Play For Nepal..

Back in 2012 we lived in Nepal for a few months while we waiting for our visas to be renewed for India. We had these grand ideas for how we would spend all of our time there but as often the way, life had other plans. My Little Feather was badly ill and so we spent more than a month in Kathmandu (more than twice as long as we had planned) in order to stay near by to some decent medical care and whilst that was a super trying and difficult time, the real upshot was the extra time we got to spend working with a local NGO. They were working with women and children who'd been rescued out off Sex Trafficking through providing homes, job training and schooling and as Wild Flower's degree was in International Aid & Development she was able to lend a hand in some amazing ways. The relationships we built with the women and children (heart crushingly many as young as 4) and particularly the Nepali family running the NGO were really beautiful and continue along in our family and I still proudly display their Gurkha blade they gifted to us when we left in the lounge room of my home.

 

For us here in Pai, most of the people in our community have either traveled to or spent a period of time living in Nepal and as so many of us have friends and family there it's been hitting quite close to home with all the horrible news and footage coming out of Nepal of their recent earthquakes.

It was in that climate of shock and sadness that we all decided we wanted to do something to support and brothers and sisters in Nepal and raise some cash and prayers. The Caveman had been previously tinkering away with an idea of hosting a variety night at our community space and getting performers in from all over Pai and when the news of the earthquakes reached our ears and the idea of turning it into a fundraiser was broached, well, the two seemed destined to be.

 
As with what feels like most of my life these past few years, the straight forward and simple path to running the night seemed to allude us all. We'd been thinking about it for a while and it finally felt like the right time to install the sound system in the Salah (the main gazebo/building) and so spend most of the afternoon getting it and the lights wired for the evening. It was midway through this process that a giant storm cell hit Chiang Mai and off went the lights, wifi and most importantly - fans! The storm had knocked out the power to the whole of Pai but unlike Banaras where power cuts could literally last days, here the longest we'd experienced was only 2 hours and so with more than double that before the beginning of the night we had very little concern.

But alas, as the time to begin came and went and we were still without power we raided our Candle stock piles and lit the place with every candle we could get our hands on. And.It.Was.Beautiful! For half the night I walked around wondering whether I even wanted the power to come back on as the ambiance was so sweet but with it also came the somber reminder of those in Nepal who are still without power and the substantially harder problems they face because of it.

But roughly half way through the night the lights did indeed come back on all throughout Pai and from every direction could be heard the unified shouts of "Woo Hoo!!" During the interval we set up the mics and did a quick sound check before Shoonksworth took to the stage to performed a gorgeous piece with her Tampura and prayed for Nepal.

Then Wild Flower, Dizzy, myself and the true star of the show - Little Feather - joined Shoonksworth on stage for a Bhajan. For me this was undoubtedly the highlight of not just the night, but the year!! I got to play with some precious friends, my wife (for probably only the 2nd time ever! So proud!!) and for the first time with my daughter (so so sooooooooo proud!!). I found myself just looking back and forward between them the entire song and the sight of Little Feather strumming along on her Ukulele and singing at the top of her lungs filled up my heart beyond capacity! I'm one lucky man!!

 
The only other notable moment was about half way through our song when the storm hit Pai and the gale force winds began blowing the rain sideways into our Salah and onto us and the sound system. Sometimes you just can't win hey! But with the sweet sound of my daughter's little voice in my ear I was in too happy a place to have minded.

 
At the close of the night after witnessing amazing juggling acts, guitarists, story tellers, jaw-harpists, tampurists, fire dancers and even a poet who offered an ode to his balls - yes you read that right - we counted up people's donations and ended up raising 11,469 baht to go to Abari who build natural housing structures to provide relief to communities and victims of disasters. Which when you think about it, from only 52 or so 'budget' travelers, +11k is a pretty fantastic figure!

So a huge thanks to everyone who came to be a part of the 'Play For Nepal' night at Shekina Garden! Whether you donated, performed, or just came to lend your support we want extend a heart felt thank you!!

And if you're reading this and haven't already, maybe now is a good time to consider opening up your hearts and even more so your wallets to support the relief effort in Nepal! Cause in the right hands even just a small amount can go a very long way to changing someone's life! 

Monkey Battles, Garlic Thieves & The Spoils Of War..

