April 22, 2009 • 10:44 pm 0
Introducing Eco Design + Living! Please visit www.ecodesignandliving.com for the metamorphysis of this blog. Posts here will continue to dwindle as I’m narrowing the focus on where I want to direct my energy. This new website will be an information resource for living lighter on the planet in the Northwest Florida region and beyond.
Live well.
Filed under: Sustainability
February 1, 2009 • 8:10 am 5
…that’s what I’ve been calling it, that thing a lot of us seem to be experiencing as we watch our assets shrink, our liabilities increase, and our networks deteriorate. At times, it can seem a sad state of affairs, at others, it feels like we knew all along that the ever increasing, hyper-complexity of our lives could not continue. It was a distorted game of musical chairs, and many secretly sighed a sigh of relief when it started to unravel. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Architecture, Environment, Peak Oil, Relocalization, South Walton, Sustainability, permaculture , New Urbanism
January 27, 2009 • 3:12 pm 0
The data now backs up the belief I’ve long held about those individuals at the lower end of the affluent and higher education spectrum and their impact on the planet. It doesn’t take a graduate degree in systems design to understand that more education and more wealth OFTEN equate to more spending and a larger ecological footprint. I know and work with many highly educated and wealthy individuals that express their status through vacations, multiple cars, large houses, boats, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Ecology, Economics, Environment, Peak Oil, Relocalization, Sustainability, Uncategorized
January 20, 2009 • 9:53 am 0
I receive a tremendous amount of “call to action” e-mails from orgaizations I belong to, most of which I skim through for juicey tidbits. Sometimes I may forward them to another friend, but mostly, I like to live and let live. I have a friend that e-mails me updates on local environmental news as it’s unfolding. He/she is a dear, but it doesn’t take too many of these e-mails and I feel overwhelmed and/or helpless. Living in Florida with a depressed economy, the e-mails are mounting, as one program after another is being slashed. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Ecology, Economics, Environment, Peak Oil, Recycling, Relocalization, Sustainability, permaculture
January 15, 2009 • 11:46 pm 1
I’m finally getting around to doing the foraging that I talked so bravely about at the beginnings of 2008. I dragged the significant other along for company and we headed over to the Pt. Washington State Forest just a short walk from out house. I took note the other day of two guys getting out of a pick-up truck, dressed in camouflage, along side the road. I surmised it’s still hunting season and best to don my bright orange bicycling jacket. I carried a backpack with water, my Leatherman, clippers, gloves, plastic bags and my plant identification books. The Sig. brought his camera and off we went to forage. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: camping & hiking, food, foraging, garden, permaculture
• 5:38 pm 1
oh, there’s just something righteous about harvesting your own food for lunch. The mini-hoop house is working out splendidly. The only exception is that the collards are stressed, though, the peppers are loving it. Today I harvested a head of buttercrunch lettuce, three radishes, a pepper and a salad spinner full of collards. I also started a flat of cress and a flat of rocket, which I’m intentionally calling ‘rocket’ instead of arugula. Maybe ‘rocket’ will become the new must-have salad green. I know, that’s already a reality, it just goes by the name of arugula.
Rocket is in the mustard, cabbage, or Cruciferous family. When learning about plant families, they are easier to remember when you can start to identify patterns of the different families. As example, flowers of cruciferous plants have 4 petal flowers, resembling a cross and the seed pods always form in a radial pattern around the stalk. Anyhow, if you grow you’re own rocket or other greens from the mustard family, let them go to seed and check out the flowers and seed pods.
Filed under: food, garden, permaculture
• 5:32 pm 0
The Hoop House
We’re ready for cool weather now, except we’re one week into January and it’s not here yet. My goal is to get a jump start on some seedlings. I am also experimenting with over-wintering a couple of heirloom Red Marconi pepper plants. The peppers are in the cages, in the bed just past the collards.
Filed under: food, garden, permaculture
May 28, 2008 • 9:20 pm 1
I’ve been lurking around my own blog lately, wondering what happened? We were so close. Then school came between us and things were never the same.
Truth be told, I think I have my blog to thank for providing a forum from which my true path was revealed.
