Give and Grow, Walk and Be Well

Sustainable Bungay's 4th annual Give and Grow event last Sunday (20th May) at the Bungay Community Library garden held a particular significance this year in the light of the recently passed EU "Plant Reproductive Material Law" aiming to regulate and restrict the sale, exchange or growth of all plants unless officially registered.

This would have impacted severely upon our freedom to (legally) "Give and Grow" in the manner of even our humble SB events, had the law not been mitigated in the final hour due to pressure from growers, gardeners and lovers of plants and freedom from all over Europe. See The Real Seed Catalogue's page for more information and why we need to keep an eye on this law (and take a look at their great vegetable seed list, too).

Our 2nd Well-Being walk took place after the Give and Grow with a group of six adults and three children setting off through town and the annual Bungay Garden Street Market, where we were joined by Sofia, recently moved to Norwich where she is studying midwifery. So here is a story in mostly pictures and some words of both the Give and Grow and the Well-being walk:

Lesley Hartley, who is curating this year's Edible Bed in the centre of the library garden. Note the crimson flowered broad bean to Lesley's left. After a slow post-cold-winter start, the garden is beginning to respond to Lesley's hard work.

Plant Medicine 2012 meets Edible Bed 2013. Mark and Lesley trying not to hide behind flowering brussels. What was that about Brussels, seeds and plants..? Keep giving and growing!

Brussels, A-Board and the big old red Post Office van, which Eloise has picked up all the large Give and Take day furniture and garden donations in over the last three years and used to deliver items to people after the events. As well as couriering display boards for Bee group events and other talks and workshops.

 Nick shows Mark how to construct a make-shift seed envelope. This turned out to be a double (flowered?) version.

Richard demonstrates how to divide primrose roots and replant them. Primroses respond well to root division and the best time to start is just as the flowers are going over. Here Richard explains that even a small section of root like the one in his hands will resprout, though a misting table is best for roots this size.

 A new tray of primroses.

Double-flowered feverfew growing out of the cracks and just about to come into flower. Feverfew leaves are a well-known herbal remedy for migraine. I'd never heard of anyone who'd actually used it till last year. A lady from Beccles came to a Plants for Life session and told us she swore by feverfew and used it any time she felt the beginnings of a migraine lurking. "Do you put it in bread," I asked. I'd read countless times that bread helped it to be easier on the stomach. "Oh no, I just eat a couple of leaves raw. Always works!"

You can't go to a Give and Grow event anywhere these days without coming across someone reading the Transition Free Press! Tony in  deep concentration.

And isn't that the TFP's editor sitting there with Tony? What a coincidence!

Goodness me! Is that ANOTHER copy of Transition Free Press sticking out of Paul's pocket?

Straw bale culture. Cucumber. nasturtiums and giant pumpkin planted by Lesley for EastFeast at the Street Garden Market.

We've now left the library and the Give and Grow and started our well-being walk. No one was in any rush to leave the courtyard garden though, it was so relaxing.

We mapped out the route between us deciding to go via the market to the bridge at the bottom of Earsham Street and then down Castle Lane which skirts round the castle ruins. A favourite walk for several people, some found the castle ruins romantic, some liked visiting the wildflowers and others found it an  enjoyable route for walking the children to school.

A brief stop at the East Feast stall (love that hat, Dano!), to play a board game with the children, and then on to  Orchard End Herbs: "I know you," I said to a young woman there. "You came to my Trade School class on rosemary and circulation at the Common Room in Norwich a few months back. Would you like to join us on our well-being walk?" "That'd be great," said Sofia. "And I'd like to bring some friends to Happy Mondays tomorrow. How do I book?" "You need to talk to Josiah," I said. "And he's coming on the walk, too."

Leaving the market (and the Punch and Judy show) and heading down to Earsham Street bridge and the River Waveney. This is one of Sally's favourite places to visit.

Waterweeds in the Waveney.

Reuben leads us purposefully to Castle Lane.

Take Me To The River, but don't drop me in the water... at least not until August when we combine our annual picnic with a swim.

Back lanes full of wildflowers and garden escapes, from cow parsley and Babington's poppy to shining cranesbill and grape hyacinth. One of Bungay's delights.