December 2013

 
During a recent conversation with my good friend Ragnar about my garden back in Banaras, it occurred to me that I had never posted the final update from the last few months of work in the Resurrection Garden. Somewhere in amongst our relocating back to Australia for 6 months this post quite understandably just got lost in amongst the hubbub of life. So without further a do, I'd like to offer you an insight into some of my monkey troubles, garlic thieves and the spoils of war!   

December 2013

In late December I had broken the back of the manual labor and was mostly in maintenance mode with the Garden so most visits were just about some spot weeding, enjoying a chai on my favourite garden seat and the daily task of removing the neighbour's rubbish (and semi-regular bags off poo). I had already planted out all the beds with the seedlings I'd been growing in my house in the previous months and things were coming along nicely but as things always go in Banaras, an increase in production results in an increase in interest, and not the positive kind.

For a number of months we'd been frequently commenting how great the absence of Bundar (monkeys) had been and how well our gardens were able to get established in their absence. But wherever they had been they had obviously decided it was enough and back to our homes they came, and brought with them plenty of reinforcements. Almost daily I'd be racing up the to gardens, slingshot and warhammer in hand (ok.. so maybe it was just a large stick) to chase them away but ultimately it was a war of attrition and both sides were amply supplied. Oodbilav is a crack shot with our hunting slingshots and would regularly send them scurrying back to higher grounds with their tails between their legs (though usually after they had filled their belly's from our gardens). And even our neurotic landlord went and bought a high powered air riffle and would regularly patrol the property with his young sons taking shots at them. One day he even confessed to trying to shoot one in it's bottom but missed and hit it in the heart! He said that it died soon after and so he wrapped it in a mala made of marigolds and that night, under the cover of darkness, launched it off his roof top and sent it splashing down into the Ganga (Ganges River) 3 stories below.. Ooh how the madness never let up!

February 2014

As it got later into December and the cold really set in, you could see the difference in growth as things really began to slow down in the Garden. Crops that weren't already well established either died off or essentially their growth ground to a halt and as this dramatically effects the flavour of most crops, some of them were forcibly relocated to their new home in the compost pile. To fill in the spaces of those crops that weren't performing well I chanced upon a small gardening store in town that had a new pile of seedling strewn across their counter and I managed to pick up a couple of different types of veggies that went straight into the ground. They didn't perform quite as well as I'd hoped but when you're handed a pile of seedlings that have their roots completely exposed and are wrapped in nothing but strips of wet newspaper, well, you only have moderate expectation (and for AU$0.43 I didn't loose much sleep over it).

The Organic Hairy Canadian

Considering that the River Ashram is a Jesus Ashram, it probably comes as no surprise that Christmas day ends up being one of our busiest days of the year. Each year we hold a huge celebration on Christmas day and invite travelers and friends to join us in all our festivities. In the past 3 years we've had anywhere between 80 and 120 people rock along (last year we had a turn out of people from 26 different countries) and we always put on an incredible feast. Fresh salad is a rare commodity around Varanasi - and a fresh Organic Salad, well, that's an even rarer find - so I'd been holding off harvesting my salad greens for a while as I wanted to share them as part of the Christmas celebrations. And as you can see in the above pic, between Shookdedy Ba-Boooom's garden and mine, come Christmas morning we had a fantastic time in the Gardens harvesting an amazing collection including 8 different types of fresh, crisp, gorgeous organic lettuce which was devoured in no time.

January 2014

 
In January, the cold in Varanasi was at its peak and so as per our tradition we skipped town and heading for the warmer climates of north Thailand to have a couple of weeks holiday, be a part of a conference and catch up with some truly sweet friends who run a community similar to ours in the northern town of Pai. Knowing that I wouldn't be around I used up a great deal of the 80kgs of straw that I had bought months earlier and went to town heavily mulching everything.

Mulch is one of those wondrous things! It's brilliant for water conservation as it keeps the sun from blazing down on the bare earth and drying out your top soil, thus keeping the soil moist and reduces your need for watering by around 60%. It helps keep your soil temperature constant which reduces shock and stress on your plants (particularly helpful for me during these cold months). It helps keep the weeds down and prevents a lot of the weed's seeds from germinating (which is a massive ongoing fight I'm having in the Resurrection Garden) and less weeds means less competition for the nutrients and water that you want going to your dedicated food crops and not away from them. And if you're using an organic mulch such as Straw, Pea Straw, Cane, Bean, Lucerne, etc. as they break down they release organic matter back into the soil which improves drainage and soil structure as well as encouraging earthworms and microbial activity. So if you're new to Gardening then let it be known; Mulch is your friend!

