Author: jennynazak

Here’s the recording of the talk I gave yesterday at 1 Million Cups Daytona Beach. About how I, a bookish girl who grew up HATING yardwork, ended up starting a landscaping micro-business at age 55. It’s approximately a 20-minute talk followed by some really excellent questions from the 1MC community.

It was a great opportunity to plug community resilience, microbusiness ecosystems, the Beauty in Abundance book, and the FREE book.

I will be the speaker tomorrow, giving a 10-minute presentation followed by Q & A. You can attend in person or tune in via Facebook Live.

Looking forward to seeing you & answering any questions you might have. Note, “eco landscaping services” is NOT an actual business name (at least not mine), it’s just a descriptor of the type of landscaping services I offer. My business name for all my services including writing, art, speaking, teaching etc. is just my name. So you can easily find me!

How a bookish girly-girl who grew up HATING yardwork ended up starting a landscaping business at age 55!

“We have moved from Florida to New Mexico and want to start a permaculture design process. How would that look? What is the first thing we should do?”

(per Mollison) The first step! 1. *Close, protracted* OBSERVATION of the site. (Ref. Introduction to Permaculture, book by Bill Mollison with Reny Slay.)

And in the OBSERVATION, include the social landscape of your new place. Who are the nearby permie people and groups? mutual aid networks etc. And of course garden groups, forager groups, any nearby food forests, community meetups etc. Observe closely so you can tie into existing networks/energies and not reinvent the wheel. And also because your wonderful skills & energies, experiential capital, and social capital will surely be much needed & appreciated as new additions to the local ecosystems!

It’s great that you started going hiking around your new home right away. I bet you made many useful observations.

And, on your site right now immediately: start collecting water (condensation off the roof; condensation on rocks & metal tubs; of course and rainfall etc.) & putting it on the landscape. Collect greywater and put it outside on the land too; try not to let any water go down the drain.

This is a Facebook post I made after someone vomited a bunch of racist, sexist, condescending word-salad all over my comment section. I thought I’d post it here too. Feel free to use any of this on your own pages if you find it helpful!

BOUNDARIES

“Good fences make good neighbors.” — Robert Frost

Boundaries for this page and for all my other channels. I also set out to promote these boundaries in the groups I co-admin.

• Condescension is a big no-no. I won’t block people for voicing opinions I disagree with; I WILL block people for persistent condescension, bossiness, sarcasm when used as personal attack, entitled attitudes toward me, my friends, or any of the people/groups I support. Do NOT come on my page making assumptions about me or any of my friends/fellow activists. Don’t tell us what our experience is and don’t tell us what to think. I may try to engage with you if I have time and energy, but if I don’t (or when the time and energy runs out), I will simply block you in order to protect the people who come on here with good intentions.

• We don’t badmouth political parties on my page. We also don’t claim that “our” party is the great virtuous one that will save the world and make things perfect. This goes for ALL parties. Focus instead on constructive criticism or advocacy of policies etc.

• Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, elitism, ageism are not “opinions”; they are evil, immoral pathologies, and people who persist in expressing them and are not willing to listen to feedback & evolve will not be allowed to keep taking up space in my comment section. (These people tend to be “Facebook-only friends” who suddenly appear and start spouting off in my comment section of a civics/policy/social-justice post without ever having engaged with me IRL or on any of my other posts).

• Verbal violence is a form of violence.

• Trans women are women. Special note for my fellow liberal-type older white women who identify as feminists: If you don’t know what a TERF is, google it — and don’t be one.

• These are the main boundaries I can think of right now, but there are surely others and I will add them as I think of them.

• In case you are wondering, YES i hold myself to these boundaries also. And, I have on occasion had to edit or delete my own posts that violated my own ethical standards, and make apologies and amends to people. I’m always setting out to learn, evolve.

Probably if you have read this far and understood, this post doesn’t apply to you. Except that I hope my boundaries help create a space where you all feel safe, loved, and respected. Thank you for being here and endeavoring to engage in nonviolent, productive, creative, liberating discourse. I love and appreciate you!

Simplest and most inexpensive compost setup I have seen that is suitable for a typical household. Is highly convenient yet avoids odors; avoids attracting bugs indoors; rodents & other animals outdoors. This setup can easily be customized to your needs & circumstances.

