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Freeing ourselves from supporting harm

Could giving up buying new clothes be the biggest personal change you can make for the environment? That’s what The Guardian asked in an article on the growing number of people moving away from fast fashion to second-hand clothing. I came across it after I’d vowed to not buy new clothes for a year.

The seed for that was planted by an 18-year-old. I’d remarked to her that there were far more second-hand than new clothing shops on the streets of a Cape Town suburb. She swept her hands over her jeans and mohair cardigan. “Everything I am wearing is second-hand,” she said. She explained that buying used clothes not only saves her money; it also makes her feel good because it is better for the Earth. She opened my eyes. So when fires raged through the Amazon and forests of Africa, I knew what to do: I decided to not buy new clothes for a year. It made me feel less helpless.

Cautiously – was this regarded as frivolous? – I shared my decision in a Facebook post. Immediately, a handful of people joined me and we set up a Facebook group called “We’re not buying new clothes for a year” to support each other and share experiences.

 

A Clothes with Karma clothing exchange under the milkwood in my garden

I did some research and so did the members of the group. Everything I learned convinced me it was the right thing to do – and that this could indeed be the biggest personal change a consumer can make to lessen harm on the environment and the people who live, and work, in it. Presumably, if you are doing this, you are already living in a way that is good to the environment.  

The damage that fast fashion does

There’s a heap of information out there, but here’s a good summary of the issues. Follow the links if you want to discover more. In a nutshell:

• The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
• It’s responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution and is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water.
• The throwaway habits around fast fashion lead to the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothes being burned or dumped in a landfill every second.

Why on Earth did I think this might be a frivolous thing to do? The New York Times gave me a clue: “Clothes are easy to ignore because they are made far away and have throughout history been made by enslaved, unpaid and low-paid laborers, often by women. But clothing affects every other environmental problem we care about.”

My research led me to Extinction Rebellion, or XR, which pushes for peaceful, radical environmental action. XR is driving a global movement to “#BOYCOTTFASHION” for 52 weeks (it caused a bit commotion at the London Fashion Week this year). “There is no fashion on a dead planet,” it tweeted. We produce up to 100 billion pieces of clothing a year, “taking a terrible toll on the planet and people who make them”.

Consumers are choosing to remove their support for an industry that does harm to people and the environment. The choice to stop buying new, for whatever period, is being seen as a powerful form of activism against the damage that harmful consumerism, particularly of fast fashion, does to the environment.

How do we do it?

How easy is it to stop buying new clothes for a year? I like the term, “circular fashion”, which CBS News uses to distinguish from “conspicuous consumption”. It means “extending the lifecycle of well-made garments and recycling their materials into new items”.

XR has some advice too: “There is an abundance of clothing and textiles already in circulation which we can creatively repair, re-use, alter, upcycle, recycle and much more, minimising our use of new resources. We encourage rebels to share through swapping or renting, or buying and selling second-hand.”

The clothing exchanges I’ve held in my garden every eight months or so take on new meaning. We call these feel-good events Clothes with Karma. I’ll explain more about these events – they are fun and easy to organise – in later posts. And I’ll explore other ways you can manage just fine without buying new clothes.

Inspirational people

The Facebook group, steadily growing, is a source of inspiration – on why and how to stop buying new clothes and what it means for each of us. Members include men and women and people across the globe. I suspect commitment varies: some people have not bought new for years; some (like me) are just starting out; some are being more conscious of how and what they buy. They are united by a conviction to take a stand against harmful, thoughtless consumption. They are insisting there is another way.

Here's what some members say:

• Melanie Farrell (Cape Town) puts it like this: “When I was working fulltime, buying clothes was a way of distracting myself from how much I hated the job. Now that I’m freelance, I still have a wardrobe full of ‘distraction dresses’ and piles of things that I've never worn. The psychology of shopping is interesting, but a bit disturbing too.”
• Victoria Whisson (London) says she “committed shopping” to self-medicate when she was desperately unhappy. “I believed shopping gave me some control – a sense of having choices –  when I felt trapped by my situation. Now, of course, I realise that what I was actually doing was the opposite of being in control.”
• Angela Tuson (East London, South Africa) decided to not buy, eat or consume any animal products or products of sweatshops. “I feel happier and, strangely, more stylish and coordinated,” she says. “I didn’t realise that thoughtless buying was making me feel burdened until I stopped.” 

