blog

Great stuff as usual from my colleague & friend Mike Hoag, a fellow author and permaculture design professional. In a nutshell, instead of being so focused on what we want our gardens to grow, we should be asking what our gardens want to grow.

As Mike points out, the conventional approach to gardening tends to be performance-oriented. And often our gardens don’t meet our performance expectations: “Maybe the tomatoes are nagging you for water again, and the lettuce bed isn’t meeting your expectation to stay weed-free …”

The performance-focused mentality, says Mike, “is often a recipe for dissatisfaction, extra work, continued struggle, and poor performance. Because in a lot of cases, probably most cases, the garden doesn’t WANT to grow tomatoes. Maybe the soil, the sun, the groundhogs living under your porch have other ideas than just churning out tomatoes so you can pay your Netflix subscription. …

In contrast to the performance-based mentality, a permaculture-based approach is about developing a relationship with the land. This relationship, says Mike, can happen only “when we start listening to the feedback and trying to understand what THE SYSTEM wants. Maybe the sandy acidic soil is just completely wrong for an acre of tomatoes. Maybe the community doesn’t need another stand of heirloom tomatoes at the market. Maybe the family needs a more beautiful, lush environment to live and play in. Maybe we’d get more enjoyment out of a diverse ecosystem with room for the groundhogs and deer …”

Mike wraps up his post with a priceless suggestion: “So, has your garden been trying to tell you something and you just can’t take a hint? Maybe in 2023, take time to ask your garden what IT wants.”

Boy, has that lesson taken a long time to sink in with me! I feel like I’m finally getting it over the past year. For as long as I’ve actively gardened (which has been for maybe 18 years so far, in all different climates and spaces), I have rarely been successful in growing what I want to grow, particularly fruit trees and veggies. And I have perennially felt like a horrible failure in permie gardening circles.

More times than I care to admit, I have seen people’s Facebook photos of their perfect supermodel gardens busting out with fruits, vegetables; their homemade tinctures and oils and salads and boutique squash raviolis and other permaculture Martha Stewart things they whip up … and I want to be happy for them, but privately I am thinking, “I HATE YOU! What is WRONG with me???” I have even theorized that my relative inability to grow food is punishment for bad things I did in a past life. Maybe in some past incarnation I was really great at gardening, but hoarded all the food for myself. Maybe I was an evil duchess who tyrannized the people and brought about mass starvation. Sometimes I tell myself I’m just a fundamentally bad person who emits a toxic energy field, which plants can always pick up on even though some of my fellow humans might not see it.

(But at that point in my musings, rather than allow myself to go any further down the rabbit-hole, I remind myself that I’ve known many truly good people who were fellow plant-killers like myself.)

With wildflowers and native plants, I have had a bit better time than with food cultivars. But still, there’s definitely a sizable gap between what I plant in my yard, and what survives.

Say there are 1,000 plants in my yard (it might actually be closer to 10,000!). The plants you see are the 10 percent who managed to survive.

Over the past year, I’ve actually gotten a lot more laissez-faire in my relationship with plants. And, through various experiences (some moments of intuitive/divine guidance, plus some basic realtime observations of “Ya know, that plant just doesn’t want to grow in my yard“), I finally realized it’s perfectly OK that I’m not good at gardening!

And I have had such a sweet, lovely, liberating realization: All these years, while I’ve been trying with only very limited success to grow my gardens, my gardens have actually been trying to grow me! The trees and plants seem to be trying to tell me they want me to relax, and slow down, and have a lot more respect and appreciation for their unique beingness, and simply feel a lot more joy together with them. And breathe deeply, and learn — and the learning isn’t “learning how to grow food better” or “being better with plants.” It’s more like learning how to let go, learning how to trust, learning how to love. Definitely it’s about cultivating faith.

Also: my yard is a hands-on rainwater stewardship training ground.

And maybe most of all: My garden definitely wants to grow art and community. So far my most successful “crops” are my Little Free Library, and the benches I installed next to the sidewalk for anyone to sit on. Also the “Dog Bar,” a water-bowl I put at the corner and keep filled for the neighborhood furbabies. And my driveway, which I have turned into a sculpture garden of concrete chunks, rugged cacti, and found metalwork and figurines.

Who knows why some people have a green thumb while others of us don’t seem to. One thing I’m learning though, finally, is that gardens grow a lot more than plants.

Go here to read Mike’s post in its entirety. You definitely want to read the whole thing! (And, you might also want to take one of Mike’s classes, buy his books, engage his design services, or all of the above!)