Sitting (and climbing) on the bench, before heading back to Sally's for a cup of tea. The whole walk was very relaxed and took about an hour and a quarter. To find out when our next Wellbeing walk is, check out the Sustainable Bungay Calendar - all welcome!

Images (all by Mark Watson): Beans, peas and seeds; Lesley and the Edible Bed; Mark and Lesley behind the flowering broccoli - medicine plant bed 2012 meets edible plant bed 2013; brussels, board and red van; making seed envelopes; Richard demonstrates primrose division 1 & 2; double-flowered feverfew growing through the concrete; Tony gets the lowdown with Transition Free Press; And again with TFP's editor Charlotte; Give and Grow and sit down for a chat; straw bale culture; garden street market with Dano; Earsham Street Bridge; waterweeds; follow the leader;  down by the Waveney; plants along the wayside; on the bench

First published 27th May 2013 on Sustainable Bungay's website

doing the spring shift

There it goes again. Booooooooom! 4am, April 20. Bang on time. The bittern is back in the marshes. Gotta be spring out there, right? And yes, finally it is: bursting out of its cherry-plum celandine and alexander seams. I've been tracking it since we went to the woods down at Dunwich in March. First the honeysuckle, then the foxglove, then the odd blue veronica winking along the curb. We checked out wild daffodils on the tumulus and goat willow at East Hill and they were finally in their splendour. I saw my first bumblebee and first butterfly (tortoiseshell) and sat barefoot on the doorstep, prepping veg, face in the sun.

You think it means nothing a shift of season, but after this long, dark and bitter winter Spring feels like a reprieve. We're warm for the first time in months and a feeling of lightness and happiness is flooding the house. At our first Sustainable Bungay wellbeing walk a crew of us walked around Bungay on the first really great sunny day of the year, mapping the streets and green spaces. We met at the community garden and everyone shared their favourite places, the edges of carparks and rivers, the commons, certain streets, trees and  houses.

We set off to visit the now community-owned, Falcon Meadow and  the wonky colourful Bridge Street, once the main thoroughfare and site of the Halloween pumpkin festival. We exchanged our experiences and memories, knowledge about birds, trees, history, delighted at the texture of place - brick, flint, faded wood - the river, alleyways, benches, footpaths, the pattern language of our town and finally ended up at Bungay Tea Rooms, everyone's favourite cafe, where we sat in the garden with tea and chips.

The sun shone gloriously. We felt good. Not just in ourselves, but with each other. Life was harder for all of us, but treasuring the day and this town we share made it seem all right. We mapped out the walks we are going to do this summer too, including swimming down the river Waveney and holding our annual picnic by the shore. And then Mark and I did a manita de gata (cat's paw) tidy of the community garden and delighted in all the green shoots of the herbs and plants that made it through the dark and cold.

Right now in the garden under the budding greengage tree, the coldwater champion of England and fearless Transitioner, Lucy Neal, has established her caravan. We have begun work on the book, Playing for Time and each week over the summer she is coming to stay for three days and we are hammering out the Work in the tiny crucible. Here I am sorting out the hexagonal sections that make up the centre of the book: contributions from the artists, writers and practitioners who gathered at Lumb Bank. Lucy recently wrote about our experiences on the Arts Council blog here:

http://blog.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/arts-council-england-blog/playing-time 

This week we are looking at each of those sections, starting with one that matters more than anything . .

Images: honeysuckle and foxglove in Dunwich Wood, March; arts, culture and wellbeing walk en route to Falcon Meadow, April; in Lucy's caravan; message to Mark at the wild daffodil tumulus!

Wellbeing and the Community - a local perspective

What makes up community well-being in a time of financial constraints and climate uncertainty? This was the question twenty five people turned up to explore at Sustainable Bungay's first Green Drinks of the new year at the Green Dragon in January. The evening also marked the start of our new Arts, Culture and Well-being sub-group.

Well-being has been the subject of several recent studies, such as the New Economics Forum's 'Five Ways to Well-being', as well as the focus for many Transition initiatives. We live in a culture based around a market economy, and money and material status (or the lack of it), have become the driving force of most people's lives.