Redefining 

Just three months into my no-new-clothes journey, it’s already redefining my relationship with clothes – which I love – and with how I spend my money. Even with a few additions found in charity shops, I have fewer clothes in my wardrobe now: as I rediscover treasures in its depths, I pass on things I have not been wearing. My shopping trips for essentials are quicker, more focused and not as heavy on the wallet as they were. I feel lighter, freer.

When/if I buy new clothes again, I shall choose good-quality items from local designers and brands that I know use sustainable production. By then, it will be a habit to reduce, reuse, recycle and be more creative with what I have. I’ve just discovered a term for it: slow fashion, based on the impact of an item’s production on people and the environment. It’s about buying less but better, buying local. It’s about being mindful; it’s about getting back to basics. 

It’s a 7 thing

Seven. It shows up everywhere, from major religions to popular book titles. Naturally, the days of the week, the wonders of the world, the continents of the Earth and the colours of the rainbow are arranged into seven. It’s the prime prime number, truly. (Be still, spell check. The repetition is intentional.)

So here’s my big seven: it’s been seven years since I last wrote a post on this blog. There are no excuses – although I could try to not take responsibility for just being tardy by blaming that tendency to over-busyness that may have disrupted my work-life balance. I won’t. It’s a precarious thing, the work-life see-saw. And you wouldn’t really want to keep it permanently level, would you? What kind of see-saw keeps steady? Only a very boring one that none of us would want to play on.

New beginnings: The journey starts with embracing reinvention

And now it’s time. I’ve missed writing for the sheer pleasure of it and hopefully sharing something useful or thought provoking at the same time.     

Some things have changed in seven years. Blogging advice, for example. Back then, the predominant advice was to keep posts as short as possible and to publish as often as possible. Now, apparently, the ideal length of a blog post is 1,600 words, which will take seven minutes to read, because readers are more likely to engage in it. Luckily, the experts still see value in shorter posts, a minimum of 300 words. And they advise publishing quality, not quantity. That part makes sense.

And people change; they evolve. I have changed to become far more focused on sustainable living, finding ways to be kind to the Earth. It’s critical, actually, that we do this. Our home is in big trouble. And so are we.

Some things haven’t changed, like the name of this blog. I did consider wiping the slate clean and starting again. But for me, everything comes back to the milkwood tree/s in my forest garden – its survival on our damaged Earth. The milkwood (I wrote about it here) is a symbol of what I hope to get across, which focuses on recycling and reuse and reinvention of you and me and the things in our lives.

If you’ve read this far (barely more than 300 words), then you’ll realise that the subject matter of Under the milkwood is shifting from post-corporate life to using our own power to make choices in our own lives to stop harming the Earth and hopefully to even see some recovery. But we don't exist in boxes. So I'll share places and people and my ongoing battle to keep that see-saw gently rising and falling.

Join me for the journey.

There be giants here

Only the most intrepid of us – like my dear V – have ventured outside in the rain and wind of the past week. And he did it all for me.

Table two protects those saplings at the back from fiddling hands

I have quite an affair going with growing new plants from cuttings and seeds. But one of my previous cuttings tables (built precariously out of bamboo) simply rotted and collapsed; the other (an old plastic garden table) bowed so dangerously in its brittle centre that it was a miracle it could support even a whiff of plant. 

It had got to the point that most of my cutting pots and seedlings trays were scattered over the ground.

I mused, aloud and often, that my new tables would be really big and long to hold a lot of plants. They’d be made out of something strong and resilient, perhaps treated decking planks. Maybe they’d have a shelf to hold empty pots. All we needed was someone to actually build the thing/s.

Most unhandy

Table one is a beauty. I don’t even notice the slightly splayed legs

After more than a year of musing and keening, V, my most unhandy husband, steps up to the task. First, a big pile of decking is delivered. I fully expect that the pile will lie on the lawn, carving brown ruts into the grass, for a few months. But no, come the weekend, and construction of the first table begins in a respite from the rain.

V works tirelessly. I am called on to assist with holding things in place so he can attach the legs. It’s a very strange business: it involves holding the top at a guesstimate distance from the wall (hopefully the same as the length of the legs). This is probably why the legs splay, ever so slightly. But he adds braces to the legs. So all is well.

Something else is a little odd – this table is about a metre high, at least as wide and pretty long. “It’s for giants,” I declare. “You wanted a big table,” he says. It’s so sweet that I really don’t care, and fortunately, I am tall enough to be able to reach the back at a stretch.

The outer reaches

Now for table two. This time, the handy Lub joins in the task. And before I know it, there’s a massive, really massive, triangular table in the corner, using the posts of the old fence as supports. Now, this table … I can only reach the back of it by walking outside the garden and stretching over the fence. So I lug a few saplings outside to get to the outer reaches – they need to grow quite a bit bigger before they get planted out.