 

December 2013

 
I've tried on a couple of occasions to explain why I put straw onto my garden to my neighbours and Mali ('groundskeeper') but with little success. My Hindis not great so obviously that's a pretty big hurdle, but in Banaras there is really only 2 options when it comes to most things; the way it's always been done and the wrong way - and putting what cow's eat for lunch on top of your garden is quite simply not the way things are done! Shookdedy Ba-Boooom tells the story of her early days gardening at the Ashram when she first tilled the soil, watered and mulched, went inside only to come back later that afternoon to find that the Mali had raked up all the mulch and set it on fire. As I said, mulching your garden is quite simply Not.The.Way.Things.Are.Done!

January 2014

The tomato plants had been growing like a dream and I was keen to built a trellis to help support them grow upwards instead of into the giant tomato thicket they were currently in the process of creating. My neighbours sell bamboo and twine is super cheap around these parts and so with these resources and a bit of research I ended up creating a trellis of horizontal double layers of twine, essentially supporting growth by twisting the tomato branches through each double line of twine for each foot of vertical growth. The trellis was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time but time restraints meant that I just never got around to it. Once the trellis was up I began threading the branches up through it and the finished product worked a treat! The only down side was that in the process I sadly damaged a number of the branches whilst unraveling the colossal mess that their branches were in, so the lesson of doing things before they really need to be done is one which I'll commit to learning.. sometime in the future.. perhaps.. ergh, knowing me probably not.. But once it was done the tomato plants really did continue to grow wonderfully and soon after began putting out hundred of clusters of young fruits which if they were lucky enough to avoid the Bundar charged on to maturity.

 

February 2014

 
In February we returned from Thailand and to be honest, I was a little heart broken coming back into the Resurrection Garden. In the weeks prior to leaving for Thailand there had been a number of wonderful Community Gardening afternoons and the Garden was in the best shape of it's life and was an absolute delight to be in. Upon returning it was like walking into a different garden altogether. With three weeks of my neighbour's uncollected rubbish scattered everywhere, weeds which had gone unchecked and the telltale signs of the presence of veggie thieves, I found it hard to even want to be in there. One of the biggest disappointments was probably the veggie thieves who had helped themselves to my imported elephant Garlic (which was nowhere near ready for harvesting and thus inedible and a complete waste to steal) as I had such big plans to multiply that Garlic and spread it out amongst my local friends who grow their own food so they could continue growing it at their homes. I'll never know who stole it, and even though the safe money is on my landlords - they now own a gun, so I plan to quietly lick my wounds from the safety of my home and never speak of this again!

It took me a couple of weeks before my heart was ready to really invest itself back into the Garden, but once I was ready, I hit it again with passion. And as you can see in the above image, towards the end things began to once again look and feel magical again.

Heirloom Carrots

One aspect of gardening that I'm becoming increasingly excited by is in the arena of heirloom varieties. Whilst I'm still a complete novice in the field I was particularly excited to track down and trial this variety of Purple Carrots. Even though they still had a while to go before reaching full maturity, I'd previously promised Little Feather that she could help me harvest them and as we were only a week away from heading back to Oz I decided it was time for us to put on our Gum boots, march up to the garden and get our hands dirty pulling up a few different varieties of carrot that we'd been growing. Sure they're cheap as chips and take a long time to grow, but eating carrots fresh from the Garden, really, how can you resist?!
 

Rainbow Silverbeet/Chard, Broccoli, Basil, Lettuce, English Spinach, Carrots, Rocket, Kale, Cos Lettuce, Mini Cos, Black Russian, Gross Lissi & Cherry Tomatoes.

