Perma Cultured

Value and Use Renewable Resources- Produce No Waste

2011-02-20T17:56:00.000-08:00

It’s clear that humans will be sustainable soon- that or extinct…

I began the New Year doing some freelance work on a sustainable concept web-site. I was asked to research and define green criteria and standards for sustainable products as well as facts on where we are in relation to where we need to be.

Unholy Mega-Piles of SHIT People!!! We humans suck at being sustainable! There are now nearly 7 billion of us treading heavily and toxically upon our evermore fragile planet.

I’d somehow managed not to know that a plastic bag is used for an average of 15 minutes, or that 1 million of them are handed out every minute, and that 500 Billion to 1 Trillion of them end up in landfills or by the side of roads and middle of the Pacific… AND THEY take 500 to 1,000 years to bio-degrade! YIKES!!! Pop into the Dollar Store- 1,000 years, Petco- 1,000 years, the market- 1,000 years X’s 10,…

One would hope that the picture brightens with recyclables- Shockingly- NOT! Only 2 out of 10 water bottles gets recycled, the rest (approximately 26 billion) end up in land fills or being incinerated. In the US alone we use 1.5 million barrels of oil just to produce water bottles.

In my day-job I work to support sustainable agriculture because the toxic residue of the industrial Ag is not sustainable. Chemical farming is devastating to our ecosystems, our bodies and alters the bio-chemistry of our minds. I felt that I was aware of the environmental threats we are living with. It was an unhappy surprise to discover that the average American introduces 25 gallons of toxic, hazardous, chemicals into their own homes each year. These are mostly cleaning products and most of these end up in our sewage plants or ground water. At the sewage plant those toxic chemical along with human waste get processed into bio-solids then sold to conventional farmers as affordable fertilizers- (sewage sludge is not allowed in organic farm production.)

I was also asked to research the impact of our conventional clothes, electronics, toys and more. Too many issues to list and no good news… like cotton accounts for 25% of the plants pesticides use.

But there is great news- from energy to electronics and everything in-between corporations and individuals are making huge efforts to clean, green, and recycle, to incorporate renewable and sustainable elements at every step of production. The question will be- Do we reward their efforts with our purchase power? If the money is there, more will follow. And we will be that much closer to our destiny and evolution into sustainable humans.

Meanwhile- Take reusable bags to the market, don’t buy water in bottles, know your cleaning products, recycle, and research lifespan and renewability of purchases. Oh yes, and buy organic whenever possible. Our collective futures depend on a quantum leap involving many baby steps. It all makes a difference.

Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback

2010-07-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

“The fundamental truth of our time is that this culture is killing the planet. We can quibble all we want—and quibble too many do—about whether it is killing the planet or merely causing one of the six or seven greatest mass extinctions in the past several billion years, but no reasonable person can argue that industrial civilization is not grievously injuring life on Earth.” Derrick Jensen

The tenants of permaculture came out of the 1960’s, a time when there were half as many humans on the planet, there were no GMO’s riding the winds decimating heirloom seed, and an awareness of the need for man to Self Regulate waste, chemical farming, reproduction and consumption were clearly identified. How brilliant would it have been if personal permaculture had been embodied by the masses in the 60’s? …If wishes were fishes…

“The fundamental truth of our time is that this culture is killing the planet.” At what point does this reality kick in and every fiber of our being, every action of a lifetime, law, religious doctrine all fall into alignment with our sustainable future? There are those for whom the bio-ethics took root, who have been living, designing, planting, creating, and prospering sustainably. But even with the most evolved beings I know there are gaps. Those funny little spaces when an aspect of self is not in step with the rest. The friend with the all Green-Home and fresh organic food who had a bug control company spraying Malathion quarterly under and around the house to keep the flea population down. The person who owns the Prius to protect the environment but routinely dines on diet coke and fast-food.

Is there a psychological or biological resistance to owning personal responsibility, feeling one’s connectivity to everything, and integration of a sustainable life? Seemingly YES! The internal directive to CONSUME has become the vampire among us and the illusion of being independent autonomous beings a potentially deadly game.

When self regulation fails, traditionally laws and religious doctrines would fill in the gaps- “Thou shalt not kill”, “Don’t litter” come to mind. Sadly, preservation of resources and self regulation have not been in the short term interest of business and governments. Corporations that sell and earn billions of dollars, no matter how toxic or wasteful- are celebrated as successful. People would much rather hear their president tell them to go to the malls and spend money- as did Bush following 9/11, than to pay down their debt and save- as did Obama after the collapse of the Banks, even though the latter was in their best interest. The reality is religions lag and governments dally. This is an evolution of consciousness moving from ground to plant to person.

The embodiment of sustainability is as fundamental to the evolution and survival of the species as was learning to stand up-right, or a written language… It is our next frontier and our only future option.

Produce a yield

2010-05-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Somewhere outside of vows of poverty or lust for greed, nestled in a system of sustainability, lives the third tenant of permaculture…Produce a yield.

Is it just me or does that strike a chord of the profoundly obvious which wedges bits of sky into one’s imagination. For me, Obtain a yield- has an organic resonance of abundance.., a bushel of apples, a leg of lamb, and invokes an image of thriving land and community.

In permaculture, obtaining a yield can never live outside of a sustainable system which includes
Observe and Interact, Catch and Store Energy, Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback, Use and Value Renewable Resources, Creatively Use and Respond to Change. It’s capitalism with built in do-no-harm guiderails.

Obtain a yield. The yield can be love, health and wealth, art and beauty, or adventure, ecstatic, play and avocados. Think multi-cropping…Sweet!

So, how to apply Obtain a Yield to self?
Well…returning to permaculture’s agricultural roots, one must know the intended harvest before deciding on which seeds to plant. Intention becomes the key word once harvest has been identified.

It’s important to sow intention with care because life’s yield soon follows. There was a time when I lacked the attention span to notice that the manifest world I was stepping through with disregard and sometimes disdain was the litter of my yesterdays’ longings, each one dismissed for the next but with no real intent behind any. For me it took owning the outcome of the shotgun-spray of my mind’s vomit, (life drama which demanded loads of attention with no real Tah-Dah,) then learning to excavate beyond ever-changing whims of desire to tap into the deeper yearnings of soul. It is to those deeper yearning I marry my intent and creativity.

Somewhere between awareness and discipline I’m learning to articulate creative-intent in such a way that I can obtain a yield which sustain me… and can be shared. Intuitively I know my garden and grove both exist to produce a yield, and that my fruitless banana trees must be replaced by banana plants which yield bananas. And that our fledgling accreditation company, A Bee Organic must produce a yield to fulfill its function of Certifying the World Organic but just until the use of chemical farming, irradiation, growth hormones in livestock, sewage sludge, and GMO foods are outlawed rendering the USDA Organic seal obsolete. At which time we can joyously retire the Bee! If I refocus into the linear-capitalist perspective, the dictate is to make money. From make money I would not so want my industry to succeed as to make us obsolete. So at some level energetically I’d undermine the USDA Organic seal, which honestly happens (I’m sure unconsciously) within the industry.

Being a from-the-ground-up, systems-based doctrine, permaculture gives the blueprint for getting downright global and not losing connection with the lines of energy I know and trust, so Obtaining a Yield resonates a big YES!!!

Where else can we Obtain and share yield???

Catch & Store Energy

2010-04-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

"In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life." — Vandana Shiva

“…And taking one step back…its currency is life-force.”~Ro

Catch & Store Energy, is both practical and archetypal. On the practical side we really must lower our foot print on the planet. And along those lines everything counts. Capturing and storing energy may be as simple as channeling water from gutter downspouts into barrels and using the stored water to water plants in yard, wrap water heater in a blanket, invest in solar, or pre-cycle…that’s when we decide not to generate trash by buying unpackaged produce or bringing your own bags to market, there is then no need to recycle the bag and is referred to as precycle.

On the archetypal side Catch and Store Energy could be called Open and Value Energy.

If you really want to get esoteric, one can Transmute Energy.

Catch/Open: Einstein figured out what great Sages have long intuited… It’s all energy. Exercise is one form of opening energy, fresh organic food and great company would be other ways, creative expression yet another. One could go to the gym for exercise, meet friends for drinks, and the market for food, then go home to a crafts project on a Saturday…, or one could join a community garden and visit while shoveling, get creative while planting edible flowers and veggies, then harvest fresh produce from which to share and create original mouth-watering meals, meals which could be shared... Most of us can only uphold a to-do list for so long, then life happens and we get off track. In a systems approach there are living containers in place to support one’s life, creativity, goals and intent. A to-do list may get lost or forgotten but the container lives. An example would be my intended morning walk, where weather, business, or company would happen and…weeks later…. I’d start walking again. Now our community walks around the lake Mon-Fri. 9:00 to 10:00, three laps-three miles, with more dogs than people. We each have days when we can’t show but regardless the walking continues.

Store/Value: Fill self first. Learn to fill self on all levels, body, mind and spirit. Fill with the finest fuels of exercise, meditation, music, prayer, fresh whole organic food, loving relationships, stimulating books and conversation. And… stop feeding dead things. Dead things are people, work, ego…anything which does not grow or produce something life affirming with the energy. Learn to recognize healthy growth patterns and look for those in allocating time and energy.

Transmute: Further down the list of permaculture principles is Produce a Yield. Transmuting energy as a life-affirming gift or discipline should probably fall under produce a yield but it relates here as well. Joy, anger, fear, love, desire, sadness, are all energy flavors which can be used individually or in combinations to create. The act of creation is an act of transformation… be it a quiet act of kindness, setting a boundary, changing laws, planting a seed…

Observe and Interact-1 of 12 Permaculture Principles

2010-03-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love…and then we return home.” ~Australian Aboriginal Proverb

The first of the twelve principles of permaculture is to Observe and Interact, which is very similar to Aboriginal Proverb to observe, learn, grow, love. To observe in the purest permaculture sense would be to observe a piece of land, its eco-system, natural resources, the arc of the sun, prevailing wind, drainage, natural pooling areas, identify plants, bug, and animals. So now…what would that look like with self?

You can observe a lot just by watching. ~Yogi Berra

Hint: The elements of self do not look like…

-A list of unrelated items sent to the insurance company as the content and value of ones life.

-A seating list at a charity event with people arraigned according to their ability to donate.

-Checkboxes of species found in your back yard, _Lizard, _Spider, _Bird,..

In all of the above instances the stuff, beings, or nature have been objectified, listing and quantifying are not the same as observing. The first step to observing is to set aside what one thinks they know, along with stories and opinions. This helps to make room for an opening in which information and relationship can take form and flavor.

With all of the many things that one can observe and interact with, self, community, family, friends, co-workers, nature, try focusing from the ground up. Check out some dirt…can you find ground? Remember eating it as a kid? Do you have edible dirt, or could yard chemicals or other be making it toxic? Is it hard as a rock or soft and earthy rich vibrant and pulsating with life.

Here’s the deal…. It all begins and ends in the darkness of soil.

The ground on which one stands must be grocked to understand life as permaculture and in turn understand to show up as a whole element in a sustainable system. Once one has ground… the sky is the limit because sky plays off of ground.

The body is the interface with this life. I say start with ground because if we want to interact from a place of being a part of the system as opposed to apart from the system we need first to feel our place in the system…Artist, caretaker, worm food…

We are beginning to wake up and realize that ecology and self are one. Yikes!

Forget about hormone-laden milk…Got Dirt?

The Personal Side of the Three Ethics of Permaculture

2010-03-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

“We are also concerned about the negative consequences for humanity and for creation resulting from the degradation of some of the basic natural resources such as water air and land, brought about by an economic and technological progress which does not recognize and take into account its limits.” Pope John Paul II

The three ethics of permaculture are- care for the Earth, care for each other, and Fair Share- living within limits while redistributing surplus.

The first two, care for the earth, and care for each other are self explanatory. We are not there yet but the pressure to be ecologically responsible as referenced by the Pope is growing. The seeds have been planted.

Care for each other has been taught for a while now too…do unto others. Progress has been made, progress to be made…

Self-set limits however… for most… sheer heresy.

Sky’s-the-limit is a religion unto itself these days and yet there are those who understand self-limits from a place a of seamless dynamic beauty with-in limits, of stuff, consumption, and reproduction, then sharing surplus. It’s living the embodiment of the story of loves and fishes, owning the abundance and fulfillment in taking what is needed… then passing on and sharing the rest.

