July 2010
26 posts
www.sustainablehouse.com.au →
Michael’s blog has moved.
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We look forward to your visit.
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Pyrmont road gardens
The photos in the post above show some rain gardens in Pyrmont.
The gardens have been constructed between 224 to 308 Harris Street by Sydney City Council to address issues on:
stormwater runoff management eg to address both water quantity and quality issues from the roofs and footpaths
keeping the runoff near where it falls, thereby roughly restoring the natural water cycle
...
Conservative think tank says oil will run short...
This is an interesting recent post in one of the leading energy blogs, The Oil Drum, which refers to a finding by a conservative policy analysis firm, Chatham House, that the world’s oil supply will run short in the next few years:
“Lloyd’s hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities...
Using public compost bins in Chippendale
There are green compost bins in some of our streets like the one in the photo in the post above. They are for anyone to use. Please feel very welcome to put your food and garden waste in them at any time.
There are seven in Peace Park, one for each day of the week. Just put your food waste in the bin with the day that matches.
Several other bins are in Myrtle and Shepherd Streets. Some bins...
27,000 wells and counting
As oil and gas bubble up from the seabed around BP’s well there’s a growing amount of discussion of oil drilling in the coast off the USA, and this short note is interesting:
There are around 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf. One of them is within two miles of BP’s blowout, and there is a second well in the area that is not in...
Two road temperature monitors go up in Chippo
Temperature gauge on post with black winding box at base
Sydney City Council has put up two road temperature monitors.
One is in Myrtle, on the north side of the street, near the intersection with Abercrombie. It will continuously record the temperature of the road caused by direct western and eastern sun and no tree cover with black tar on the road.
The other is in Buckland and will...
Inspiring city planning
On ABC Iview for a week or so there’s an inspiring example of city planning at Portland in the US where the city:
- is reducing city traffic, increasing public transport
- making the car a guest on many roads
- cutting transport related pollution
and much more.
To visit it on the web:
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/589468 E 2: Transport: Episode 5: Portland: A sense of place
...
New raingarden in City Road
There’s a new raingarden in City Road. There are photos of it below.
It’s a fine improvement on the ones recently installed in Buckland, Myrtle and Meagher streets; congratulations to the designers and the authors of the project, Sydney City Council.
This one is better because it:
drains water from the road by gravity and keeps it near where it falls, thereby roughly restoring...
Waste forum, Addison Road Centre, Marrickville
At 7 pm Thursday 15 July the Addison Rd Community Centre, Marrickville will hold a community forum on waste: see their web page where it says:
Addison Road Environment Week
July 12 - 18th
Community Forum waste: is it sustainable?
July 15th 7 pm at HUT 3 ECCC
Developing a workable sustainable waste strategy for the Addison Rd Centre will be part of ARC moving towards 100%...
Growing interest in Chippendale compost trial
Steven sent me another email from his blog, Life in Chippendale, about the road gardens, particularly about the compost bins and it’s here (anonymous):
Hi Chippendale, I am from Ultimo and involved with setting up a community garden there.I was impressed by your composting system on the green in your community and wondered what type of bins you used and there rough cost. Also wondered...
Seoul City's freeway that became a river
Seoul City put a freeway over a river then, in 2007, over 30 years later, demolished the freeway to restore the river.
They found that getting rid of the black road cooled the city in summer, restored conversations to the heart of the city and that the cars reduced in number and vehicle trip times shortened.
To see this inspiring story go to ABC iView -
E2: Transport Episode 4
...
Coffee and knitting
There’s a shop at 413 King Street called, Coffee and a Yarn, where you can have a coffee and buy wool and knit. A friend bought some beautiful wool there (they have local organic wool, and some lovely wool from Ireland, too).
I enjoyed the sight and stillness of folks sitting and knitting while having a bite to eat or a coffee.
Just a thought,
Michael
Moth's new house
A moth has made a house in the fejoia tree outside my house and this photo show it hanging there, hard to see, well built but without development approval the little law breaker.
There’s lots of snails on the paw paw trees and other trees; the sooner the midyen berry bushes and other bird-attracting plants get growing and bring the little birds here to eat these pests the better.
Ahhhh,...
