On the wireless

G'day folks, sorry for a slight absence of late. I've been very busy taking on a fun new project - my own gardening radio show on community radio!

Get Growing is on at 9am every Saturday on the Student Youth Network (90.7FM in Melbourne and Geelong or at syn.org.au). And hopefully I'll soon have podcasts of the show up on show's page on the SYN website as well. The show is aimed at the station's 12-25 year old audience, with an emphasis on growing vegies and making a garden when you're not a home-owner and you have a tight budget.

It's been a bit of a stressful, steep learning curve, because I only completed my four week radio training course the week before I applied for the show, and then I only had another week or so before the first episode went to air. To add to that, I'm my own producer, panellist, everything, so I push all the buttons and sit alone in a studio with no one to ask questions of when things go wrong! But there haven't been too many long pauses so far, I've had some great guests to interview, and I've had a lot of fun chattering away about what to plant and harvest, budget tips and indigenous food plants.

To answer a couple of questions left in previous comments:

EcoMILF, we planted our beetroots as seedlings in the second week of January.

Katiecrackernuts, after a bit of warrigal greens tasting experimentation I would have to say no, they don't taste like spinach. They are probably closer to silverbeet but a bit less minerally tasting. They actually almost remind me of the taste of potato, but in leafy form. Odd, I know.

Not a domestic goddess, just a girl with a plan and a garden

Mia Freedman is a columnist I often end up reading because she sometimes comments on issues that interest me, but for some reason I find her incredibly grating. Yesterday's column in the Age was all about young women whose 'ultimate goal is to take up life long positions in the home raising children'. 'Who knew there were so many 23-year-olds out there baking, crocheting, gardening, marrying, procreating, making their own pasta and having Tupperware parties?' Freedman asks. I'm not quite sure how we leapt from women in their twenties knowing they wanted children at some point to this summary, but as a 22-year-old who happily bakes and gardens, who knows she wants children at some later date and who seriously considers being a stay at home parent I resent her derision.

I hate that somehow acknowledging that I want a career and then children is seen as lessening my commitment to my career until that point (and after that point), and the fact that I enjoy some elements of domesticity is seen as tantamount to disempowering myself. The sneer of Freedman's 'These women consider themselves empowered underneath their pink gingham aprons' is so palpable, even if she is attempting to give the article some sense of balance at that point.

I think it's a good thing that I know I want a career and then quite probably children as it drives me to make the most of the decade I consider to be for me alone. I understand that if I choose to have children my needs will often no longer come first, and I want to give everything my best shot before that point so that I don't have regrets or resentment about my career being cut short. I'm not going to box myself into saying that I will definitely have children or that if I do I will give up full-time work, I just see it as an insurance plan in case I do want to. I know I'm not alone in this; I have other incredibly driven friends who know what they want from life and see planning ahead as the best way to take advantage of all the facets of life they want to experience. Don't worry, I understand that things don't necessarily go to plan, but I get so sick of people judging women who acknowledge the realities of what they want from life.

And don't even get me started on her claim that Kate Middleton may epitomise this trend. Somehow an upper class woman without a job and with none of the domestic trappings Freedman's so critical of is meant to reflect women who want a career and children but also enjoy gardening? (I also think that if there's a trend for domesticity, it's not necessarily confined to women - plenty of my male friends are also right into all those terrible disempowering activities like making pasta, baking and gardening.)

I actually wrote this post yesterday but decided to wait a day and see if I still felt incensed about the issue. Yep, I do. But interestingly, by waiting I was able to see more comments on Mia's blog about the issue. One of the comments I most liked came from someone called Alice. 'I wonder if she has a blog?' I thought, so clicked on the link - turns out I already follow it!