But I don’t care a bit. And I didn’t even mention that the shelves are still to come. These are such special tables, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

Today smiles on us

After weeks of foul weather, today smiles on us with sunshine and a cooling breath of wind. That breath is becoming a hot berg wind, though, and the heat is surely a warning that more foul weather is on its way. Nevertheless … the day feels like summer and it reminds me how enormously privileged I am to live here next to the sea.

Treasures from the beach

So by 9am, I have downed tools – work can wait until later – and I’m on the beach, coated in sunscreen, with not another human in sight. The only fellow beach creatures (well, those that I can see anyway) are birds. It is, after all, a Wednesday morning.

I even have a quick dip, although the water is still on the chilly side. Mostly, though, I forage for things like shells, polished sea glass (did you know that the sea glass got that way because it’s been nurtured by the sea and sand for 20 to 30 years?), gnarled driftwood, and smooth rounded stones.

Some of the treasures get carted home, where they sit around the garden looking pretty. Sometimes, shells may have a practical purpose, like edging for a bed or pathway. Broken shells make fabulous mulch, especially in pots.

Some treasures find their way into mobiles

Some treasures and beach-found things become part of a mosaic or a mobile. I’ve just made a big mobile that hangs over a workspace in my office. It’s great inspiration for me when I’m doing something serious. 

Some find their way into mosaics

The flooded rivers – all this rain – brought down heaps of driftwood that has washed onto the beach, and a few pieces have found new life woven into my fence.

Recently, I paid a man called Lub to dig out a stretch of grass for a new bed. He turned out to be so handy that he built a gate – from driftwood – for an awkward spot. I’m thinking of adorning it with a few strings of shells …

My fellow beach creatures today

An ode to singing souls

Whether it’s a passing touch of the blues or sheer horror that can persist for years, bad times happen to all of us. When I’ve been able to stand back and look at my own bad times with some sort of detachment, I’ve been intrigued trying to understand why some of us lift out of the sadness, sometimes with new momentum, and some seem almost trapped in bleakness.

The most joyful colour of all ... yellow flowers, like this hibiscus in my garden, are R’s favourite

There are plenty of theories, some to do with being a pessimist or an optimist. Also, I’m not suggesting for a second that depression is not a real disease that needs medical treatment.

In a relaxed conversation with my aunt, R, she gifted me (well, that’s how it felt) with a sudden sharp clarity that was so obvious and so crazy that it made complete sense.

“I think I have a singing soul,” she said. This is always how it has been for her, she said: she’d always had this deep joy about life. And I felt something smile deep inside me, inside my soul maybe.

Only twice had she not felt her soul sing. The first time was when she went to university for the first time and was desperately homesick: my aunt went to medical school in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Can you imagine how hard that must have been for the young woman at that time? Not only was she heading off on her own to another city, she was also venturing into what was decidedly a man’s profession.

Evergreen

The second time was when her husband of almost 50 years died; that was just over a year ago. Theirs was a fairy-tale marriage. They married soon after meeting each other – they just knew. Every week of their life together, he gave her flowers, usually yellow, her favourite. And as he became more and more ill, he told her that now, in the winter of his life, she was his evergreen.

She went into a very dark place after his death, and even though she would smile at you, as she had always done, there was a sense of great fragility and great despair. This is not something that you “get over”.

I know from the death of my own father in his 50s, very young, that you never get over the loss of someone you love. But eventually, you are able to think about him, and even genuinely smile about him, without feeling that you have been gutted.

R had lost her life partner, a wonderful man who was literally the centre of her life; their three grown daughters also proudly declare that they are always “Daddy’s girls”. I was just one person who began fearing that R would not be able to live with her loss.

Bubbling

And here she was, telling me that she could feel her soul sing again, bubbling up inside her. It brought tears to my eyes and it made me feel immensely happy. I realised that I too have this thing, this singing soul: even when there is immense sadness, the joy will come back. In this clarity, I knew that I had recognised it in my cousins. 

So I tell Vick about it. She responds: “Thank you for telling me this … It is beautiful and brings tears to my eyes too. What a wonderful notion. Grandma (our Mary) definitely had it too. Aren’t we superbly lucky to have come from these exquisite souls? I shall keep this to read forever as it tops up my soul.”

And that’s why I am sharing it with you. If you listen, chances are you’ll hear your soul sing too. I hope you do.

