Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Day 10 - Permaculture III

Life's a garden, dig it.

This unit on permaculture is making me itch to design systems for people to live more in harmony with their surroundings. Coming from a city girl who is on her way to live in NYC when this program completes, you would think that's no easy task. We watched the rest of the Global Gardiner movie with Bill Mollison tonight. In this movie he highlights how permaculture design can impact different climates and landforms. Tonight we watched the section on designing functional green spaces in NYC. How appropriate!

I keep thinking about the unused rainforest land my mom owns out in Washington State.. it would be so amazing to use the knowledge I'm gaining here to build a functional, sustainable living space there. It's always been a dream of mine to build something out there, but never did I feel like I could actually do it.

Give someone the tools and they will find their own confidence.

Some great lines from today, 'get comfortable with your ignorance' and 'learning is remembering what you are interested in.' I am definitely interested.

6 comments:

  1. dez, your blog is absolutely fascinating! i'm thinking about planting a silly little herb garden in my backyard when i move and i'm totally in awe of what you're doing.

    i didn't know there was rain forest in washington state, but it makes sense - they do have rain, and they do have forests.

    funny. when the world ends you and lars are going to be the only people left who don't have to eat one another.

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  2. OK, somehow I just lost that comment I posted in response to yours. Argh!

    Fenster, I heard you bought a house, I'm so excited for you! Congratulations. I hope that you do plant that herb garden, I'm sure you could even get some veggies going out there. I'll help you design it if you want. (^.-)

    Washington has some really beautiful rainforest and I'm very excited about the prospect of building my dream home out there. The land is a cliff overlooking Puget Sound with an amazing view of Mt. Reineer. It is tough land to build on because it is so remote, but I will keep working on the ideas.

    Self sufficiency! It's not just for Ted Nugent any more.

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  3. Kick ass.

    Is "The Earth Care Manual" on the reading?

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  4. Thanks for your interest!

    I have not had the opportunity to check out "The Earth Care Manual" yet, but we have an extensive library and reading list that I'm just scratching the surface of at this point. We are working in a tropical climate, however, we did speak just today about creating temperate, edible forest gardens. The ideas presented in our agroforestry lecture today are very similar to the applications I've seen in some of the British models of cool weather permaculture farming. I can't remember the name of the British fellow who was featured in the Mollison film yesterday.. that was our introduction to the seven-layer-forest idea.

    I'd love to talk to you more about it. I'll try to check out "The Earth Care Manual" and remember that gentleman's name.

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  5. Oh I love it. I love the interest and how thought provoking all this is. It all sounds so fascinating. Keep on learning love. I sent out for the Natural Gourtmet catalog . . . ha ha, we'll see where that takes me.

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  6. AWESOME.

    I would totally be insanely jealous if you went to the Natural Gourmet, Ximena. You are always welcome to stay with us in our currently imaginary in the near future real apartment in NYC. <3

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