 
With only a couple of days left before leaving I decided it was time to get out into the Garden for one final harvest. As you can see from the above shot, it resulted in a fantastic haul of amazing tasting crops and brought a real sense of accomplishment to all the sweat and tears I'd put into this project in the last two years. I've spent so so so many hours in that space, sometimes feeling a great sense of refreshment, sometimes pulling my hair out; constantly battling the monkeys, the rubbish, the weeds, the neighbours, the termites, the years of soil mistreatment, the elements and so to really experience that joy of dig my hands into the earth and pulling out literally arms full of fresh produce really made my heart feel full. I was able to pass out what would have been baskets full of veggies over the wall to my neighbours (yes.. the same ones who send baskets full of their faeces my way) and whilst showing gratitude in these sorts of situation doesn't seem to be a common cultural trait amongst Banarsi folk, I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there there was a bit of love being handed back and forth too. 

February 2014

As a closing though, if you were keen to visit the Resurrection Garden but the thought of forking out thousands of dollars to make the trip to Varanasi doesn't quite appeal to you, I have something which might just be the next best thing. Whilst this is from back in January and certainly isn't as good as being there in the flesh, you do get the benefit of checking it out from the comfort of your own home (which will certainly save you a few rupees)! So have a click on the following link and take a look around (works best on a tablet or smart phone but using the arrow keys on your keyboard is also good) and as my Little Feather likes to say; "Welcome to be here!!"
 
                                                                            >>> The Resurrection Garden 3D <<<

Signs Of Life..

So I'll admit it, I've been enjoying writing these posts about the Resurrection Garden - but I'm also a tad over it. Not that I want to stop sharing about what's been going on with it, not at all, I'm just over looking backwards!

For a while it really was enjoyable for me to be looking over old photos and thinking through how far it's all come, but now I just feel like there's so much exciting stuff going on that I'm chomping at the bit to share, and so that's why this post is great! Because by the end of it I'll hopefully have covered all the worthwhile parts of the journey of the Resurrection Garden that will lead us up to the present! And then we can really hit off on some recent developments!

 

Freshly sowed and watered experimental plots in late November 2012

So in late 2012 I began taking the contents from my Berkley Method Compost Heap (which you can see the remains of against the wall in the back of the above image) and started dishing it out. I was already way behind the ideal time to be planting and so I decided to wait for the next year to lay the garden out the its final form of the way I had dreamed it could be. Also, I knew I didn't have enough compost and aged manure to fill each beds with as much as would be ideal and so I decided to make use of the opportunity and do some experimenting.

I began digging some long trenches, some individual holes, 3 larger plots (roughly 4x1x1 feet) that I completely cleared of soil and then 2 long rows right against the back wall. I filled all of the holes with only the compost and manure except for one of the larger plots which I mixed in 50% of the old soil that was already there. I was interested to see what changes would occur in the quality of the soil in each of the different plots over the coming months now that there had been such a good influx of freshly decomposed organic matter and hoped that would give me some more direction for the next years.

New growth in early December 2012

I planted some seeds in punnets to be transplanted out but the vast majority I simply sowed direct where they were to grow with a fairly high strike rate of germination. I only had a relatively small amount of space ready for planting (compared to the long term vision, we're really only talking 15-20%) but I managed to fill it up with 6 different types of lettuce (something which you can't often buy around these parts), Pak Choi, Spinach, Yellow Squash, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Snow Peas, Sugar Snap Peas, Tomatoes, Rainbow Silver Beet/Chard, Carrots, Radish, Basil and Garlic.

Interestingly Garlic has turned into a bit of an obsession for me lately. Here, Garlic are these pitiful little things which taste fine, but are so small that you'll need 4-5 of the little fellas just to equal 1 average clove from back in the West. And considering Garlic is in so many Indian meals, I imagine the local women must be stuck on the kitchen floor for hours each day just pealing those things which is why you'll often hear Shoonkdedi Bloom shouting out the windows and across the landscape "Indian Garlic is a form of female oppression!" So now every time I see a Garlic Walla pushing his cart around I find myself eyeing off his produce trying to find a decent sized bulb or clove so I can plant it and start a process of growing some decent sized Garlic.

A happy garden in January 2012

Growing Subzi (Hindi for 'Vegetables') in the Resurrection Garden isn't without its fair share of relatively unique problems. I've already spoke about the state of the soil and all my efforts to clean it up but sadly those efforts didn't translate into my neighbours ceasing from tossing their rubbish over the fence. Each morning there would be a new bunch of rubbish; everything from broken shoes, unwanted plastic items, last weeks homework, last nights dinner, all the way up to plastic bags filled with human feces were daily left there for me to clean up. Shoonkdedi Bloom helped me to come to terms with this one morning when I was feeling particularly frustrated when she quite helpfully pointed out that "When we gardened in Australia we had to pull the weeds out of our garden and that was just normal, now when we garden in India we have to pull up the weeds as well as our neighbour's rubbish, and that is just the new normal."