But what real good has this done ourselves or the planet? Apart from living in a badly degraded environment, we are as a collective suffering from ill health, depression, loss of identity and lack of connection to nature and other people. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

For many people (including myself) this winter has felt particularly long, dark and cold, with uncharacteristic feelings of gloom and lowness. When I've spoken to people about it, many have said "Oh, it's not just me then." Then there are those colds and fevers which seem to take weeks to clear up. Something is clearly not okay.

What would it mean if our lives, instead of being determined by GDP, were based on our mutual well-being and happiness – not just our personal well-being, but within the communities and neighbourhoods we all share? What would it mean if instead of striving for our own comfort and security, we valued sharing our resources and knowledge? How would our attitudes to each other change, and what kind of changes in the environment would that bring?

Much of the work Sustainable Bungay has been doing over the last five years has this co-operative learning at its base - from creating the Community Garden at the Library to hosting Happy Monday meals at the Community Centre, to organising bicycle rides, sewing circles, Give and Take Days, Bungay Community Bees and the Pig Club. Several of us attended the recent East Anglian Living Together day about co-ops and intentional communities in East Bergholt, where we found we had over 30 practical skills between us - just in one workshop! As well as sharing these skills, we've learned that working together brings a certain kind of happiness you just can't pay for.

For example, you can go and forage for blackberries on the common on your own, but going out together, sharing a picnic and then taking some to the Abundance table or for a Happy Mondays pudding for others to enjoy, makes for a more open and shared experience. This simple activity has all those five ways in it: connection, action, learning, taking notice and giving. Most of all it involves the place we live in and includes the wild spaces we are surrounded by.

At our Green Drinks we have focused on the many ways we can reconnect, from learning about medicine plants to the restoration of the River Waveney. In January the ideas were flowing, as people paired up and asked each other what community well-being meant to them and what creative or practical skills they had they would like to pass on to others.

A common thread emerged: well-being meant belonging to a place and not feeling on your own. So plans for a wide range of communal activities were mapped out, from walking and exploring the local countryside, river swimming and canoeing, to sharing skills such as food growing, cooking and meditation. Creative workshops were designed, including storytelling, theatre work and body percussion. What also became clear was that well-being is a major factor underlying and motivating Sustainable Bungay's activities.

Giving ourselves more time and space to connect with people and the neighbourhood was something people thought was vital and in April we'll begin creating a well-being map of Bungay with a walk around town paying particular attention to what the various public spaces in town feel like to be in.

Sustainable Bungay is a busy group. We have always been primarily events-focused and that seems set to continue. But a closer look shows that these events  also often provide the space for people to come together for discussions that might not happen ordinarily.

For our seventh Give and Take Day last Saturday (16th March), Charlotte set up and facilitated a conversation on the Gift Economy – sharing what we have with others in times of austerity. Over twenty people joined in.  Nick spoke about some of the ideas in Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics and Jeppe and Vanessa talked about their involvement in setting up the Common Room in Norwich. This project makes unused or underused public spaces (in this case an old church) available as a 'living room for the community', where people can swap and share skills, knowledge and company with no money exchange involved.

What was striking about this discussion on a cold, dark, Saturday midday in March in Bungay's (slightly dilapidated) Community Centre, surrounded by the Give and Take tables of household goods, clothes and books, and accompanied by a bowl of Josiah's homemade fava bean and winter root veg soup and Christine's freshly baked bread, was that when time was called after 50 minutes, no one was in any hurry to leave. People were still discussing everything from how to receive a gift and should that leave you feeling obliged to give something back in some way, to how to begin to value ourselves and other people, places, skills and the living planet in a way that is not market-driven or utilitarian.

Usually when we think of well-being, it's in terms of personal comfort, and often has medical associations. But what if well-being were really not just a personal matter? What if it also depends on our getting out of our personal enclosures and insistence on everything belonging to some private personal sphere? And into that 'living room for the community' where a conversation can happen about sharing what we have, and we can start to forge different relationships with each other, the places we live in and the planet that gives us life.

"I've never experienced such a discussion before," said one visitor. "I could have stayed much longer."

