly in giant crates, the band saw singing tunelessly in the background and the queue to pay wending oh-so-slowly through all this is tough going on an early-morning stomach.

In due course we stash our assorted purchases in a cooler box in the car, then head across to the much larger veggie markets to face yet another throng of people, more jostling, more queues, more toting of heavy boxes. So why do it? Very simple: the price difference between the markets and a fish vendor, butcher or suburban veggie store is significant. Our most recent market haul included frozen fish fillets (hoki) at $5/kg, fresh trout – googly eyes and all, salmon steaks (we have a house guest who can’t eat red meat), many kilos of beef mince and ox heart at remarkably low prices (for the dog and cats), stir fry beef strips and a couple of roasts (because we still eat red meat sometimes!), cherry tomatoes ($5 for a huge box of these – the pick of the week), red capsicum, pears, nectarines, corn, potatoes, zucchini, cabbage, watermelon and some very tasty freshly-picked prunes. Our fridges and freezer are bulging at the seams and we’re set for fresh food for the next three to four weeks.

I remind myself of this every six weeks when I roll out of bed at 5.30 on a Saturday morning, wondering if it’s really worthwhile. From a both a future planning and cost point of view it is absolutely and always worth the occasional early morning and a bit of shoulder bumping from strangers. It’s also fun, in a weird sort of way – and last time I was there the coffee stand was open and the (charming) barista charge me $1 less than the standard price for a cuppa just because she liked my accent and I smiled at her. Win! 🙂

Procrastination – or the hunt for perfection?

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At what point does the seemingly endless round of editing and getting people to read your manuscript become self-defeating? The objective, no doubt, is to refine the manuscript so that the best possible product reaches a publisher or, in my case, potential publisher. Somewhere along the line, however, this quite possibly ends up sliding towards nitpicking, navel gazing and – essentially – procrastination.

A friend of mine has a simple mantra in life, one that’s borrowed without shame or compromise from the corporate world: just Do It! I admire her for this enormously and am often slightly envious at the capacity she has to live up to those words. She’s a great example to her many students and, indeed, to me. So whenever I start to debate the finer details of syntax, grammar, sentence construction, paragraph length and so on for too long, I try to haul myself back from disappearing down that rabbit hole and try to keep a sense of perspective. I remind myself that, whilst correct spelling, appropriate grammar and the position of a comma or apostrophe are all very important, so is finishing a product and getting it out there. Finding the balance between procrastination and a gung-ho attitude is the key to just doing it whilst doing it right.

In that spirit, I tidied up the final details of my epic tome this weekend – adding and captioning some photographs and scanned images – and have sent it off for some final line editing. Are these edits really necessary? Probably not, but I’m pedantic enough to want to be sure that the product I take for professional assessment by a publisher is indeed the best that I can produce. To an extent doing so will make rejection tougher than if I knew that it still needed a lot of work, but at least I won’t castigate myself unduly for not having done a good job upfront – whatever the outcome.

I actually have no idea how long other writers take to edit and tidy up their manuscripts prior to submission. My only benchmark is my thesis – and that took an awfully long time, partly because reference checking is exacting and very time hungry. This round of editing (by no means the first) started in September last year. Given that December was a write-off, that still means that this is the fourth month of nitpicking, of checking for consistency and formatting, along with everything else.

Things I’ve done that have worked:

Changimageing the font and colour of the text. This makes me actually read every word, rather than letting my eyes slide over them and not see typos. This is a real pro tip, by the way 🙂

Printing out a hard copy and reading it as though it’s a book by someone else – and being ruthless with a red pen whenever I find an error.

Reading sections out aloud to myself, since this often shows me where the errors lie more clearly than anything else does – particularly where the commas should (or shouldn’t!) be.

Things I’ve done that haven’t worked: Procrastinate. Yup, that’s about it really.

So – onwards (to victory, and beyond!). I await feedback from a couple of people and must then knuckle down and submit the manuscript as a book proposal to local publishers. Exciting times…