Michael Green

Writer and producer

Autumn Leaf Catching Contest

In Blog on

A FEW weeks ago I announced the inaugural Autumn Leaf Catching Contest, as best I could, using my feeble social networking capacity (by way of a Facebook event and a twitter hashtag: #autumnleafcatching, and on my Sharehood notice-board).

However, as befits a contest of such nostalgic quality, it is gaining momentum by word of mouth, especially in the office tearooms of my friends. 

Here’s how it works…

While you’re walking, keep your eye out for falling leaves. When one drifts nearby, try to catch it. That is all. I will say this: autumn leaf catching is both more difficult and more fun than sounds.

The contest continues until the end of the season. If you want, you can post your provisional leaf numbers on twitter (#autumnleafcatching), by commenting on this article or the Facebook event, or by emailing me. Final tallies must be posted on 1 June. Winner gets Official Autumn Leaf Catching Bragging Rights until next autumn.

But don’t feel compelled to keep a record or post a tally. Just notice the season changing, and try to catch a leaf now and then.

Some rule clarification and general advice (in response to queries)

1. Standing around below a tree waiting for leaves to fall is frowned upon for the purposes of the contest, but what the heck: I encourage it whole-heartedly.

2. Contestants shall not saw off branches or cut down trees in order to collect leaves.

3. Although butterfly nets and fitted sheets may greatly increase your yield, their use is not considered within the spirit of the competition. However, if you do employ a sheet as a leaf-catching contraption, please take a photo. I’d like to see it.

4. While there’s no doubt that the momentary kiss of an autumn leaf upon one’s person is an episode of great beauty, it is not a catch. Unless, of course, you’re quick enough to prevent said-leaf’s downward journey. Catchers, here’s the rub: the leaf must not strike the earth. That means, however, that if one gets stuck in your hair or your hood, or flutters into your handbag, it counts.

5. If you feel the need to mail me your leaves, I will gladly use them as compost, but I will not count them. Let your conscience be your guide.

6. Attempting to catch leaves while riding a bike is very dangerous.

Some experiences you can expect

You may find yourself looking around sheepishly to see if anyone just witnessed you fumble at thin air. You may startle a friend by darting to your right, mid-sentence, arms flailing. You may find yourself smiling and cursing, stifling your laugher and shaking your fist to the sky. You may become very excited, or very smug, when you catch your first leaf.

The tally

My neighbour Tanya is leading. She’s on eleven. I’m on five, and I’m mad as hell. Let the leaf catching continue!

Bottles

In Blog on

A FEW months ago I wrote a column about Fowlers Vacola bottling kits, and a week later, I received a letter, via The Age. It is my all-time favourite letter. The writer had cut out the header of my article from the newspaper and adhered it to the sheet.

The handwriting was cursive like my grandma’s. “Dear Sir,” it began. “Last week you wrote a very interesting article on fruit bottling. I have the complete works, several dozen bottles and instructions. I would like to find someone interested as I am now retired and no longer do any bottling…”

Margaret included her number, and when I phoned, she called me “Mr Green”. We spoke a few times, and finally, a week ago, I drove to her house.

She was waiting by the door when I arrived. I guessed she was in her late 80s, but her physical presence had not yet diminished. She gave the impression of height. Her husband had recently passed away and she had been sorting through their effects. Over the past weeks, she retrieved the Fowlers bottles from the garage, washed them and stacked them for my arrival. There were rows and rows of them – too many to transport at once – as well as the big electric boiler and boxes of lids, seals and paraphernalia.

Margaret told me that she and her husband had both worked full time. In late summer and autumn, they would arrive home at six o’clock and begin bottling. They bought cheap boxes of fruit and stored enough to last through the year.

When she told me about her husband, she spoke slowly and looked away, towards where the wall and floor met. She had no next of kin, she said. It was a lot to do, to organise and discard their possessions, but there was no one else. She was glad the bottles, at least, would go to someone who wanted them.