Another problem I'm facing is trying to come to terms with the different growing season. Up till around August-September it's simply too hot to grow anything (or do any work in the garden) and the monsoon rains make it difficult for many seeds/seedlings to not get flushed out. But when it hits late September and the temperature starts coming down then you have the problem of wanting to plant none-winter crops in the lead up to Winter. In Australia I'd be planting many of my crops as soon as it hits Spring and things start warming up but here once it 'warms' up everything's just going to die, so I'm doing a bit of research at the moment and trying to understand better how to plant during this completely different set of growing seasons to what I'm accustomed too.

 

Some locals checking on the buffet

 
And then there's the greatest problem of all. I have looked around for advice and even turned to my trusty copy of the Gardening Australia book but for some strange reason Peter Cundall doesn't seem have any advice on how to deal with Monkeys in your Garden! Now look, I know what you're thinking, "Oh monkeys, that's so cool, they're so cute!" But you'd be wrong. It's more like how you'd feel if a pack of wild dogs came into your backyard every couple of days, not so exciting. Not only are they carrying all sorts of wonderful diseases, but they love to destroy things and at certain points of the season when they became particularly bad they'd come every few days and start ripping whole plants out of the ground or pulling up the radishes and taking a single bite then tossing it away. Sadly it's an on going problem with no real solution. However the acquisition of some decent slingshots (care of Oodbilav) has served to level the playing field somewhat!

Little Feather, Wild Flower & Fräu-Clau helping harvest for Sunday Lunch at the River Ashram

During January and February I was fortunate enough to have a number of people lend a hand to dig new plots and sift out rubbish from parts of the garden I was yet to get to and for this I am still EXTREMELY grateful (you know who you sweet folk are!). I happily managed to plant a number of things in those later months which I knew I would never see the fruits of as when it hit February my sweet Winnie Wild Flower was 8 months pregnant with Little Foot and so we left Banaras and started making our way south to Kerala where he was to be born. Because of this, all my work in the Garden was finished for the season and so I had to be content to wait and scheme for the next season before I could get back into it.

The Resurrection Garden from August 2012 to January 2013

All things considered, I feel like in just 5 short months the transformation that you can see in the above image is pretty immense. You only have to look at the drop in the ground level against the back wall to get a feel for just how much rock, brick and rubbish we pulled out of this thing (check out the drop between the 1st and 2nd brick pillars in the above two images) and that literally every brick that makes up my paths or little garden wall that you can see in the 2nd image was pulled out of the ground when I first started cultivating the garden beds.

And not only did I get to improve this little patch of earth and visually transform the space, but I was able to feed my family with fresh organic produce (something I'm growing more and more passionate about) and even had enough to be able to feed the throngs of sweet Hippy travelers that came each week for our Sunday lunches at the River Ashram. 

My resurrection project has both eyes on the long term, but I have to admit that even after just one season I'm already super excited about the amount of transformation I was able to achieve and am still feeling hugely excited about what the future will bring!

Composting Hendrix..

 

When I last left off talking about the Resurrection Garden I'd been sharing about the terribly poor soil condition and all the hard work that went into clearing it of rubbish and non-organic debris. That same day after paying my day labours I stood in amongst the (kinda) freshly tilled soil and there was one thing was glaringly obvious; if I wanted this garden to become a thriving slice of paradise then it was going to need an influx of organic matter, and plenty of it!

At the time, we had 2 large compost bins on our community that were each built out of beautiful stone slabs that all up were about 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5m in size and were pretty much full of good composting materials. We have a couple of very large trees on the property that give off a never ending supply of dried brown leaves, also plenty of grass clippings, kitchen scraps, garden refuse, coffee grinds, eggshells, cardboard and the list goes on. It was monsoon and so the piles were getting a decent soak from time to time and to my mind they should have been plowing along nicely, turning all those rich nitrogen and carbon based goodies into a sweet smelling, rich black soil which would be 'so good you could eat it' (ala Peter Cundall). 

