November 14

Certificates galore!

What a month it has been. You can go for years without a certificate and then several come your way!

The first one is for passing my Permaculture Design course which I started in February and finished this month (November).  I have taken part in quite a few online courses, including writing one, and this one, Geoff Lawton Permaculture Design Course online,  was excellent.  The course has Teaching Assistants who patiently answer every single question asked and obviously have extensive permaculture experience themselves.

At the end you have to submit a permaculture design for a plot of land bigger than half an acre, although you don’t need to own the land, and explain your permaculture thinking. I am now qualified to undertake permaculture designs.

 

My second certificate was from the Vegetable Growing Course that we run on the allotments. John leads it but there are three of us that help, you could call us teaching assistants (!) and one of the course members has a daughter who is incredibly creative and made us certificates for a graduation ceremony. They are lino prints and absolutely fantastic. We started  the course the second week of February and finished at the end of October, sowing, growing and harvesting together working in a no-dig way. The best thing about the course was getting to know the group and now that they all have their own allotments we are still a community but part of a much wider one.  Our next activity is in December where John is hosting two sessions for us to make Christmas wreaths.

The third certificate is one for the allotments as a whole as part of the RHS Exmouth in Bloom It’s Your Neighbourhood Award where we received ‘Outstanding’ for the Vegetable Course and the Wildlife Garden. That was a real surprise as the Wildlife Garden was a last minute entrant and I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of the In Bloom bit but we are delighted with the outcome. I haven’t seen the certificate yet but hope to soon.

After all these celebrations I am off to do the real work. Clean out my greenhouse and sow some broad beans. What are you up to this week?