We stacked the jars in the car and I arranged to visit again in a couple of weeks, for the dozens remaining. It was a grey Sunday afternoon, windy, and the jars rattled as I passed back through the suburbs.

A couple of days later, I rode to my friends Helen and Sam’s house with half a dozen jars in my bag. They had a box of apples ready, some gleaned from a tree in their street, others from a neighbour’s sister’s yard. In a small production line, we peeled and cut them, and packed the jars. Helen made syrup, three parts water to one part raw sugar. We clipped on the seals and lids, brought the water to 94 degrees, and held it there for 45 minutes. We nattered and joked and listened to music; we were productive and joyful.

I’ll take Margaret a jar or two, and a story to preserve, when I return.

Fowlers jars

I’d like to bottle some more fruit, over Easter. I’d especially like it if I could use fruit that would otherwise go to waste – so if you know of any overburdened trees, please let me know!

The electronics life cycle

In Greener Homes on

Old electronics are too valuable to be dumped

IN Life Pscycle-ology, a short animation by Leyla Acaroglu, a forlorn mobile phone named Eric Sun laments his future stuck in a desk drawer. He is only one year old.

But poor Eric Sun’s plight is just the tip of the landfill. According to Greenpeace, e-waste now comprises five per cent of global municipal waste, nearly the same amount as all plastic packaging.

Ms Acaroglu, from Melbourne design consultancy Eco Innovators, says only one out of every 100 discarded mobile phones is recycled.

“The way we use and abuse high-end goods is very inefficient,” she says. “They contain hazardous substances that escape into the waterways or leach out in landfill. It’s wasteful and unfair to future generations – we’re gobbling up valuable resources so we can all have the latest iPad.”

Unfortunately, pollution and waste aren’t the only worries. Our throwaway electronics have side-effects all along the production line, from allegations that the illegal trade in minerals funds conflict in eastern Congo, to the dumping of e-waste on developing countries. (For more about the high-tech life cycle, see Annie Leonard’s animation, The Story of Electronics, and for background on conflict minerals, check out US charity, The Enough Project.)

“Australia is one of the only industrialised countries that doesn’t have effective end-of-life management for electrical goods,” Ms Acaroglu says. “And not only that, we also have no restriction on the hazardous substances used in those goods.”

But at least we’ll soon be able to get old TVs off the footpaths. Under legislation introduced to federal parliament in March, importers and manufacturers will be required to fund and run a national recycling scheme for televisions and computers, set to begin before the end of the year.

Ms Acaroglu says that while the product stewardship legislation is a crucial step, the goods themselves must be made differently. “Many of our products are designed to break. We really need to be creating long-lasting, interchangeable, upgradeable products,” she says.

“We need system service models – so that if you buy a computer, it’s not more expensive to get it repaired or upgraded than it is to buy a new one.”

In the meantime, Ms Acaroglu says householders can still minimise their gadget habit. First, unplug or switch off chargers at the wall – needless energy consumption accounts for a large dose of a mobile’s life cycle impact.

“Secondly, consider the consumption hierarchy,” she says. “Do you really need this product?”

If you really do, consider buying second hand or opting for the best quality, longest-lasting one you can find. Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics is helpful; it ranks the major brands’ performance on toxic substances, carbon footprint and e-waste.

“Seek out products that have longer warranties or service components associated with them,” Ms Acaroglu suggests. “Cheaper is not always better. And when something is really, truly no longer of use to you, make sure you recycle it.”

You can earn money for your old gizmos on eBay or from buy-back businesses (such as Mazuma Mobile or Cash a Phone), or give them away on Freecycle. There’s also a recycling scheme for mobiles, called Mobile Muster. Victorians can drop off old computers through the Byteback scheme, operated by Sustainability Victoria.

“Don’t leave them stuck in your drawer,” Ms Acaroglu says. “Get those resources back into the recycling stream.”

