I found a great excuse to eat ice-cream.
Gardening.
I found that the little wooden ice-cream sticks, atop which sit the tasty frozen delights, can also be used to label plants and seedlings for my backyard garden.
The garden is at the back of a rental property on the south coast of New South Wales, about 2 hours south of Sydney, Australia. The soil is generally fertile in a region famous for dairy farming and viticulture, although the garden had been stripped of much of its nutrients when I moved in, courtesy of the previous tenant’s neglect and a dry winter. The garden attracts quite a lot of sun, during very warm summer months and even during colder winter months in what is typically a temperate climate. The area is also famous for beaches and surfing, which is great after a day of hard yakka in the garden.
Better still, the more seeds I plant, the more sticks I need and the more ice-cream I need to eat.
Yummy!
After I’ve polished off every sugary morsel, I leave the stick to dry, then I place it in the pot or the garden, labelled with the name of the seed or plant.
I’ve planted quite a few seeds and cuttings. I have tomatoes, purple basil and chilli seeds in some small pots as well as some cuttings which will hopefully one day grow into a hedge. So, I can very easily justify a tasty treat on a regular basis.
It could be said that eating ice-cream and creating an organic permaculture garden are contradictory. Organic gardening is designed to improve the health of people as well as the planet and designed to provide more nutrients in food stuffs, while ice-cream is famously unhealthy and potentially addictive due to its high sugar content. Ice-cream is also heavily processed and is usually sold in individual pieces wrapped in soft plastic, which can’t be recycled.
The choice of brand can also be problematic. The purchase of any Nestle product (or Nestle subsidiary) for example, contributes to highly unethical business practices which destroy peoples’ health and livelihoods as well as the health of our planet (…this might be discussed in another article).
Luckily, I have access to shops which stock brands other than Nestle and which I am very confident operate in a far more ethical manner.
I also eat a lot of frozen yoghurt, more so than ice-cream, which I believe is better for my health and which provides me with a steady supply of the longer sticks which can be seen in the photo above.
What’s more, I went for a run this morning, so I’m pretty sure I burned off any nasty calories from last night’s desert.
So, that’s how I found an excuse to eat ice-cream, or frozen yoghurt.
Now, vanilla, chocolate or strawberry?
kieranblakewriter 