Blitz 110 in Elwood
Seila and Keith designed and facilitated a great blitz in Elwood at Jane and Claes’s house on the weekend.
Jane writes:
“I am still shocked and emotional at the people and their efforts to help our family build our garden beds… We are privileged to be part of this community!”
Keith writes:
Our client, Jane, was nesting. Yes that’s definitely what it was. With two young children and a third on the way, she and husband, Claes, are definitely on a mission to build some food security and resilience into their lives. As the designers, Seila and I were very pleased to impart some permanent-culture. Jane had a good idea what she wanted, having been to a couple of blitz’s: wicking vegie beds, an area for chooks in the front yard, to remove some ornamental trees and plant fruit trees. And that is basically what we did this second Sunday of September 2011 in Elwood.
Before the day; meetings were held, a base plan and design was drawn up, materials specified, how the blitz would run was discussed. The day was upon us. “Oh no – it’s going to rain”… but luckily it held off.
What I enjoy most about blitzes is the characters you meet. Young, old, male, female, Italian, Malaysian, Israeli, single, gay, married, divorced, tradies, professionals, retired, sad, happy, funny, peculiar, you name it. (I’m the sad peculiar one). We all had smiles the whole day – just look at the photos! And then there was Cathy, who kept saying “Here, I love digging holes…”. When your back’s starting to ache, that was music to my ears. Many hands make light work, as they say.
I ran a quick workshop on how to chop a tree, and Seila ran the master-class on wick beds.
Lessons for next time? If we had pre-cut the timber for the wick beds, we may not have run over time. It’s also wise not to use power tools on the day.
— Keith Rhodes
