The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Today was the first evening of a seven week Living Smart course. It was completely inspiring and amazing but then again the serpent had expected no less from the creators of The Painted Fish and The Hulbert Street Sustainability Festival

One half of the crazy couple revealed some of his goal setting secrets. And this guy has gotten to be taken seriously because the stuff they have done is so cool, quirky and inspirational.
They both decided that living the green life would be a more productive and useful path than following the usual route into local politics as a means of changing things.
As Izzie would say - lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness

Tim - our local version of Michael Leunig (his paintings and sculptures are just so whimsical and quirky) brought along his big brown book used for plotting and planning
His ritual is to spend four or five pages just rambling. It seemed to be along the lines of Julia Cameron's 'morning pages' to get the creative juices going and do a sort of mind dump before invoking the inner serpent (what muggles call 'the subconscious')
Then he writes his goals for the week and the month along with three things that he has achieved.
The other big book has lists of three month, one year and five year goals in several different life categories

This whole morning pages thing has a lot going for it. It really is a Muggle version of the Pensieve - a means of sorting and organizing your thoughts and being able to see them objectively as well as creating room in your head for new ideas to come in by dumping and clearing out all the old ones cluttering the place and gathering dust

On the whole goal setting thing, Izzie came out of the broom closet with a certain project involving 50,000 words in 30 days. In fact, that is the real value of nanowrimo. Not the first draft itself but the discipline required to accomplish it. The tips and tricks you learn during November end up infiltrating other areas of life. It turns out that the side effect are more important than the project itself

Today also happened to be the day devoted to finishing this year's plotting and planning. Izzie now has prompts for 260 or so scenes so whatever obstacles may appear in our path, writer's block will not be one of them.
The theory is that 200 words for each will get us past the finishing line. The hope is that while some scenes will be dead ends, others will send the sparks flying and finally provide the golden thread linking the whole story together

While laying out the last of the cards in the Victorian Romantic deck - the very last of the 88 being The Fool, was listening to a fascinating interview on Radio National with one Wade Davis who wrote the fascinating "The Serpent and the Rainbow" about Voodoo in Haiti.
It was so good that not only will Izzie be downloading it but also setting the radio alarm clock for 3am to listen to the repeat

It's back to the mad house on Saturday but tomorrow will be spent once again under the wicked influence of the Fishy folk and their monthly movie night with pizzas. They provide the dough and the oven and you bring along your own toppings. The movie is "The Astroturf Wars"
It was either that or Analakshmi's "Deepavali festival" and Izzie has gone for the crazy and quirky yet again.

Izzie's been a lazy lazy serpent and neglected her Cyberian cell for so so long. Even the offline little green book has not been getting much of a look in lately.
Izzie's got nothing to show for the last month of her life except a bunch of green things blooming and blossoming in the garden
It's been crisp crunchy weather for most of April. Not hot and not wet so just the sort of weather for slinking and pottering about outside instead of in Cyberia
Not to mention that the old Portkey has been seriously pathetic lately. Not just imagining it either. The Froggies downstairs also have a 3 Portkey - a prettier one than Izzie's soap on a rope with a whole lot more gigabytes on the menu but it's still as slow as hell

So online time has been mainly spent dodging spinning beachballs while trying to get from one page to another. So even catching up is an exhausting grump inducing procedure let alone actually squiggling anything.

The last Sunday of March and first day return to REAL time (damn daylight 'saving') was the Festival of Trees. Petunia came too. It's run by a bunch of tree hugging weed lovers most of whom are volunteers. They even had a bunch of reptile handlers as guest speakers and some seriously strange tin foil hats into dowsing and stuff.
The ma went on a wild spending spree when she discovered a stall selling all sorts of wicked weeds including her much loved horseradish which is seriously hard to find here. Izzie did find one about 6 months ago but it never survives the weeks of 40 celsius sizzle that we had in summer. These people had 3 so she snatched them all. Will be soon raiding her place to grab cuttings. Izzie was happy to snatch 2 different varieties of yarrow and some pink and fluffy poppy seeds. Not planted those yet.
Other folks had stalls selling local seeds so got some sandalwood seeds and everlastings (a kind of paper daisy) there

The pots of kale and silverbeet we snatched there are now all fat and juicy and not too far off being turned into tasty serpent snacks

Then there was the annual garden festival run by the nursery industry association. No snakies or a single silver sickle to get in. They wanted an outrageous 16 for that privilege and the place was full of snake oil salesmen - steak knives, copper bracelets for arthritis, chamois and all sorts of magic pills and potions to keep your weeds happy. Not the other sort simply because that would be completely illegal and obviously dodgy
But still it was interesting - not least because there were a bunch of companies selling rainwater tanks who had stands there
It was also the one time of the year where a car less serpent could meet the Muchea mob who specialize in growing proteas, waratahs, banksias and grevilleas. After years of slinking, found very good and cheap suppliers of banksias and grevilleas elsewhere but no one else at all has got those amazing proteas - well no one who is remotely affordable.

The Snark was there - Izzie's name for one of the local garden gurus who truly is the Severus Snape of Herbology. But you can get away with being a snarky sarcastic grump when you know your stuff.

Last Friday was an excuse to visit another of those happy hippy tree hugging nursery ventures but was just a bit too early. Their main selling season starts officially on Monday but it was a nice excuse to meander along the river in Fremantle and slink around their very pretty gardens looking at all the birds and other wildlife attracted by the pretty weeds. Their stuff is 1/3 the price what you pay in commercial nurseries and is smaller so has a much bigger chance of adapting and surviving in its new home - not to mention that they stock stuff because it is local and useful for revegetation and keeping the critters happy rather than being fashionable or highly profitable.

It's also tree hugging time at the online suppliers.
The mob where we got the baby pecans, macadamias and blue berries last year also have seriously gorgeous dragon fruit and a very peculiar citrus tree called Buddha's hand. It's also called Goblin Fingers as if Izzie even needed an excuse to snatch one

And just when you thought the serpent couldn't get any greener, another interesting item on the April agenda is an evening course called Living Smart where Izzie can meet and mingle with fellow evil greenies. It's been on two weeks so far and is fascinating. Not that much of the stuff is new to this serpent but it was interesting hearing a talk from the local Al Gore wannabee who used to work as a bigwig in projects for BHP (A huge mining company) until his conversion on the Road to Damascus
There'll be more peak oil stuff in later weeks but the best bit is meeting all the other greenies and sharing ideas and inspiration. That's not even to mention the seriously scrummy and definitely kosher munchies provided in the middle of the evening.

It is so so wonderful to find a half way house between the Izzie online and muggle identities and where being eccentric is normal