Several months of downtime from Hive

Hi everyone!
My orbit has taken me away from Hive for a little while...um...months, in fact!

There's been a massive amount of other stuff happeing in our lives and garden that I had little time for writing posts.

So what's been up?
A death in the family - Jelina's sister pased on. Lots and lots of illnesses for family members have taken up a lot of my energy. But that's the negatives, though many positives have sprung from those.

I've written much more info for our website Ligaya Garden Online. There was so much positive feedback from the Kitchen Herbalism workshop that I felt far more confident in publicly sharing more detailed, in depth knowledge. I've added lots of info on tincturing, decocting, harvesting, drying and storing herbs. Most importantly though, is that I've a whole page dedicated to using alcohol in herbalism. There's lots of info on diluting alcohol that needed to be shared and now, it's done.

I'll be adding a lot of that info to this account sooner or later.

It's been Winter here in Gawler, so little was done in the garden but the advent of warm(er) days has kicked off activity there.

I've done a massive prune of all of the major trees, bringing the height right down and bringing sunshine and warmth to the soil. The trees are burting into flower and the lower layers are thriving.

We've had solar installed (no battery yet), and are seeing big enough numbers on the meter to know that it's saving us money and reducuing our emissions nicely.

Mushroom foraging season has come to a close. The Funga are always there but the most have stopped sporulating (my favourite new word) and the edible bits have all but disappeared. The frosts have been finishing the season for us, turning the sporing bodies to mush before we can get to them.

I ran three successful workshops on mushroom ecology and foraging. There could have been more, the demand is high for knowledge. I find that, this year, the focus of people attending has shifted. Participants are much ore intrested in the ecological side of things, the connection and interconnection that Fungi represent. It marks a shift from folks just asking 'can I eat it'?

I've also started working at Ucare, a local offshoot of the Uniting Church that distributes aid and food to folks in need. My job is to, on a Monday, help to unload the truck that comes from OzHarvest or Second Bite. Those are full of bread and vegetables that the big supermarkets donate.

Once again, things are changing. The amount of food that we receive and distribute has been dwindling, even in the few months that I have been there and the number of folks relying on it to get them by is increasing. Another sign of the times, I guess?

On a better note, gardens, parks and roadsides are becoming choked with wild foods and medicines ('weeds' to some people) so there will be a few field trips, forages and good, seasonal, meals coming up as the weather improves!

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