Huhu Grubs and the Hugelkulture Influence

Wood on newspaper

I've been given a lot of rotten wood to use in my garden, as a layer in the raised beds I'm developing in the front yard. First I put down a layer of carpet or cardboard or newspaper to suppress the weeds, then I pile up rotten wood, then  dollop on home made compost followed by a layer of soil on top to plant seeds and seedling directly into, then finally mulch. I'm inspired by a permaculture technique called Hugelkulture which combines carbon sequestration with soil enrichment. It's a big project and I'm progressing slowly but steadily.

A huhu grub pokes it head out of its hole, perhaps surprised to breath fresh air?

The advantage of building up a raised bed with rotten wood is two-fold.  The wood will act as a sponge, soaking up rain during the wet winters and releasing it slowing into the soil as it dries out over summer. I shouldn't need to water these beds much, if at all, the next time there's a drought like the one we've just come out of.  Rotten wood doesn't just release moisture though, its chock full of microorganisms busy converting wood into compost which makes for a rich  fertile growing medium. I expect these beds to grow abundant, healthy, productive plants.

Another huhu grub reaches across the newly divided log, looking for its fellow grubs?

Some of the organisms doing this important work are not so micro.  Inside one log, a family of huhu grubs, each the size of my little finger, had turned the wood to mush. They seemed quite startled to have there mushy home split in half by my axe.  After photo time, I pushed the halves of the log back together to let them get back to their carbon sequestering activities.

A third huhu grub landed on the ground letting me have a good look at its pallid, plump, caterpillar-like body. 

On meeting my huhu grubs, I did consider the United Nations' recent recommendation to eat more insects as a valuable and sustainable source of protein.  But... I feel I'm pretty well supplied with more palatable sources of protein just at the moment. Frankly, the wood-composting contribution of the grubs to my future diet of home grown fruit and vegetables seems more valuable than a mouthful of "buttery chicken" flavoured larvae (according to wikipedia).

Huhu in motion

My first hugelkulture bed, half finished.  

I just  reread the hugelkulture article, and remembered there's a lot more advantages to rotten wood in your raised beds than I mentioned above.  They  are 

"loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets - so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water - and then refeeding that to your garden plants later."

Spill Sketches

Looking back through my journal I came across my sketches and notes made  in the days and weeks following the Rena oil Spill in October 2011.    Since the result, Just a Little Spill, is finally going to be seen in public for the first time later this month I thought it might be interesting to share these early ideas now.

Words are as important as visuals for me when I am conceptualising a new piece.  I'll often have a working title before I have anything else, in this case Folly and Hubris. The working sub-title won out in the end though.  I didn't end up pursuing representations of birds either.  

Exploring the ways oil can spread out on waves of water.

Nitty-gritty details of stitching, felting and size.

Photocopied from a book of Japanese prints about 25 years ago, and carried around in my pile of important papers until 2011 when it finally found a place in my journal among the Spill sketches.

Stitching doodle

Birdspoke

Red Billed Gull

While in Auckland for Art in the Dark last weekend, I stayed with Rachelle Wood who is the artist behind Birdspoke.   She lives in a rambling old villa set on a huge section planted to attract the birds that inspire her work. It is an oasis of birdsong and beauty near the middle of a big city.

Vintage lace 'window treatment'

Rachelle is doing some lovely renovations and her home displays her quirky, vintage and sweet tastes  perfectly. Her style might be called 'shabby chic' and I like it very much.   My mattress was in centre of the living room floor and when I opened my eyes there was almost a sense of vertigo under the extraordinary ceiling rose (complete with bursting pomegranates) set inside a large dome.  Like any proper home, its heart was in the large kitchen/dining/sitting area which opens out onto a deck with views of fireworks at night and trees in the daytime.

One third of the fabric stash

But my favourite room is her studio which is small, perfectly organised and crammed full of potential for creativity.Her huge stash of fabrics is neatly arranged by colour, her tools stored in baskets from Samoa, and her vintage lace in old suitcases.  I arrived feeling very annoyed to have left my crochet workbag* on the bus, but Rachelle quickly sorted me out with a hook and some ecru cotton from her stash so I could keep making throughout the weekend.

Bird embroideries and sewing machines

I've not met anyone besides Rachelle and me who crochets with this old-fashioned cotton that is so fine and fiddly. Rachelle shares my passion for slow making and hand stitching. She spends hours crafting each individual piece by hand to sell at craft fairs and on Etsy, Felt and Toggle.

A Huia plushie.  Huia because extinct over a century ago because their tail feathers were so fashionable.

She also finds time to make pretty things for herself and her home. I love this work in progress (below), to stitch together old lace doilies into a window hanging.  I can't wait to go back and visit again, to see the light shining through the lace.



*Complete with six precious completed spheres, two balls of cotton, crochet hook and second best scissors.   If you find my little blue and green bag, please give it back!

Exploring oil

Since my visit to Tauranga, I've been exploring different ways to represent the tarry black oil sheening the ocean and washing up on the beaches of Bay of Plenty. Of my five recent experiments these three are the most successful; where I was working out concentric waves, waves lapping on the shore and an oily bird.

I find images of oily birds most heartbreaking, even as I grieve for all the other sea life and human lives damaged by oil spills. Seeing their graceful shapes and light as air bodies dragged down from the sky to be found as sticky black puddles on the sand is particularly agonising.

Working with wool seems to cushion my sadness a little. I'm planning a large installation piece that both responds to Rena's oil spill and cautions against plans for deep sea drilling off New Zealand. I'd like to honour each of the species on the casualty list, many of which are rare or endangered native species including petrels, dotterels, pengins, gannets, shearwaters and terns.

My bird experiment started off with layers of blankets felted into relief (above) with feather details stitched in (below).

Unrelated words and pictures

For the past week or so I have been observing with interest the action on our swan plant. Caterpillars eating and growing and then hanging upside down and turning into beautiful cocoons whenever I'm not looking. The cocoons start out light bright green and darken to emerald studded with gold beads. I haven't seen any butterflies yet, but I'm watching.

The only thing that these photos have to do with the following poem is that they were made last weekend. The poem resulted from a writing game shared with a group of local writers who meet to eat cake, drink tea and write together on a Sunday afternoon. This piece was the result of pulling 5 random words out of a hat and spending a few minutes trying to compose them into something I like. Can you guess which of the five words were from the hat and which ones I chose for myself?

She has fashioned a jest
from embers, from ashes
flinging words like sparks
out into the dark
laughing until she is soupy inside
delirious, feelings rising like smoke
until her rimu heart bursts into flames.

Cute baby birds at Hamilton's Lake

baby coot

Its been raining and raining for weeks, but every now and then there's been a day of sunshine. One fine Tuesday I broke out of the studio and went for a walk around the volcanic crater in the middle of Hamilton, Lake Rotorua. I thought I might see some ducklings but there were none.

baby coot

Instead, the lake was full of dozens of baby coots with their bulging blue eyes, shiny red heads, and yellow ruffs. They are freaky little balls of fluff, and its hard to see how they will ever turn into the sleek elegant white faced coots parenting them so assiduously. Of course the adult coots have those weird scalloped feet, so maybe the freaky coot look just settles into their toes.

gosling

Also on the lake was a large family of goslings being herded around by a flock of doting adult geese. I know better than to get on the wrong side of a goose or gander so I didn't get many good pictures of them.

pukeko chick

But being seen taking pictures of cute animals meant people kept stopping to tell me where I'd find another lot of baby birds to photograph. I'm not sure I would have seen the discreet family of pukeko if I hadn't known to look out for them hidden in the rushes.