Slim Pickings for Car Thieves
Yeeesh it got nippy this week! Somehow everyone managed to work for the full day on Friday. Oh and Friday morning, we discovered someone had attempted to break into one of our utes.
The Mazda has suffered three attempted break ins during its time with us.
The first attempt, they bent up the keyhole on the driver’s side, and didn’t manage to get in, but whatever they did meant that you can <my partner has made me delete this part because apparently I ‘want the ute to get stolen’>.
The second, same kids I think, did manage to get in and attempted to hot wire it- well, I think they realised they were out of their depth, because they pulled all of the wires out from under the steering wheel, looked at them, and walked off.
This time, someone tried to jam a slim jim down the window to pop the lock. But they put the slim jim in the wrong place, it went through the rubber seal and shattered the glass. But the tints held the glass together and inexplicably they still couldn’t get inside the car, so they left again. Alex lifted the window out as a whole piece and drove in as usual…
Remember kids, if you are stupid enough to be stealing a car you should be smart enough to know how to use a slim jim. Which, btw, you can create with a ruler or coat hanger, give it a go.
What I'm obsessing over this week
I came across this by accident, with a snappy title- “Planting non-native trees accelerates the release of carbon back into the atmosphere”- I’m sorry, what?
‘Tl;dr- planting native plants in areas that usually only have non-native, or vice versa (say, converting a garden filled with exotic plants into one full of natives) will make the soil- bacteria, microorganisms, bugs of all shapes and sizes- cycle quite rapidly to match the change. This will result in a substantial amount of carbon lost to the atmosphere where previously it would have stayed in the garden.
There’s not a heap more I can say right now, I don’t understand the scale- I know this is the case with forests, I do not know how this translates in a garden. I do not know what the soil situation is like, for instance, if you are in a home garden.
There is also a fairly bitter argument between some academics and the forestry industry, because exotic plants (grown for timber) sequester carbon very quickly- but tend to lose carbon as well (during processing of the timber). So is it better to grow exotic trees that will sequester a huge amount of carbon very quickly, or better to grow native forests, that may take decades to sequester the same amount of carbon (but won’t lose it)? Can’t we do both?
One thing that is being hinted with regards to the soil is that if you change up the plants in your garden beds, and stray significantly between types of plants, you will end up with far more bugs, which in this case would be the ‘bad’ bugs while the plants stress out (aphids, etc). So I will do a tonne more research here!
What staff learnt about this week
Our weekly focus was pruning hydrangeas. This is year two of our new strategy of pruning back shoots once the flowers have gone, so instead of a proper prune, we practice aggressive deadheading during the season and are just tidying up now, taking some shoots back so the pruned plant is a nice shape.
Highlights: We are all enjoying the ‘do it when you see it’ approach, which seems to be working substantially better than trying to time our prunings for maximum blooms next year. It also means that even newbies are confidently pruning the hydrangeas.
Lowlights: Sometimes the plant can be a bit wonky with a few really tall shoots and the rest cut quite far back, but we realised we have all started to correct ourselves mid-season and made sure that this is not such a big thing.
An interview with a gardening legend
I didn’t get to interview my gardening legend this week because some other bastard realised how great she is, and she was literally being interviewed by someone else during my time with her! (Unbeknownst to me, in her spare time she crochets toys for sick children- you can’t make this up- so she was stuck inside with a real journalist).
So here is the bounty from Mary’s garden this week- she gave me some sorrel, some limes and miners lettuce. She offered potatoes, too, but I ran out of time to dig them up.
And here is why I like sorrel so much. Sorrel is a super lemony leafy plant which I was never a huge fan of until my friend Sophie taught me how to make an incredible sandwich with it- she didn’t have pesto, so she just added similar ingredients-
Bread (duh)
Peanut butter (nuts)
Mashed avocado (good fats)
Sorrel (making up the ‘greens’ and ‘citrus’ portion of the pesto)
Heaps of salt and pepper
.. you have to try this sandwich, especially while there are so many avocados kicking around. And if you want a sorrel plant, hit me up!
Thanks everyone! It’s been really fun writing this and I am loving the chats it is inspiring. I hear the weather will improve this weekend so have a great one.