What is enough? Must be answered differently by each from vows of poverty simple, sparse and eloquent, or the Bill Gate’s model, amass fortune, keeps plenty for self and strategically invests the rest back into humanity, or…something in-between. It’s not about right or wrong, closer to Goldilocks and the Three Bears, taking the time to understand too small, and too big, and finding our Just Right!

There is another piece which must be in place though in order to begin a sustainable life and that is a real connection with the timeless place of self which connects with all of life. It lives in everyone but not everyone chooses to live from the there. Not living from the place of connectivity to self and the eternal is in truth not living, but that’s hard to explain to those who mistake ideals and opinions as path and passion. It’s the difference between George Washington Carver lovingly coaxing seeds to self-evolve into new and specifically useful hybridized strains, and Monsanto mutating seeds to tolerate poisonous herbicides so they could sell more Round-up. The thing is, we do this with ourselves, we mutate self into accepting toxic unfulfilling lives which look good from the outside if viewed from one angle. …Smile!

Understand that sustainability is not a to-do list of buy green, drive a Prius, and recycle. Those are optional elements of a whole interrelated system. At the center of the system is self and self’s-connection to the whole…Once clearly owned and connected- life, planet and future can be retro-engineered and accessorized for sustainability. Choices become crystal clear, like food grown with poisons which burn soil, pollutes water and kills off companion eco-systems, can not then be packaged without preservatives and labeled as NATURAL…

Return of light

2010-02-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

Winter in the garden and the ground lays bare…
It’s such a cliché and we are so clever…why would we submit to a winter of self?
And yet comes... It came for me.

It came first as a seasonal melancholy, then followed by abrupt and senseless loss…which in turn cut a core belief off at the knees…a belief I held with out question. Feet stood firm but there was a death of ideals along with the comfort of knowing were lost. So I slipped in through the quiet of sorrow to the abyss of the void, retreating into a barren winter within.

There is a sanity in following the rhythms of nature, however dark and long the nights... But even knowing the nature of seasons, I found it tricky to steal time to properly morn, dissolve, or dismantle myself these days. I thought about the necessity of time to reboot the soul, cut loose of the known, to deepen and regenerate while I was in darkness, not blogging, and keeping the company of self…in-between like 32 family gatherings, holidays, birthdays, work, big family and never ending obligations.

Seasons and loss of all kinds happen, and in the end the body will die. Man’s quest for knowledge and power, along with our pathological repression of nature have done little to change the outcome of the game, death still comes…Or so I contemplated in the dark of my winter…

The world got dark, cold, my dog died, rain fell and life sucked, but then the days got longer, warmer, our spring sprung froth to feed and fill the pond, crows courted and a new puppy is on the way. I don’t need to have a vision board to imagine spring. It’s the natural procession of life.

Big smile… I think about the primitives and pagans, simple folk, celebrating the return of the sun, spring, harvest, the quiet of the dead and then a return of life… Can I play too? I want to celebrate the return of the sun but only after having had the privilege to feel its disappearance. I want the quiet of the night, and opportunity to compost emotional and mental debris in the vacuous void. And I’ll trust that spring will let me know when its time to return…

But I must ponder… Who thought to put New Years in the dead of winter? There is nothing natural about celebrating new beginnings when the life which surrounds still lays dormant. Chinese’s New Years on the other hand came this week. It’s the year of the tiger, disruption and change! Perhaps we can change the date of New Years.

The sun is back, the pond is full, the garden wants expanding. Our business, held hostage for months in a bureaucratic winter of Washington DC is poised to get final blessing from the USDA. Call it coincidence or spring… The word feels renewed and my need has changed from isolation to engagement. It’s magic…

Einstein's Map- Liberation Through Compassion

2009-11-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security-- Albert Einstein
With the equation E=mc2, Einstein was able to convey that matter and energy are really different forms of the same thing and that matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter…, a truly mindboggling concept with potential limitless and sustainable energy. With, “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert maps healthy sustainable inner-ecosystem, which in turn, translates into healthy whole planet eco-systems.
If we could master both equations as a collective by next January that would really rock. Tick-tock.
The teaching and concept of compassion has been around… Christ taught it, Buddha taught it, Quan Yin embodied it, and yet from the level of the collective, humans have not come very far. Instead most wallow like pigs in slop in the prison of delusion… Why?
Is compassion that painful? Is the prison that comfy? Are we that dim? What’s the deal?
This blog is on Personal Permaculture, or growing-up our inner psychology to the point where we collectively evolve into sustainable global citizens. On a side-note, my mother has no faith in you the people, or in my odds at making headway with my intent, but I beg to differ. Collectively, I think we dally, but when up against it, we manage to work miracles. For those keeping score, its become evident that the chances, choices and possible outcomes for the future of our kin are narrowing with each passing day, and each passing year as 80 million more people slide down those birth canals joining life raft Earth.
Just as some lizards managed to get wings, I believe that humankind must find liberation from the cell of separation- to recycle trash, plant a garden, practice compassion. Compassion for self, for other, and planet guilt free and with passion! “Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security-- Albert Einstein

Why not try compassion?
Sweet thoughtful widening circles of compassion,
Small ripples, moving through still deep pools of compassion,
Giant waves of compassion to batter rocky shores of isolation,
Compassion with wings….

Organic, More than what you eat

2009-11-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

This week we explore where personal permaculture meets politics, rule of law and myopic pin-heads…
While admittedly less mythically inspiring than some posts, equally vital to our sustainable future.

~ September 23, 2009 Zelig Golden, NY Times-
“In another important case against Monsanto and the USDA, the Center for Food Safety has again prevailed, demonstrating that GMOs pose serious risk of harm to organic farmers and consumers, and that the USDA is failing to sufficiently protect us from the contamination that can result from the planting of theses crops – this time in Sugar beets!..

A Federal court ruled that the Bush USDA’s approval of genetically engineered (GE) “RoundUp Ready” sugar beets was unlawful. The court ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impact of the crops on farmers and the environment”

The above ruling is a huge step for organic, without which there might not have been a legal argument. It’s in the National Organic Program rule that organics be GMO-free. GMOs indiscriminately pollute the organic seed stock, along with heirlooms vital to our ability to adapt to the oncoming changes in environment along with our evolving taste/flavor demands.

Recently some nit-wit wrote not to buy organic avocados because they could be peeled thus the consumer could avoid pesticides… Really? Is that where the story ends…with the person who ate the avocado?

Does that sound like the whole picture?

When my mom’s conventional avocado grove (now organic) had to be aerial sprayed for thrips, (twice in one year) -every bee, bug and bird in the orchard dropped dead. Meanwhile our nearby organic grove had no notable thrip damage. So…what is a grove of bees, frogs, and birds worth? What is the value of supporting healthy, bio-diverse whole organic systems? What is the value of eating food not grow with sewage sludge and non-irradiated?

Organics are a verified, eco-friendly form of food production which can no more be taken out of the whole system, than mankind can live without clean water, air and soil and planetary bio-diversity.

In our organic avocado grove the soil is alive with microbials, worms, beneficial bugs, the land is rich in diverse vegetation, mulch, and life such as toads, frogs, song birds, bats, coyote, bob cat, mountain lions, and birds of prey. In the conventional groves there are no weeds, (RoundUp- which can be harmful to frogs…which are then eaten by birds…) the soil is dead, burned by nitrogen, and those dwelling or buzzing through the canopy in danger of lethal spray. Yes, the avocado can be peeled, but in which grove would you put the future of your children’s children?

It’s not always financially possible to buy organic… but to say not to buy organic- is its own crime of conscience… When the choice and funds are available, know that it is a small slice of eco-system you’re supporting. And that is a very big thing….

We are all connected...

2009-10-27T11:55:00.001-07:00

‘We are all connected…To each other, through biology…To the Earth, chemically…To the rest of the universe, at the atomic.” Neil de Grass Tyson

Connected biologically, chemically, atomically to each other, the planet and the universe…but are we connected emotionally? Spiritually? To not be connected would seem unlikely.

My friend E.J. Gold wrote “It is our job to alleviate the suffering of the Absolute.” I have pondered this statement for a very long time…Alleviate the suffering of the Absolute. Isn’t God supposed to be responsible for our suffering? As a parent I can say that children do have the ability add to both joy and suffering. My son could definitely spare me untold grief should he choose… so it’s possible. If we are connected, then alleviating any suffering of the Absolute would seemingly lessen the suffering of all.

Along the lines of suffering, mine and the absolute, I have been exploring the space between the exquisiteness of feeling deeply in terms of love, beauty and the divine, and the longing for a body-prophylactic for protection from the rest. But life does not work that way. If I love deeply, I will know loss. This could fit with Buddha’s “all life is suffering.” Although I’m not ready concede that all life is suffering, I’ll agree that love and loss are inseparable.

Religion has a long tradition of glorifying suffering, to the point of self-inflicted suffering. Our cultivation of suffering is a learned behavior so it is something we can unlearn. “Alleviating the suffering of the Absolute,” intrigues me as a spiritually-mature, healthy alternative to martyrdom.

Perhaps we should not love or not feel?
What do you think landed us here? Not feeling, lead to massive consumption in order to numb our disconnect… and still we felt. From there our inner-toxicity has seeped outward and onto planet...

From the sustainable, whole-systems approach, the equation would be: pain and suffering form connection…, counterbalanced by the joy, inspiration, comfort, and constructive mirroring, generated from resonate sharing of friends, loved ones, and kindred-spirits. Ultimately, the power of love alleviates mountains of suffering. The deep shadow reflective rivers of sadness should not frighten but serve to strengthen our resolve to love more fully…

We are, after all connected…to the planet through biology. When the planet suffers, so does the body and the planet is suffering. Here it’s a no-brainer to commit to alleviating the suffering of the plant and our biological-vehicle… When our body suffers, the mind, the emotional and the spiritual body suffer as well. From dis-ease it is hard to dream new worlds, love fully and experience the searing beauty of our miraculous connectivity.

“The beauty of a living thing
is not the atoms that go into it,
But the way those atoms are put together…
The cosmos is also within us..,
We are made of starstuff.
We are all ways…
The cosmos can know itself…” ~ Carl Sagan

What would you share with the cosmos?
What suffering could you spare the absolute?

Awe...

2009-10-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

“When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster.” ~Lao Tzu (531 B.C.)

I think if Lao Tzu were coming to dinner we’d have much to discuss.
I spent the day on-line catching up on Ted-Talks, the Bioneers Annual conference postings, cutting-edge organic and environmental art, and other relevant planetary doings…from the hopeful to the hopeless, taking in the global picture. I will say that there are a lot of remarkable people, projects and lines of awareness emerging at this time. Right along side are critical global issues which could so easily render me frozen, mute or lost in despair. If he were to be at dinner I would tell Lao Tzu that awe and disaster have arrived as the Siamese-twins of this era. Then there are the oblivious…until disaster finds them too.

Disaster is being felt each day in a billion ways by millions of beings, as the norm of their lives is being irrevocably altered. It is felt in the faceless-wild spaces where climate is changing, and man has infringed deeply into the sacred balance of nature, fracturing once-whole systems… and those are the first waves. Disaster is setting up house.

Meanwhile…I am in awe… In awe of the guy who is making fat-free (elegant organic low-material) furniture. In awe of the artists who sculpt amazingly sensitive detailed sculptures out of used tires and the photographer who photographs the largest tire dump in the world so that the horror and beauty coexist within the viewer. In awe of the man who while working out the details of using radio waves to cure cancer discovered he could make an engine which will run on salt water. In awe of the multitude of thoughtful, creative, sustainable ideas being birthed and midwifed into form.

Yes disaster is on the march… but the brilliance it provokes in mankind is so awe-inspiring. I wonder what Lao Tzu would have to say about that?

My shaman friend keeps directing me towards my wonder. Awe and wonder seem similar if not the same, although wonder seems child-like and awe seems more adult and age appropriate. I may need to invite him to dinner as well… I was struggling with wonder and feeling discomfort in the naiveté and innocence which accompanied wonder. I did have a dream in which I had “eyes-of-wonder” sort of like glasses which I could take on and off. In playing with them I learned that I can’t wear “eyes-of-wonder” while doing organic review work, but I could wear them in nature…

The point being- I’m finding my way. I’m choosing my side, I’m choosing awe and I’ll continue to work on wonder… It’s a comfort really, a clear job description that I can handle. I don’t have to have answers to problems large or small. I can own my awe.

Disasters will come.

Our power is in our searching and supporting all that is awe worthy.