Images: Plants for Life 2012 weed walk, Bungay; Hot Beds and Leafy Greens poster, March 2013; Koru body percussion poster, March 2013; Gift Economy conversation at SB's 7th Give and Take Day, March 2013

First published on on the Social Reporting project 18th March 2013.

Keep Circulating in the Common Room or What Rosemary Did

I had planned on giving a pre-spring tonic Herbs for Resilience class at the second Common Room prototype day at St. Laurence's church in Norwich on Saturday. I was going to focus on plants like dandelion, cleavers and nettles to wake up our systems after winter.

Only it really wasn't 'after winter' on Saturday. It was after a week where the temperature never rose much above freezing and I'd had too many conversations with people who said they'd been feeling gloomy and low (including, unusually, myself) or who had had flus and colds that were taking an age to clear up - or both!

So on Friday I decided that the spring tonic was just going to have to wait. What we needed right now was something cheerful and warming for the End of Winter. Something that would clear our heads, lift our spirits and also keep us warm in the nippy air of St. Laurence's church!

Welcome to Rosemary! Known since forever as a herb that warms, stimulates circulation, helps clear the head and improve memory AND cheers the heart, it had to be you, bold, resinous Rosemary!

I picked some sprigs from the garden, packed up my teapot, and took some dried thyme and lavender to add to the mix along with some Norfolk honey. The class would be based around a cup of tea. 

Then on Saturday morning I sat down at home with a hot water bottle to tune in to the day and the class. The temperature was almost as low inside the house as out and I suddenly noticed my kidneys and hands were really cold. I placed the hot water bottle on my back to warm up my kidneys and carried on considering the class. Five minutes later I noticed not only was my back now warm, but so were my hands! Warming up my back and kidneys had warmed up my hands too. As my system was not just focused on keeping my organs warm, the blood was circulating further out to the extremities. 

"THIS," I thought, "is what I want to pass on to everyone at the Trade School today." Keep your internal organs warm with a hot water bottle. And make a pot of rosemary, thyme and lavender tea with a small amount of honey to help clear those old colds and cheer the spirits!

Ten people turned up for a lively class and in the way of skill and knowledge share and Common Room and Trade School, I was rewarded with friendly people and some lovely gift exchanges: a pair of hand-knitted fingerless gloves, a diary, organic fruit and veg and a jar of homemade Seville orange marmalade, all of which are already being loved, worn (fingerless gloves on as I type!), written in, cooked and eaten!

So thanks to everyone for those and for joining in so heartily. And also for sharing your own knowledge about the virtues of Rosemary, which is also an antiseptic:

"When my brother was a teenager, he had terribly smelly feet," said Sarah. "Our grandmother told him to bathe them every day in cooled rosemary tea. And that soon sorted it out!"

Notes:
(i) For more on The Common Room in Norwich check out the website. There were all sorts of interesting and co-operative/collaborative classes, talks and demonstrations going on on Saturday, besides mine: from creative action for trees and grassroots media to origami and creating complementary currencies. The whole day had a great atmosphere with many people joining in in spite of the cold. And you can see some photos from the day, too!

(ii) I teach people in groups and communities to reconnect with the living world by taking notice of the plants growing right where we are and how that helps increase well-being. Here is some of what I've been doing recently:

Common Plants, Common Room
The Plants for Life 2012 Archive (a monthly series of talks, walks and workshops I organised last year with Sustainable Bungay)
Mark in Flowers

I look forward to doing more Trade School barter sessions at the Common Room! And if you'd like me to come and give a  plant talk (always interactive and practical), or lead a walk or workshop with your group, do let me know: markintransition@hotmail.co.uk

STOP PRESS: Common Room meeting tonight Monday 25 Feb 7-9pm at the Norwich Playhouse (42-58 St Georges St, NR3 1AB) to discuss next steps and how to move forward. This is your chance to join in with setting up a new and exciting community space in Norwich! The meeting is in the Playroom (the room to the right when you come in).

Pics: Preparing the blackboard and the tea at St. Laurence's Church (in an attic-like side room); Passing the rosemary tea at the herbs for Resilience class; Lovely things people brought in exchange for the class

Winemaking - 'For Medicinal Purposes'

For Sustainable Bungay's 10th Plants for Life event last Sunday, Winemaking - For Medicinal Purposes, Nick Watts invited a dozen of us to his house for a practical demonstration of how to make fruit wine, in this case (sic) from raspberries.

