....the horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.
If you are unfamiliar with the words above, I highly recommend that you watch this recording of the profoundly beautiful and inspiring Maya Angelou poem 'On the pulse of Morning', originally spoken live to the world at the point of Bill Clintons inauguration:
If it sounds vaguely familiar, you may know it as the speech which was abridged and then immortalised by the Liquid Drum N Bass Pioneer & godfather LTJ Bukem in his seminal piece: 'Horizons'.
So why the rhetorical theme to this post? Well, since speaking to Dave I've come to realise that this entire site needs a ground-up overhaul. I need to deconstruct and demolish pretty much everything, clear the site stone by stone, and work it from the soil up. It's weird doing it, as I am effectively destroying the signature and years of investment of the previous plot holder, piece by piece. I keep finding clues about the previous tenant - the IPA bottles in the compost bins, the strangely arranged fencing to 'keep intruders out?!?!?', The neatly planted rows of root vegetables. The mysterious chest with god knows what in it.... all signs of work carried out, by person or persons unknown.
It has the hallmarks of a renaissance for the plot - after all it has been tightly shackled, regimented and enclosed for many many years now. And now I return it to just soil...
Probably a tad melodramatic, but the words of that song, and then the poem, came to me last night in a moment of contemplation as I worked on the plot and tried to remove yet more rubbish, with the aim of giving myself a completely clean start.
Since the last post I have completely ripped out all of the fencing, the 11ft dividers between the planting areas, and removed a very packed car-full of rotting timber, plastic, sheeting, canes, posts, stones, bricks and more. As you can see it's considerably more tidy looking already
open plan now, save for the raised beds...which are staying but may be moved
Most of the tarpaulin around the shanty hut is now gone, I've just left the roof on for rain protection...the the whole structure will be torn down eventually. You can see that now the only timber next to it is scaffold boards which may be useful for shoring up the plot edges.
As mentioned before there are 3 compost bins and a water butt(topless/blue). However, the previous tenant had evidently given up some time ago, because the compost bins contained a combination of composting bits, tin cans, glass, tiles, plastic bags, compost bags, cardboard boxes and fuck-knows-what-else, covered in shite. I set about emptying the three compost bins...and here's what I was presented with:
It may not look like much on here, but that's a serious pile of cack.
A huge pile of composts bags and other non-compostable shit. Which will need going to the tip. The mix of composted material and just pure litter, was approximately 55/45 - compost to the right, the rest to the left. Fucking marvellous. It's all covered in endless slugs, snails, spiders, larvae, mud, rotted vegetation and woodlice...
...and shitloads of fucking ants. Two of the bins had full blown ant colonies in them, meaning that any rubbish being put in my car was full of ant eggs, and hundreds of thousands of ants. An absolutely piss awful situation.
I came to the conclusion that I would have to individually shake each and every single piece of rubbish which needed binning to remove as many ants as possible, empty the large blue water butt, and use it as a makeshift bin, which I would then place in my car and transport the writhing mass of crap to the tip. I've done some shitty jobs in my time, but being covered in a swarm of two competing Ant colonies, flying ants, pupae, and other horrible shit really did take the biscuit. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the experience - it had some kind of cathartic effect...the rebirth of the plot facilitated by a rough, dirty, disgusting journey of hard labour, skin crawly moments and sweat. Lovely.
So anyway, the packets, bags, pots, plastic, bottles and cans were duly shaken off and piled into the big blue bin. As I didn't have a spare, clean tarpaulin to line my car, I didn't risk an ant infestation quite yet. I've let it all settle down for the night and will collect it later....
The remaining pile of so called compost will be disposed of in the on-site weed bins, which were full when I looked last night. By then I might be starting to make some progress.....
I like this clearing up project. My only bugbear is getting rid of rubbish from the site. It's just not simple with the bug factor. But I'll get there.
Now, where did I put those headphones....
LTJ Bukem - Horizons
No comments:
Post a Comment