With everything changing so much in the nursery world here in Australia, here’s something from the UK to check out:

Gardenerscentre is a collection of online boutique shops that offers a whole range of garden and gardening products as well as plants and garden furniture from the best international designers…so they say!

This is just in from the ABC website – a little coverage of the verge garden…

So you can’t see the fringe, which would make you realise how much this Pooch Poncho was inspired by Coco Chanel Fall 2011…

Just imagine the fringe under all that neck fur, ok? This is Max (yep, it IS written there) modelling felted faux tartan a la Chanel.

(I have yet to do the ‘classic suit’ but it will come…)

Yesterday M, Helen the Unbeliever and I dug up the potato bed and towers and unearthed the booty…

Greek Helen has been very pessimistic about the fate of the potatoes. And apparently her husband’s friend has also been over, shaking his head at the slug-eaten leaves and absence of flowers and pronounced that no potatoes would be growing here.

Oh ye of little faith, how wrong you were.

Okay, I accept that there MAY not have been the quantity that there may have been if the slug killer had been used and we’d watered a little more frequently (especially the towers, which always seemed to be left out). However as garden novices, I think all has turned out quite well.

Bring on the next harvest…

In the place of the potatoes – good crop rotation practice says that you don’t plant potatoes in the same bed twice for fear of the 100-year plague (or something like that) – we now have carrots, heirloom 5 coloured silverbeet, Asian greens, comfrey, leek (and I hope that the mystery woman from way down the street doesn’t sneak up in 9 months time and snaffle them all just as they reach maturity) and of course, some more kale.

I needed more as Helen the Unbeliever and become Helen the Vengeful Greek and yanked out the other kale earlier in the week. (Their stringy stems and aphids were really bugging her. I really don’t think she believed me when I told her I LOVE kale.)

Anyway, it’s all good and part of life on the verge. Helen has also transformed into Helen the Happy now as all tomotoes that she’s preciously tendering have now been staked…

Have I mentioned that I’m having a ball running my new business? And in the spirit of bringing everything together, today I’ve announced the great Doggie Rescue Felt-off!

Find out more about:

• how Pooch Ponchos and business comes together, AND
• how  you can learn how to make a fabulously warm and funky felted Pooch Poncho from scratch, absolutely customised for your dog, in the company of other doggie rescuers, walk away with it
• AND contribute about $50 each to Monika’s at the same time

…over at the Sydney Small Business Centre blog.

(Phew. Out of breath!)

And here’s Rambo in the Dog-o-saurus at Chew Chews.

Where is the calm, I’m asking?

Those reading regularly may have noticed that there’s not a lot that comes out on this blog about the topic ‘calm’. In fact, if you go an click the button calm at the top – yep, I dare you – then you’ll actually only find one entry there. It’s about meditation failure. About now we should probably be saying mediation nosedive.

M told me this morning that maybe because I am sleeping so much better – not doing quite so much work at 3am in the morning – that maybe I don’t need to do it. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding about why one would meditate revealed there but I’m not picky, and M ALWAYS looks on the bright side, so you have to give credit for that.

It’s not like I’m here in the middle of raging seas or anything (I chose that metaphor; better make full use of it), but clearly my be-calmed but not calm state is obvious even to the Buddhist couple who walk their dogs in the local park. They no longer ask how meditation’s going, they just ask after Alfy and Mondoe.

You know, I’m trying for a little balance here. And at least I’m warming to the idea. Previously I just used to think balance = boring = give up the highs and lows, peaks and troughs, but actually there’s a lot to recommend it.

In fact, just last week I not only worked my arse off, but also managed to go to one very interesting dinner to hear a business woman speak, one lovely big business lunch and a couple of seminars. I DID miss out on the Medecin sans Frontieres presentation event about something which was a bummer but I had to go back and do more work. I HAD been out playing all day after all. And I reckon that was a balance of work and work-related fun…and it didn’t feel too damn bad.

It has occurred to me that I was NEVER motivated to do that when I was back working in corporate slavery…even though colleagues did. Usually the ladder-climbers though. Some of those people need all the help they can get after all. Medicority sure does need networking.

Ok, enough of this muttering, I away, to walk the dogs, work, do my back exercises (more on that later) but no meditation today …

Every tried kale chips? You really should give them a shot…

I was chatting potato slugs and kale aphids with a real urban hippie friend last week and she asked if I’d ever tried kale chips. I haven’t, and in fact I’d never heard of it, but we do have lots of kale (if aphid covered at present)!

To check how widespread this particular dish might be I’ve just Googled it. There’s over 400,000 responses, but here’s the recipe at the top of the page.

By the way, chooks love kale too apparently. Vanessa said that she had only a few leaves left on her plants, at the top of very long stalks. The chooks love the kale so much they jump up to get the leaves…

The woolly warmth of felt seems to have real comfort properties…this story just in from Rambo’s mum Valerie who also has Rocky the cat…

“Rocky has developed an affinity for felt. The other day, when he was ill, he sat on the camo one all day. Even when we took him off it, he would go back on it. He even knew how to leave it, go spew about 10 times elsewhere, and then return to it for comfort. Very odd…”

Here’s Rocky making friends with the Dog-o-saurus:

After a re-make of the Dog-o-saurus for my dog Alfy shrank just a little too much, I thought immediately of another pint-sized dog who’d probably love it…

Here’s Rambo in the Dog-o-saurus. (This is the art shot.) I can say with absolute confidence that dog mum Valerie will encounter two types of people when walking Rambo in the Dog-o-saurus outside. The first will be ‘OMG that’s freaking adorable/cute/funny’; the second will look sideways at her, then quickly away with that ‘OMG there’s a weird woman; quick let’s pretend she’s not even there’ look.

Now as I live in feral-but-rapidly-gentrifying Newtown the split between first and second category is roughly 60/40…But on the leafy north shore??? I’m going for the opposite! We will see…

Now take a look yourself.

In the year 2050 it’s likely that we’ll be living in increasingly tiny spaces. For designers entering Electrolux’s Design Lab 2010 the challenge was  how do you fit “all mod cons” into an apartment that might be no bigger than a boxing ring?

The undergraduate and graduate industrial design students currently enrolled at a school or university who could take part in the competition were asked to look at science and technology trends and predict how these could be used to make futuristic products for compact living. Here are three of the best designs, from a fridge that sticks to the ceiling to a wardrobe that cleans the clothes you keep in it:

1. This space-saving fridge, designed by Yuriy Dmitriev, based in Russia, has no door, is super-slim and can be fitted anywhere – even on the ceiling. A biological gel fills the inside and holds your food in place, so all you have to do is plunge your hand in when you fancy a snack.

2. Michael Edenius, based in Sweden has designed a cleaning wardrobe that will scan clothes for dirt and using waterless molecular technology remove it ready for next time you need to get dressed. (Bring that on in a hurry!)

3.  Modular Kitchen by Matthew Gilbride, based in the US, lets you fit your whole kitchen on the wall with each shelf-like unit using solar-powered wireless networks to morph into any of a number of roles: shelf, fridge, stove, light or air-conditioning unit. (Reminds me of the bollocking Philippe Starck gave poor Polly in Design4Life! You were on to a winner Poll.)