Nick’s front room was filled with people (including Sophie and Nick from Transition Norwich's Low Carbon Cookbook group),  funnels, demi-john’s with deep red liquid and when you opened the door of any one of the cupboards you would discover a large container filled with a fermenting fluid. One demi-john contains enough for 6 bottles of wine at 750cl per bottle. Nick calculated he had about 80 bottles of wine fermenting at the moment.

First we took a look at some of the medicinal qualities of  raspberries. I’d been aware of the raspberry leaf  as a uterine tonic during pregnancy and childbirth and have used it along with yarrow to make a salve for piles. But for me raspberry fruits were always a delicious sign of high to late summer, picked fresh or bought from a roadside stall, and eaten long before they made it home to be turned into anything else culinary, let alone medicinal.

Raspberries, in fact, are incredibly rich in anti-oxidants and vitamin C. Eating them can help boost a poor appetite and they are useful in arthritis. See Hedgerow Medicine, by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal,  for an excellent chapter on the many virtues and uses of  the raspberry, both leaf and fruit, with some great herbal recipes.

Penelope Ody in her book 100 great natural remedies has a simple recipe for raspberry vinegar: Soak 500g fresh raspberries in wine vinegar for 2 weeks, strain thick red liquid into a bottle and use in cough syrups, as a throat gargle or add to salad dressings.

Nick took us through the winemaking process in three stages, starting off a new wine and then using ones “I’d prepared a bit earlier.” He was keen to point out he was not an expert, having started about three years ago, but had really got into it and was happy to share what he knows with people.

This was the essence of not only this session but also a main impulse behind the whole Plants for Life project, and indeed Sustainable Bungay as a group and the wider Transition 'movement': If Nick could make so much and such decent wine (not to mention his delicious dandelion and burdock beer) from home and allotment-grown and foraged fruit by just doing it and immersing himself in it, then anyone with sufficient interest and initiative could. Watching Nick describe the process and go through it physically with a friendly group of people was absorbing and instructive, as well as good fun. It was a true skill-share.

What follows below is not necessarily the whole story, but what I learnt from Sunday's session:

STEP ONE
In a big bucket with 3lb raspberries (you can choose your own fruit, almost any will do), Nick poured on 5pts of water and added a teaspoonful of pectin enzyme to prevent ‘pectin haze’. He then mashed the raspberries with a wooden spoon and covered the liquid with a tea towel (very important esp. in summer to keep insects out).

This is left for two days.

STEP TWO 2 DAYS LATER
Add to the bucket between 1kg and 11/4 kg of sugar (preferably fair trade/organic, white) dissolved in 2 pts water off the boil. Add 1 tsp dried yeast with a little sugar all dissolved in some of the fruit liquid in the bucket.

It’s the yeast that turns the sugar into alcohol and the more sugar the sweeter the wine. Nick uses less (1kg) as he likes a drier wine.

This liquid is then stirred 2-3 times a day over the next four days, and the process is called ‘fermenting on the must’.

STEP THREE 4 DAYS LATER
This is the messy bit, where you strain all the liquid through a muslin sieve, before funnelling it into the demi-johns and putting an airlock on it. This is then left to ferment for between 3 and 18 months until there are no longer any bubbles to be seen in the airlock. During the fermenting process a stable temperature is important. Nick doesn’t worry too much about whether it’s warm or cool, just that there is as little fluctuation as possible.

STEP FOUR 3-18 MONTHS later
Decant into bottles and leave for 1-2 years depending on the fruit. Raspberries need less time than elderberries, for example.

After the demonstration, Nick invited everyone to taste some of the wines he's made. My favourite was the dry and fragrant Elderflower and Rosehip. I took half a bottle home and tried a glass with a dash of elderflower cordial - for medicinal purposes only, of course. And it was the perfect antidote to the recent gloomy days of continual rain and lessening light.

