Coconut and Strawberry Ice-cream with Chocolate sauce - Dairy and sugar free! ~ Mariella

So, now you have delicious frozen homemade coconut milk in an ice tray in the freezer.

(see http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-make-your-own-coconut-milk-at.html) 

But what can you do with it? You can use it as a substitute for cream in any dish from pasta to Thai curry and it’s great in smoothies and baked desserts. This is what I did with mine this week and my kids are bugging me to make more!

I tipped out one ice tray full of frozen coconut milk and added an equal amount of frozen organically grown strawberries which I bought during season from the 'Home Grown' stall at my food  market. Organic fruit is obviously first prize, but any frozen fruit will do, just remember to peel and cube it before you freeze it.

(see http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/10/our-first-market-day.html )

I then put it all through the Oscar and it looked like this:

Which, for all of it’s yumminess, doesn’t look all that appetizing, which is why I added a little Agave, then put it through the Oscar again.

I then made homemade chocolate 

(see http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/07/super-easy-healthy-snacks-on-move.html) 

and instead of refrigerating it, I poured it straight onto the Coconut and Strawberry ice-cream. It was such a hit, completely dairy and sugar free and quick to make!

  

How to make your own Coconut milk at home! ~ Mariella

As I am sure you are well aware, I’m nuts about coconuts! Coconut oil, fresh green coconuts, desiccated coconut, coconut milk, coconut cream. There just one problem, all of the above are easy to find except for the coconut cream. Most tins have horrendous lists of stabilizers and additives. My favourite is sodium metabisulfite, which is an inorganic compound of chemicals, formula Na₂S₂O_5.

This chemical has been associated with broncho constriction, shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, gastrointestinal disturbances, swelling of the skin, flushing, tingling sensations and shock. Direct contact of sodium metabisulfite with your eyes can cause irritation, pain, stinging, tearing, redness, swelling, corneal damage and blindness. 

Ingesting pure sodium metabisulfite irritates your gastrointestinal system as it reacts with acid in your stomach by releasing sulfurous acid. Ingesting high amounts can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, circulatory disturbance and central nervous system depression. A fatal dose is estimated to be 10 g for the average adult, that comes to approx two R2 coins!

Suffice to say, I’m not so into it! But I do like coconut milk, so I've devised a cunning plan! It’s so easy.

-Take desiccated coconut, pour it into a pot and add approximately double the amount of water.

-Let it boil for 5-10 min

-Remove from heat and allow to cool.

-Run through your Oscar, 

Which happens to be on Sale at Fresh Earth at the moment 

(http://www.freshearth.co.za/store/p-2179-oscar-juicer-da-900-chrome.aspx) 

or other food processor, using the juicing element and viola, you have coconut milk!

It doesn’t keep for longer than two days (which is probably why they load it so full of nasties!) so it’s best to make it on the day you intend to use it. You can also freeze it in an ice tray and add to curries or smoothies.

I did that and had a little left over, which I added to my smoothie.

Today’s smoothie:

-Homemade yoghurt 

(See post : http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-make-your-own-yoghurt.html)

-Homemade coconut milk

-1 white nectarine

-Agave/honey

-Tahini

-Macadamias

-Roasted desiccated coconut and goji berries to garnish

So yum and all before work this morning! It’s so easy and…… I’ll show you next week what I have in mind for the frozen coconut milk in the freezer....!

Grow your own! ~ Mariella

I picked these tomatoes in an open field close to my house.

They were growing wild. 

They taste great! 

And this got me thinking, 

if we threw seeds into every open plot, how much extra free food we would have and that got me thinking about the open space in our gardens, especially if you include the lawn! And that got me pondering the mass crop situation and how unnatural it is to grow just one crop for kilometers repeatedly in the same place year after year, and then I thought (all this thinking was very linear, as you can see!) about supply on demand and how we have the industrial era to thank for suburbia and now we have suburbia to thank for the protracted employment of mass crop farming.

 

If you look at these two images, they look rather similar and in fact, the one necessitates the other. The concentration of people in one space, not growing their own food, requires an unsustainably vast quantity of food grown in another place. 

