All my life I’ve farmed real mammals. I’m an expert in the snuffling, snouty, somewhat hairless kind. For 72 years tofu didn’t enter the district let alone the house. Then, in 2022, I woke up.

I woke up a tired man. I guess I was getting old, or something, but mostly I think it was a psychosomatic effect of being sick of chasing escaped pigs. When you’ve pursued rogue porkers all your life, you get sick of livestock bloody escaping. And fixing fences. When I retire, I’ll make sure I have a terrace outlook on a good, solid, pig-proof fence.

But I had one more venture in me. Enough pig farming was enough pig farming, but I reckoned there was a real opportunity in plant-based meat production. …

Plant-based eating just got an upgrade…

Macadamia nuts are far from the wackiest vegan edibles native to Australia.

“It’s up there, astronauts are sucking it out of a tube (…) This is what’s happening to this fruit.”

This giant continent grows 10kg pinecones on prehistoric trees. There are fruits here that are filled with gem-like capsules. There’s even a plum species that’s made it to space. How’s that for export?

Within the Earth’s atmosphere, native Australian ‘bush tucker’ is now popular internationally for its high nutrient content and unique flavours. Think nutritional yeast is the bomb? There’s a whole other world for you to explore.

Yes, Hogwarts’ Professor Sprout would adore Australia. …

Until you read this.

Since COVID-19 did away with keep-cups and dining in, I’ve been accumulating takeaway coffee cups. I have about 60 by my front door. They are of varying environmental merit, and they join us today to show us how best to dispose of our morning beverage encasements.

You just blinked. As you did so, several thousand coffee cups were heedlessly flung into garbage bins. From thence they will be heedlessly flung into landfill. Oh my.

Some people feel fine about landfill. They present convincing arguments for its continuance, like how the Earth is so big that we’ll nearly never run out of space to stuff our stuff under the planet’s surface. …

You’re not being silly. Send those blooms.

Flowers inspire me to write.

Research and prominent historical figures say that flowers would help most of us right now.

Studies show flowers boost wellbeing

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy to have such things about us.”

~ Iris Murdoch

While not quite mad with joy, participants of several recent studies did have strong positive responses to receiving and living with flowers:

• Flowers significantly reduced stress and boosted mood in women, men, and seniors.
• Living with flowers reduced anxiety and increased enthusiasm and compassion.
• Flowers in bedrooms and kitchens helped people feel positive in the morning and experience more energy throughout their day. …

It all began with a half-strength coconut flat white.

Ah, the days when alarm clocks meant rush hour, when red-eyed people threw on office wear and ran or clack-clacked out front doors. When, outside, the roads honked and hundreds of thousands of takeaway coffee cups did their city dance.

They split and splashed onto bitumen among wheels and pigeons.

I had an epiphany this morning, and I think it had more to do with the jellyfish than the coffee.

My mum had just flipped the cover of Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence. From beside her I could see a gelatinous creature glowing on the black front pages.

It took a few moments for me to realise what I was really seeing. Before me was something from the deep and dark, something that had remained secret for centuries and which now found itself on the pages in my mum’s hands. It seemed amazing that I was sipping a coffee while watching a creature that emitted its own pink light, that trailed ribbons of living purple. …

Down-to-earth advice in uncertain times

Hello, planetary beings. I am the Earth.

What do you want in life? What is life? I hear you asking these questions of yourselves now in this seeming chaos. I also see that you’re pleased about the sky being bluer, about the reduction in CO2 emissions since your vehicles have been inactive. I hear you telling each other that now is the time to slow down and be grateful for loved ones and the planet.

I have another question for you. Are you still throwing food scraps in your rubbish bin?

Come on. Either you do it or you know someone who does. Today, banana peels from breakfasts around the world have joined the organic waste conglomeration that is releasing millions of tonnes of methane through anaerobic decomposition inside your ‘landfill’. …

You may emerge from this pandemic with green thumbs. Like everyone else, apparently.

The shelves were empty.

No, not of groceries. Or toilet paper. That’s so written about already.

The shelves were empty of vegetable seedlings.

I’d got to the gardening centre early, but apparently I wasn’t the only genius around.

It looked like I’d have to leave without the baby vegetables that were key to my visions of self-sufficiency and pandemic-propagated community spirit.

“People are panicking and deciding they’ll grow their own food,” she muttered. “That’s why I have basically no stock.”

The Pandemic Triggered My Latent Green Thumb

I’ll have you know that I’m not new to the gardening game.

I grew up on acreage. I spent my childhood shovelling horse manure fertiliser. I have harvested potatoes, cackling and muttering in an Irish accent as I unearthed the starchy nuggets. …