Photos: Raspberry wine fermenting in demi-johns; Nick instructing; Mashing the raspberries; Straining the liquid; Cheers on a rainy day (Mark Watson)

Retro blog #5: I never promised you a rose garden

As well as our topic and themes weeks on This Low Carbon Life we also wrote in three-day (originally five-day) shifts. It gave us a chance to focus on our "home" subjects and to see the breadth of each others' experiences and to respond (the great advantages of contributing to a community blog, as opposed to a solo one, is  knowing you are not on your own). These days allowed us to stretch our wings as writers and photographers and appreciate our different styles and takes on life.

Where we met was in our celebration of plants, people and places. So whether this was Jon talking about bees, planting an oak or finding a city fox, John reporting on his vegetable garden in Little Melton, or rescuing toads on Norfolk roads, Elena on the wild life at Norwich FarmShare or Helen celebrating the artist quarter of Magdalen Street, place making forms the heart of this blog. You could say it created a connection between us, as well as grounding us within our Transition stories. Climate change and "community" can be abstract things unless fully engaged with. A feeling, kinetic and imaginative connection to our neighbourhood and its inhabitants (not just human) help us all make ourselves at home in a rocky and restless time.

One of our most eloquent PPP reporters has been Mark, who manages to weave a love of the wild and medicine plants with an unswerving generosity towards fellow Transitoners. Funny, warm, self-depracating, as well as a great record of community events and meetings, his blogs regularly track the comings and goings of plants, particularly this year where he has curated a Transition medicine bed at Bungay Library Community Garden. I really enjoyed the winter (look still no heating!) Meanwhile let's talk about the weather, the springtime foraging epic Conquering Alexanders and the mix of midsummer meetings in  Life is roses... sometimes.

We are told that life should be a paradise, when we see all about us a wrecked and polluted kingdom. We depend utterly on the plants for our food and air and shelter, yet we are taught to treat them as mere commodities. Somehow we have to restore our relationship with the planet, with each other and get back on track.

Sometimes we find help in the most surprising places . . . .

Magdalen Celebration crew, 2011 from Shift Together - Working Title (helenofnorwich); Mark under neighbourhood cherry from Wallking with Weeds (Charlotte Du Cann)

Some Notes on Tracks and Edges by Mark Watson

31 March 2012

At the edge where we encounter another human being, we discover for ourselves what it is to have to break down a little... Cat Lupton

I am standing on the platform at Lowestoft Station. It is early evening. April 2010. And May. And June. In under an hour I will have traversed the Broads on the two-coach train, past the swans and waterways, past the big sugar factory, past the wide green and gold vistas and the boatyards. And will have arrived in Norwich where I am on my way to a carbon conversations course.

I have loved these journeys, made possible as they have been by a bus service connecting Lowestoft to where I live further down the coast. This will not last. The bus route which has run for 26 years will be reduced then scrapped altogether in the Autumn. No more connecting night buses. The carbon conversations will finish.

I am unsure about the carbon conversations, a 6-session course over twelve weeks aimed at helping people reduce personal and household carbon use and emissions using a non-confrontational approach. I often feel like I’m at school disrupting more well-behaved pupils in a quiet and serious class, and prefer the more creative, deeper, experimental nature of our Stranger’s Circle meetings where we bring our household energy bills to show each other, take a good look at the industrial food system, have difficult conversations about transport use. Where we're making it up as we go along. Where there's more of an edge.

Down the line (sic) I see the value in both approaches, and it was through both the Strangers’ Circle year and carbon conversations that the Low Carbon Cookbook group was born, which meets monthly to explore low carbon ways of buying, growing and preparing food (and write a book about it – always the hardest part!)

But back to the easternmost station in England. I have no such ambivalence about the journeys themselves (carbon-footprint-calculated though they were). Having downshifted in a major way over the past decade from someone who travelled all over the place in bus, car, train and plane, I rarely travel beyond East Anglia now. And I’ve learned to become less spoilt, less desirous of more ‘glamourous’ destinations, more present to where I am.

That platform for instance. If you walked past where the small train stops, where no one goes, in June and July of 2010, you would find, there at the edge, the most extraordinary outbursting of native wildflowers and medicine plants, all Growing Up Through the Cracks: midsummer Mugwort, St. John’s Wort, Plantain and Yarrow, Buddleia and Wild Carrot. All shining in the early evening light. The plant the Chinese use for moxa in acupuncture, the ‘sunshine herb’ dispeller of demons and nightmares, the menders of myriad wounds, the butterfly bush and the ancestor of one of our favourite vegetables.