If Lao Tzu is right… rediscovering awe could be our salvation.

Sustainable Sprituality

2009-10-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

"If a female Dalai Lama can be more effective, then why not?" "It will come. No problem." ~ The Dalai Lama, opening day of his Vancouver Peace Summit.
Perhaps unrecognizable to the untrained belly…but encapsulated in; “It will come. No problem”…is nothing-less than permission to alter the path we are on….in support of- our future Hermanity.
In nature it takes the dance of masculine and feminine to conceive and create new life, spiritually is no different. The Eastern Yin-Yang Symbol reflects the healthy dance and the balance of the universal masculine-feminine. In recent times religion/laws/myth/story have been solely about Man-God. Having God, with no Fem to temper, seduce, and occasionally over-ride, rule supreme for several thousand years has taken a toll.
So check it out: the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, himself a recognized God-resonant, spoke publicly that- he saw “no problem” with a female incarnation, Goddess-resonant Dalai Lamass?.
…Boys and girls- that is a very big opening in the psychic streams if one chooses to take it in. We have not heard such a statement recognizing the potential of divinity manifesting in a female form- well not from one with the Dalai Lamas level of spiritual authority, by my count, in over 4,000 years. This is big. How big? No other awaited messiah is preached as gender optional. “It will come” ~ Very big. No mosque, synagogue or Sunday school on the planet this week will be telling the daughters of man that they are worthy and credible containers of Divinity in their reflection.
Guess what?
We do not need to wait for his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to pass, then wait for untold eons for incarnation to choose a Fem-reincarnation, (as true with some beliefs…). Diva-Fem flows freely, no mountains to climb, or self flagellation necessary, and the big secret is… it’s never- not been here.
What has kept it from us? Stories and millennia of behavior modification in the form of social exile, shame, burning at the stake, stoning.
Wait…let me check….?
Yep, still there- the streams of fem, the void of pre-manifestation, the renewable dance of polarity. Still there!
For those of you, women and men, who have been waiting dutifully for permission to really feel- life, love, and one’s self as an intrinsic part of the streams… The 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama, has spoken…"If a female Dalai Lama can be more effective, then why not?" "It will come. No problem."
Note he did not say, God decrees a women’s body unholy, her mind not up to the task, she ate the apple…, He said, ”…why not. It will come. No Problem.” ~ Love this man!
So we now have permission.
To explore sacred feminine manifest.
Magically mind, and soul begins to balance,
Self discovering self
In dance of yin-yang eternal,
Refreshed by streams…
Of universal-unconditional love,
Somewhere a war will end,
or never start,
A tree planted,
A girl educated.
And in time
A planet re-dreamed
And its inhabitants redeemed.

Let there be light...

2009-10-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

"A candle looses none of its light by lighting another candle." ~Unknown
And yet energy is squandered when attempting to light a steal rod, or wet noodle….

Many years ago I worked with two brilliant and wise women. They owned Stereoscope Bakery in Incline Village, Lake Tahoe. The women felt strongly that everyone should know how to bake their own bread, much like Gandhi promoted the looming of cotton to make one’s own clothes. They offered free bread baking classes, as a way of empowering others. Fascinatingly, they found that when the classes were free, people did not honor the gift, show up on time or complete the classes. Later classes were offered with a fee. With that a value was established and the participants were able to learn how to bake their own bread.

I’m not saying that everything should have a price, just that it should have a value. Otherwise it can be “casting pearls before swine.” This is a soul saddening dilemma because the caster of peals, can believe, because the pig has no appreciation for the peals, (gift of self given) that there is no value. It’s hurtful to the soul not to be seen or received. It contributes to low self-esteem. For a sustainable system the wholeness and value of the elements, in this case the resource of self must be respected.

Lighting the candle of those who step forth, holding their candle out to yours is one thing. It is entirely another to drag someone out of an unconscious stupor, dig though their trash, find something potentially flammable, put it in there hand and light it on fire. That never ends well.
Then there are the ones who take heart, ego or imagination hostage, demanding the lighting of the steal rod they are wielding… Good luck with that.

The act of sharing light, fire, knowledge, creativity, passion, does not give the giver say in how the recipient uses, expresses, or extinguishes the light. Attachment drains off energy from the potentially sustainable system of community growth and sharing.

Giving is only half of the circle. The other half is receiving the gift of others. Then there is gratitude for those who came before and lit the way… gratitude is its own magical bridge to new land.

There is a story that each soul upon birth in given the amount of energy needed to blast out of the orbit of the time and situation of which they were born, and into the orbit of the souls destiny. The problem is energy is often caught in the webs of others. Learning to liberate ones energy and still be open to give and receive is its own form of mastery.

Mentors, those who can embody passionate engagement with boundaries can be invaluable here, imprinting by healthy example. Whenever possible choose to work, play, and interact with the realest people you can find. Those for whom you can exchange light, ideas, empathy, compassion, maps, passions and more…

Cautious People Wanted

2009-09-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
~Robert Kennedy

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations ... can never effect a reform."
~Susan B. Anthony "

Robert Kennedy’s words were born of the 1960’s, a pivotal era which began to shed light on the damage being done to the planet and its inhabitants through the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, global warming, endangered species and all manner of planetary degradation. It’s now 40 years later… and we are in far deeper shit. The planet’s population has more than doubled since 1969, the widespread use of genetically modified seeds, cross pollinating with our heartier heirloom varieties bred over millennia, is rendering major grain sources mutant and useless.

When the Permaculture map of whole systems made of whole elements it blown up to encompass the planet it runs squarely into the Gaia theory, as suggested by visionary scientist James Lovelock, that the planet is a single, complex, interrelated organism finding itself infected with an out of control virus called mankind. Just as you and I when we need to kill off a virus, she is raising her temperature a few degrees to kill it back. Lovelock has calculated that the climate disruptions ahead will shrink the planet’s population down from 6.6 billion to 500 million. That’s pretty drastic even if he is off by half…

According to the Gaia theory’ as we quibble over the ethics of abortion on our personal and political levels, the planet herself is moving towards a near do-over with mankind….How does it feel to be labeled a parasite, an out of control virus, a mutant species to be aborted?

I do believe in the ingenuity of people. More and more each day are willing to think, (an almost dying art) and dialog, (a potentially rich source of mental evolution when activated). Where do we start?
Do we control our population numbers?
Do we switch to clean technology?
Would we stop mindlessly abusing our planet’s resources, poisoning our finite soil, air and water?
The answer is: All of the above and more.
What can you do today?
What can be done every precious day we each have left on the planet?

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events”,… What if careful cautious people could preserve their reputations … and effect reform? I think when it comes to doing the right thing, even the cautious person will want to participate. We can each change a small portion of events by,… planting a garden, supporting a farmers market, using natural cleaning products and pest control, buying organic food, and learning how to grow through shared dialog.
…., “and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
~Robert Kennedy

Six impossible things...

2009-09-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast” –The Queen/ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland… Then….“Sustainable development is a compelling moral and humanitarian issue.” Collin Powell…
I have nothing but respect for Mr. Powell, but morality alone does not carry the potency to dream us to a sustainable future. For that we are going to need to believe in a great many impossible things.
How many? I do not know. Maybe that’s the fun.
Sometimes it’s as much about disbelieving. I’m certain that it’s one’s sacred duty to disbelieve the collective humans who exercise chronic critical lack the vision, especially when that vision conflicts with the truth in your gut. Given the time, impossible tends to make itself manifest. So, we could argue the impossible or (my favorite) discuss which potential realities we might be willing to energetically back into form.
What is a vision you would die for?
Look around, who would stand beside you?
If the vision lives in you then at some level, it is already real. Note: what others say is impossible is an argument for their own lack of vision, and not a barometer of possibility.
Personally, I made a point to marry a simpatico spouse with impeccable vision, and have been blessed with some close family and friends who can fathom as possible- realities yet unacknowledged by the collective. Together we have created life-altering experiences and rich fields-of-play. Some are even gaining practical application…
September 11, 2009, the application for A Bee Organic LLC, was signed and sent out to the USDA. A Bee Organic was born out of the bramble and sink-holes of Organic Certification into which my partner Sarah and I were hired and trained. Daily I’d wonder- What would organic certification look like when viewed as a whole system of supportive elements? Obviously it would be forthright, verifiable, compliant, and humane, but that was not the industry we were being asked to support. Various certification agencies all told us the same thing; that the status quo (different in each) was the only way, and how it must be… And, neither Sarah nor I believed that to be true. Not believing what you can see is the flipside of believing the impossible… Together we have untangled a lot of brambles, filled in the sink-holes, created maps and sculpted healthy containers. We think we rock….nothing impossible about it!
If we want a sustainable future we must begin to believe impossibilities to be possibilities inviting our care. We must learn to support each others possibilities and practice emulating the system we aspire to become. That may seem like a lot of impossible things to believe before breakfast, until it dawns… how possible it all is.
Believing the impossible is vital to finding creative solutions. If I imagine very clearly, with great detail a destination, (impossible or not) then stand at that point of arrival and look back… from there, it’s not hard to map home.

Where ever two or more are sutainably gathered...

2009-09-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. ~Margaret Mead

It has, with great pain, begun to dawn on me that the masses do not like or want change. As a matter of fact there are a remarkable number who have yet to digest the basics of their own evolution. Recently, I’ve begun to wonder if what passes for our News should institute an opposable-thumb-check policy prior to letting people share their views. I’m not saying that they should not be allowed to speak, but there should be a warning on the tape at the bottom of the screen, (the person you are hearing lacks opposable thumbs, and frontal lobe may not be properly activated.) Politicians should not be excluded. At a time when we should be having real dialog, and making hard global changes, humanity as a collective finds itself staring blankly down the corridor of extinction and finds itself thinking… “Do I want fries with that???” And I think, well if they’re organic and vegan, maybe…

Thank you Margaret.

I’d forgotten my history and somehow thought that we could all wake up together. Not a chance, as the masses are none too quick to assimilate new ideas. It’s been a while since Jesus said “judge not,” even his followers can’t seem to live that rule. The constitution is over 200 years old, and while the right to bear arms seems to have captured the imagination of many… other amendments like the right to the pursuit of happiness got radically stomped, (think paying for sex, recreational drugs, and gay marriage) they got all prissified and judged off to no-no zone. When bedrock concepts like non-judgment (different than discernment) and the right to pursue happiness provide such cultural and individual challenges…integrated sustainable?

The planet and our children can’t wait for those busy arguing for their limitations, and according to Margaret they are not even necessary for change, ( happy thought). The rule in evolution is; embody the change, own the ground, and find a way to replicate. If you’re the first lizard to get wings, you don’t wait for everyone to get them before taking flight.

And that is being done. Everyday, in every corner of the globe someone is waking up and finding a way to live, love and create in a sustainable field of play.

Hence, the small dedicated group is my soul’s joy and a point of personal recalibration, because there is definitely a small and growing group of thoughtful committed citizens dedicated to changing the world. There are astounding scientists, entrepreneurs, social activists, sustainable organic growers and producers, community gardeners, recyclers, green builders and consumers, zero-scape gardeners, teachers, comedians, citizens, bloggers, and politicians dedicated to making their slice of the system integrated and sustainable and from their personal wholeness.

I just have to show up, own my ground, my consciousness…and welcome those who show up to take their place.

Welcome reader!

A Point of Creation

2009-08-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

“It’s not how busy you are, but why you are busy- the bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted.” Unknown…
Busy-ness like most everything in life is a double edge sword...
A sword which, when wielded from wholeness as opposed to this or that, can manifests as true power. How is it possible to live in alignment with so many variable factors?
History tells us we can either live by outer rules such as laws, religion, or we can live from within.
Living from one’s internal ethics only works well when those ethics have matured to the point where they meet or surpass social and cultural expectation. Imagine that my internal impulse was towards cannibalism in that at some level I believed I gathered power by eating the body of the more-powerful… I could maybe still find sanctuary in the Amazon jungle or Wall Street, I could act it out and risk imprisonment, or I could find symbolic ways of implementing cannibalism into my life such as joining the Catholic Church and enjoying communion. Cannibalism is an extreme stretch but it’s a fun example of a primal impulse having found a sociably acceptable outlet.
Whether the directive for action comes from within or without, there is still the issue of personal alignment with the whole. There is a lot of doing going on taking us as individuals and community further away from a healthy sustainable life and planet. How does the personal alignment switch become lit and available for use?
To dogmatically assign rules, maps or “thou shalt & shalt not’s,” is old school and I probably wouldn’t listen, so why should you? I’m well versed in inspiration but I’m distrustful of the process. For some reason the act of trying to inspire… can inadvertently lead to deception and lies; Think positive, love, light and darkness will not fall…
In exploring Personal Permaculture, I find myself circling like the buzzards in the canyon below our house, scavenging from all who came before. Those who pondered the same riddle: On what ground do we stand to witness evolutionary change? Change so big that the multitude of little changes necessary to globally alter the course we are on, would fall into place, like seeds in fertile soil, taking root and bearing fruit...
What if;
Instead of thinking everyone needs to know more, be more, do more, my self included,
I stop.
Hold what is treasured in me…
and consider…
What if each window of awareness needs its watcher?
… And I’m mistakenly thinking my window is more important?
That thought…
Takes me to a place of interest and honor,
In looking through an-other’s window of awareness…
It would be folly to forget
My window and viewpoint as I adventure into other points of view…
Because in remembering …
We could share,
Exchange, be challenged and inspired…
And that is a point of creation!
Maybe even communion…

I'm with stupid =>

2009-08-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Chinese Proverb; "If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed."

