The Brownies Take On Eden

Our last visit to the Eden Project was a run through for this one. This time I had a bunch of young girls with me. I challenged them to find the word Brownies in the plants.

Bamboo

Rough Comfry 

Olive

Waterfall (I know it's not a plant...)

NuMex Twilight (chilli) 

Ivy

East Indian Galingale

Soil

We had a fantastic time.

Blog Action Day: Sharing Our Food Knowledge

In this post I'll be combining Vegan Mofo and Blog Action Day. Blog action Day this year is about food so it's not that hard to combine the two. That hardest part is picking a topic. Food seems to be the most simple and the most complicated thing in our lives. I've picked a topic that is very close to my heart. I want to talk about sharing. Not just sharing food but sharing the knowledge that goes with it.

Everyone is saying it. Days barley pass before another newspaper complains about it. Kids today have lost touch with were there food comes from. I think that's wrong. Young people haven't lost knowledge. They aren't born knowing everything and then forget it just to annoy us. It's our fault. We've failed them. We haven't been passing knowledge down. In some cases we've been failed too. Nobody gave us the knowledge, nobody certainly gave us any confidence, or money for ingredients, or time to cook, or decent kitchens. We're in a mess.

One of the ways I try to dig myself, and my community, out of it is to teach young people how to cook. I've held impromptu lessons with my brothers, roped kids walking through Occombe farm into a quick lesson on herbs and vegetables, I've helped at cookery classes for young people and grown-ups alike. One of the best things in my life is volunteering for Girlguiding UK. And you can be sure I've slipped some food into that.

Actually it's not all that hard to combine food and Guiding. It's one of the things we're famous for. Most, if not all of our planning also comes from suggestions from the girls and they suggest eating an awful lot. It's almost always the first thing mentioned when asking my Brownie unit what they want to do this term. We're always happy to oblige.

Fusion!

Good Morning World. Yeah. I'm not really feeling that. I'm buzzing with energy and still absolutely wiped. Why? Well I've just finished volunteering for Fusion: a fabulous, amazing, incredible arts festival put onto celebrate the Girlguiding UK centenary. There was music, dancing, craft tents, and some amazing installations and street preformers. And it was totally, amazingly incredible.



I was on the Homezone staff. Homezones are hard to explain for anyone who didn't see them in person but they where huge marques that people could leave there bags in, we also collected lost property and lost children. So we had quite a hectic day. But it was very cool I was part of a great team and talking to all the girls as they arrived and helping everyone out was jut so much fun. I got to see quite a few of the acts and I was relieved to catch the finale.

So after two days on site - one to set up and one for the event - I'm shattered, completely in awe of the other volunteers and very, very happy.

Snapshots after the jump.