Part 1: Indoor receptacle. Compact with tight-fitting lid. The one I saw is a Tupperware container, square but with rounded corners. Use this in the kitchen to collect your food scraps. Keep in the fridge (or freezer if you like) to avoid smells and bugs.

Part 2: Outdoor receptacle. Barrel with a number of holes about pencil-width in the sides. The one I saw is a metal barrel with lid. It was originally meant as a burn-barrel.

Be sure there’s plenty of carbon / “browns” in the barrel, to balance out the nitrogen / “greens” (coffee grounds, fruit peels, eggshells etc). Both types of ingredients, along with air and moisture, are needed to turn scraps into compost.

If your compost barrel/bin is slimy or smelly, you need more browns in the barrel.

If you live in an apartment, ask your landlord if they are willing to let you do composting (and grow a communal garden with vegetables, fruits, and other good stuff). You might also be able to do this compost setup and a mini garden on your balcony/patio.

Here are pictures of the kind of setup I’m talking about. (These pics will be viewable as long as Zuck’s will shall have it.)

There are people with multiple houses on the beach that got hit by the storm and lost their seawalls and yards, and are going on TV pleading for millions of dollars in federal aid to rebuild. A guy who owns THREE houses on the beach was saying this.

I wonder how many of these same people think that poor people who need some public assistance with basic everyday needs should “make better life choices” and “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

Some people are adamantly opposed to public assistance til it’s their turn.

Honestly if any federal bailouts are given I think it should be payouts to get people to vacate. We live on a barrier island and I think maybe it’s time to start letting it revert to its natural state.

I like what my friend K said: “I really think that federal aid for beach houses needs to come to an end. We need a program that helps those who actually live full time in high risk areas to get out if they choose, but rich people should get nothing that’s not from paid flood/disaster insurance that they purchased themselves!”

As a beachside resident (though I’m not beachfront, at least not yet, but may be someday at the rate we are going <wry face emoji>), I have always assumed that at some point, like if the storms and everything keep getting worse, there would be a public move to encourage me & other residents to vacate the island. I take that as something that comes w the territory of living on a barrier island. I cherish my home and every moment i spend here, but i fully get that i might well have to move, and im good w that when it comes.

Woke up to a cool windy morning. Significant drop in temperature plus gusty breezes.

Wind is not my favorite. Sometimes I try to wall myself off from it. But no matter how deep into a building I go, if it’s windy the wind will find me.

If I can make myself, what works better is to go out for a walk; errands. Be in the wind.

When I get home I still want my calm desk with no papers blowing around, no unsettling sounds of rushing air snaking its way into the deepest innermost crannies of indoors, disturbing my equilibrium.

But, the walk (or bicycle ride) still helps. Voluntarily being out in the wind helps me get over that unsettling feeling of never being able to escape the turbulence and noise no matter how much I coccoon myself.

I can think of some things in my life that this is an analogy or metaphor for.

Later:

This morning as I was out & about on my bicycle doing errands, various analogies from my life popped into my mind. They may not make sense to everyone, but anyway sharing for what it’s worth. Feel free to drop me a line and share your own analogies or ask me questions about mine.

• Trying to shrink the amount of space I take up, to placate roommates (this is way in the past; my housemates the past while have been super cool, but a long time ago I had an apartment-mate who always wanted / “needed” more and more space no matter how hard I tried to innovatively find ways to fit myself and my stuff into less space).

• Trying to present myself as more middle-class respectable to be less offensive to certain people.

• Trying to tone down my “weirdness.”

• Trying to mask feelings of social awkwardness; making an effort to be less dorky.

• Trying to tone-down my environmental communications to make them more palatable to Important Official People.

• Trying to keep my lawn super short and well-manicured so it doesn’t stick out even one centimeter from the other yards. (Actually I don’t really do this since I don’t have a lawn. But many of my neighbors do it and the results are hideous, not to mention incredibly damaging and possibly life-threatening as they undermine stormwater absorption and exacerbate heat-island effects. And, I myself have on occasion found myself trying to do this thing with trimming the vines, shrubbery etc.)

Basically the more we try to shrink, the more of a bottomless pit the monster’s tummy becomes. We can never shrink ourselves enough to satisfy that thing that’s coming for us. And there is no prize for being the biggest incredible shrinking martyr. The remedy is to stand up and own our (reasonable) boundaries, take up our full space of who we are.