This week I am discouraged. I like to think the best of my fellow Earth travelers but wow- are we childish. Now would seem the time to focus on working together to find new ground to solve epic social and ecological issues, issues which threaten the future of everyone on the planet.

Instead, dialogue has been replaced with emotional gibberish. This week it was affordable healthcare being cast as the villain. It’s frightening that we can’t constructively explore solutions rather than degenerate into polarized sects.

So, where are we headed?
Consider; "If everyone on the world enjoyed the same level of natural resource consumption as a typical UK citizen, we would need three planets to support us. This is clearly unsustainable. " - www.bioregional.com- . The US is a more gluttonous consumer than the UK, so how many planets should we order?

Unsustainable… not unlike a gross National Product which must get bigger and grosser each year or it all collapses. Gross and uncool because at some point we will be running out of stuff to consume. Collectively it is time to dream something less gross and more sustainable.

Sadly it may not happen.
The human brain has evolved over a very long period of time to keep us alive when faced with an immediate danger. We are hardwired for the threat before us and passively-wired for anticipating future threats. When encountering a snake for example, nearly our entire brain will light up to alert us of the potential danger. When we are told global warming could threaten one-third of the world’s known species with extinction…, only a puny portion of our pre-frontal cortex lights. A small blip… So easy to miss, set aside, to ignore…

So how do we avoid ending up where we are headed?

Well, we could make it a moral issue. The brain is wired to note threats deemed disgusting or immoral. Growing “Round-up ready” genetically modified corn (to be sprayed with herbicide, weeds die, the corn you eat,) grown with sewage sludge (think heavy metals, antibiotics, etc..), then sprayed with the newest lineage of pesticides ( engineered to breakdown the immune system, think bee colony collapse, and immune system degeneration…) I could argue such as disgusting and immoral…

But this week; it’s affordable healthcare that’s got the masses taking arms …
A few months back it was Gay Marriage that got people’s panties in knots.
Our brains have evolved to the point where left un-checked… they will work against us.
Knowing this is the first step.
Permaculture starts with observing the whole system along with the interrelated elements…
That’s what bummed me out.

The interrelated elements are stupidly ignoring their flashing pre-frontal cortex…
But they manage to whoop-ass on the imaginary snakes ( issues deemed moral immediate threats).
Why are we taking this road?
Because we are probably going to end up…where we are headed…

Gardening & Good Food

2009-08-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

“He who works land will have abundant food “- Proverbs 12:11

True that!
This week it not about the greater esoteric wholeness of the psyche as it intersects with the sustainable systems of planet earth… No, this week’s blog is about gardening and good food.

We don’t have a big garden this year as it was planted late, Hawaii kept us away for a chunk of spring, so planting was an afterthought. I threw in some pre-sprouted pony-packs and added horse manure as token plant food. True to form, a great abundance of food is streaming forth from the garden.

There are tomatoes of every shape and size, tender mutant yard-long string beans which are delicious with everything, especially tomatoes. Tonight’s dinner was an amazing mix of rainbow peppers, young zucchini, tomatoes and garlic sooo fresh there is no paper to peel, just dice and sauté. It was all cooked in olive oil, seasoned with Moroccan saffron and finished with a sheep milk Romano. All the vegetables came out of the garden maybe a half hour before dinner. The flavors were wildly vibrant, and I eat a lot of veggies but fresh produce at its peak of ripeness is another level of flavor.

The bad news is that my immediate neighbors and family all have larger and more productive gardens than mine, so I can’t pass my excess produce off to them. The good news is I got some ripe passion fruit from my brother-in-law this week which was divine, before that there were the tubs of strawberries they were downloading. Yum! Just a note; growing is addictive. More than a few of my friends started growing pot as an affordable source of self-medication then graduated onto fresh produce. I guess it’s true, the first one’s free.

Wendell Berry wrote: “One of the most important resources that the garden makes available for use is the gardener’s own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

My favorite 2 year old buddy, Emerson, was here yesterday. He was having a great time feeding the koi, petting frogs, (one finger only, gently,) hunting for cats, (who were hiding) and picking tomatoes and peppers. Emerson threw himself into harvesting with a glee that everyone should have with gathering their food. It was as if we were on an Easter-egg hunt but for tomatoes, he reveled in the gathering and even tasted some, (mixed review) then moved onto the peppers. Em proudly insisted on carrying the bag which had began to drag under the weight. He seemed to like the feel of his body’s strain against the bounty he had gathered. It was a far cry from sitting in a shopping cart and having his mom put food in the basket. I think that Emerson in his 2 year old wisdom would heartily agree not only to the dignity of working in the garden but of the pure joy…

Joyful hope

2009-08-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

A vision without a task is but a dream.
A task without a vision is drudgery,
A vision and a task is the hope of the world.
- Church wall, Sussex, England, circa 1730

This is an early map to a sustainable life.
It’s never about the doing or the dreaming,
The vision or the task,
But the sacred marriage between them.

The world’s longest list of tasks, even when completed will not change one’s life. Not unless the list is a series of steps taken to support an intended vision. The act of holding the vision, and being present with each step, is its own sacred journey and is the joyful hope of the world.

Dreaming, and day-dreaming, as a stand alone activity can be great ways of relaxing, bringing personal renewal and exercising muscles of imagination, and those are all great things. Dreams can hold a non-linear, intelligent depth of mapping, and can offer an almost magic path through seemingly unopenable doors. I’m a big fan of dreaming, but pathological escapist dreaming is its own drug and can degenerate into its own prison. Being the keeper of a vision birthed forth from an ideal is just as tiresome and often more lethal. Too many people have died in the name of religion along with insane amounts of hate and dissonance. A vision birthed from the connectivity of self, meaning really feeling one’s place in the sustainable systems freely gifted, comes forth as a vision with gravity, legs, and a will to grow and flower.

The Sanskrit word Dharma literally translates as that which upholds or supports. In English they squish the definition into the word “law”. I prefer to see it as taking our places supporting and upholding nature’s sustainable systems or laws. Dharma is often translated as one’s righteous duty… to do?

Zen Master Dogan said: “Those who see worldly lives as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions: they have not discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.”

I love that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma. I get that but those of us who do are still in the minority. Mankind as a species does not understand the peace that comes from living within the laws of nature. A lot of pathos could be eliminated with some basic gardening. Being green or sustainable and upholding ones place in the system is considered to be an optional life choice. Absolutely, if one is not attached to the future of the coming generations, it’s optional.

In 1830 Charles Lamb thought himself clever when boasting; “A Garden was the primitive prison , till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.”~ True that Charles. The definition of sin; to miss the mark. In its adolescence humanity sinned itself out of the garden and into possible extinction.
Clever lucky humans.
Heartfelt Dharma is out ticket back…
sustainable-vision interwoven into every task…
The hope of the world.

Life is Compost

2009-07-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

"Life is compost."

"You think that a strange thing to say, but it's true. All my life and all my experience, the events that have befallen, the people I have know, all my memories, dreams, fantasies, everything I have ever read, all of that has been chucked onto the compost heap, where over time it has rotted down to a dark, rich, organic mulch. The process of cellular breakdown makes it unrecognizable. Other people call it the imagination. I think of it as compost heap. Every so often I take an idea, plant it in the compost and wait. It feeds on the black stuff that used to be a life, takes its energy for its own. It germinates. Takes root. Produces shoots. And so on and so forth, until one fine day I have a story or a novel."

"Readers," continued Miss Winter, "are fools. They believe all writing is autobiographical. And so it is, but not in the way they think. The writer's life needs time to rot away before it can be used to nourish work of fiction. It must be allowed to decay. That's why I couldn't have journalists and biographers rummaging around in my past, retrieving bits and pieces of it, preserving it in their words. To write my books I needed my past left in peace, for time to do its work."

From "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield

This wonderful quote was sent to me by my friend Gary Jo. The passage is spoken by a famous author near the end of her life. She explains how she held the compost generated by her personal life as sacred fodder for her creations. There is something so sustainable and integrated with the concept, every little bit of a life heaped and allowed to be digested in the darkness of the subconscious, then recycled as creative manna for nurturing new life.

I’ve written about the need to own one’s story. Life as compost reminds us that there is also a time to let go of the details, the emotional triggers, attachments, and even the story itself to allow the dark to work its magic.

Buddha said that all life is suffering,
I’ve never been able to fully back the idea…
But life is compost… this I understand.

The uncomposted bowel movements or rotting copses of our past are seldom met by life art. In organic production, time and temperature are monitored to chart when the waste is ready for use. In my backyard compost bin and personal life I am far more casual with the monitoring. It’s not uncommon in our household to make two or three trips a day, arms full of peels, rinds, leaves and shells- all into the bin. Everything not eaten is food for the dark, to emerge on a new day as food for our plants and life.

So perhaps great gardening and creativity…
May share the same humble beginnings
In compost.
I’ve got loads of compost!
And you?

Pruning & Cut -backs

2009-07-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

"It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about your gardening. You must love your garden, whether you like it or not." ~WC Sellar &RJ Yeatman... In Personal Permaculture- The garden is you.

Last week I was pruning grapevines in a friend’s vineyard, we went out early in the morning and quit when it began to get warm. It was very lovely, thoughtful, and heartfelt work. Pruning grapes has an interesting balance, between the rules for pruning or preserving the best fruit. It was cathartic and made me consider the constructive side of deconstruction, the plowing, weeding, pruning, or thinning, in relation to the permaculture of self.

Growing grapes involves different levels of pruning from light to hard for different seasons then, every seven years, the grapes should be allowed to grow wild with abandon. The grapevines left on their own reach out forever with long vines and large leaves in every direction, but don’t focus on roots or fruit so such years are not about the harvest. That first hard prune after a long summer of undisciplined revel must come as quite the shock to the plants…perhaps not unlike now on the planet. Life has been remarkably easy for most for quite a long time. At this time on the planet many people are experiencing a hard prune in one or more aspects of their lives. It has come in the form of lost jobs, home, cars, financial security, the loss of health, relationships, and or lives. Although strength and solace can be found in friendships, prayer, silence, work, or gardens, there is nothing which makes great loss comfortable.

The season which follows the year of casual abandon in the vineyard typically offers a spectacular harvest. Human cycles are not as short as that of a grapevine but understanding that there is cycle, however long it may be, can be helpful. With people we have the choice to grow, hunker down or retreat further, making ourselves smaller. I feel that I am too young to either begin arguing for my limitations or recoiling in retreat. So after the initial denial, drama, and grief, I track back through the choices I’ve made, finding the points where, either out of story or my very incarnation, I can own my life as my creation. Ownership is paramount.

Part two takes even more courage- Dreaming one’s self onto new ground.
How does a thirty year old, sixty foot tall, sprawling avocado tree cope with being stumped chest high, painted white and having its water reduced to almost nothing? With the California water restrictions, stumping has been the strategy for managing the older groves. It’s harsh. Sometimes not a leaf is left on the tree. I imagine it feeling like imminent death.
Yet, after a time of stillness, miraculously they begin sending out branches. It takes a few years, but the trees come back with structure and bounty. Avocado trees know they are connected to the earth and sky, they naturally stretch back out and fill the space.

And us?

Repetition---You are here.

