gaze not too long upon the garden fence

For you will find that the fence gazes also.

prowl one (of many)

Our little kitten had his first garden prowl today:




He says that the outside smells and tastes AMAZING.

Leaves! What are they about?

living ink on the paper

The official paper and grow-house (which contained a hefty layer of ?probably agar jelly) took only a tiny fraction of the "ink" -- this is a mixture of the "fast" and "slow" inks, in the process of fading. They disappeared entirely in the end, and I propped it on my windowsill on the wooden "easel" it had come with to await the coming of the algae.



The remainder of the ink went onto some super-thick handmade paper I'd been given for free when I bought some very fancy scented ink. It seemed to resemble the paper I'd been provided with, and again the ink successfully disappeared on this paper. I put it under my grow-house lights in a still plastic portfolio that resembled the "growhouse" that had come with the pack.

    
Like all very watery inks, it was a problem to manage. The ink was watery and made large, blurred lines. By the last of the paper, I was starting to get a handle on it, kind of.

I saved a little ink for my spare sheet of paper, for though the ink was getting old fast I only had one grow-house, and I had strong suspicions that the algoe would not grow except in the supplied grow-house, on that mysterious jelly.

Arad, V & A, self contructing summerhouses and algae walls

In the garden, at the V&A Design Festival Hub, a low pavilion is spinning itself very slowly, polymer extruding from nozzles, shading the sky one strand at a time.



We're here for the Arad expedition, rational bomb shelters and delicate architectural models, very tidy signs and sketches of important buildings. Entrance is past a vast green wall, which turns out to be full of liquid, which is full of algae.



This is a working wall, fixing energy from the sun. There's no sun in here, just the bright lights of the exhibition, but maybe that is enough.

the long awaited kickstarter - living ink

I bought into the Living Ink kickstarter becuase it aligned with my interests: draw with live plants, ink that grows! And due to turn up in my birthday month, too. Brilliant.

The first rumbles of awkwardness began to emerge with the updates. We've adjusted the prizes after your feedback, they said. The various changes described were strongly suggestive of an online eco dressing down; cool plastic pens were to be replaced with the sort of paintbrushes you can buy anywhere, plastic and printed elements were to be "absolutely minimised". Hmm, already drifting away from the reward being something attractive and unique.

Then the research phase began to take longer. Quite a bit longer. Then the deliveries to the UK were delayed. Then autumn came, and my chirpy confidence that the algae would be fine getting across the Atlantic and to me began to look silly. Then came six days delay while I wrestled the item bit by bit (customs charge, failed delivery, delivery to pick-up point, delivery delayed) from the delivery firm.

Finally, it's here. And it's kind of small.



Oh look, a canvas tote bag and a few pages printed out of a desk-printer. What's in the bag?



Do not eat!!!! Yes, hilarious. Scribble is unimpressed.



... wow. Cheap generic components, and a heavily pixellated print out coloring-page.

I'm not expecting great things of the ink, as there were updates about running into challenges. Still, that's the way of the Kickstarter. Sometimes you get something awesome, sometimes you end up paying for someone else's failed R&D.

impossible flower Polaroids and when can I stop watering 2016?

My duochrome impossible film turned up this week! This is my I-1 impossible camera -- a polaroid analogue/digital reproduction/re-envision which takes Polaroid film and links to an app via Bluetooth.



It's expensive to run. The shots work out at £1.50-£2 each. At that price it's hard to justify anything that isn't a picture of person, a portrait. Taking flowers seems ridiculously  OTT. Maybe I can combine both, be a little Brigid Polk.

Dry pots on Sunday. I had to soak things. This autumn is too dry.

naked ladies and putting another gardener to bed

Gardener's World is an hour long now! Monty Don got quite suggestive this evening, as if he's been told to give it a bit of good old Bake-off innuendo (wonder why). He got quite rhapsodic over Naked Ladies, aka Colchium. They also brought in Flo Headlam for a tiny spot in a street garden, Greening Grey Britain one front garden at a time. There is promise of small urban spaces featuring in the future, albeit as little studs of reality in a world of vast fancy semi-pro gardens full of invisible and unacknowledged undergardeners.

Flo Headlam's pretty cool, but doesn't say much, Her twitter's mainly retweets, and her instagram is quite focussed on the presenting work. I love this pic though:

Gardener's World presenter, Flo Headlam, meets Roy Ayers. Music and gardening TV presenters rock as you know#Brockley #streetart @BBCTwo pic.twitter.com/u3L1LDIgCk

— CROFTON PARK LIFE (@CroftonParkLife) 27 September 2016

In other news, Cancer year continues :(

designing outward (London Design Fair)

    



   



I also found something to buy for my (indoor) garden; Pasinga airplants.

Interior design from the fair may be found here.