As a bonus, this link doubles as your introduction to the Transformative Adventures group if you’re not already part of the beautiful community we are growing there.

Happy New Year everyone! May your dreams take root, grow, and blossom in 2023.

Happy Back-of-the-Year to you. That’s how I think of this time of year. The cool dark relatively quiet pocket of days from the day after Christmas through New Year’s eve afternoon. Things usually aren’t very demanding work-wise; I work but it doesn’t feel urgent. I engage in pleasant year-end tasks around the house and I just really enjoy the general lack of obligations. Even though I get very busy in a manner of speaking, it doesn’t feel frantic-busy; it feels more like “resting and incubating” busy. In lunar terms, it feels luxuriously dark-moonish still, even though we are well into the waxing crescent phase. Whether or not you enjoy a dark fallow time as much as I do, I hope you are doing well. Please call me if you need anything. And if my intuition tells me to call you, I will. Otherwise, I will see you in the new year! Much love to you all.

P.S. Now if only the mow & blow bro’s would catch a bit of the quiet dark back-of-the-year spirit! No, they continue relentlessly with their chopping and shaving and “cleaning” of the great outdoors. Maybe one day we, collectively, will come to realize that letting living things rest (including letting ourselves rest!) is a part of their growth, and is far more urgent than whipping them into our idea of “neat.”

P.P.S. The end-of-year period is always a favorite time of mine. But something that makes it extra-special this year is that the last few weeks leading up til Christmas Eve were extra busy in a very good way!! Very very fruitful in terms of growth & learning. In addition to completing the classroom portion of my training for a new occupational category, Certified End-of-Life Doula (International Doulagivers Institute), I also did some continuing ed. for my decluttering & organizing services which I have been offering since 2004. My official printed certificate arrived today. The Certified Ultimate Professional Organizer course from Ultimate Academy is by far the best professional-organizer training I have ever taken!! Both of these services — organizing and end-of-life support — as well as my writing, speaking, teaching, landscaping, and art/craft offerings, fall under my overall occupational umbrella which I refer to as “sustainability educator, self-employed.” A green umbrella, so to speak!

Consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of economic activity in the USA. Seventy percent!

That’s it. That’s the post.

We make a difference, and we hold huge power via our wallets! So go out and spend (or NON-spend) as if every single dollar you spend or withhold makes all the difference in the world. Because it does!

To a reader feeling eco-guilt about painting the inside of their house:

You are part of your environment. If clean and neat-looking spaces help you feel good and enjoy life, then that IS permaculture. Zone Zero-Zero (our minds) and Zone Zero (inside the house) ARE permaculture too.

Some places sell partially used cans of paint for cheap. I think our dump/landfill in my county in Florida does, or used to. Also, locally owned paint shops are often able to mix paint in just the quantity you need so you’re not left with a bunch of excess.

Also of course, eco-friendly paints are becoming more widely available. When shopping, a couple of terms to look for are milk-based, and VOC-free (or maybe it’s low-VOC).

Regarding the recycling of cans: I doubt they get recycled. But maybe they do! And I’m honored that you think I would know the info for every locality. (My brain doesn’t retain that info even for my own locality!)

But, it varies from place to place, so you’d need to call your local landfill, local recycling company, local govt to find that info out.

Here in Florida, I took on a bunch of paint that was left in the garage by the previous owners. I have been able to use up most of it, and I then reuse the cans for various purposes til they rust out, which here in my humid place by the ocean doesn’t take long.

This same reader also asked another excellent question: “So if something doesn’t feel neat and clean to me, then I should fix it? Or should I fix myself instead? That is the dilemma or conundrum for me.”

My answer: That varies for all of us.

1) If it were me, I would check to see if there is consensus with your home’s other human inhabitant(s), re whether the space looks/feels/seems neat & clean or not.

2) I would also check in with myself, use some of my “inner landscape” tools & processes, look for patterns in my life, to feel if it’s a thing within myself. Which, if yes, then I would then address using the tools/resources I have found effective for inner work.

One of the basic concepts we learn in a permaculture design course is microclimate. It’s just what it sounds like: variations in conditions from place to place, even if the places are in very close proximity.

One way to experience huge variations in microclimate is to walk around a building. It can feel sunny and tropical on one side of the building, and downright arctic and blustery on the opposite side. Sun, wind, humidity, light-reflecting objects (such as bodies of water and light-colored surfaces), thermal masses (such as asphalt and concrete, and bodies of water) are all factors.