Read this article at The Age online

Anita’s dad

In Blog on

A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from a woman called Anita, offering some timber to the Urban Bush-Carpenters. She lived in Brooklyn, in the western suburbs, out of bike riding range. I called her, planning to say thanks, but no thanks.

But when we spoke, she told me about her dad, Ricardo, a lifelong builder and tinkerer. “He re-used everything,” she said, “to the point where he made a wooden base for a broken wineglass.”

So on the weekend, I drove west to pick up the timber. Four years ago, when her parents became unwell, Anita had moved in next door to her childhood home. I knocked on the door, and she welcomed me into her house. Most of her belongings were packed away in boxes and the garden was bare – the place was well cared for, but with the air of a waiting room.

The yard next door was teeming with life. Above the fence line, I could see several fruit trees: stonefruit, citrus and olives. It was an abundant garden, with veggie patches near and far.

“When I was younger, an ex-boyfriend once told me he always knew I was a wog, because we grew vegetables in the front yard,” Anita told me. Both her parents had passed away, and the two houses had been sold. “Living here is just too emotional,” she said. She was about to move suburbs.

Ricardo, a carpenter by trade, had emigrated from Italy after World War II. He was lean and poised, and he liked to present himself well. In the photos clustered on Anita’s table, he wore a suit and hat.

Anita's dad, Ricardo

Anita put on her gloves and helped me move the timber. She told me about how she’d grown up learning how to do things with her hands. In her street “there were Italians, Greeks, Aussies, Polish, Germans and even a French family”, and many of them shared the DIY ethic.

Recently, she and her siblings had cleaned out Ricardo’s collection of useful materials. “We grew up reusing and recycling,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much it pained me when the skip came and we threw away so much of the timber.”

Over decades, he’d built two houses and two extensions. He built the “taverna” as well, the small brick building where he cooked family meals and smoked meats. Anita showed me a photo of its interior, pointing out the sinks and stove and bench top. “Everything was salvaged, second-hand, re-used,” she said. Then she pointed out a pattern of white tiles on the floor, which formed his initials. “The man had an ego, too,” she laughed.

“He was always doing something. He carried had a notebook in his top pocket, with a list on it. But the list never ended, it just went on from one page to the next. Even as he was dying he didn’t want to stop. He said to me, ‘I can’t die yet, I’ve got too much to do.’”

Taverna

Maintaining the backyard

In Architecture and building, The Age on

A renovation that re-discovers outer space

ARCHITECT Andrew Maynard is standing in the grassy garden of a newly renovated house in Ilma Grove, Northcote, explaining why his design blurs inside and outside space.

“If you invest in a big block, then you’re investing in outdoor land. Don’t feel like you need to fill it all up with building,” he says. “But you have to make your house connect with the backyard, otherwise you won’t use it.”

As if to prove the point, his littlest client, three-year-old Harvey, barrels through the very wide backdoor and demands a game of cricket.

“Australians talk about growing up in the suburbs with all the space,” Maynard continues, while bowling to Harvey. “But we’re building these big homes and renovations, which are empty most of the time. Going small is really important environmentally – and also, in terms of design, it’s so much fun.”

When the young cricketer’s parents, Anna MacWilliams and Cameron MacDonald, decided to renovate their heritage California bungalow, they had three main objectives: to create an open plan living area, to use passive-solar design principles and to retain their garden.

“We didn’t want to build a mansion. We love having a backyard,” MacWilliams says, as she steps out from the kitchen to visit the compost bin.

The rear of the house faces north, but the couple rarely used the old dining room, because it was dark and pokey. The sun was blocked out by a lean-to laundry and toilet.

“It was all brick wall, with a tiny little window,” she says. “We used it as a storage room and had visitors in the front room. The backyard was segregated. You had to make an effort to get outside.”