2009-07-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last week in Comments, Rosalie asked some great questions. In answer…

• Nature is full of stories. Take the built-in story arch of the seasons, Winter to Spring, Summer to Fall, birth death, a story unfolds with a beginning, middle and end. In tracking story arch you must know the story along with where it ends, the rest is easy.
• Repetition. The same as we find the repetition of story and patterns throughout nature, we’ll also find repetition of theme. Shakespeare said there were only seven plots. That would mean a lot of repetition and plenty of opportunities to wake up. Stories repeat. Pay attention, if life looks familiar, last time you were here…. how was the ending?
• A Story has a shared eco-system. The Bushmen understood the potency of the psychological eco-system intrinsically woven throughout story hence its great value. If story lives in a vacuum of one, it is either a seed waiting to germinate or there is a disconnect. In most cases story will be shared and spread throughout a family, group of friends, or community.
• Nature is constantly adjusting for influx or lack. Similar to the eco-system the story will always seek balance and seek completion. If a story is lacking an element it is constantly in search of the element. So the missing element is as much a part of the story as those which are present. Often more so. That’s why I said that for MJ, the completion of the story would be unjust persecution, to counterbalance the soiling of his soul from the worship and adoration. Stories seek balance.
• You can’t plant onions and expect to grow pumpkins. An example; I work extra hard for a withholding parent or boss so that they will recognize and honor me. Only one thing; the part where I cast the person who is never going to see me, honor or meet me. That would be like hoping to harvest a pumpkin from an onion patch. What grows in your story’s climate and eco-system? Can you get there from here? If not, how can you alter the story?
• Nature is a miracle unfolding, stories also unfold. Waking up within the story comes in phases. I think that Red Riding Hood woke up when the wolf ate her. The woodman cut her out of the Wolf’s belly, so the next time…and there will be a next time, Red might take one look at grandmother’s BIG EYES/TEETH and RUN. Later, she might become aware of being followed in the woods and double back. Eventually she might think twice before going into a woods dressed in red, (really now red?) all loaded up with fresh wafting baked goods.

Then she might decide to visit the woodman’s son. If he pays no attention to her, she might come back with a basket of goodies dressed in her Red Cloak. The difference being, the story would have become conscious.
Then perhaps she will try on a new story…

The End.

2009-07-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
—Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel

If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life. —Siberian Elder

In my quest to imbue a power to relax into a healthy sustainable psyche, community and planet, I keep returning to story, because our story writes our script. I’ve been thinking about stories this week in the context of watching the mass mourning of Michael Jackson’s life and death. I was struck by the repeated comments about his death being untimely. Maybe not, consider this: Michael’s story was of being Peter Pan. The trajectory of the Peter Pan story is to never grow old, yet the body he inhabited was 50. When Michael announced his final tour, wearing large dark glasses shaped like eye sockets of a skull, pale white, and 112 lbs. with a wide toothy grin… it seemed that he had abandon Peter for being the brother of Jack Skellington.

One does not age from either story.
I didn’t know Michael but I do know stories and stories follow rules.

It also struck me that his mother was a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Not being a follower of MJ I didn’t know this. Had I known, I would have seriously doubted the accusations against him for sexual molestation of children. Jehovah’s Witness do not celebrate birthdays or holidays, rather it is believed that salvation comes through suffering. To be persecuted is considered Christ-like and is one’s ticket to heaven. From youth, Michael was forced into a life of being celebrated. Part of him thrived on the attention, but the religion of the mother that he loved judged such adoration as counter productive to the soul’s salvation. Think about it. How then to find redemption? Playing the innocent in such a way that it would lead to persecution… this would fit the story.

The rule is this:
The story owns us until we own the story.
The first story is the one we were born into.
The second story is generated by what happens to us.
The next story is the one we co-create with life.

I long ago noticed that invariably the people with the cool lives had good imaginations, and a love and respect for story.
So…
What is the trajectory of your story?
Where will it lead?
Where will it end?
How will it leave the world for future generations?

If the answers are not stellar… start reading, writing, and practice telling a new story.
*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*

“The story was the bushman’s most sacred possession. These people knew what we do not; that without a story you have not got a nation, or culture, or civilization. Without a story of your own, you haven’t got a life of your own.” —Laurens Van der Post

So why the attitude?

2009-07-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

"Independence"... [is] middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. ~G.B. Shaw

Yes, so why the attitude?

Haven’t we reached the point where, denial of the inter-relatedness of all souls on Planet Earth is adolescently futile? Let’s face it, there is no such thing as a sustainable system of one. As of yesterday there were an estimated 6,845,146,643 people alive on this rotating real-estate, we are all dependant on the orb and each other. That’s a lot of inter-dependence. When I consider how challenging it is some days to get my husband and I in-sync and in agreement it’s overwhelming to ponder…, how can I even begin to know how to interact constructively or inspire awakening and responsible interaction in 6,845,146,641+ others.

On the bright side I know that there are many other people on the planet who are playing with different sides of this same puzzle, and history shows us that this is not a new quandary. For thousands of years humanity has been testing ways to incite group movement and transformation, religions were born of such ponderings. Although we do have more examples of failure than success, at least we know that making everyone, or killing, shamming and coercing the masses to work towards the good of the whole, does not work. Bribery is even looking less promising, so what to do?

I am not one who by choice, wants to be responsible for others. I’d much prefer others be responsible for themselves. It takes most of my focus and attention just being true to the line of me, (in my defense -the line of me is not a static point, it is in part a constant yet always in motion,) maintaining that and directing others freaks me out…What if taking out the trash isn’t their joy in this moment?

I like it best when people tell me what they want to do, then we can marry that to a job which needs doing. I’m very good at channeling those who know what they want and have some passion. I’m less good with the Tigger people; “Tiggers love water! Yikes! Tiggers hate water!” I ‘m even less good with the adolescent “independents,” self contained with no containers, all opinion- no passion, those are not my people.

With the creation of our company we’ve chosen to encourage awakened and sustainable inter-dependence with our company policies. A Bee Organics’ fee schedule is structured to favor those clients who show up awake and responsive. We have designed a modest base-fee, partnered with additional fees for additional time. This will allow our responsible clients to get certified organic affordably, clients with greater time and energy demands because of special attention needs will pay more. We are weaving this philosophy of personal accountability into every aspect of A Bee.

It’s a lot like Farmtown,
Only it’s USDA-Land,
And we are setting up clear and fair fields-of-play.
I have never worked in such an environment…
I’m getting exited.

Are we there yet?

2009-06-26T10:13:00.001-07:00

Are we there yet?

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the Devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

~Joni Mitchell

This song was one of a few which used to run through my head in answer to an inner longing. It helped to shape my intent, my actions, aiding in the creation of my life in a beautiful canyon, with good friends and family, fun and vibrant community. Thanks Joni!

In an earlier Blog there was the mention of containers. From where do they come- not the container store. Containers are built of relationships…to others and the abstract, sometimes even a song.

The building of containers is a process of holding, playing, digesting which is not to be confused with spinning and projecting. One refines and defines while the other only maintains and eventually deconstructs.

We are stardust…

On some days this idea would sound fanciful, on others it seemed so viscerally precise.

Billion year old carbon…

Sounds less shiny than stardust… I don’t know that I can fathom a billion, but at times can relate to my inner plant, and plants are very close to dirt and basic carbon. I’m aware of being an amazing plant evolved into a mobile processing unit. My species have pulled up roots, we are on the move… It makes me feel very privileged, like winning the lottery. I like to share my fortune. They (plants) like that I can look after them with care. We are a close knit family the plants and I. We share our stories.

We are golden…

Not the object-gold as was the daughter in the story of King Midas as that would suck,

but golden.., like sunshine.

Plants like sunshine.

I’ve never really felt golden, I’ve been blue and I think that’s a start…

Caught in the Devil’s bargain…

Sounds fright-full.

And fear makes its own boxes.

Eating the apple-the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

As human beings.

Probably, but in spirit of reoccurring patterns.

I imagine the first time we sampled that apple was when we got mouths.

Lucifer-(Light bringer) AKA the Devil’s, bargain.

Lose the roots gain mobility and conscious reason.

Now unable to live on soil and sunshine.

Thus sentenced to having to continually seek food,

Rootless, and in delight of a crisp cool apple…

That was a good day.

Glorious and terrifying.

Container building is Sudoku of story.

We have got to get ourselves back to the garden…

I’m a free and mobile plant person. I have escaped/was thrown out of the garden fair’n square.

Why would I want back in???

At some point,

I found my answer to that question.

How about you?

First- Define the garden,

Why would one return?

I think that when… we have all answered that question,

A healthy sustainable planet will be sooo natural!

"When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, There is always the garden".~ Minnie Aumonier

Are we there yet?

Valuable fertilizers…

2009-06-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow. ~Author Unknown
…But not necessarily someone else’s shadow. ~Ro

I woke up this morning in a dream. My friend Danny Sugarman (used to manage the Doors, dead in real time,) was in my living room managing a heard of spinning, life sucking drama queens, one of which was my June, my mother-in-law, (also dead, but still fully capable of mischief and mayhem). Eyes still closed, I smiled as Danny ingeniously spun the spinners, sending them off in every direction. I marveled at his art form, it reminded me of the discipline of Aikido in which the force of the blow from an attacker is not stopped but sidestepped, then given encouragement to continue on and away. When the house was clear Danny stepped into my room and awakened me with a kiss…

In real time I woke with the smile and kiss still fresh…
I followed the kiss back into the dream…
Once again, I was impressed by Danny’s mastery of shadow herding.
With Jim Morrison as his mentor, one would expect nothing less than brilliance.
Grateful for the clearing and care I got out of bed enjoying the peace that wafted through like breakfast cinnamon rolls transmuting the stink of the week before.

In last week’s blog I touched on the wonder and divinity to be found in one’s shadow. I forgot to mention the part where shadow unchecked is the dragon locked in one’s closet, scorching relationships, sabotaging finances, turning valued achievements to shit. In gardening terms manure and ash are valuable fertilizers… but the drama generated by a shadow disowned is never pretty.

Ultimately, the undoings of the shadow makes people bitter, convincing them that something or someone other than themselves created their life’s sorrow and disappointment. Like “the butler did it,” it’s never the dumb-ass boss, lover, or other’s doings… most of life’s ugliness is handiwork of one’s own shadow seeking attention.

This week a wounded adult, left abandoned shadow for Ron and I to raise, or drown as we saw fit, much like kittens left in a box in the alley, only more passive-aggressive. What to do when a juvenile-adult parks their shadow at your door step, in a brown paper bag, covers it in gasoline, sets it on fire, rings the doorbell and runs…?

Cold hearted bitch that I am, I watched it burn knowing that like a phoenix that sucker would resurrect from the ashes and fly back home. But the smell had been lingering. Then Danny popped in. Thanks Buddy!

Basic shadow rules;
• Shadow does not die.
• Like the many-headed dragon, no one can raise-up or kill off either their own or another’s shadow.
• Shadow is every bit as much fertilizer for the interior garden as animal manure is for the yard. Much like all fertilizers it needs to be properly aged or it does more harm then good by burning the crops and soil.
• Raising shadow- One starts by taking ownership.

Shadow Farming

2009-06-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The question I pose is… What is the garden you have been defrauding self of all this time in letting others do for you which should have done with your own hands? In relationships and life we all turn our back on some part of our inner ecology and decide not to farm that quadrant. It’s seductive to think that we are winning- by losing out in not taking responsibility for the aspect of self.

A well endowed to-do list is a relatively new addition to my life. The first 50 years have been steeped in family, philosophy, simple pleasures spiced with exploration and play in the depths of dimensionality. It’s been great. Now it’s time to grow up and give back.

So, I’m bloody boring these days, I’ve turned my tracking and mapping skills away from the rich deep water of the psyche and into the shallow end of USDA Organic rules and standards. The rules do not need me to either to make or break them but to hold them firmly in the light of their wholeness. Then to weave that forward into a vibrant container inclusive of the wholeness,.. the wholeness of the Organic producers, their production, and the employees who will monitor and verify it all.

It’s my karma yoga and takes me to the far edge and beyond my comfort zone.

At moments it’s even exciting, but it’s uber-geek paperwork which one can’t even boast about on Facebook; -Ro’s just completed a draft of an Organic Employee Notification. Woo Woo! I’m even okay with being that because for me it is the mirror work of; I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands, in that, I’ve let others handle the business of business. So I’m in the garden of USDA National Organic Program with my spade, and dig a bed, and it is exhilarating, frightening, and there are worse things in life than dying a geek.