Temperatures can vary significantly across a wider local area too. According to official weather-station readings, our city had a hard freeze last night, 28 degrees, lasting about 7-8 hours. The weather station is about 3 miles inland. Here by the ocean we are always a few degrees warmer than the official reading. The night before last, when the official reading was in the low 30s or high 20s for several hours, we didn’t get any sign of a freeze except a skim of ice on the birdbath.

Last night was another matter. We definitely got a freeze. The birdbath, which is on the west side of the house, is frozen solid. Also there is visible damage to leaves of some plants. On the north side of the house, there’s about a 1/4-inch shell of ice on the water in the rain catchment tubs. And yet, on the sunny south side of the house, there is not a trace of ice in the water.

The concept of microclimate is hugely useful and widely applicable not only in the tangible physical world, but also in our “invisible structures” — the intangible aspects of the human-built environment: social groups, workplaces, congregations, nonprofit organizations, neighborhoods, and so on.

Cool!! Last night I found out that my #1 preferred taxi driver now lives in my neighborhood! Extra convenience just in time for the super cold weather and holiday parties!

I don’t use taxis that often, maybe a few times a year. I make a rough calculation of the gasoline and include it in my Riot total for the year.

Speaking of the Riot for Austerity gasoline category: This past year once again I have come in around the 50 gallons that constitute 10% of the average USA resident’s annual gasoline consumption. This was even though I bought my motorcycle. (On my motorcycle rides, which serve as both recreation and errands, I use an average of 1 to 2 gallons a month.) My annual train trip to Virginia counts as 15 gallons (public transport gets counted as 100mpg in the Riot).

Numbers:

• motorcycle errands + recreation 24 gal (estimate erring on the high side; it’s probably more like 15 but let’s call it 24)
• Amtrak to Va roundtrip 15 gal
• Sis & bro-in-law picking me up & dropping me off Amtrak train station 1 gal
• Big bus trip to Ft Lauderdale for Bucs game 4 gal
• Misc rides around town – taxis, occasional rides accepted from friends even though I was out of their way etc. probably a total of 40 miles for the year so say 1.5-2 gal, but even if we pad it to be safe and say 200 miles, say an average of 30mpg that’s just 6 gallons which still puts my total within the 50-gal mark for the year

Back to taxis: I love them! What a great concept. And, I tend to choose them over having a friend drive out of their way, because I would always rather support someone’s livelihood than impose on a friend.

General note … (And I want to hear from others of you who also choose not to own a car, or to minimize your use of cars.) I am struggling with some people who chronically insist on making an issue of my transportation. Asking how am I getting there, acting all shocked and worried etc. I don’t want anyone putting attention on my transportation, but some people can be very insistent. Even though most of them mean well, it’s very stressful knowing that my choice is taking up that much of people’s attention. I am always working on practical solutions for how to diffuse or divert their attention.

One tactic I’m trying is to simply change the subject. (When simply stating “I get around by foot, bicycle, and bus” doesn’t seem to satisfy people.)

And, my stock replies to people who are chronically horrified at the sight of me walking or bicycling, and offer rides even though I always say no, are effective in many cases: “No thanks, I need to get my steps in”; “No thanks, I get carsick” (TRUE — though thankfully I have never actually thrown up in anyone’s car, and only once on an aeroplane, in an airsickness bag fortunately); and “Thanks, but I have transportation.” Also, when it’s an option, I try to arrive at a gathering unobtrusively, leave unobtrusively, disappear quickly out of the area, walk the first few blocks extra quickly so people won’t see me walking. Out of sight, out of mind!

Then there’s the perennial “Did you get here by bicycle?” (from people who have only ever seen me arrive by bicycle). Sometimes I simply respond “Yes, did you get here by car?” (to people who I have only ever seen arrive by car).

Of course, some people could be asking these questions or having these reactions because they themselves are feeling guilty about their gasoline consumption, and/or trying to add to their menu of transportation options. If you are one of those people, I’m always here to support you.

Sometimes I respond to the questioners, “Yes, let me know if you want to ride together next time” (or walk together).

And for some closer friends, I’m practicing something along the lines of: “Look, you knew when we met that I get around mainly by foot and bicycle. You don’t have to like my transportation choices, but if you want me to visit you and spend time with you, you need to accept that this comes with the territory. I’m not arguing with you anymore.”

