The Painted Fish
12/09/2007 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIzzie's been a busy little green serpent. Sunday was the Big Day Out. The big event was a visit to a permaculture open garden. But as so often happens, it is the things you look forward to that turn out to be disappointments and the real joy comes from the unexpected
Open Gardens is a national institution where people will open their private garden for a specified time - usually a weekend. The normal admission fee is around five silver sickles which is to cover costs with any surplus to be given to charity
Most of these are not easily accessible for folks without a car but this one was an exception to the rule
The ma is also interested in green things and a regular viewer of the ABC TV gardening shows staring the ubergorgeous cute and quirky Peter Cundall. But it was not his garden but that of another presenter that was the star of the show this weekend. As well as the garden itself, there'd be a sort of street party with stalls about various green things, live music and guest speakers among other things.
It was a glorious and gorgeous day on Sunday. Set off around 10am and by 11 was pottering up McClaren Street in Fremantle with the ma.
Knew in advance that the admission fee for this particular garden would be $$10. A bit expensive but figured it was an interesting opportunity to see a bit of permaculture for city folks in action. Had visions of slinking around the garden and sitting in a nook reading or soaking up the sunshine. Had certainly not expected that you'd have to queue for 15 mins or so to get in and that you'd only get about ten mins in the garden. And it was so so small. Just as well that there were those stalls and things to look at while waiting
It was quite nice but certainly not worth paying $$10 to visit. But there was another place open that day, one that was also mentioned in the local papers during the week. They had a little sign at the open gardens - The Painted Fish obviously hoping to get some of those folks dropping by.
Turns out that it was less than a ten minute walk away.
First impressions - a rickety bockety old house with various solar panels and stuff on the roof and a quirky and very curly garden too. This one had an entry fee of five silver sickles.
But there were no queues and there was room to swing more than a cat. But not only that, because it was a one hundred year old house, it had been retrofitted and adapted and a lot of this stuff was the kind of thing that every day folks could do themselves as opposed to the very complicated grey water systems and underground rainwater tanks at the other place
There were little signs everywhere with lots of information about the various features. It was just so crazy and quirky and this little Izzie felt right at home. It was so reminiscent of our usual November haunt down in Bridgetown.
The place is actually designed as holiday accomodation and has 3 separate places to stay. One is the old house, another is a studio (the only concession to yuppies) and the third was a converted railway carriage
The place was just so full of character with all sorts of nooks and crannies and quirkiness around every corner
One of the little and very clever pleasures was a little water fountain near a very spirally fern outside the bedroom. There was a limestone wall with big holes in it and the water flows from pipes in the shape of sunflowers. On hot days the breeze blows straight through and evaporates the water cooling everything down in the process. This cool breeze is right in the path of a set of louvred windows from the kitchen
Then there were the cute and curly outdoor showers also with pipes made in a sunflower pattern. Once again, the limestone wall has holes in it so that the breeze cools as it blows through
And all the nearby plants enjoy the odd drink or two
Then there were other clever little features that owed more to intelligent design than bucketloads of money
There are a bunch of vegie patches around the place. One particular patch was always a very abundant garden in summer but suddenly in winter started producing nothing but weeds. The recent appearance of a two storey house next door was suspected to have some connection with this sad state of affairs
But the owners noticed that little patches were still productive. They were getting bits of light reflected from the solarium nearby which had recently been added. So, they decided to do a bit of tweeking and added 3 wardrobe sized mirrors to the solarium which solved the problem overnight as well as making the garden look so so much bigger.
There was even a spiral staircase in the studio just like the one in Izzie's sisters' house in Amsterdam. Upstairs was a bedroom and outside balcony amongst the tree tops.
The teapots hiding amongst the leaves and the nooks and crannies in the garden were another cute little feature along with a sort of grumpy blue gargoyle style fish perched on the chimney stack
It was such a wonderful and inspiring place. Lots of interesting ideas well worth snatching
The information booklet and application form for the solar panels rebates just arrived in the post today. Will have fun doing the sums and getting quotes. With no north facing roof and using an average of only two units per day, will be interesting to see what sort of payback period would be required to recoup the original cost after the rebate.
Did return to the other garden later to see what else was going on. There was a very interesting talk by one Peter Coppin who could be best described as the Severus Snape of herbology. Quite snarky but damned smart and certainly knew his stuff. Petunia was impressed too. This fellow has a thing for macadamia trees and local native plants and not much time for time and resources consuming but totally unproductive lawns.
He's big into espaliered trees and did the work on the ones in the open garden. Was full of all sorts of interesting snippets, tips and tricks to get those trees to work extra hard.
But for this week, will probably pay a visit to Bunnings to buy ourselves another fruit tree or two. Walnuts are no longer on the menu. Apparently totally unsuitable for this particular climate. The old baby pecan never survived being transplanted - it was always struggling anyway - being from the bad old days without a decent drop of water. So maybe will try to find another one. Had no idea at all that hickory and pecan tree wood was one and the same thing.