While writing on (is it “in” or “on”?) a blog may encompass relevant course work, it is still another thing “to do” that takes away from the doing of other things. When school work inundated my life, I thought I could keep it cohesive. Then the prospect of shifting my career crept onto the scene, the garden expanded, community projects developed and something had to go. It wasn’t going to be my sleep.
The blog will stay for now and I may even pick it up on occasion. For the curious, I’ll be spending some of my free time contributing to or maintaining these other sites:
Filed under: Uncategorized
November 4, 2007 • 6:36 pm 7
Contrary to popular belief, I have not abandoned my blog. I’ve simply found that more of my time these days is spent reading, writing papers and working on community and personal projects. That doesn’t mean I don’t have material to blog about, I most certainly do. For instance, the youngin’ is “individuating”, as my dear friend Cynthia likes to say. That means my only child has moved out of the house, somewhat prematurely. Another for instance, the mead has been racked and was a big hit at a couple gatherings. One more, in my move toward a more abundant life, we now have a papaya, a granny smith, red banana and a fig tree planted in the yard. Albeit, a bit crowded in the space I planted, though they are in and seem happy for the moment. Well, they aren’t ALL planted but that’s on my list of things to do today. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Ecology, Economics, Environment, Mead, Sustainability, permaculture
August 15, 2007 • 9:40 am 4
The Labyrinth at Rose Creek
I thought I would be posting sooner than now, though “re-entry” into reality has left me a little shell shocked and bewildered. I was away for two weeks at a permaculture design course outside Ashville, N.C., but it wasn’t the run of the mill pc course. For starters, we were spoiled with three ‘organilocal’ squares a day, which were shared over in depth conversations of conflict resolution, tantra, permaculture playground design for burning man and the like. This was preceded and or followed by various earth based rituals with lots of singing, sharing and getting in touch with your inner self (looking like a fool).
Laying out contours w/ an A-frame and a quick permaculture design on 1/8 acre
Not to be taken lightly, this was an intensive course to say the least. Interwoven with the required course material, including a design project and participation in a no-talent show, we were sporadically exposed to surprise actions in which we were enticed to procure a collective intelligent response. As example, a spontaneous dance party broke out between lectures and was abruptly halted when we (the dancers) were corralled by the police (actor children and other students) and beaten with batons (paper batons). Things got quite physical when we banded together, fell to the floor and started to chant. The police, thoroughly engaged (and enjoying it) in their role, began to attempt to pull people (me) from the pack. I was ultimately terrified of becoming seperated from my sisters & brethren, who had a firm clasp on my extremities to the point at which I began to wonder if this were a real direct action, would I simply be pulled apart? Note: see Starhawk’s non-violent activism resources.
Jack’s restored 67 VW
There were herb walks, where I learned how to identify water hemlock – ‘veins to the cut, pain in the gut – veins to the tip, everything is hip.’ There were peaceful nights in the tent and wet soggy mornings in the tent. There was a girl named Dragonfly, a guy named Noah who is an active member of the International Solidarity Movement, a girl that was studying to be a doctor in Cuba and the author of Radical Healing, among other inspiring souls. I didn’t get as dirty as hoped due to the relocation of our course, but I did get to hike to the Tennessee River and take a dip. Oh, and the mead. If I got nothing else out of this course, I took away an intense interest in mead and mead making.
Noah & Kelly exhibit their Fire Poi talents
We were remotely located away from cell phone service and nearby towns, so we created our own “bar” at our retreat, where the organic porters, double belgian brews, ports and meads flowed. I sampled apple-lemon cyser, hyssop-anise metheglin, apricot-cinnamon melomel and various other home made meads. I witnessed a small (30-40 gallons) homebrew mead operation, a mead making demonstration at the no-talent show and various wild yeasters sporting their wares. Within two days of arriving home, I had a gallon of Joe’s Ancient Orange mead bubbling away on the counter and another gallon in the makings.
Mead at AVI
I got to hang with the female permaculture heavy weights for two weeks, Starhawk, Penny Livingston-Stark and Patricia Allison. I forewent the day trip (our one day off) to Earthaven Ecovillage to catch up on some much needed relaxation. Ah, another time I’ll make the trip to see how they have assembled their little village. I’m back home now, immersed in courses and design work. Back to 90 + degree days and the land of the flatwoods. Got mead?
Filed under: Environment, Peak Oil, Relocalization, Sustainability, camping & hiking, permaculture
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