It is so easy to hate: those who flail the countryside hedgerows and pour poison on the poppies by the junction of the main road. The stupidity of councils and people obsessed by tidiness. The compulsion to keep anything that smacks of ‘wild’ or ‘untamed’ out or under strict control.

Those rude, healthy, resilient plants. How dare they push through those cracks in the polite concrete and tarmac. In the end they were not left alone, beautiful and shining on that part of the platform where hardly anyone went, but removed in the manner of all ‘weeds’ in the name of civic orderliness. They still make their appearance further over on the tracks and by the fences though it’s not quite the same.

And anyone who loves the 'wastegrounds' and the natural world will know how difficult it is to live with the feelings that these things bring up. In my pre-Transition years I was frequently overwhelmed by them. Now after all the meetings and events, carbon conversations and circles, food and plant swaps, wild plant and foraging walks and experiments in downshifting, I still feel the same about the destruction of wildflowers and their habitats, but I'm tougher. I'm taking people out to show them where the 'weeds' grow, what their properties are, how they feed bees, how they heal us and how beautiful they are in their own right, and curating a plant medicine bed with related events.

Not that Transition has been either an easy ride or a magic pill. Learning to temper one's individualism to relate to others, even include them at all and not lose yourself, can be a struggle. There's the frequent temptation to cut off when that carbon conversation is just too, too... annoying. Boring. Left brain. Whatever. Or to simply go along with things that don't feel right because challenging them would make you feel like you WERE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO FELT LIKE THAT and EVERYONE would look at you like the OUTSIDER YOU REALLY ARE and you would be EXILED.

But engaging in that struggle, difficult, edgy though it is, can bring a meaning and sense to life which no amount of comfort or opulence will ever bring.

And the quote at the top of this piece? It's from an extraordinary post, Meeting Your Edge, by Cat Lupton, writing this week on The Place Between Stories about grappling with individuality and community after an introduction to permaculture course.

It was reading Cat's post that gave me pause to consider these things.

Pics: Mugwort Lowestoft railway station 2010; on the train to Norwich, Lowestoft, 2010; Midsummer wildflowers, Lowestoft, 2010; Plants for Life talk at Bungay Library community garden, 2012

Ribwort Plantain is Your Friend - Get Your Balls Rolling!

It's the last day of summer, a blue moon and I'm off in an hour or so for the last of the plant medicine 'surgeries' I've been holding at Bungay library community garden every Friday for the past few months. Between 1 and 3pm anyone can come and talk about plants as medicine, share knowledge and tips and visit the plant medicine bed.

These Friday sessions have formed part of Sustainable Bungay's Plants for Life project, which I've been curating this year.

As well as the central bed of the library garden showcasing a variety of medicine plants, the project also includes a monthly talk, walk or workshop on some aspect of plants as medicine. Authors, medical herbalists and biodynamic growers have given readings, shown us how to make great green teas, tinctures and oils and passed on invaluable tips for growing herbs. I have taken several groups on walks around Bungay exploring the medicinal value of the plants we call weeds.

Over the past month I've received so many requests from people asking which plants will help with insect bites and stings that I'd like to share some tips about a fabulous plant - it's common, handsome and grows everywhere. You probably step on it all the time.

When it grows unimpeded by human feet and its flowers shimmer in the light and breeze, you wonder why you never noticed it before. And it is truly a medicine chest.

And although summer is coming to a close, bites and stings will still be a possibility for some time yet, especially for those working on the land or in the garden, so...

Ribwort Plantain is your friend.

Bites and stings of bees, wasps, ants, nettles, mosquitoes, horseflies and fleas are alleviated by rolling a ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) leaf in your hand into a juicy ball, and applying it to the bite/sting.

The leaves of this friendly, common, handsome plant have been giving me a hand all summer and I've been recommending it to everyone.

It really works, often immediately, and is utterly safe. And usually not too far away.

