Again not sure why this post has deleted itself again!

I’m not going to be writing at Stanselen for the next wee while but can be found at the Otautahi Urban Foraging website/blog & facebook page… not sure when I’ll be back here.

lots of love,

jo  xo

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic
3/4 cup pine nuts (or walnuts)
2 cups chickweed leaves
1 cup basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes.

Pulse your garlic till fine in a food processor.
Add nuts and blend till they’re finely chopped.

(if you don’t have a blender just use a sharp knife and chop till really fine.)

Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth.
When you’ve got your desired consistency stir in a pinch of salt.

*The trick to a good pesto is to make sure you blend the garlic first, then the nuts. Otherwise, you’ll end up with big chunks that can’t be reduced once you’ve added the other ingredients.

We have plenty of wild chickweed growing around the place, and I’ve been wondering how edible it is, apparently it’s high in lots of good minerals and Vitamin C, and is nice in salads too. No Basil at the moment cos it’s too cold but this can also be sub-ed off for Parsley which also grows wild in lots of places around Otautahi/Christchurch.. check on the Urban Foraging Map here or just go outside yourself and have a look.

Slogging the Paranoid Treadmill.
Brainwashed into a university student
with an English career.
Her daddy wants to harm her future,
pinch her baby,
make her homeless.

While thinking prolonged.
She doesn’t know.
How he could.

Paranoia
Somatically pokes a finger through her keyhole.
Watching.
Watching.
Watching.

She’s bought
2 books
and black boots with
long silver zips up the side.

Anyone might.
(Like her parents.)
Think she’s a bikey.
Inside.
Inside.
Stay inside.

josephine p. 2002

Outside of the Fuzzy Pink Room Creeps In … it’s about my young children leaving their early childhood years. The tools are my masters, the person in the doorway is me and other pretentious art wank, wank, wank.

But then all blogging is pretentious wank anyway, isn’t it? And I’m not just saying this cos she said it first aye.

This is going to be about as interesting (to those in it for the competition) as watching paint dry but then I’m not blogging for the race,  I just came here to smell the flowers.

In order to further gender equality in the garden, Kerry and me have decided upon separate vegetable plots. This seems to be the best solution to avoiding stepping on each others proverbial toes and seedlings, and means that we can continue to share the same bed.. I think this will work particularly well for me, who grows resentful at being told what to do and how to do it in the garden, and also finds this somewhat patronising, considering that I have been raising my own gardens since the green age of four.

Evee diving off the Worm farm and over the Rocket.

Marigolds for bees and salads.

Leafy Rocket and Kale.

Snug Baby Broccoli’s.

“All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I know this is the third time I’ve said this, but, I am still really disgusted by the media’s take on the Claydon Weatherston murder. And it seems to have only gotten worse in the days that have followed his trial and conviction.

The Press and Sunday Star Times have both published several articles that normalise the violent actions of Weatherston. In fact, the angle that all of these articles present is fixed on the relationship between Weatherston and the person whom he murdered, Sophie Elliot, and come to the same conclusion that it was a tumultuous relationship and are almost all fatalistic about Sophie’s death. Like she had it coming.

And whilst they don’t say it so bluntly, the detailing of the difficulties that the relationship had experienced seem to be completely put to blame.

(Though I haven’t once yet seen anything questioning the violence of Pakeha/European communities..”Is violence a European problem?”)

Like difficult relationships always end in violent murders and we are just supposed to expect this.

It’s little short of blaming Sophie entirely for her murder. And this makes me furiously mad.

Speaking from my own personal experience of difficult relationships, and one in particularly, where I had an ex-partner (ex at the time) arrested for giving me a black eye after many prior threats/acts of violence and intimidation at the end of our relationship. I can say, that although I was not faultless for some of the problems in the relationship, I, in no way, deserved or could have foreseen his attacks on me, and in no way were there any elements of fate at work in his actions. Just the bruised ego of one young driven male intent on hurting and destroying me. If he could.

Sophie Elliot and Claydon Weatherston’s relationship may have had its problems, but this in no way should be presented as the reason for Sophie’s untimely and unnecessary death. Only Weatherston should be made responsible for this and there should be nothing glamourous or special about being the murderer of a thoughtful, intelligent and caring woman.

I know that blaming the media is an easy option to make, when to look at how our media is actually just a reflection of our own culture and how this culture reflects violence to fetishized levels is harder.

But for people who have experienced violence and abuse within their own life’s, (either as victim, perpetrator or survivor) the media has huge power beyond the ordinary person to influence views and events. And it is often harder to escape. And because of this the media should not forfeit the responsibility that needs to be taken in it’s analysis.

This is Phloyd, she’s an anti-dogma cat. She’s ok though, just likes it when human beings think for themselves.

I’m not surprised that Claydon Weatherston was found guilty of murder. To have been seen by Sophie’s mother in the act of killing her should have made this apparent enough for any person with a bit of common sense to call what he did murder.

I am still sickened by the media slant throughout this farcical trial. The glamourising of violence for 5 minutes, when it’s focused on a real person’s life, is even more disturbing than watching a whole series of SVU…though I haven’t even tried.

Did the media, in it’s frenzy for the “hot” story, forget that it was a real person whose murder they were detailing?

hattip: Coathangers Revolt

Jo breathes a sigh of relief that other women think like this, and feels less alone.