Mapped along side the four directions as, North Mind, South Emotion, East Spirit, West Body, We stand in the middle of the circle facing one of those directions, I face East. The directions on either side are like right and left hand with most favoring one or the other. The direction at our back is home to the shadow. Interesting to note Carl Jung said that God lives in our shadows. For some I guess that is further incentive to stick with their winning game, maintain familiar drama and hope death takes them out before whatever it is they are avoiding taps them on the shoulder from behind…

The real bitch of it is, I started in the East… I never lost touch with the divine.

Connectivity of Now

2009-06-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

"We cannot set limits on the versatility of nature; the limitations are in us."
Elsa-Brita Titchenell

So I’m working out my own limitations- around a map to support my nature without limits.

My nature is such that I need really good clean fresh food, exercise, mental and emotional stimulation and support… but there is this other less tangible thing…I need to feel connected to the bigger story. In mapping this, my mind keeps returning to the power of the present or ever expanding NOW.

There is a unifying current running through the now that transcends the fractioning stories of self.
One recent morning I walked into the kitchen where Ron was standing at the sink doing the dishes. Something cued me into the fact he was not in a normal state of mind, so I asked him; what was up? “They are dirty, then they are clean,” he told me holding the dish up to the sunlight in wonder. I had to smile at his enviable dish-bliss. Ron was not feeling bad about the usual suspects; money, someone else’s opinion, or his never ending to-do list, he just allowed himself to see and feel the beauty and even the renewability of dishes being dirty, then being clean. And he slipped quietly, joyfully into the simple bliss of knowing that in this moment life worked.

But Ron’s had some practice. He has built some containers so when the moment expands he can meet it.

Once in the middle of Nordstrom’s with our friend Debra, Ron and I fell into the now. It was a special event where early one morning, women came by appointment to meet with professional make-up artists. A piano was being played live, the women and artists were all into the art of being beautiful. Ron and I stood on the side just arms around each other enjoying the music. The quality of light shifted to a soft shimmer. We could feel the perfection and weave of every movement in the crowded room. There was a vibrant current flowing through it all. Ron and I moved the center of the hive where we found Debra and enfolded her into the wave. The guy working with her slipped in too. As the music played there was a giddy mischievousness matched with pure business flowing like sparkling Champagne moving out from where we were at the center into the store in waves. The energy sustained regenerating and full, we lingered forever... until it began to subside, then off to our day.

At first one might be aware of body, temperature, and breath, then noises like conversations, music, traffic, breeze, then there are subtler energies. The energy of the person next to you and the person beside them, following awareness out in concentric circles like ripples on the pond, never losing track of self always at center. It takes some practice but then again it might just find you. When it does, meet it, greet it,.. see where it takes you.

Permaculture & Me

2009-05-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

A Bee Organic… only if we are

So, my friend and cohort Sarah Costin, along with Ron (my husband) & I are filing the paperwork to become an Accredited Certification Agency (ACA.) Organic Certification is an intricate verification process at the end of which the client can use the word “Organic,” “100% Organic,” or “Made with Organic” on their label as a marketing tool. Products carrying the word Organic have been verified as produced and handled without genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), irradiation of the ingredients, or sewage sludge. It also means no petro-chemical fertilizers or pesticides were used to grow the food. It means that land resources have been preserved and all things monitored and documented. These are things I am bio-ethically bound to support.

For me, the energy and commitment involved to birth an ACA came out of the writing and exploration I’m doing in Personal Permaculture. The intent in founding A Bee is to insure the humane treatment of applicants and employees- both, even while upholding all standards we hold dear. If successful we believe we would be the first of our kind.

How wrong is that? That we would be the first? Very… but the condition of the industry was not enough to get me involved. If I believe that in the near-future we can achieve a sustainable planet via- us as individuals showing up, then the path for me narrows. But not enough to make such a sweeping commitment to the industry… and even if the leap was to be taken…then, how to avoid being more of the same?

I looked to the map permaculture offered:
1) See the system as a whole.
2) Identify the whole elements within the system
3) Observe how the elements operate and interrelate
4) Create a supportive environment for a healthful system by following templates of healthy systems

My intent is that that Organic Certification becomes obsolete.
Obsolete through becoming so dead-common that the table flips, and those who ravage the environment through their Franken-seeds and chemicals be held accountable. But first I must be accountable. Even trickier than accountability, I must merge my passion to my ethics and everyday good-sense business. I’ve done it before in my commitment to motherhood, my marriage to Ron, my deeper friendships, but never to business…can I make the leap?

A lot of the fears of becoming more of the same and a part of the problem were alleviated by sitting with partners and painstakingly reviewing the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) Standards for the duties and responsibilities of Certifiers. The hardest thing to do- was to forget everything we’d seen which was fragmented, did not meet the mark, accurately support the law, or even the clients’ rights, but to see the system as a whole. Then we needed to map, how… out of our wholeness we could show up to meet the wholeness of the industry.
Then…
slowly and methodically
as true to ourselves as we know…
find new ground.

With the dream..
With the NOP…
Within ourselves.

Farmtown Fun

2009-05-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

So after a little over a week on Facebook, I’ve dropped out of Mob Wars and I’m only slightly obsessed with Farmtown, a happy virtual agricultural reality of friendly neighbors, growing crops, and perky pets. In Farmtown players earn virtual money by growing and selling their crops and harvesting for other farmers. With the money earned, more crops can be planted, more land purchased, along with houses, barns, fences, scarecrow, hay bales, flowers to plant by the front doors.

The farmers of Farmtown are very socially interconnected, always lending each other a hand with watering, raking, weeding, and harvest. They also send each other gifts like fruit trees, livestock, and farm pets. There’s a wide range of game strategy making the farms interestingly diverse, one will have all his animals in pens and crops organized in perfect rows, another may have planted alternating crops making fun patterns using the colors and textures of different plants. Some farms choose to mono crop, all grapes in their vineyard, or a coffee plantation. For now, (as the game is still evolving) on my farm the chicks, pigs, sheep, cow happily wander free range through the sunflowers, wheat, and strawberry fields. There’s a tavern (chat room) in Farmtown where farmers can ask questions and get acquainted. The people in the game are from all over the world but mostly, US, Canada and UK. Some like me are really farmers, others garden, but many are suburb dwellers and city folk playing in Farmtown.

In contrast, back at the farm here in De Luz last year’s avocado crop was dismal, personal stash only (not enough to sell) but next year’s looks promising. Overlooking the idealistic side of Farmtown I love the social training. Interwoven into the game are lessons on the value and benefits of being and having good neighbors. Poignant lessons for our time, as sustainability must happen in both individuals and the collective.

Just like in Farmtown, most of us who plant a garden end up giving away an abundance of fresh veggies to friends and neighbors- a big difference from water guzzling green lawns. There are growing numbers of people creating sustainable businesses, providing goods and services from renewable, low carbon footprint, fair trade humane practices. As one business after another puzzles it all out, the do ability of sustainability begins to unfold. How do we join the growing wave of personal bio-ethics partners to support the transition? A hopeful example is of those who have been able to add photovoltaic systems to their homes and are hooked back into the grid operate as micro-generating stations, feeding clean electricity into the system. Everyone benefits

I write this blog as a way of exploring and cultivating inner eco-psychology. I’m fascinated with the gap I still track both within myself and the world at large. Gaps where sustainability gets so easily shelved for convenience, or ego; Gaps as a culture we may no longer be able to afford….

Sustainable Elements of Self

2009-05-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

In the cultivation of plants and livestock there are some known formulas for success. The first being good land. Obviously farming a chunk of rock like the one we owned in Sedona, (while not impossible) has its limitations, as would farming a frozen chunk of land or a sand dune. I used to think that I could add a few amenities and farm anything. Sedona humbled me, teaching that although I could add all kinds of organic materials and improve what little clay/dirt lived on our rock; only god made soil.

Then there is water. There are cultures like the Hopi who have thoughtfully established effective low water farming practices, something mainstream farming is slowly wrapping its mind around. Water conservation and management are essential to sustainable farming practice.

Sunlight is a must, unless perhaps one is farming mushrooms & air is also vital for thriving plants & people.

Which brings us full circle, in an earlier blog the question was poised: What do you need to thrive?

The answer for each of us is unique and evolving but when organized into sustainable systems rather than the more daunting to-do list, a grace can begin to take root.

The body has wants, needs & appetites ranging from exercise to sleep, food to shelter, sex, reproduction & everything in between. Care & feeding of the body alone can seem a daunting chore, then there are the abstracts like tenderness, dance, competition, play.

Family, friends, lover, community can all play a big role in body health. A friend to walk, play work out with, family & friends to prepare and eat healthy food & give warm hugs, community for parks, team sports, gardens, farmers markets can all show up to meet you & support body health. Doing it all by oneself can feel like a never ending to-do list or it could all be reframed as quality time with loved ones and great fun.

Friends, family, work & community should also play a huge role in mental, emotional, and spiritual exploration. If they do not… I’m a big believer in one’s right to choose.

Do not settle for less than true family, friends, career and community hand chosen to inspire, challenge and meet in those places one needs to feel met. Mysteriously, once one has really been met by life…, that resonance can be quantized and returned to life & loved ones.

Patterns & Chaos

2009-05-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

As avocado growers we count on our Northern San Diego County weather, coined, the banana-belt, because of the moderate climate. We grow semi-tropical plants, so when a freak cold snap came through, it killed a lot of our youngest avocado trees and bananas. When the thermometer hit 104 on April 5th, the tender blossoms and buds on the trees were toast. As of last year our water was restricted by 30%, this year it could be 40%, and avocados really love their water. Being adaptable, we found a free municipal source of mulch. It was not perfect as it had bits of trash but hey, it was free including delivery. We got about a dozen, 40’ semi truck loads of mulch and distributed it throughout the grove. The trees loved it.

Some of the mulch was used in the yard around the house. Soon out of the mulch all kinds of cool plants began to sprout. Oddly it wasn’t weeds but all kind of interesting flowers, shrubs and trees. Our landscaping is new and incomplete, so a lot of the plants were put to use. Flowers included sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos, and trees like ginko, fig, mimosa, jacaranda, pomegranate and some promising mystery plants began to grow. Granted I had to move some things and eliminate others but it has been an ongoing source of pleasure & discovery.

There are those times when rhythms and connectivity of nature, juxtapose its chaos. Random disruptions in the patterns fuel the two sided sword of extinction and evolution. This holds true from our internal stories, and patterns, our health, money and relationships all flower forth from the pattern. Just as weather is wonkie and we call that climate change, there is a deeper shift, in each of us…for better or worse…the pattern had been disrupted. This time there is the option to do it differently than by our forefathers and mothers. This time we have the opportunity to wake up within the pattern and have a say in the direction of variation, or not and stay asleep.

I know this can seem nihilistic or extreme but it can be a simple as taking a slow deep breath, centering oneself and making conscious choices and actions throughout the day.
This slowing can,
in and of itself,
make room
for awakening,
new lines of connection,
activating internal authority
and faith in the process.

We accept the waning and waxing of the moon,
the cycles of the seasons and tides,
as a comfort,
but when applying natural cycles,
to self ,
or gross national product,
we always seem surprised.

For better or worse, personal and planetary change is on the loose. And it affects everyone as our stories allow it, but like wonderful plants sprouting in my garden there exists a parallel mystery enfolded within the change. Surfing the wake of deconstruction is as simple as faith, spring follows winter, and high tides, and a full moon always cycle round.

Subterranean Terrorists in Garden & Self

2009-05-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

Spring is so hopeful; everything is in bud & in bloom. But wait, there’s more! Aphids have appeared out of nowhere to engulf some of my favorite plants, gophers are on the move, & the weeds… We’ve come home to the abundance of spring for better and worse.

Out in the grove the weeds are a part of our healthy eco-system. In the winter & early spring they serve as rain erosion control, food/habitat for the first wave of beneficial bugs, then mulch for the land when cut. If I let the aphids go untreated, they’ll annihilate my first wave of roses & hibiscus, but soon ladybugs, lacewings & praying mantis appear and set up house as they have plenty of food & no poisons. After that it’s all good.

Then there are gophers, they are pure evil.
This year we had a five year old apple tree topple over, no roots thanks to the subterranean terrorists. Our youngest cat has caught two that we know of, we were so proud…, but if I get very still I think I can hear their 5,000 cousins out there chomping.