I was stung on the neck by a wasp in a local shop and after making a very unmasculine shriek, I went home, rolled a plantain leaf and applied it to my neck. The pain disappeared immediately and there was no swelling.

So get those balls rolling! And love those plantains!

Note: This piece is adapted from a post I wrote earlier this week, itself an extract from a forthcoming, more extensive post about the plantains. UPDATE October 2013: More of my posts about and including plantain and its marvels can be found here.

Pics: ribwort plantain flowering; ribwort leaves; ribwort flower close-up; rolled ribwort plantain ball (all by Mark Watson)

Noughty but Nice and Keeping Refreshed at Happy Mondays

The Low Carbon Cookbook group hasn't had a meeting this month, and so here is a post I wrote for the Transition Social Reporting Project yesterday, 22nd August, about the latest Happy Mondays meal at the Sustainable Bungay community kitchen - a celebration of multiple birthdays with falafels, cupcakes and the herbs that refresh us. Mark Watson

Bungay community centre, Monday 20 August, late afternoon. I have spent the past hours gathering and infusing herbs for the herbal refresher I am making for Sustainable Bungay's Happy Monday meal. These events happen once a month with a different theme, using as much local food as possible and are organised and prepared by the Community Kitchen subgroup of Sustainable Bungay. Anyone can join in and help out or just come to enjoy the food and atmosphere. This month's meal is also a Happy Birthday celebration for the proportionately large number of us in SB who have arrived at an age with '0' in this year .

I'm hot, I've been unable to find any organic, unwaxed lemons in town and outside everyone seems to be moving at a snail's pace as the heat increases towards the end of the day. It must be nearly 30 degrees and I'm definitely feeling the effect of my particular 0 (which is no longer 30). The infusion of over twenty herbs (picked both from home and from the community garden at the library) smells amazing, but it's still piping hot, people will be here in forty minutes and WE DON'T HAVE ANY ICE!

Margaret (another 0) offers to go down the road for the ice after she's finished the flowers for the table. Charlotte cools the infusion by transferring it from jug to pot to saucepan to pancheon and puts in the summer fruits and flowers. I add a little sugar, fizzy water, a bottle of Nick(0)'s homemade raspberry wine and some blackcurrant cordial, testing as I go to get the right balance.

I've stationed myself in the main room where it's slightly cooler. Janet ties balloons on the windows and I carry on pouring and stirring and testing. Thane and Emma are among the first diners to arrive. "Great!" I said. "Tell me what you think of this. I don't want it to be too diluted."

"It's certainly strong enough," they said. "Adding more water would be fine. It's really refreshing!"

The mood of the kitchen is the usual one of intense concentration as everyone in the crew goes about producing the dishes: Josiah rolling the falafels he's made from British fava beans, Christine preparing a raspberry coulis for her cup cakes, Lewis testing the beetroot for the Moroccan salad. Cucumbers and tomatoes are sliced and onions are chopped for the accompanying dips and sauces. "Charlotte, can you do the yoghurt sauce?" says Nick almost at the last minute, whilst he washes up several large pans.

The drink is finally ready and living up to its name. People are arriving and everybody wants some.

"This is delicious," says Sally. "You must tell me what herbs you used."

"Well, there are over twenty five, with a strong base of lemon balm and lemon verbena, and... I'll come and tell you about it later," I said.

And there was plenty for everyone, with Dano (but not Dan0), taking the pancheon round the table so people could have seconds.

The meal was great, too – falafels, pitta bread, salads, sauces, oven-baked wedge potato chips, followed by cup cakes each with its own candle – and that raspberry coulis!

The candles were lit, the lights were dimmed and there was silence for a moment before we all sang Happy Birthday. Janet (yet another 0) and I laughed as we both realised we were singing happy birthday to ourselves and tried to add an 'us' in there somewhere, which didn't rhyme but never mind.

PS There were even more 0 birthdays in Sustainable Bungay this year than I mentioned here: Elinor, Eloise, Jon and Dee also celebrated the beginning of new decades. So cheers to you too, guys!

Pics: Birthday balloon by the window*; Peppermint (ricola) flowers*; oh those cup cakes, in the kitchen; Dano offers Margaret another glass of herbal refresher. By Josiah Meldrum and *Mark Watson