This visibly explains that if we want an end to commercial farming we have to feed ourselves, we cannot demand a change but still go to the supermarket to buy groceries. What we need is something more like this…

We need to grow our own. 

If you don’t already have your own garden and don’t have a lot of space, then start with potted fruit and vegetables that are easy to manage. Most plants do well in pots provided they have enough space.

Check out this website for tips:

http://www.container-gardening-for-food.com/

Growing you own food ensure food that it is fresh and grown with love and it’s so empowering when those first little shoots start to show. Good plants to grow in temperate regions in South Africa in January are: Dwarf beans, climbing beans, beetroot, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, endive, leeks, lettuce, marrow, spring onions, parsnip, potatoes, radish, silver-beet, sweet corn, turnips.

Pick one, find out what it likes and start from there! The time is now!    

Your number 1 energy saving asset! Mariella

The point of this blog is to ‘create a new understanding of health and sustainability through a combination of modern world creations and the reintroduction of some forgotten principles!’ And I think this post, as brief as it is, fits the criteria perfectly!

It’s one thing to know about an applicable bit of wisdom but I have found that until you are forced into a situation where you have to use that bit of what you already know, do you actually make the effort to apply it.

My daughter and her friends won the Young Designers Award at the Eskom Eta Ideas for Energy competition last year.

(See post http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/11/my-daughters-team-wins-eta-awards-young.html )

They won with a research project about energy savings and introduced the concept of the ‘hotbox’ to the judges. Now before your eyes glaze over with memories from your college days, I’m talking about the concept of taking an already cooking pot, and insulating it either in a blanket or a container made specially for that purpose, so that it passively cooks itself. I use a very large polystyrene box to make my yoghurt, it works like a charm. But because I use it to store all the yoghurt tubs and other goodies for my market stall during the week, I don’t ever use it to cook with. Last night I cooked a meal which required all of the elements on the stove plus one! I still had rice to cook and had no space for it. So my husband came up with the ingenious idea of seeing how the cooler box would work as a hotbox. It insulates, right?

So I let the rice boil on the stove for five minutes and then transferred it to the cooler box, dropped a blanket on top of it and closed the box. It cooked in the same amount of time but with a fraction of the gas! 

This is really important information! 

It should go viral! No matter what our socio-economical situation is, most of us have a cooler box, which sits redundantly in a corner until there’s a braai at someone’s house! This cooler box can become your number 1 energy saving asset. I’m being very serious about this! If everyone started using their cooler boxes tonight, 71% of South Africa’s domestic energy crisis would vanish overnight! And think of what you could do with the extra money in your pocket! Really super-duper-extra seriously, try it. 

This post applies to you!

Today is the day! 

Happy 2013! Mariella

It’s 2013! And I quite like the number 13. Perhaps because so many people do not! I traveled on the 13^th once, and suffice to say I had the entire back of the plane to myself!

2013 is, as my brother-in-law so eloquently said, ‘uncharted ground!’ Every year I start my year with a good read up on all the different philosophies and what they have to say. I see it as having a look at the map before the journey starts.

2013 is the year of the Water Snake according to Chinese astrology. It begins February 10^th. The snake, also known as the junior dragon, is an enigmatic, intuitive, introspective, refined and collected creature. Ancient Chinese wisdom says a snake in the house is a good omen as it means that the family will not starve. In the year of the Water Snake, all things will be possible. Saving money and being thrifty should be on top of your list of priorities.

‘While the outside seems to be solid, the inside is empty.  Hence it is a year of conservation, a year of rebuilding and a year of changes’, this is what Paul Ng has to say about this year.

http://www.paulng.com/CMS/uploads/2013-geo.pdf

Numerologically speaking, 2013 adds up to the number 6, which apparently personifies the idea that we should love others as we love ourselves. This year there is focus on helping others less fortunate, and assessing how important material things are to us.