Trapping gophers is slow and takes daily dedication. Pumping gas in and blowing them up, while it has Caddy-shack appeal, I’m told it only gives them a headache & it’s not compliant with the Organic Program. I don’t poison them because the hawks, cougar, bob cat, and coyote all hunt the land, and I am leery of secondary poisoning.

Our land came with many many snakes, but all of them were Rattlesnakes as it was the dumping ground for all of the capture and release rattlers in the canyon. We enrolled our dog in snake aversion training, and killed the ones which were in & around the house & construction sites. The grove workers continued to kill them up in the grove.
Fast forward and our gophers are unchecked and doing a lot of damage.

Other snakes are beginning to show up. Lite rainfall means light weeds, less gopher food. I have faith that with work & time balance will come. Just not soon enough to save the apple tree, & entire beds of mixed perennials.

It has been my experience that there is a lot of valuable & indispensable content of self; entombed, hiding, or skulking in the subterranean shadows my unconscious.

Left unchecked and in the dark, it is common to feel victimized by life. Not recognizing it’s a disassociated aspect of self, who is in fact conducting the train of events. What aspect of self undermines our relationships, finances, and careers?

Often, pop psychology & religion
will recommend we locate & repress or eradicate
undesirable bits of self.
The question to ask oneself
of all aspects of self is…
What is its function?
Rattlesnakes do help keep rodent populations under control & gophers aerate soil…
Our land has room for both
From a healthy sustainable standpoint,
What does that look like?
And for self…
Same question.

Comments Please…

2009-04-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve gotten feedback that many of you reading the Personal Permaculture Blog have tried unsuccessfully to post comments. I don’t know what that is about, I have not had the opportunity to track down if there is a glitch or if Google just made it more difficult than it should be. I do want comments as they will help me in the process of honing the content of the site and more directly, let me know if I am making progress.

At the moment I'm living in a jungle on the edge of an island in the middle of the pacific and feeling so very connected & utterly disconnected. From this point I have absolutely nothing to say...Mahalo?

This is one of those times where dialog would be greatly help. I'll be home soon and my brain will find its reset button, and I'm sure it will be all the better for the down time. In the meanwhile the Pema/Prima, culture concept can steep in my belly.

I’ve now got my email address under personal info, but just to make it easy;
gardeners.organic@gmail.com

If inspired to comment, try the blog option and if it doesn’t work, please feel free to email me directly. I’ll work to address the comments in future blogs. Thanks everyone for your on-going support.

Ownership of the Kingdom of Self

2009-04-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Permaculture of land is about relationship of elements. Managing recourses like rain run-off into cisterns for later use as irrigation. Or, good bugs which eat other bad bugs which eat my crop. So I may create a pond or cistern and or choose to manage the food and habitat which support the beneficial bug.

Permaculture of self and life is about relationship, relationship of the elements both within and without. At some point I’ll have to evolve Personal Permaculture into Primaculture, the first culture of self. Healthy Primaculture, healthy self, healthy planet, but too soon for that. So back to stories we go.

Ownership of the kingdom of self begins with stewardship of stories. I keep returning to stories because stories are the fabric which bind us together or tears us apart. A well cherished story can launch us beyond the world into which we were born or serve to bind us to a life unlived. They are potent little buggers which hide in plane sight.

A wise friend and guide had an interesting psycho-story equation;

Take any persons prevailing story,
Stand it next to the stark reality of their lives,
The space between those two…
=
Their neurosis and general mental wackiness.

I have used this map personally. Finding too much sky visible between the story I was telling myself and the base reality. The trick is, I need a story big enough to grow into, but not so big that I get lost or bullshity in the process.

I have a friend who was the first to operate a western style business inside of Poland at the time of the fall of communism. The second biggest obstacle to overcome, besides corruption/bribery, were the stories. Whereas America has its classic rags to riches stories; communism’s version told of the person who wanted to do better, be more, or earn more.., it ends badly, they allll end badly. Very badly every time, they dared to want more and bad bad things happened. As a business person, my friend needed to inspire excellents and optimum production, to do so he needed to navigate around giant monolithic obstacles in the form of stories. Stories designed to maintain the party line.

Most of us have such internal Stonehenge built of stories we consider reality.

In navigating my story I keep a close eye on what stories I am telling myself about others. If I think that someone had done-me-wrong, I have to consider what I get out of telling the story. From a victim position on the wheel, its rather tuff to become master of my kingdom of self, let alone a conscious creator. I have a good friend who has a narcissist for an Ex. She always knows what he is up to by what he tells her, she is thinking. Projection, it’s dead common and a worthy beginner map. Just like in dreams, one way to track them is to see all characters’ and elements of the dream as a part of self. Only for a time, then the rules reverse.

Perception & Wholeness

2009-03-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

I was awake last night thinking about awakening others. Not to my insomniac state, as that gets old but activating others to be wired into the web of life. To do so would allow everything else I’d like to download to go smoothly and seamlessly. Like the concept of personal wholeness.

Being in ones head, and thinking along the lines of thought which society has favored over the millennia, only leads to more of the same. On the other hand through meditation, joy, yoga, knitting, crocheting, weaving, disruption of the status quo, sex (when one can surf the opening,) enthiogenic plants, personal disciplines like Aikido and so forth, inroads are made into Right-brained dimensional perception. From the right-brain, one can become aware of intrinsic energy lines which run through everything. Everything including each of us. When one learns to navigate the energy which flows along lines an intelligents, independent of the linear, begins to unfold. The energetic side of the brain has an order, integrity, and an authority, but it is not derived though logic but connectivity.

What if the reason people do not experience their wholeness, is that they have been trained away from using the part of their brain which was designed to do so? I’ll attach a video link to A stroke of Insight, you may have seen it, where a brain scientist, Jill Bolte, maps her own brain and its potential to experience the energetic connectivity of life while suffering a massive stroke. One of the reasons she fought so hart to make her way back from the stroke was to let everyone know that ecstatic oneness was there for everyone.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

When one is linked to the web of life, the knowing that comes with it, follows original pattern. Original pattern is the very nature of a situation or thing. It allows for thinking to move from idealized to integrated.

When I am connected, there is an energy flowing through my body, sometimes it’s low and steady and purrs like a cat. At other times its huge, and roars. It takes me having containers and body stamina to sustain the roar and even then I am grateful when it settles back in to the purr.
The moment I allow for thought or deed to stray, I’m outside of the lines. The energy shuts down. I’m naked in the cold with only my thoughts and ideas of what and how I should proceed.
Perhaps that why people fill every moment of their lives with chatter, music, TV, work, drama, puzzles, so as not to fall through the crack between worlds. When instead there could be practice disciplines to strengthen the inner containers to hold the energetic.

The two sides of the brain and the two worlds are one, energetic and linear, two sides of the same coin. They connect to the map to sustainable integrated self and planet in the most sublime way…
But that’s another blog.

Map to the map…or was it a vessel?

2009-03-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

In reading this blog, one is looking at work-product. In another time I would develop the maps under cover of hermitage. Honing, testing, tweaking, then massive editing, (apologies for all typos) before anyone saw the map. The thing is, I believe that there is something to be learned in observing the process. I’ve even had a couple of people ask me how I set about mapping.

Without breaking down the process used to map (another day or blog), for those who follow along, I would hope that something can be gained, in observing the muddling through. First, I should explain that I can feel the connections. They are alive and intact both with in me and throughout the planet. What has to be mapped is how to bring others to the awareness of what already is. But if that were easy we’d be there, and we are not. Or so I’ve been told.

I’ve got a hunch that I’m losing everyone by telling them that in Personal Permaculture, rule number one is; view self and life as whole. If by chance, your personal wholeness is obvious, please write in the comment box, describe how wholeness configures in you. If wholeness in a given that would save a lot of time and energy. And we could use that as starting point.

Sadly I think that I could get more attention if I started with; “Every soul shatters into 16 pieces upon birth, and the point of life is like a big scavenger hunt, we need to locate the fractured 16. Then offer a ceremony to reconnect the part back into wholeness. Explain that once connected all glories and riches befitting an whole being would be yours, love, health, money, spirit, fame, I’d have to come up with 16 highly desirable words. With that as my map I would have a best seller. I could write it too, but I won’t.

Just for the record, no mater how well executed the map of the 16 fragments would be from the top (mind, idealized) down. The planet, our bodies, and our weary souls can’t take much more of that tired old map. Besides it’s been done and the planet had not been healed, and more importantly, it would not be my joy. This is. And so; Personal Permacuture begins in wholeness, whole planet, whole eco-systems. Without and within. No exceptions.

Now I have my skeptics. My Mother for starters. She can not imagine how I’m going to map Y’all into shape let alone wholeness and a sustainable oriented mind-set. I think, she thinks, Y’all are a mess and maybe even slightly dim. Or perhaps it’s me she thinks a starry-eyed granola-cruncher.

Me; As I write this it dawns on me that it may be less of a mapping project (masculine) than about container-building (feminine). Yes, that feels like the plan…

From the Botom of the Well

2009-03-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

When we lived in Sedona AZ, I’d take people out to Montezuma’s Well. The place felt sacred, but energetically dark. There were ruins at the ridge of the well which was more of a giant sink-hole. The ground was harsh, volcanic chunks, and rather desolate. One could hike down to the bottom of the sink-hole, where human remains that had been ceremonially buried in the ruins. Nothing lived in the large dark pool but turtles.

Looking up through the volcanic rock walls to the sky, the water dark and reflective would open doors within me. Not all of them pleasant. Stagnant arid air, whooshing forth with the opening, then raw silence. What had been released, I could not say.
But always unnerving.

Then the hike out, body feeling dense and drained. We’d follow the path up and then around the corner and dropping down the backside of the rim to a lovely canyon with a chatty stream. There the light glistened, dancing merrily through large sycamore trees. The place was sweet. It felt somehow kissed by wonder. There where water flowed forth from the rock wall of well, it always seemed to wash away the feeling of having been touched by darkness, even if the darkness may have been a reflection. The creak side of the well transmuted,...somewhere in the play of light and shadow healing happened.

The water which flowed forth from the side of the wall was harnessed into an irrigation ditch. The ditch was believed to be over a thousand years old and was still in use to irrigate land. In the first 50’ of the ditch lived a little fresh water shrimp-like thing. The critter was unique to that spot, the first 50’ of ditch was the critters universe as it didn’t live anyplace else.

Ecosystems live and evolve. They live in the first 50’ of an irrigation ditch and they live in us.

Even if you do not own a piece of land, have never picked up a shovel, and never intend to pick up a shovel you are in relationship with self, nature, the physical word, and the unseen worlds. You are the caretaker. We the people have are mini-gods we develop and cultivate our own ecosystems. How does your garden grow?

Beyond the many critters that live in and on you, there are the stories you keep. Stories are like food, some nurture while others steal food from your soul or others. It is out of our stories that we dream, from the stories that we create.

Permaculture asks us to observe how the elements behave and interrelate…

Are the recurring themes and stories in your life grounded and integrated? Do they support your wholeness? How does one identify ones stories?
Better yet, how can one upgrade?

Like my garden in springtime, it may be time to pull some weeds in the form of week-ass stories. It’s okay if the shelves have to sit barren for a while. Sitting in the vacuum of empty is harder than it sounds. But radically productive in a non-doing sort of way.

More Basic, More Slowly, More Depth

2009-03-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

I once went out hiking with a nature guild. He led on a walk up a stream bed at the foothills of the Angelinos Crest, all the while gathering edibles, and educating us on other uses for the plants. At the end of the walk we cooked some of the gathered food. It was a tasty but meager snack.

Had we hiked outside of the stream bed, gathering food would have been even more labor intensive. The cultivation of food was a prerequisite for building communities. When humans stepped in, cleared land, and planted a lot of one food in one spot, every bug and beast that liked that food came to dine. And the struggle began…

When science appeared, with its shinny promises of no bugs, no weeds, many felt that salvation had come at last.

Once it became clear that –that dog don’t hunt. (Putting toxic chemicals on our land, in our food and water,) someone thought to ask themselves;
WWND- What would nature do?
Why, nature has sustainable systems.
How do we get ourselves one of those?
At which point, Bill Mollison & David Holmgren broke it down into rules to design permanent agricultural which would mimic nature in establishing relationships found in natural ecologies.

Permaculture is a map to sustainable.
Sustainability is important because…
We (closing in on 7 billion of us,) sit upon, one round planet hurling through the vacuum of space, made up of diverse eco-systems within eco-systems. Eco-systems which humanity has altered with little to no regard for the space they were holding. And it has just become apparent to some, that our small isolated planet is not getting any bigger and we either become sustainable or render ourselves extinct.