Another volunteer for road gardening
Steve sent this note from his blog, Life in Chippendale (kept anonymous):
Hi there, I'm writing to express my interest in getting involved/volunteering/learning about your group. I do a lot of street gardening in Surry Hills, currently I'm working on my dream of greening Cleveland St. I use orphaned plants, cuttings, seeds, whatever I can find really. Having come through Chippendale...
Join us for gardening each Friday
Join us for road gardening each Friday: knock on 58 Myrtle at 9 am or look for us after then in Myrtle Street or Peace Park.
Bring gloves or we may have a spare pair.
It’s winter so we’ll be:
- keeping the compost bins turning over
- putting out compost or mulch to keep the plants warm and well fed
- pruning the citrus
- making raised bed gardens
- saving seeds and planting...
Raintanks for Peace Park
Council is putting in two 10,000 litre rain tanks to water Peace Park. They’ll be underground. Water will fill them from the road.
So water that would otherwise be wasted and pollute Blackwattle Bay will now be put to good use.
The pump to irrigate the park from the tanks will be solar powered.
Tanks for that Sydney Council,
Michael
Peace Park Compost feedback
Sydney City Council’s Waste Officer, Michael Neville, has put a sign up on the compost bins inviting people to contact him for information and with feedback about the bins.
Here’s one Michael has received (kept anonymous)
Good morning. There is a sign up at the Peace Park asking residents to email if we use the compost bins. We do. Our family of 3 (soon to be 4) takes compost to...
Want action?
Enrol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qub4lWT6GNk
Cooler, healthier, more productive cities
At the talk tomorrow at Tusculum, Kings Cross, organised by the NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, from 630 to 730 there’s two folks talking about collaboration and design - Caroline Pidcock, architect, and myself.
I’ll talk about: - problems and solutions for cooling and making more productive the forgotten one third of our cities - the land where roads and...
Gardening today and next Friday
Today Karlie, Nathan and I:
- put out some trace elements on the citrus (essential tucker for them in these poor soils which should have them naturally - Potassium, magnesium, Iron as sulphate, manganese, copper, zinc, boron, molybdenum, sulphur)
- turned the six bins in the streets and mixed in chopped cardboard
- planted a little Midyim Berry and tucked it up against the cold with some...
June 2010
30 posts
More and more road gardens keeping rain where it...
Some photos of yet another road garden in Sydney.
Notice how the water from the downpipe is being diverted by a Barloch water diverter located about 1 m high above the pavement so that rainwater, which would otherwise flow to the gutter and be wasted, may be directed by gravity below the footpath to water the garden beds some metres away.
One of the residents tells me,...
Talk at Tusculum about ways to collaborate
6 July Sydney - Tusculum, 3 Manning Street, Potts Point
The Australian Institute of Architects’ Tuesday Night Drinks will see Michael Mobbs and Caroline Pidcock lead a discussion on collaboration, different ideas of “sustainability”, the future of the industry, broader perspectives, and multidisciplinary practice. Click here for more details.
Chippendale becoming less and less sustainable
Data showing trends for resource use in two of Chippendale’s 59 streets shows the inner Sydney suburb is becoming less and less sustainable.
The data is in the Bathurst Burr column I’ve written this week for The Fifth Estate, here: http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/13701
There are some small signs of more sustainable use of resources but they are tiny compared to the...
Compost latest
Michael Neville, Sydney City Council’s Waste Officer, has provided a ‘where are we now and where are we going?” note about the Peace Park compost bins:
I’ll be away down the coast on Friday 9 July and on long service leave from 2 August till 20 September (6 weeks).
Michael, Joel and Alina - I’m hoping you’ll all be OK to keep the maintenance ticking over during...
No tuna in the shops by 2020
Hard to imagine, but not coming to a shelf or fish shop near you - tuna.
Tuna is the “last great wild-fish gold rush the world may ever see. ”
For details of the overfishing and some data: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27Tuna-t.html?pagewanted=3&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/science/earth/index.jsonp
And they’re warm blooded fish, too.
...
Gardening & composting this Friday
This Friday 2 July at 9 am: Compost maintenance at the seven bins in Peace Park - join myself, Joel and Michael Neville from the Sydney City Council for some bin maintenance. Bring gloves or the council often brings them for you.
Then from 10 am on join myself and Karlie for some gardening in the road gardens.
We will spread some mulch, maybe plant a few hardy things and do some winter...
Imagine
On human ecology and capacity, and imagination:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
A wonderful talk on how we can empower our children and ourselves.