I have moon calendars in my shop made by a talented astrologer, Fiona Sim, from Cape Town. I find her calendar very sensitive and spot on! And I freely admit to consulting it on things like party dates. Full moon makes for a dance party, whereas if the moon will be waning, I make sure I have enough chairs! For example, the 1^st January 2013, the moon was in Virgo.

The calendar said ~ ‘Time to get organised, fix and finish things. The mood is useful and helpful. Enjoy health foods and stalls, crafts, detail work and planning.’ So if you found yourself organizing a little more than is healthy for a New Years day, that may have been why!  

I take these things with a pinch of salt, but I find it increasingly interesting how, in retrospect, there's a truth to them!

Happy 2013 everyone, may this year be blinded by how brightly you can shine!

Mayan Calendar and beyond / Mariella

So we are still here! The world didn’t end on Friday, Christmas came and went and I have to say that even though I didn’t expect to meet my maker last week, a part of me did wonder if there would be some kind of manifestation of lack of Mayan calendar! A bigger swell than usual perhaps or a global hiccup…mass awakening maybe! Am I a little disappointed? Well let’s say that I bought my 2013 Moleskin with a little more fervor than usual. 

And I have nothing planned for New Year!

If there’s no automated rise in consciousness planned anytime soon, perhaps it’s time to manifest my own. I think that on a subconscious level I had my eye in 12/21/12 and now I have my eye on me! There is a growing movement toward looking to our forefathers for a way forward. We look to the Native American Indian prophecies such as the Rainbow Warrior story:

Some time in the future, the Indians said, the animals would begin to disappear. People would no longer see the wolf, or the bear, or the eagles. And, the story goes, the giant trees would also disappear. And people would fight and no longer love one another. And the beautiful rainbow in the sky would fade away; people would not see the rainbow anymore.

Then children would be born into the world. And these children would love the animals, and they would bring them back. They would love trees, and they would bring them back too. And these children would love others and they would bring peace to the world. And these children would love the rainbow, and they would bring back the beautiful rainbow in the sky. For this reason the Indians called these children the rainbow warriors.

http://2012rising.com/article/the-new-children-prophecies-of-the-rainbow-warriors

http://www.manataka.org/page235.html

We look to calendars, ancient texts, documents channeled from the infinitely wise for some guidance on this un-signposted path we tread. And sometimes we find the wisdom we seek and sometimes it sheds a little light on our cloudy road, but you know when someone else is holding the torch for you at night down a winding path to your car? You can see, but the light is always a little off center. And it’s irritating because you’d really rather be the one holding the light! You’re thinking that what you need is a light that comes from you! These incredible sources of valuable insight can only inform us on direction finding, in the end, the path is ours to walk. And if I am the one shining, then that light is perfectly positioned for me! So today I choose to cultivate a brighter light to find my way by, a light so bright that I can see the fork up ahead, or a shear drop! I don’t really see this as a post-Armageddon resolution, there’s another end of the world coming in March anyway! I see this as a renewed perspective on a methodology I already try to employ and I’m excited by it! 

Check out this truly inspired song by a very talented musician, Matisyahu, I will be light!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mbHr5wOKG4 

Why I'm keeping it Local this Holiday / Mariella

I have decided that I’m ready to take the Pledge! This holiday I am only buying local! I’m buying gifts and goodies from Locally owned businesses only! And even though the reasons are obvious, it still helps to bring them to mind in a conscious way and think about them when shopping.

Why it’s a good idea to buy locally designed products:

-South Africa is full of amazingly creative artisans, craftsmen and women, manufacturers, designers. There really is no need to look elsewhere.

- Locally owned businesses tend to take greater care with whom they employ, resulting in better customer care.

-You keep the carbon footprint of your festive season to a minimum, just think about the amount of trash in your bin on boxing day, and how many trashy plastic toys get thrown away in that first week. Now times that by the block and then by the neighborhood and so on….it’s scary stuff!

-  Buying local boosts local economy.

- It increases job availability in your area which in turn puts more money back into local economy which in turn boosts job availability!

- Support of one’s creative endeavors is a powerful incentive to keep creating and if people are supported in what they love to do, it makes the world a much happier place.