Here is where the map will take a leap. Not to worry as I will circle back in another bolg.
Remember the song from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young:
“We have got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Well perhaps they were profits of the times.
We do have to get ourselves back to the garden.
The first move is into self.
How does one get reconnected to the WEB of Life?
Because unless one feels the direction and pulse of the web of life, everything created is from good intentions and an ideals. There was a time when that was enough. That time has passed.

Connecting into the web is doable, I’m in, and I’m not here alone. Yes, my mind will jump in, spin a good story and act outside of the integrity of my Personal Permaculutre. But when I can stay awake and ask the right question, then continue to stay awake long enough to support the answer into action, the result is something which is real. It is integrated with the web, life, the planet and me.

Like in the story the Secret Garden, nature is magic and has healing powers.
There are a lot of things in need of healing.
Nature lives inside of each of us. Granola not required.

Personal Permaculture-It may not work.

2009-03-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

I sent out a link to this site to my friends and asked for feedback. And I got some, very cool.
People said nice things about the site and content. Thank You. And good reflection was offered. Even better.

Christopher said; “You race through it all, and only people who already are at your level would get it and agree.” He wanted me to take my time. True. But for the moment, I’m just laying the framework and pissing in the corners. From there I can revisit it all again… and again.

Mary warned; I would be careful of your use of the word polarity and stated; “I have been working with a man named Barry Johnson who has mapped out polarities in a very different way, as an infinity loop that is self supporting and self sustaining.”

I thanked her as it was a good point. I was going to edit it out but it seemed more interesting to expand the dialog. While I am not familiar with the work of Berry Johnson, I did spend about 10 years exploring and writing about the Divine Feminine. The point for me was to reestablish polarity as a way to heal ourselves, and use the energy generated from the poles to create from a new paradigm and heal the planet. Perhaps Berry feels the same way.

I define polarity for myself from how it configures within my body.
Duality/Polarity as; This or That, Or, one of the two must go or die.
Polarity as; This & That, this one has an ecstatic, creative charge. Yhee Ha!

They are very different…like night & day. Hence, opposite polarities of the word polarity.

The third comment came from Mike, who argued; “Isn't Personal Permaculture an oxymoron? Since Permaculture is all about symbiotic relationships and biodiversity, and personal is of or concerning a certain person?” Hmmm, not for me it’s not. It’s diverse & symbiotic in here. Personal; as a whole element within the larger Permaculture, & Personal; containing a permaculture within. From the food the person eats, to the archetypes who argue what to eat, there are inescapable symbiotic relationships at play.

Guess what? This is an exercise. I am taking an established structure of Premaculture, a term used in sustainable agriculture and retro-engineering it as a structure to explore a systems based model for consciousness. It may not work.

I’m attached to the dialogue about the systems/symbiotic, ego/eco-structures not a perfect meld with the permaculture format, but I’ll take it as far as it goes. So far I’m liking it.

Duality was born of the idealized.
It came from the top down.
There was God, all good.
And that which was not God.
Duality.
Permaculture comes from the ground up.
It works in nature, can it work in us?

Personal Permaculture Transcends Duality

2009-03-06T18:29:00.000-08:00

A permaculture model transcends duality. This is a good thing. Duality is for training, it’s perfect for children, yes/no, right/wrong, good/evil, using polarities is the simple answer for young minds. Life on the other hand is dimensional, it can not be encompassed or artfully created from the limits of duality mentality.

As the mind develops it can learn to hold ambiguity, it can perceive gradations of grey, and understand value based on the relationship of elements within a specific context. Fire is no longer no-no-bad but rather an element or tool to be partnered with and respected.

Making the shift from a duality framework over to a systems approach is self empowering and it makes life more interesting. Under duality rule, there is no real choice. The only question becomes does one compile or rebel against the pre-described set of values. Follow the rule of church, parent, authority or not?

There was a time when I thought that the ongoing drama of my life was helping me to grow and was making me a better person. Later I became aware that the dramas were only allowing me to react to my life and keep me feeling productive while I stayed in the same place. I began to wonder if it were possible to grow through grace or if grace meant further stagnation. It took me a while, as the drama had its ways of trying to convince me, that it was my path to salvation. The drama was lying of course.

Personal Permaculture is an archetypal explanation of the answer to my question. Permanente, sustainable agriculture finds ways to arrange and support elements to create a culture in which growth happens. Our grove has self supporting systems which allow for healthy fruit production even when we are not home. One example would be mulch. We applied a thick mulch to the grove, which is still young. The mulch helps to limit erosion and weeds, it maintains moisture, and is habitat for some of our predator bugs. Predators in this case are the good guys. They eat the bad bugs which would damage the fruit.

Growth is a natural state of being. Life promotes it. But healthy growth takes a supportive environment. How as individuals can we manage the elements like food, housing, work, the needs of the body, to create a safe growth enhancing environment? Then, how do we include family, community, planet? The map which works for sustainable plant and animal systems can be creatively modified and apply to us.

What do you need to thrive?

The Foundational-Four Elements of Self

2009-03-04T17:41:00.001-08:00

Before we can focus more on resource management it will first be necessary to have a map for identifying the elements or resources. When looking at a plot of land there are the foundational four, Earth, Air, Fire (sun), Water, elements to consider. When considering self I can start with the very same foundational four.

Earth- Body
Air- Mind
Water- Soul
Fire- Creative Expression

Every grower knows the importance of feeding the soil as many natural amenities as one can find or afford. Bodies are pretty much the same. It is difficult to become obese eating whole natural foods. Beyond food the body and the soil have further needs and desires. The trick is to own your body. Create a comprehensive plan and implement it. Include things like, chemical-free, unprocessed foods, stretching, exercise, tactile nourishment, and all things which help the body thrive.

Air and mental can seem a bit abstract. In my grove most of the year the soft ocean breeze caresses the land from the West creating what is called the banana-belt, a sub-tropical oasis with the ability to actually grow bananas. Then there are the Santa Anna Winds. Sometimes they are gentle and bring warm winter days, sometimes they are relentless strong and dry; dropping fruit, shredding leaves and spreading fire. In the management of mental resources, there needs to be an ongoing challenge of learning new things, partnered with a format for teaching and giving back. Maybe not as much for the young as the emphasis there is on the learning; but mentoring, tutoring, educating, completes the cycle and closes the circle. That, and ask questions. The answers might surprise you.

On our land, all of the surrounding hillsides drain to one spot, then the land drops steeply away. Some fabulous being before us, had the land shaped so that the water would have a chance to pool and fill a good sized pond, before tumbling happily down the canyon and into the lake below. It is divine and it feeds my soul. Some years, because of drought the pond does not fill. Then I’m on my own when it comes to feeding my soul. It would take more than a blog to describe the wonder I’ve found in the process. Make friends with your soul. Let it teach you how it is filled and how it can fill. Much like the spring which magically springs forth to fill my pond, create the container and soul will show up. Really…it will.

Each morning the sun rises and sets. It warms the earth and creates photosynthesis in the plants making the leaves on the trees and grass green. I do not want to hear (in a whining voice) “But I’m just not creative.” The fire to create is in each of us. We use it to create children, homes, gardens, music, art, communities, and countries. Life is an ongoing creation in which we have no choice but to participate. Own your creations, then dream more.

Self & Resource Development

2009-03-03T07:57:00.001-08:00

A large element of Permaculture is resource management. Collecting rain in cisterns, supporting or improving biological diversity, planting a cover crop to increase soil texture, fertility, and protect land from soil erosion, are examples of recourse management.

With Personal permaculture the primary resource to be managed would be each of us. The primary managers would be us as individuals, taking responsibility for ourselves; something that from an ecological point of view as a culture we are failing, so it must fall to the individual.

My greatest passion is in the cultivation of the interior realms. When One wakes up within life- to feel the connectivity of all things… one lives life in an integrated fashion. The problem being the masses are not awake and not integrated, so their psyches and the environment suffer.

Because the Environment’s clock is ticking, I’ll rant briefly before moving onto the interior realms.

Let’s start with lawns. Lawns are a strange American religious icon. So much so that in many subdivisions there are rules which dictate every home has a lawn. In San Diego County California where we live, 60% of the water goes for lawns. For those who don’t know the region, the climate is semi-arid so the water is begged, borrowed and stolen to support a mass addiction to lawns.
But wait, there’s more…

Last year access to agricultural water for our grove in Fallbrook was reduced by 30%. No water restrictions were placed on lawns. Thousands of trees in our county were cut down, stumped, or let to struggle without adequate water, something which will weaken the trees immune systems and increase disease. Crop production plummeted, while lawns flourished.

Weird weather from climate change means disruption in food production. Bee Colony Collapse (virus enhanced because the new pesticides deplete the immune system,) is reducing food production. Choosing lawns over agriculture and forcing growers to cut down producing trees is frightening. More than 100 trees were cut down in our small grove alone. This year our water will be reduced by 40%...

Your Personal Permaculture advice is Food First. Plant some soon. Grow it organically. Eat it.

Tuck a tomato plant in-between the rose bushes, basil between the society garlic, which (by the way) those little purple flowers can really add flavor and beauty to a salad. Green onions and chives can grow most anywhere, and you may already have rosemary growing in the yard. If you have an unsightly fence plant beans, berries, passion fruit. Better yet, get a book on landscaping with food along with reducing or eliminating the size of your lawn.

Oh, and stop using chemicals on the lawn and flowers. They stress the environment and poison pets and food.

Permaculture Basics as Applied to Plants

2009-02-27T14:05:00.001-08:00

Permaculture Basics

Sustainability- Nature is a vast sustainable system that has the ability to self-renew thus it continues on indefinitely. Ecosystems regenerate season after season, year after year creating food and habitat without any help from us. Sustainable agricultural practices seek to emulate the patterns in nature through companion planting, crop rotation, the use of animals for manure as well as other duties like sheep and goats for weeds or ducks and geese for snail patrol. Maintaining wildlife habitat can be very helpful in keeping the destructive pest populations down and the land productive.

Permaculture; permanent agriculture or permanent culture; Cultivated Ecology

Permaculture and sustainability go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive. Permaculture is a site-specific approach to agricultural. Observation of the key elements native to the location are used to create systems of healthy ecology. The concept was defined and developed in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, along with one of his students, David Holmgren. he concept of permaculture continues to grow and now has moved beyond the fields and into financial, community and personal disciplines.

Basic steps to creating permacuture;

1) See the system as a whole.

2) The elements or parts are always in connection. Observe how they relate.

3) Build a healthy system based on ideas learned from time tested working systems found in nature.

4) The connections and synergy created by the parts is the key to understanding healthy sustainable systems.

The creation of a true permacultue is a formidable undertaking, and there are the naysayers who think it can’t be done. Few things even in nature are permanent so yes the concept is somewhat idealized, and yet when a healthy balanced system is in place it can be self sustaining, and so a semi-permanent culture can be established.

So how do we apply this to self?

Beginnings...

2009-02-26T16:50:00.000-08:00

Traditionally used in reference to Permanent Agriculture, I became interested in the permaculture model as a way of integrating my lifetime of work with mystic non-linear realms with my life as a farmer, partner in green construction, and work in the Organic Certification Industry. Personal Permaculute was a happy solution to merging these diverse bodies of knowledge and understanding.

The rules for creating sustainable Permaculture can be applied as easily to a person as a plant, after all what are we if not advanced interactive bio-logical units? Our bodies are of the earth, fed by her plants and animals.., water bubbling, streaming, raining, forth.., air still, blowing, abundant breath, temperatures within the limited realms which we can thrive and survive, mobile plant units...with a mind capable of logical thinking...a heart capable of love...a spirit able to perceive the Divine...and creativity to birth forth our dreams.
A brilliant creation with the ability to create! Sweet.

Permaculture begins with wholeness. Wholeness of self, a plot of land, family, community, or the planet. Wholeness is made up of diverse elements (or parts). The Elements have a wholeness unique to themselves but not all parts operate under the same rules or support the same fields of play. Learning to identify and observe the elements, in self or a field of crop is essential to creating permaculture. With a strong understanding of the supporting elements, the field of life can be sculpted into a a dynamic sustainable system.

Keeping in mind the four foundational elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water and the fifth element, the quintessence... or that which animates them all. All things of body, mind, spirit, family, community and planet are relevant elements to feng shui-ing personal permaculture. Which means there is so much fun and potential to be found in exploring, sharing, and mapping all things.