Today, MacWilliams is cooking a vegetarian shepherd’s pie in the open, blue and red kitchen. “We get beautiful light coming in here now. In winter, the low sun definitely penetrates into the living space,” she says.

The northern wall of the Ilma Grove house’s new living area is comprised of large double-glazed doors. Among other eco-friendly attributes, the extension is clad in recycled bricks and all the timber was salvaged or harvested sustainably. All paints and finishes are either low- or no-VOC, and a rainwater tank is plumbed into the toilets. Up the space-saving spiral staircase is a spare bedroom and a roof-terrace boasting a solar array and views to both the Dandenongs and the CBD.

“I love opening up the doors,” MacWilliams says. “We’re always going in and out, to the vegie garden or the herb garden. Harvey can be in the backyard and I can still do what I have to do.”

Maynard used a number of design elements to make sure the yard was not only preserved, but also, used regularly. The first step was to demolish the rear laundry and toilet. The new laundry lives in a cupboard.

“Over time, people tend to add wet areas to the back of homes, and they dislocate living spaces from the outdoors. We knock them down and build them in the middle of the house, close to the bedrooms,” he says.

The broad double-glazed doors mean that the garden is always in view. “Visual connection is fundamental,” he explains. “And then you try to pull away the edges.”

He blurred the border between inside and out by retaining sections of exposed brickwork inside, and extending the light blue shade of the indoor cupboards to the external service area. A small patch of garden protrudes into the home, planted with basil and lettuce.

Beyond the broad doors, a narrow deck doubles as bench seating. “It means the edge becomes a social space, not just the line between inside and outside,” Maynard says.

“You’re always going to have some people who want to be inside and some who want to be outside, especially in a climate like Melbourne’s. Don’t force people to choose: instead of ‘either-or’, give them ‘both-and’.”

In de-fence of the backyard

WHEN Anna MacWilliams and Cameron MacDonald bought their Northcote home, they were already considering a renovation. Their real estate agent gave them clear advice: keep your backyard and you’ll do well.

The agent, Grant Leonard, a partner at Nelson Alexander in Northcote, says oversized renovated houses are a turn-off for many buyers.

“You can devalue the property if you don’t leave any backyard. They’re harder to sell,” he says. “Sometimes I see really large houses where they’ve taken up most of the land. Big houses suit families with kids, but generally, those families will want a backyard for the kids to play in.

“When people are renovating, the main thing is to get the balance right between the size of the backyard and the size of the house.”

In his recent book, The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard, Professor Tony Hall argues that the balance has been lost. He found that the proportion of an average suburban block covered by a new residence has increased significantly since the 1990s. “The cause is bigger houses, not smaller blocks,” he says.

Professor Hall, an urban researcher from Griffith University, believes planning regulations should require less block coverage and houses should be designed with more windows looking out onto gardens. He says vanishing backyards not only stop children from playing outdoors, but also reduce the biodiversity, natural drainage and cooling effects previously provided by trees and vegetation.

To Kirsten Larsen, from Melbourne University’s Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, existing backyards present an invaluable resource for food production. Larsen says the city’s food security is threatened by a number of constraints, including water, oil, energy and agricultural land. Backyard vegie gardening must be part of the answer, and for that we should limit house sizes.

“It makes sense to produce some of our food in cities. We have a lot of the resources here that we need – water, nutrients, space and sunlight,” she says. “We need to increase urban density if we’re to stop encroaching on agricultural land, but we need to do it in a way that allows people to continue to grow their own fruit and vegetables.”

Indoor amenity need not suffer for the change. Whenever clients ask Andrew Maynard to design a modest building on a large block, the architect’s mind starts to race. For the addition to be small, the concept must be inventive.

“Doing something small on a big block is really exciting. When you have to put a number of functions in a confined space you’re forced to think differently,” he says.

“One of the reasons houses become big and horizontal is because people just line up functions next to each other. The moment you’re forced to overlap them is the moment something strange and beautiful will happen.”

Read this article at The Age online