- It cultivates unique local identity

- It ensures growing quality instead of decreasing quality of product as a marketplace of many small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.  A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Reasons to supporting local food:

-The produce is fresh and bursting with vitamins,

- It creates relationship between buyers and producers, if you want to know something about the product, ask the farmer, he's standing in front of you!

- You get more for less!

- If it's organically grown it safeguards the environment and protects biodiversity.

- It preserves open space as farmers trading directly to the public make more per metre and are less prone to selling out to developers.

- It cultivates home industry and entrepreneurship.

- It's a place where community meets and grows; a place unique to the character of the town and the people in it. It fosters a direct link to the food we eat and to the land and seasons.

And if you are giving presents this festive season, why not:

- Use news paper instead of wrapping paper and get creative with potato printing.

- Make what you can, especially if you are budgeting a small amount per person and there’s a long list! Chances are you’ll get more for your money by making something at home.

For those of us who like to give gifts at Christmas time, it’s good to keep the spirit of giving in mind; it’s about the love, not the amount of zeros and small prices can go hand in hand with small environmental impact, just think local! Now is the time!

Spring in my garden / Mariella

Contrary to popular belief it is now Spring in Plettenberg Bay. Our season’s are different here, warm time is from December to June. If you expect a week of warm days at a time before that, you may be disappointed! I see it in our garden. 

We planted like possessed farmers in August/September and all those sweet new baby shoots struggled to get out of their beds, like chilled children on a winter’s morning, while mom screams from the door,’ Get up now, it’s time for school!’

But now with a relatively dependable sun baking down on them from 5:00 am to 7:30 pm they are pushing fast toward the sky. It’s a reassuring sight to see! Everything is bright new green and hiding within the protective covering of so many leaves, are small green fruits and flowers of all kinds, carrying infinite possibilities!

   

And we have many different types of tomatoes coming up! Names like Chocolate cherry,Yellow Pear, Yellow stuffer, Mortgage lifter, Ananas Noir, Cuban black,Purple cherry, Ukrainian purple, Pineapple,Brandy wine, Golden princess, Green zebra, wild cherry tomatoes, and some strange unknown variety that look happy!

We use what is called a cold frame to plant some of our seeds in instead of in seedling trays. A cold frame is simply a wooden frame sectioning off an area in your bed. It has another frame the same size over it with a hinge that is used as a door to regulate heat and cold. We cover it with clear plastic in winter to keep it warm, and shade cloth in summer to keep it cool and retain moisture. This is where our little babies live and get transplanted from.

it keeps bugs out and makes sure that no unforeseen elements trash all of our hard work! I'll post some photos as things grow and progress. Spring is here and my garden is a busy place to be! 

Little nutrition tricks I've learnt / By Mariella

Little tricks, we all have them. Things we've learnt along the way that we now take for granted, things that have possibly yet to occur to others. It’s good to share these things, grow the trick pool a little. 

This is a little list of nutrition tricks and bits of info I have acquired along the way. This is not a complete list! I’ll add to it periodically, as I remember things!

-Coconut oil, when eaten, is a natural sunblock. I haven’t researched this and haven’t found it in the research I have read regarding coconut oil, I found out accidentally. We went hiking for a few days and I took coconut oil along as a superfood snack. I ate about 4 tablespoons of it a day, maybe more. We do this hike every year, and every year I burn, this year everyone else burnt and I didn't  except on the last day, when my coconut oil ran out! Also, i use it on my face instead of moisturizer and I've noticed a difference. And it's great to put on after you been in the sun, but not before! I use two different oils, one made by Quinns, which is deflavoured for everyday use, and one by Crede, which is super flavourful and yummy, check out the Crede Oil on the Fresh Earth Website. 

http://www.freshearth.co.za/store/p-2974-crede-coconut-oil-500ml.aspx

-Chocolate craving is indicative of iron deficiency; this does shed light on the cravings that happen at a certain time of the month. Incidentally, the more carbs we eat when we are PMSing, the worse the symptoms become. 