However it was not to be. They were Cold Compost piles and none of us on the community had the time to turn the piles to aerate them with any sort of regularity, and so they were progressively becoming more and more compacted and thus anaerobic; completely shutting down the decomposition process. Shoonkdedy bloom is my gardening buddy and it was to both our surprise that even though the compost bays had been filled for between 6-8 months, the deeper we dug down into those compost bays the less and less things had decomposed. This was a rather deflating discovery to make.

Knowing that it wouldn't be long till monsoon ended and that it would soon be the perfect time to plant all my crops, I wanted compost, lots of it, and I wanted it now! I began devouring any articles on speeding up the composting process that I could get my hands on (and during this time I began to realise that the Gardening Australia website/TV program essentially do the exact same story on compost every other month, just with a different host. I guess there really is only so much you can say about throwing kitchen scraps into a pile hey!). But in all my scouring of the web I did come across one very interesting article that was set to change everything, it was called 'Hot Compost; The Berkley Method.'

Little Feather helping Papa Bear gather leaves for the Berkley Pile

This article outlined the method of Hot Composting developed by the University of California, Berkley, which promised to naturally turn 1.5m³ of raw materials into a rich, highly fine, pathogen free compost in just 18 days. That's right, 18 days. Initially I was super skeptical to say the least, but as I read over the process a number of times it seemed to make a good deal of sense, so I figured why not invest some hope into it and give it a try.

I won't bore you with every step of the process in full detail (that can be done here), but the basic premise is that by getting the right sized pile, stacked in a specific way, comprised of a specific balance of high Carbon materials and high Nitrogen items, getting the right amount of moisture, then exchanging the outside of the pile for the inside (and vise versa) every 2nd day, you'll have created the perfect environment for the bacteria who are responsible for the composting process to pretty much go nuts, and 18 days later you'll be in compost heaven.

Day 1 (Still with about a foot or two of raw materials to be added)

I had desired to be really specific with the whole process and really test the '18 day' claim, but being married with a 2 year old, adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, having only a small window of opportunity to work in the afternoons when the heat isn't too intense... well, I'm guessing you get the point.

Day 4 (Fairly noticeable change already occuring)

Building the pile took around 4 hours (hauling everything around in 8L water buckets as we didn't have a wheelbarrow) and I was quite specific in following the details. Turning the pile turned out to be a much bigger task than first anticipated and all up would take roughly an hour and a quarter each time. In the first week I did great, turning the pile exactly as instructed, but in the subsequent weeks I could only managed to find time to turn the pile at least once every 4-5days and it didn't take long before I could no longer be bothered turning it the time consuming way by exchanging the inside for the out (and vise versa), and so the process was definitely thrown of track and clearly effected the outcome.

The process itself is quite remarkable though. The pile heats up so much that you are able to put pretty much anything in there and it will break down (including weeds with seeds, pathogens/diseased plants, roadkill, etc.) and I discovered on around day 8 that when a section of it falls on our foot you actually get burnt! I've since read all sorts of things that people do to utilize this naturally generated heat - my favourite being building your pile around a coiled pipe that is connected to your water system that you can feed water through in order to take a naturally heated hot water shower. I love this kinda stuff!

Week 4.5 (The final product)

When it reached the 18 day period it was clear that my Berkley pile was not the glorious mountain of humus I'd dreamed of, but there was no denying that those lil bacteria had found a great place to be getting it on as a tremendous amount of decomposition had taken place. I kept the pile going, turning it as often as I could and somewhere around the 4.5 week mark monsoon ended and it was time to put some seeds in the earth and so I began shoveling out the compost. As you can see in the above image, there's still a little ways to go before it would have been completely done, but to make this quality of compost in just 1 month.. Shabaaash! ("excellent" in Hindi)

So if you have the garden, the time and most importantly the desire, I would most definitely encourage you to give the Berkley Method a crack. It was a lot of hard work, but the benefits of this style of Hot composting Vs. Cold composting are obvious and numerous (apparently you can even Hot Compost your old cat!). And the change that adding this much organic matter to the soil made was instantly noticeable (you can see the difference in soil quality in the above image between whats on the shovel and whats beneath it!) and led to a far superior growing season. But I'll be saving more about that for next time!

* The title of this post 'Composting Hendrix' kinda gives away a bit how my brain works..
To this day I can't hear the word 'Berkley' without immediately associating it with this moment and this guy!