May the laughter be with us,
Michael
The opera of decay
The Wednesday bin reached 60 degrees last week!!! Pretty impressive. A few recent photos - the heat and incredible fungi’s and moulds that develop overnight…and the temperature log. May the decay be with us; and may we love it Michael
Chippo Food Boxes from my place - news
Sydney Food Connect, the new box service, has this weekprovided news on how they’re going:
A big welcome to our latest City Cousins, Cat at Greenpeace, Beth in Coogee and Chez at UNSW. Social and Environmental Impact so Far! Boxes/week: 110 City Cousins: 16 Price to farmers: 41c/$ Organic or chemical free: 100% Food miles: 252 km
I’m a City Cousin, a volunteer who has boxes...
Useful discussion of resource trends
This interview with Bill McKibben on Minesotta public radio contains useful information about Earth’s increasing crop failures, increasing storm damage and some solutions for managing food and resources:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/06/21/midmorning2/
Enjoy,
Michael
New sign to show respect for stolen banana tree
Local architects, Allen Jack + Cottier, have kindly done another sign for us to put up where the banana tree was stolen
We’ve put the sign into two languages only - English and Chinese - as these are the only languages easily to hand among our gardeners and those languages are commonly spoken here. If we had the resources we’d put the signs into more languages.
Any translator...
Oil spills are a daily way of life for Africans
While on oil spills in the US let’s remember they happen all the time in Africa and the damage they do is mostly unfixed.
For an example of current and past spills, see this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/africa/17nigeria.html
Last 8 US Presidents each promised to end oil...
From Richard Nixon to Obama, the last 8 US Presidents have each promised to end the country’s dependence on oil. See their promises here in this beaut example of media bang on target:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future
It’s us, not governments, which bring change - we citizens must look to ourselves for leadership.
May walking our...
Disturbing analysis of BP's oil pollution
Analysis published on the web 13 June suggests that the BP oil leak is leaking further down within the casing of the well; it is ‘compromised ‘down hole’”.
This means that plugging the hole at the surface of the well increases the ruptures further down and increases the flow of escaping oil and the pressure at the top and all other rupture points.
On a web page...
New Banana Tree stolen from road garden
Just two days after we planted it someone has stolen our new banana tree.
Robyn Williamson, Local Seed Network Coordinator of NW Sydney Seed Savers, grew the tree and brought it in for us.
It was on the corner of Myrtle and Shepherd, heavily pruned and with new lucerne mulch around it. The mulch has gone, too.
We think it’s someone around here who is stealing our plants, probably to...
Alkaline compost doesn't hurt your garden
One of the riches to be harvested when gardening in the road are the conversations we have there with each other.
There’s such knowledge among ourselves here, and such generosity.
Here’s advice to a local, Curious Person, from another local some call ‘Dirt Doctor’.
The question put to the Doctor was:
Dear Soil Seer
Why do you say not to worry about the...
Five new wattles for road gardens
We planted five new wattles into the rain-blessed road gardens on the weekend.
They’re beauties, described thus:
Acacia victoriae is a widespread species that occurs from the Pilbara,
Gascoyne and Murchison region of Western Australia, east through central
Australia to the Gulf of Carpentaria to subcoastal Queensland (e.g., near
Townsville), south to the Adelaide area in the South...
Frasers hide pollution, sort of
How cute.
Last week we saw a sea of polluted, sediment brown muck rushing out of the Frasers World Best Practice Polluter’s Site on Broadway and thence to kill fish at Blackwattle Bay, and there are lovely pics below of the 2 million litres + deathly liquid bequethed to the fish and aquatic domain of Blackwattle Bay.
And now?
Ah, we love it.
Frasers have hidden it. Sort of.
...
Some humour to dissipate the angst of local...
From the web: a reminder of the absurdities of religions:
In her radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It’s funny, as well as...
Another day, another load of gravel
This morning another truck carted gravel here and three workers shovelled it off to fill another rain filter bed.
Low maintenance beds. Not.
Making it home
This last Saturday I did some cooking, having started on some of it during the week, first buying some rare beautiful goat cheese on the one trip out near the airport right after I bought some lucerne for the road gardens. Oysters unwashed with chlorine-ugly mains water were got from a Marrickville place much cheaper and fresher than the Fish Markets. And lots of other good things went into a...
