Sunday, September 26, 2010

Doesn't even taste like soap

Dear everyone,

You know how you love Thai food and then you decide to try cooking it and it doesn't turn out too bad so you reckon you could get down with nature and grow some of that coriander in a pot and so you buy some and it immediately dies and so you buy some more and plant it in the dirt and it goes to seed more quickly than the stuff you bought in pots carked it and you swear off trying to grow it ever again and go back to paying two bucks a bunch from the supermarket and it's always slimy and you end up associating Thai cooking with slight failure even before you start?

I used to be like that.

Used to.

But it turns out nature works.

That bit where it goes to seed? Apparently those seeds contain some of free-love, hippie-huggin' magic because now I ain't growing bunches of coriander, I'm growing trees.

Check out my forest.


Yeah.
King Coriander swingin' through tha treez
(of coriander).

6 comments:

  1. I failed at coriander growing when I tried it. I forgot I'd planted it and when it came up it looked a bit like celery, so I waited for it to grow big, like celery, completely forgetting that my celery was on the opposite side of the yard. When the coriander stayed small, I thought it was dud celery and ripped it out.
    Yours looks fantastic, you could supply the local Thai restaurants.
    Is that camomile I see down in front? Or feverfew?

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  2. That is tragically hilarious.

    In response to your query: they are some kind of flowers.

    That's about as botanical as I get.

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  3. Your first half has always been our experience. But even when we've said, "stuff it" and let the sodding stupid plant do what it likes we've NEVER had the corry-forest that you've got going there!

    ReplyDelete
  4. We planted those flowers (can't remember what they were exactly) after reading some stuff about organic plants that deter pests from eating the good stuff...in two minds about whether it actually works

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kath - I might have neglected to mention that every time I've planted something I've liberally shaken around a bunch of fertiliser pellets.
    But still ...

    Mele - I get the feeling that they're like the rock that keeps tigers away in The Simpsons.
    No tigers, but we still got bugs ...

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  6. Like everything else that's supposed to deter pests, you need a lot more than one or two plants. I've read hints in several permaculture books that say for each plant you're trying to protect, you need three of the deterrent plants. or in the case of tomatoes, the tomato bed literally needs to be surrounded by the deterrent plant. I'm about 99% sure your flowers are feverfew, a tea can be made from the flowers and used to treat headaches. I've never done this, preferring panadol.

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32