  

-Grinding your teeth is indicative of Magnesium deficiency, I find that if I take 1500 mg a day, I stop grinding and the benefits ripple over into things like being about to wake up earlier in the morning, clearer thinking, no cramps.

-Dehydration results in: Fuzzy eyesight, extrasystoles (when your heart skips a beat and then makes up of it with a double beat, usually at night), swollen hands and feet, sleepiness, loss of concentration and short term memory, back pain, craving something sweet, feeling hungry all the time.

-My body can handle a certain amount of mucus forming foods before reacting. Now that i don't eat carbs or sugar, my tolerance of Dairy has sky rocketed. This is the first year that I've eaten it throughout winter without so much as a sniffle!

-I read once that Chillies are so good for you that your body releases endorphins as a reward so that you'll eat more! Chillies are also great for your immune system.

Ok that's it so far, a little shared insight. I find that if I make sure I have at least 1l water before i leave the house and don't forget my Magnesium, I'm good to go. Find the little tricks that work for you and share them with others. A little wisdom goes a long way! 

My daughter's team wins the ETA awards Young designers category! | by Mariella

I am the proudest mother in the world! No really! Today, right now, I am! Ok maybe not, maybe there are three other mothers out there just as proud as I am! My daughter and her three friends from Bay Collage got together and decided that they wanted to enter the Eta Awards. This is an annual competition sponsored by Eskom which rewards projects in the field of energy efficiency. There are quite a few categories – Industrial, Commercial, Young designers etc. And my daughter was part of the Greenwood Independent school group which entered previously and received a special mention.

http://www.eta-awards.co.za/?q=con,70,2012+Winners

So, with the inexhaustible help of Susan Donald, regional coordinator for Wessa/Eskom Energy and sustainability program, my daughter and her friends, calling themselves ‘Girls Looking Forward’ set out to do a research project on ways to reduce electricity consumption in cooking. They prepared a dish using three different methods – microwave, stove-top and slow cooker. The aim was to determine affordable cooking costs for local communities and to figure out which cooking method was the healthiest.

They found that the slow cooker used the least electricity (saving a whopping 71% compared to the stove and 81% compared to the microwave!) and it yielded the food with the highest Nutritional value. But not everyone can afford a slow cooker, so they made hot boxes, did the presentation to a soup kitchen and donated the hot box!

http://www.thehotboxco.co.za/

They submitted their findings and made it through to round two, which meant that they had to fly to Johannesburg to do the presentation in person and got to stay overnight in a hotel, they had a blast! The final event took place on Thursday night and their category was far down the list for the evening. They were so sleepy by the time their names were called out! They won! They won money for their school too. I am so proud! Well done Kharma, Courtney, Chanelle and Ava, you rock. And Susan, you relentless hard worker! Thank you for all the commitment you put in to help them! If ‘Girls Looking Forward’ (GLF) were a political party they would have my vote! Proudest mother in the world!  

New Moon at Sun up | by Mariella

I’m a little tired today. It could be because I went to bed at 12:00 last night or it could be because I got up at 5:30 this morning. Either way, I am not holding a full deck of cards today and it’s probably great that I am not obliged to operate any heavy motor vehicles or power tools today! And why, oh, why would I do this seemingly incongruous thing to myself? I can wholeheartedly blame the moon.

I am part of a woman’s circle, we meet on Dark moon, as the tribal women before us would have done, to share and hold a space of sacredness in our otherwise disconnected lives. Under usual circumstances, we meet on the evening of Dark Moon, open with a warm up exercise, share the delicious dishes that we've all brought, and then share our thoughts, delving as deep as we must because we know, of all the quiet places to take your secrets to, this place is safe, will lock your cautious whispered words deep down into a place where no one will ever find them, you are safe here and your agonies, fears, conundrums, disasters, laughter, sighs, singing voices will settled down here and go no further than the hearts of the women sitting before you. But because of many things happening simultaneously, we chose the morning, and because we are mostly moms with jobs to go off to, and because the sun rises so early now, we chose to meet at the lagoon at 5:30 am! Goodness, it seemed a very good idea at the time, I slur over the keys as I write this, it’s been a long day!  

