RESTORE NATURE

Newsletter 15

August 2024

I hope this letter catches you in abundant times. Here something about my experiences with the amazing plant, bamboo, which is an icon of abundance.

Recently I aquired a lot of cut bamboo as a gift. I was exited as it brought some building projects I could not afford withing reach. I'm so grateful to my friend.

As luck would have it, serendipity, I had been participating online with ideas and brainstorming for a bamboo project in a wetland in Gauteng which already has a lot of bamboo. The project was stymied by the fragility of the bamboo fencing they built. A member for the group from Indonesia lept into the fray with lots of ideas for other products and online building instructions. Preserving the bamboo from insect attack is an issue occupying minds all around the globe. When that is mastered at an affordable price it will surely be the miracle material of the future.

In a fervour of excitement I approached the chance to build with bamboo for the first time. I will detail the build in an article in the link below as it has rather too much building detail.

my-first-bamboo-build.html

Bamboo comes in two main types of habit, clumping and running. This is due to the length of the rhizomes. I have a clumping bamboo and true to form it contains itself, the new shoots emerge right next to the other culms, or a few centimeters away. The bamboo given me as a gift was running bamboo. It occupied the whole of my friend's backyard, with culms emerging every meter or so. He had to cut it back heavily to try and contain it.

Imagine these shoots emerging in the middle of my husband's soft plastic fish ponds. It would be a disaster. I had to stop it from growing, so I hit on the idea of placing the base of the culms not in the ground, but in rubble in a pot. I imagine that if leaves emerge I could fill the pot with boiling water. It also provides another opportunity for recycling materials.

The first bamboo building project was to build a support for a vine which was shading and obliterating the windows at my mother's house. I had to disentangle the wild grape from the wire grills over the windows and lay it on the ground.

I used cement pots as bases for the vertical poles. First I had to level the pots with little concrete pads and then I began to build the trellis. After finishing the verticals and outer framework of the trellis I stood back to admire it. Much to my dismay I saw it looked very flimsy and was swaying to and fro in the wind and it wouldn't be long before the structure broke.

I rebuilt it with stronger uprights made by binding 3 culms together with wire. I couldn't complete the project and must fetch culms from my other home. The part which came forward into the garden to make a pergola will have to be completed later, once the house renovation is done. For the time being The frame close to the wall should serve its purpose of freeing up the windows so that we can work on them.

Thus far its been a very quick build, and didn't need any strenuous action. It is traditional to tie the culms together with string or rope, needing no tools but a knife ! No electrical tools, or metal parts like bolts are needed. I just love working with bamboo. I hope that one day the garden will be enobled by some lovely bamboo structures for carrying vines laden with pumpkins, beans, tomatoes and other climbing vegetables like the ones I've seen in Li Ziqui videos !

While thinking about food and invested energy below is a link to my recipes using seaweed as a supplement for my thyroid.

kimchi.html

On a rainy cold Saturday, not freezing but well below 10 degrees C, when you want to stay in bed, I transported the needed long poles to the site. Some incidental environmental information follows, between the lines a tale of destruction. I couldn't find a red flag for the bamboo and I'm happy the police didn't catch me. Traffic was sparse at midday on a Saturday, thank goodness. Table Mountain is about twice the height of the blue sign but invisible behind the white cloud. You can see the signs for the offramp to Century City which once boasted being the biggest mall in Africa. The mall and the N1, the main highway between Gauteng and Cape Town were built over a wetland at his spot. We had enormous amounts of rain this winter and the trench recently made by diggers on the right was to stop the N1 flooding, which it did for weeks. On the left are the power lines from the Nuclear power station which pass directly in a nest of massive pylons past Goodwood prison.

Whooopeee.. on this cold day, I finished the last two uprights. They are a bit too long, but I left them till the build was finished and then trimmed them.

..and the next day the double row of horizontals using tourniquet joins. See the article on the build to find out what these are. Just click the link 'my first bamboo build' at the top of this letter.

Topic suggestions welcome

You may write to me anytime at the website greenidiom by filling out a comment. You can also use my webmail (website mail) address greenidi@greenidiom.com.

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