Transition Town Festival

Diana at the grafting workshop - yes, she cut her finger.

That was fun! Frantic too. I talked continuously for about 7 hours it seemed, mainly teaching people how to graft and taking them through the process, and seeing them walk away with at least one grafted apple tree in their hands - it was great! I talked gardening with lots of people, new gardeners and old, and plenty of local politics, from dairying to lignite mining, it was quite the hot-bed. Met and wrestled with the Labour, Green and National candidates for Invercargill (actually conspired with the first two, tangled with the latter :-). Eric Roy, Deputy Speaker of the House and MP for Invercargill strayed into controversial territory during his address to the (largely green-sympathising ) crowd, and invited me to comment, which I did. I cited Jan Wright, commissioner for the environment, and asked why National had rejected her advice. There was a good deal of support for that line of questioning, I discovered once Eric's talk was over. Labour's Leslie Soper spoke, as did Dave Kennedy of the Greens. I met a lot of very energised people and was quite exhausted by the time the festival was over. It was a cracker of a day and the Invercargill Transition Town people deserve much congratulation for their event. We sold around 50 young grafted apple trees, lots of vegetable seedlings and other gardening paraphenalia, and made plenty of contacts and arrangements for further get-togethers like this. Afterwards, Robyn and I had a meal at a Chinese restaurant in town, I drank a Chinese lager and ate with chopsticks, having learned the art when we had our Cambodian foster children.
On the way back out to Riverton, we bathed in the evening light coming through the windscreen and enjoyed the sight of lambs gambolling in the fields. Now, it's time to see who's stronger, England or France. I'm not telling Geoff who I'm backing.