Jewels of the bush

Not long after we moved to East London, I found myself wending my car along a dusty farm track. I was searching for a nursery I’d heard about, one with a great variety of bromeliads, indigenous bulbs and clivia.

Jewel-like clivia flowers in my garden

Suddenly, it was upon me. Two excited and very large dogs herded me to rows of shadecloth-protected tables, groaning under the weight of plants. There, I met a woman called Stella. These plants, all of them, were so clearly her babies.

Stella noticed my awe of her clivias – the adults with their jewel-like flowers and the vast trays of infant plants. So she reached for a clivia’s fat red berry and began gently rubbing away at its skin. 

Slowly, one pearl-like seed emerged, and another and another. “This is how you do it,” she told me, and then handed the seeds to me.

Stella’s seeds and their grandchildren

Clivia nobilis

Stella’s farm nursery, sadly, is closed these days. But since our encounter, I’ve never bought another clivia plant. I’ve grown all of mine from seed, and I’m sure some are the grandchildren of those that came from Stella. And now, in springtime, I can’t keep my hands (or eyes) off my clivias, also known as “bush lillies”. It’s definitely the time for making babies.

Fresh from my foray into seed germination, I see the fruit hanging off the clivia among this spring’s flowers. Thankfully, I don’t battle with growing clivias from seed as I do with other plants (perhaps because these seeds are so big?).

Seeds newly harvested and laid on a sandy medium

A couple of years later, almost ready for planting out

Anyway, the berries I’m looking at now have formed from last year’s flowers, and they are ripe and juicy. I pick a bucketful of them, and they look good enough to eat. You shouldn’t though. They would make you ill. 

Wild abandon

I grow both Clivia miniata and the lesser-known Clivia nobilis. C miniata is more prized in the garden because it is supposedly the most spectacular of the six known varieties, most of which grow wild in the Eastern Cape. But I do like C nobilis, whose flowers droop like pretty pendants. It may be slower growing (or so it is said), but I find that it’s less bothered by the horrible amaryllis worm.
 

What I should do is separate the seeds of the two varieties so that they can be correctly labelled. I don’t do that, but then I don’t mind the varieties getting mixed up some kind of wild abandon in the garden. Next time.

Labour of love

I find a comfy spot to relax, and I begin opening the fleshy fruit and releasing the seeds from the membranes that keep them together and prevent water from penetrating the seeds (this could cause rot and fungus). It is a labour of love: it has to be because it can’t be rushed. At this point, some people will wash the seeds in a bleach or peroxide solution to prevent any possible fungus infection. I never have; I don’t think Stella did.

Close-up of the seed

Then I lay the pearly seeds onto a bed of quite sandy soil, pushing them down just a little, not to bury them, but more to secure them in the soil. And I will water them regularly.

From experience, I know that it will take a month or two for germination to start. And it is delightful: each seed sends out a tentative green shoot, which then twists itself into the soil. It will take a year or two before they get big enough to plant out into the garden. And it will take three to four years before we start seeing flowers. 

The wait pales into nothing when you’re rewarded with your very own homegrown clivias. I promise.

The flowers offer a vast array of colours

This serious frenzy of making babies

My method for rooting cuttings seems to be fairly successful, even with “difficult” plants, but my attempts to get seeds to grow is another story. V also, with his chilli obsession, tries to grow plants from seeds, but sadly, his success rate is even worse than mine.

   

A beautiful sight, full of promise

We’ve even passed on some precious chilli seeds, including the naga, to my sister Angela’s gardener, who seems to be able to grow all kinds of things.

Crazy

Nevertheless, V went a bit crazy ordering seeds from an online  store called Living Seeds. He chose some unusual chillis, like white habanero and “NuMex Twilight”. I joined in the frenzy, and ordered old tomato varieties, including the heirloom brandywine cherry, as well as “Blue Peter” runner beans and “Caserta” marrow.

Angela came visiting in the midst of all of this, and she too got ordering. Strawberry popcorn and multi-coloured corn, among other things, went into the basket. We’ll swop seedlings later – assuming we get lucky enough to get to that stage.

A few days later, we take delivery of lots and lots of fascinating seeds. After we ooh and aah over the stash, we are faced with the obvious reality: now we have no choice but to get this seed business right. And what a serious business it seems to be.

Harass the Plant Guy

This warmer spring weather suggests that it’s a good time to plant seeds. But I suspect that my soil medium choices for germinating seeds are not good ones, so I start by harassing the local nursery person: he calls himself the Plant Guy and he supplies seedlings to nurseries all over East London. I know he knows all about growing seeds.