(He deplores the importation of hickory for use in smoking food when this part of Oz has the perfect climate for growing the little critters)
Did make some curly tree circles in the garden yesterday but a few heavy showers put an end to anything more ambitious
Open Gardens is a national institution where people will open their private garden for a specified time - usually a weekend. The normal admission fee is around five silver sickles which is to cover costs with any surplus to be given to charity
Most of these are not easily accessible for folks without a car but this one was an exception to the rule
The ma is also interested in green things and a regular viewer of the ABC TV gardening shows staring the ubergorgeous cute and quirky Peter Cundall. But it was not his garden but that of another presenter that was the star of the show this weekend. As well as the garden itself, there'd be a sort of street party with stalls about various green things, live music and guest speakers among other things.
It was a glorious and gorgeous day on Sunday. Set off around 10am and by 11 was pottering up McClaren Street in Fremantle with the ma.
Knew in advance that the admission fee for this particular garden would be $$10. A bit expensive but figured it was an interesting opportunity to see a bit of permaculture for city folks in action. Had visions of slinking around the garden and sitting in a nook reading or soaking up the sunshine. Had certainly not expected that you'd have to queue for 15 mins or so to get in and that you'd only get about ten mins in the garden. And it was so so small. Just as well that there were those stalls and things to look at while waiting
It was quite nice but certainly not worth paying $$10 to visit. But there was another place open that day, one that was also mentioned in the local papers during the week. They had a little sign at the open gardens - The Painted Fish obviously hoping to get some of those folks dropping by.
Turns out that it was less than a ten minute walk away.
First impressions - a rickety bockety old house with various solar panels and stuff on the roof and a quirky and very curly garden too. This one had an entry fee of five silver sickles.
But there were no queues and there was room to swing more than a cat. But not only that, because it was a one hundred year old house, it had been retrofitted and adapted and a lot of this stuff was the kind of thing that every day folks could do themselves as opposed to the very complicated grey water systems and underground rainwater tanks at the other place
There were little signs everywhere with lots of information about the various features. It was just so crazy and quirky and this little Izzie felt right at home. It was so reminiscent of our usual November haunt down in Bridgetown.
The place is actually designed as holiday accomodation and has 3 separate places to stay. One is the old house, another is a studio (the only concession to yuppies) and the third was a converted railway carriage
The place was just so full of character with all sorts of nooks and crannies and quirkiness around every corner
One of the little and very clever pleasures was a little water fountain near a very spirally fern outside the bedroom. There was a limestone wall with big holes in it and the water flows from pipes in the shape of sunflowers. On hot days the breeze blows straight through and evaporates the water cooling everything down in the process. This cool breeze is right in the path of a set of louvred windows from the kitchen
Then there were the cute and curly outdoor showers also with pipes made in a sunflower pattern. Once again, the limestone wall has holes in it so that the breeze cools as it blows through
And all the nearby plants enjoy the odd drink or two
Then there were other clever little features that owed more to intelligent design than bucketloads of money
There are a bunch of vegie patches around the place. One particular patch was always a very abundant garden in summer but suddenly in winter started producing nothing but weeds. The recent appearance of a two storey house next door was suspected to have some connection with this sad state of affairs
But the owners noticed that little patches were still productive. They were getting bits of light reflected from the solarium nearby which had recently been added. So, they decided to do a bit of tweeking and added 3 wardrobe sized mirrors to the solarium which solved the problem overnight as well as making the garden look so so much bigger.
There was even a spiral staircase in the studio just like the one in Izzie's sisters' house in Amsterdam. Upstairs was a bedroom and outside balcony amongst the tree tops.
The teapots hiding amongst the leaves and the nooks and crannies in the garden were another cute little feature along with a sort of grumpy blue gargoyle style fish perched on the chimney stack
It was such a wonderful and inspiring place. Lots of interesting ideas well worth snatching
The information booklet and application form for the solar panels rebates just arrived in the post today. Will have fun doing the sums and getting quotes. With no north facing roof and using an average of only two units per day, will be interesting to see what sort of payback period would be required to recoup the original cost after the rebate.
Did return to the other garden later to see what else was going on. There was a very interesting talk by one Peter Coppin who could be best described as the Severus Snape of herbology. Quite snarky but damned smart and certainly knew his stuff. Petunia was impressed too. This fellow has a thing for macadamia trees and local native plants and not much time for time and resources consuming but totally unproductive lawns.
He's big into espaliered trees and did the work on the ones in the open garden. Was full of all sorts of interesting snippets, tips and tricks to get those trees to work extra hard.
But for this week, will probably pay a visit to Bunnings to buy ourselves another fruit tree or two. Walnuts are no longer on the menu. Apparently totally unsuitable for this particular climate. The old baby pecan never survived being transplanted - it was always struggling anyway - being from the bad old days without a decent drop of water. So maybe will try to find another one. Had no idea at all that hickory and pecan tree wood was one and the same thing.
(He deplores the importation of hickory for use in smoking food when this part of Oz has the perfect climate for growing the little critters)
Did make some curly tree circles in the garden yesterday but a few heavy showers put an end to anything more ambitious