I have already said to friends, when we’ve been at their house drinking and eating and they want to give me a ride home at the end of the night, “No thanks, enjoy the exercise and the moonlight. And, none of us has any business getting behind the wheel of a car right now.”

I may never convince some of you to see the good sense in taking a darn Uber or taxi or walk when we meet up at a bar or party, but I can at least put my foot down and keep you from drink-driving on my behalf when I come to your home.

Sorry if I sound mean or cranky! It’s just discouraging that our society as a whole has become so totally car-dependent that people who choose to live without owning a car elicit some mixture of misplaced pity and outright shock and being treated like a freak and *constantly having people ask* how one got somewhere, how one plans to get somewhere, etc. The way I get there is that I decide I want or need to go, so I get my ass there! Or else I decide I don’t need or want to go, and I stay home!

This auto-condescension is worse in some parts of the country than in others. It happened some in Austin but was not as crazy as it is here.

On that note, a big THANK YOU to my friends, neighbors, and colleagues who do not make a giant, public, stinking federal case of my transportation methods. If I am willing to accept a ride from you and it was out of your way (even just a few blocks out of your way), you know you are one of these lovely human beings. (I don’t accept rides from people otherwise unless there’s some sort of emergency.) Thank you for understanding that human-powered transport is not some freakish novelty. If I have ever ASKED you for a ride (and you are not a taxi service who I am paying money to), then you know you are in my innermost trusted circle, transportationally speaking.

And in closing, I would like to share a quote from Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of ancient Rome, that I feel is relevant here:

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”

P.S. (It’s amazing sometimes how many additional ideas can occur to me, that after I thought I was done writing!) In addition to not wanting to burden people, and not wanting to attract embarrassing kinds/amounts of attention, there are also safety & security reasons for not wanting one’s transportation particulars widely broadcast. Same as a person driving alone (particularly a woman driving alone) might not want the general public to know where their car is parked and so on.

Many parts of the USA are in a massive cold snap, including heavy snow in places. Supposedly about 60% of the US population is under some sort of winter weather advisory or warning!

Here in my part of Florida we are having a cold snap that is unusual for us. Below-freezing temps have been forecast three nights in a row, with last night being the first night.

Yesterday afternoon I took the precaution of shutting off the watermain at the curb, and opening the taps inside the house as well as the outside tap. (We always have several days’ worth of drinking water stored in jugs inside the house. And of course the rainwater in the barrels.)

Rainbarrel prep: I took the lids off the rainbarrels, and also scooped out a few inches of water from each barrel to allow for expansion in case of a hard freeze so the expansion of the ice wouldn’t crack the barrels.

This morning I woke up toasty warm in bed. Went outside and indeed it’s very chilly out there but there’s not even a skim of ice on the public dog-water bowl I keep filled at the corner. No ice in the tubs on the south side of the house; I will go out and check the north side next.

North side all clear also.

(Later: Oops I spoke too soon, there is a skim of ice on the birdbath so obviously we had a freeze in at least some spots here last night. It’s on the west side of the house which is where the banana trees are. I watered all over the yard yesterday as best I could (by hand, from the rain tubs) so hopefully that’ll help protect some of the trees & plants. Tonight & tomorrow night are supposed to be colder than last night.)

Oftentimes here on beachside the temps are a few degrees warmer than the official reading. The weather station is over on the mainland by the airport.

Inside the house feels like the temp is in the high 50s or low 60s, very reasonable with layered clothing. In line with what I have written elsewhere on this topic, we keep the bedrooms and porch entry room closed off from the living room and kitchen, and that creates cozier pockets and minimizes drafts.

One housemate uses a space-heater in his room; one does not. For me, I think this is my 15th winter without using air-heat in my space. We are all comfortable.

I actually think the hot air coming out the back of the fridge may be helping to warm the living room. Other than that, the low-angled sunlight coming through the large window of this south-facing room is the main heat source for this room in winter.

(The fridge is in our living room because it’s one of those giant American fridges and won’t fit through the deeper interior doorways of our 1950 house. A neighbor gave it to us — either they were getting a new one or it was an extra they weren’t using. To even get the fridge inside our house, the fridge door had to be removed. I was on the verge of vetoing it — my usual house rule is nothing comes in here that I myself can’t carry in and out — but I really wanted it for my housemates’ benefit. Also, even though I had been living without a fridge for three years at that point (my longest “fridgeless living experiment” to date), I must admit I appreciate the convenience of refrigeration especially in summer.)