He explains kindly that for getting seeds to germinate, it’s best to use a milled bark medium, and none of the stuff that I’ve been using (peat moss, potting soil, and so on). A few days later, I collect a mega bag of this medium from the nursery.

Living Seeds also gives good advice on seed germination: it told me, for example, that using seed trays can give you 90% better germination rates than direct sowing. There’s no shortage of trays in my potting area, which nestles in a mostly sheltered and shady spot behind the garden shed.

Fine balance

I’ll be careful with watering: gentle watering that doesn’t dislodge the seeds; not too much (the seeds will “damp off”, drown and rot, in other words) or too little (well, they will shrivel up and die).

Many hours later – how did I land up doing all of this on my own? – trays of seeds buried in the Plant Guy’s mix (at a depth not more than three times the size of the seeds) are neatly placed on the potting table. Their names are written in red permanent marker on labels made from strips of a cut-up ice-cream container.

It’s quite a beautiful sight, I think, full of promise. And I will keep you posted on any success, or lack of it.

My happy jeans with karma

Today, I am wearing my most beautiful jeans and they are making me feel happy, so happy that I want to dance. Not even the gloomy weather can get me down.

These epic jeans are going places – again

These jeans have a history, a karma, that is precious. Until last week, they belonged to my beloved friend, Kathy. She turned a regular pair of jeans (Lady Wranglers – that’s how old they are) into a work of art by combining layers of gorgeous fabrics, full of colour, texture and pattern, into something unique.

Kathy wore them for years – and yes, she loved to dance in them. They are full of joyful memories, including the whirlwind days of early romance with Phillip, her husband for the past decade. I can picture her – the blonde bombshell in her sexy jeans blowing Phillip away.

When she handed them to me last week, I was bowled over. With a sense of reverence, I attached another strip of fabric to the legs to accommodate my very long legs. Then I chopped off the waist – these jeans settled into the waist in a way that was once high fashion. I know the high-waisted stuff has been edging back, but it’s not for me.

“Editing”

But I cut off too much and had to sew on a new and lower hip/waist band for some decency. It was a good mistake that enriched the look, and the jeans fit perfectly. My daughter calls it “editing”.

I’m telling you all of this because it backs my conviction that truly beautiful things don’t have to be found in shops: I choose items with karma over the shiny new and soulless anytime. It’s better for the environment, too.

Beautiful things can be discovered anywhere, maybe even lurking in the back of your wardrobe. Often these pleasures – these previously loved things – are patiently waiting for a new life.

• Treat yourself: check out Kathy’s art here.

In search of the lemonwoods

Up. The thin path winds through the forest, up and up the mountain. And we keep going. V and I are searching for the grove of lemonwood trees that we’ve heard about. We’re not even sure that we are on the right path. But it doesn’t matter. Long ago, or so it seems, we settled into enjoying the journey.

The old man of the forest

The journey is taking us past the great-granddaddies of knobwood (Zanthoxylum) trees. These specimens are so magnificent that they make me catch my breath. Their thick embossed trunks stretch upwards to the light, taller than I’ve ever seen them. Likewise, the cabbage trees (Kiepersols): these are tall, slender creatures, their heads gracefully bobbing out of the forest. The yellowwoods are tallest of all.

Carpets of crocosmia

In the lower layers, there in the carpets of orange crocosmia and between the protrusions of twisted wood, are the juvenile trees. At the very top of the mountain – this must be the top – we thrill as we pick our steps across a spring running over a bed of smooth rocks.

And in the stillness of the forest – even the birds are silent – we are, most humbly, tiny specks of being in a big, big picture.

We’re wandering along the footpaths of the Xholora forest outside the little town of Stutterheim in the Amatola Mountains. We’ve found the most delightful escape: it is named, most appropriately, the Shire. We do expect to see hobbits any time.

Sea of grass

The guest chalets – there are four of them – are spaced across a sea of grassland, and their shape reminds me of boats. Or caravans. Or temples. Whatever they are, these cocoons of wood are beautiful feats of engineering, with curved walls and even curved glass.

As a child, I played on these forest roads

We’d never considered Stutterheim for a weekend getaway in the past. But it is a true pleasure, offering real peace and quiet within 80km of East London. And accommodation here is still pretty affordable.

Yesterday, we strolled along a forest dirt road, just around the next corner, and the next, until we’d walked for hours. And I remembered playing on just such a road in the Stutterheim forests when I was a small child and my grandmother Mary painted pictures of trees. Perhaps she painted that tree, or that one.

We never did find the lemonwoods (at least, I don’t think we did). We found a lot more.