But it was worth it! The sun at my back and the hazy sleepiness of a morning meditation washing over me like the ripples of the water in the lagoon, what a blessing! But beach frontage aside, it’s a lovely practice to start: Once a month, on Dark Moon, to come together with your girlfriends and enjoy a little bit of organized something, be it tai chi, yoga, breathing exercise and then talk and eat and then eat dessert!  

I recently spoke with a girlfriend of mine (not this morning) who told me about recent studies on mental health indicating that women need a 10 minute heart to heart with another woman everyday. So go ahead, call someone up, now, for a good gossip, it’s good for your health!

Post Staph! | by Mariella

We are not in the clear yet but my son is finally healing! It’s a great relief! He’s back at school today, bandaged up to the hilt so that no one else gets exposed, even though the two remaining sores are no more than two millimeters big.

My son is a very physical boy and extremely confident in his body, this may have something to do with living in an area where most of his activities involve hiking, climbing, running, jumping! Or it could be that we do not rein him in, we leave him to jump off high things and climb dodgy stuff and be a boy. We thought it was just that, him being a boy, but one day, two years ago, we realized that was not entirely true….

I had just returned home after work and was met by a very excited child saying, ‘Come look what I can do, come, come!!!’ My husband and I came around the corner to see my daughter standing at the top of the hill holding an over sized bike steady so that our son could climb on. His feet couldn't even touch the pedals and he didn't know how to ride a bike yet! Once he was on, she let go! He went bouncing down the lawn full speed as we stood, mouths agape, unable to do anything. Once he reached the bottom of the lawn, instead of braking, he simply rode, full tilt, into the bushes and got off unscathed, leaving the bike suspended in a bush, wheels off the ground, as he ran up to us beaming from ear to ear! He has an accomplice! 

This is how it is with him. He lives life to the full, and there’s no stopping him, there’s only guiding him toward minimal injury! So you can imagine how strange it was to see him out and about yesterday for the first time in weeks without us fussing over him and trying to keep him from hurting himself and finding him, well, a fraction less coordinated than usual. It was noticeable. And the obvious conclusion is this:

The more we let our kids be kids, the better they get at being kids. 

So kick your kids out the house today. Close the door on them and feed them lunch through the cat flap! Not really, but remind them of the great outdoors where a backyard can really become a jungle. Inside is great for when it’s raining and they have their entire adult lives to sit in front of a computer. 

The time is now! 

Some interesting stuff about Staph! | by Mariella

Yip, there is no place like home! Especially when you come home, with your mind full of the things you seen, places you've been and you are met with your sweet baby boy who has acquired a staphylococcus infection in your absence and you are thrown straight into the turmoil of helping heal him. 

Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium that is frequently found in the human respiratory tract and on the skin. Although S. aureusis not always pathogenic, it is a common cause of skin infections (e.g. boils, grim!), respiratory disease (e.g. sinusitis), and food poisoning. Disease-associated strains often promote infections by producing potent protein toxins, and expressing cell-surface proteins that bind and inactivate antibodies. The emergence of antibiotic-resistant forms of pathogenic S. aureus is a worldwide problem in clinical medicine so if you cop out of trying it the natural way,which is very tempting when you've been sitting on this for two weeks, you may end up having to try it again after the antibiotics have failed you, except now your child's immune system has been further compromised!

This is a post about icky stuff but we felt totally alone when we first had to deal with this and if you have kids in school, and ever have the misfortune of encountering this, maybe sharing our experience will be of some help

I shall spare you the gory pictures, there are plenty out there, but this is what an otherwise healthy but contagious child who has been kept at home from school for two weeks looks like:

And we hope that this:      

+ this:= this:

What’s in my home care kit of staph-destruction:

Raw garlic served orally on rice cake with marmite, twice a day

Olive leaf extract x 4 capsules a day

No sugars of any kind (fruit included) as they will feed the bacteria

Non acidic Vit C

Lavender and Tea Tree essential oil

Miracle Comfrey Ointment

Food grade hydrogen peroxide

Care (a biodegradable disinfectant by GNLD) – any disinfectant will do

Daily plan of action:

It’s essential to keep the wounds covered as they are highly contagious so every morning we redress them.

