Edible forest landscapes are life filled places that not only provide food for humans, they are habitats for wildlife, carbon sequestering, biodiversity, natural soil building gardens of fruit and nuts, perennial and annual veggies and flowers. These many-layered gardens are beautiful, resilient and self-renewing. With the emphasis on the whole system as an interrelated organism, interconnectedness is the key to a healthy, dynamic garden. Let nature be the model we use to design landscape.
I engaged on my first wwoofing experience in Nelson, BC. It was my first time to Nelson and it was a super way to hang out there for a week. I spent about 6 hours of my day helping with the garden and the rest of the time exploring the countryside, sitting in cafes and painting. Woofing isn't for everyone, but if you are into alternative methods of seeing the world, this is a good place to start. Here I am doing some landscape work in the garden.
I stayed with two wonderful artists: Fiona Brown who creates the most exquisite ceramic pieces. We ate out of her colourful bowls, her tiles covered the walls and her studio was so inspiring. Here is a picture of my adventures in tile building and a small sample of her brilliant artwork.
Fiona Brown and Brian McGlachlan both open their house to the the COLUMBIA BASIN CULTURAL TOUR, which happens August 14th & 15th, 2010. Go to Nelson and check out:
Stanley Street Studios - you will fall in love with their home, the artwork and the artists.
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What do we really, really want?
Jacqulynn Mulyk's art exhibit starts the discussion
Yvonne Jeffery, Calgary Herald
Our city is taking a few knocks these days. We're accused of getting too big, too quickly. Our environmental footprint is the largest in the country, we rely on cars instead of walking, and even our homes are growing instead of downsizing as they're beginning to in other major markets.
But Jacqulynn Mulyk isn't buying into these generalizations. The 34-year-old artist has stood on the streets of New York City and Vancouver to paint the streetscapes there, and now she's done the same thing for her adopted hometown. The result is Big City Living -- from the eyes of a downtown resident, an exhibit currently at Inglewood's Artpoint Gallery.
"When I moved to Mission, the buildings around there and the businesses really affected me," Mulyk says. "I believe they gave me a sense of peace and excitement. Then, as I spent more time there, I realized it wasn't just the buildings. There are a number of things that contribute to your sense of place, and that's where this series of paintings came from -- from trying to communicate those different elements."
Her paintings -- collages of paint, photos and even fabric -- provide glimpses of the cities: vibrant splashes of colour and movement in New York, flowing expanses of blues and greens in Vancouver, and in Calgary, a sense of space, set against a framework of skyscrapers and rivers.
"I love architecture," she says. "I think it plays an important role in our lives, and (the art) puts that into context with the other things around it, like the trees on the street, the river, the natural spaces, the air quality, the energy."
That last element is one of the most important.
"We all contribute to that sense of energy," she says. "How we drive, what we drive, which businesses we support, which kinds of activities we do or don't do outside, our arts and culture, diversity, clubs -- everything contributes to the energy in a city."
She's concerned that many of those energy sources can be overlooked in new developments, particularly given that most people have -- or at least contribute -- little or no influence over what gets built in particular spaces. She hopes her exhibit, with its paintings, journals and video of downtown streets and construction gets people talking about where the city -- which she likens to a pre-teen -- is going.
"We're still a young city and we've grown so much so quickly -- you get all kinds of growing pains," she explains.
"We all, as citizens of Calgary, influence the way Calgary is going to grow and what type of adult it will one day become."
She mentions walking down a Vancouver street that boasts lots of small shops, markets and people. "It has a very rhythmic energy to it, a low but steady rhythm of people. In Calgary, you get quite a bit of dead space, I find, or you get jolted."
To boost the flow of energy on our streets, she'd like us to think about what we want to surround us.
"That's why I have a number of elements in the exhibit," she says. "I want people to look at them, study them and explore them . . . but beyond that, I want people to think about the story and formulate their own stories and add to it."
She suggests that starting the discussion at home by surrounding yourself with ideas is one step.
"You create energy in your home by the way you bring things in, by what you surround yourself with, just like on the street. The energy I like to have in my home is one of ideas, one of openness and excitement.
"For me, when I have original work on my walls, I feel like anything can happen in this space."
yjeffery@theherald.canwest.com
]]>The painting workshop was lead by Michele Cassou, the same artist I studied from in San Francisco. Her methods are about getting down to the core of what you are and this connection we have to the universe through the painting process. It isn't about painting really pretty pictures or learning brush techniques or how to paint mountains realisticly. It is about opening yourself up with the 'jaws of life' to reach the core - which is hot and bubbling like molten.
The ZCLA: http://www.zcla.org/index.php
Here are some pictures
Zendo Centre
One of the beautiful gardens at the ZCLA
A few of us set out easels up outside
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Small garden allowed to remain on city land
Published September 3, 2009 by Julie Van Rosendaal in Food Julie Van Rosendaal
Sometimes, the spade is mightier than the pen.
This spring, Erlton residents Jacqulynn Mulyk and her husband Jon Walters were faced with a glut of rich compost and not much yard at their townhouse in which to cultivate it. Located steps from a chunk of rarely used public land — a small space at the top of Cemetery Hill — the couple went ahead and planted three raised beds rather than jumping through the required hoops to meet city policy (considering factors like parking, irrigation and insurance) for an approved community garden.