-First, we clean the wound with watered down disinfectant and one drop….I repeat….one drop only of hydrogen peroxide, open any new blisters and clean them out.

-We let him sit outside in the breeze for a while to let everything dry.

-Then we drip lots of Lavender Oil and a little Tea Tree over the area and wipe the oil off the skin around as plaster doesn’t stick to oily skin.

-Next, we spread a thick layer of Miracle comfrey ointment over a square of gauze a couple layers thick, place that over the sore and tape it in place with surgical paper tape.

-We wrap bandage around the whole job to keep it properly covered and safe.

-Then, and this is the tricky bit, we keep him entertained with things like audio books and lego so that he doesn’t run (excuse the pun) the risk of injuring himself and having more infected sores to deal with. I have, at times, given five drops of Rescue Remedy when I can see he is completely freaking out from frustration and fear. 

It’s a traumatizing thing for a little person and a very sobering experience for a parent. I’ll let you know how it goes and if you have any ideas, please let me know! Now is the time! 

A picture of home | by Mariella

I am currently on business in Munich, so I`m writing to you from a keypad that requires a little more concentration than usual! I`m only here for a week and it`s autumn here which means that the streets are lined with bright yellow leaves. When people ask me where i come from and what my home is like, this is what comes to mind, I try to communicate it to them, but there`s nothing like home!

Companion planting | by Mariella

Plants don’t grow in isolation, they grow together! This is obvious, right? But what I find so interesting is that plants do not always make good neighbours. Some vegetables, when planted together, turn out sweeter, stronger, seemingly immune to attack from pests. But when you get the combination wrong, plants seem to experience stunted growth and are weak or more susceptible to attack from harmful bugs and disease.

Companion planting takes into account: the proximity of plants which have adverse or beneficial effects on one another, planting of plants which are beneficial to the soil and plants which attract friendly insects or act as natural pesticides and herbicides in strategic places in your garden.

Comfrey is every gardener’s ally.  Its leaves are extremely high in potassium, nitrogen, calcium and other nutrients, making it the best natural fertilizer. Just remember not to eat any part on the plant though; this is food for your garden, not for you! Mix the leaves with boiling water and let the ‘tea’ rot for a month or so. It smells grizzly but the plants love it!

I would recommend getting a book on the subject if you are starting your own vegetable patch as it helps when you haven’t had the opportunity to observe which plants make good bedfellows!

There are some plants, especially herbs which attract helpful insects into your garden, doing the job of pest control for you. The flowers of angelica, borage, mint, buckwheat, Californian poppy, carrot, chamomile, chives, coriander, crimson clover, dill, Echinacea, fennel, garlic, golden rod, lavender, lemon balm, marigold, marjoram, mustard, nasturtium, parsley, rocket, rose scented geranium, rosemary, sage, sunflower, tansy, thyme, yarrow will attract insects like bees, dragonflies, damselflies, spiders, ladybirds – which can eat a whopping 400 aphids a day, lacewings, praying mantises into your garden. 

It’s so rewarding to hear the buzz of your little helpers already at work in your garden when you get there first thing in the morning. They've been awake and productive for hours, they love my garden and I love them, it’s companionable! 

Did you know that borage makes strawberries sweeter? And that fennel should not be planted near beans, tomatoes, kohlrabi or coriander, but it’s great as a flea repellent when scrunched in your hand and rubbed into your dog’s coat? Rows of wood ash in your beds will deter slugs. Garlic and parsley grown near Roses will help keep them pest free.

No one knows why it works, chalk it up to one plant liking the way another plant smells, but it comes from generations of observant farmers and if you’re going to take the time and effort to plant something in the ground and will it to live through hard work and love, you may as well surround it with buddies, so that together, they don’t get bugged!