Henninger Park is a hilly chunk of grass with a lone bench placed at the top, overlooking Meals on Wheels and Macleod Trail. Its steep slope renders it unsuitable for a playground or much else in the way of recreational use; a narrow red gravel path allows pedestrians to cut through to get from the neighbourhood to the street below.
Unsure of the soil quality (the land was once a ravine, now filled and covered with scrub grass and a few bushes), Mulyk and Walters laid newspapers over the earth and filled each bed with soil. Then they planted seeds. Since June, they have been successfully growing carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, chard, arugula, radish, lettuces and what they think might be broccoli.
Irrigation has not been an issue; Mulyk and Walters maintain the garden, watering it from a hose attached with a small electric pump to the rain barrel outside their townhouse, about 30 metres from the raised beds, and they let rain do the rest of the work. Despite its public location, squirrels have been the only vandals. (They appear to love peas.)
“If homeless people want to help themselves to the food, I couldn’t care less, that’s not the point,” says Walters. “It was just something productive to do with this nice organic material. It’s a natural progression. In every other jurisdiction where people can grow things, they grow things.”
Throughout the summer, city workers mowed around the beds without comment. Then last week, representatives from the parks department called a meeting and paid a visit to the garden.
“I’m hoping I get the same latitude as someone guilty of visual pollution,” says Walters, referring to the commercial signs one so often sees on public property. “I’ve taken down 400 signs from public spaces. If bylaw doesn’t have the resources to do it, I don’t mind spending my Saturdays that way.”
The good news is, the city didn’t ask them to remove the planted beds. The city was unavailable for comment on the future of the tiny garden, but Ward 9 Alderman Joe Ceci’s office says that although it’s unsanctioned by the parks department, they have agreed to work around it for the remainder of the season and hope to work with the community to make the garden legit next year.
“If the city wants to do something, maybe it could start from this,” says Walters, hoping that officials might take notice that it has no impact on city resources. “We’re trying to be as basic and unchallenging as possible.”
“If you start with ‘No,’ you put the citizen in a position where they have to battle,” says Mulyk. “People give up. Better to open up the conversation — let us know where to begin, what we can do.”
]]>Cob is a very old method of building with earth and straw or other fibers. It is quite similar to adobe in that the basic mix of clay and sand is the same, but it usually has a higher percentage of long straw fibers mixed in. Instead of creating uniform blocks to build with, cob is normally applied by hand in large gobs (or cobs) which can be tossed from one person to another during the building process. The traditional way of mixing the clay/sand/straw is with the bare feet; for this reason, it is fairly labor intensive. Some of the process can be mechanized by using a backhoe to do the mixing, but that diminishes the organic nature of it. Because of all the straw, cob can be slightly more insulating than adobe, but it still would not make a very comfortable house in a climate of extreme temperatures. The wonderful thing about cob construction is that it can be a wildly freeform, sculptural affair. I've seen some very charming homes made this way. Cob was a common building material in England in the nineteenth century, and many of those buildings are still standing.
And so it goes. I helped to build a home on Salt Spring Island at the end of July. The process was beautiful, the other builders were beautiful and the end result will be spectacular. Everyone working for the same result - earth friendly living experience. Getting together with 25 other women to build a house was a really powerful experience. It is amazing that an experience that should be central in all of our lives, turns out to be just so fantastically different then our current city living experiences. To pick food off the land, rely on rain water, share your space with food producing animals, build your house with your own hands - all of it is very empowering.
I am working on creating a video of the experience and the process of cob building. There are a few ways to participate, but check out the MUDGIRLS.
THIS IS MOLLY. We built her house on Salt Spring Island. She is very knowledgeable in natural building processes and had a ferocious spirit that is very inspiring.
The whole group of Mudgirls building at the end of July.
This is me Cobbing. We were covered in Mud all week. It felt great.
This is as far as we got on the cob house by the end of 6 days. This type of building takes a lot of labour but you are left with a very organic building - well worth the work.
If you would like more details or to see more pictures, please send me an email - I have many more.
On Friday afternoon I took my new camera for a walk through the park. Slept on a bench by the river and just enjoyed a nice summer afternoon.
DEAR BUM.
Here is me and the the morning show gang. From left to right: Jacqulynn, Angela Knight, Jim Brown and Julie Van Rosendall.
The CBC asked me to come onto the show as a guest to represent the Vegetarian population of Calgary. I think they could have gotten someone MORE vegetarian than myself, but I am the one who called into the talk back line, calling them on their excessive meat cooking. I told them they were making me puke first thing in the morning.
Here is a wonderful dish made by Julie. It is a Brie wheel topped with spiced and sauteed walnuts. The brie was cooked on a cedar plank on the BBQ. It was absolutely delish.
Luckily the brie was removed before the cedar plank started on fire. The producer of the show, Michael tried to stamp out the fire. Quite a bit of activity first thing in the morning.
Angela Knight and Jim Brown doing their thing in the lovely CBC studio. They can see everything happening on Memorial from their window here.
It seemed to me that everything to them feels pretty routine. I imagine their jobs take a lot of energy to pull off with such grace and well - vibrancy they bring to their show every morning.
Thanks guys!
]]>David is an amazing drumming faciliator and we may get together to offer you a drumming and painting workshop. I was so inspired in creating the beats that I didn't realize I hurt one of my fingers. I was working so hard that I fractured one of my fingers! I think I am healed now. A friend of mine said, 'Why do you think they invented sticks?'. Whatever, he doesn't know.
