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“I don’t want a flash car. I want to be anti-flash. He’s that guy reduced to its quintessence … unapologetically troll-like ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance right. So I’m the anti-Tate.” (Louis Theroux, quoted by someone just now in the Socially Conscious FIRE group on Facebook.)

<Pictured pointing to his Casio F9W1 watch costing £10-£15.>

Casio watch >Flashy private jet and Bugatti. May these frugal displays of wealth be admired in 2023. I have been steadily doing frugal exterior since as long as I can remember.

In the past, a lot of people who had huge piles of money were not at all flashy. It was a whole aesthetic in old-money WASP culture, the low-key guy in well-worn Topsiders, driving the old beat-up Volvo and living in a rustic shack etc. Privileged people could afford to dress down because there was no one they needed to prove anything to. (And also I suspect many did it deliberately to deflect unwanted attention from their wealth).

I like the idea of popularizing the low-key, dressed-down, inexpensive aesthetic.

One of my favorite quotes, from Henry David Thoreaux, is “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” It’s one of my guiding principles to a life of creative and occupational freedom.

Next time someone comments on my beat-up shoes (or my lack of shoes altogether), maybe I’ll just wink, laugh, and say “Old money dresses down.”

I hear that since the hurricanes, a lot of people hate trees more than ever, and have become even more determined to get rid of trees. Some local governments are even facing pressure from citizens to cut down trees.

But chopping down trees is not the solution, for many reasons. The solution is to plant more trees and other deep-rooted plants, so their root systems protect each other and hold the soil.

A lot of trees are weak because we plant them in isolation, in the middle of a wide expanse of buzzcut turfgrass. (Trees can’t grow up healthy in isolation, any more than humans can.) Trees can also be weakened by turfgrass chemicals and excessive trimming.

We need trees! In addition to being beautiful, trees serve many essential functions, including but not limited to: stormwater absorption, shade, heat mitigation, pollinator & wildlife habitat.

#VolusiaCounty #Trees #HeatMitigation #StormwaterAbsorption

(Added later in response to a comment from someone in one of the eco groups who said she had not heard anyone voicing anti-tree sentiment; that on the contrary people are very concerned about the clearcutting of woods for new development):

For sure, many people are upset about the clearcutting for new development. But at the same time, a lot of people don’t seem to mind or notice that we are losing trees in our already-developed neighborhoods which were developed decades ago. The “treeless yard” seems to have become the gold standard … not sure but I think it might be a combination of several factors in addition to residents’ fear prompted by the hurricanes: the real-estate sector touting as “curb appeal” the type of naked landscape pictured in this photo <photo from real-estate section of local paper>; the mow & blow industry promoting same; plus the home-insurance industry maybe going overboard in forcing people to get rid of trees.

Happy last day of 2022 to all of you! (OK, SECOND-to-last day, but I thought I’d get started early on the good wishes!)

Despite a few extreme challenges, this has been a wonderful year for me, maybe the best year of my life so far — and that’s saying a lot. I will be saying goodbye to the old year with love and appreciation, and ushering in the New Year with love and excitement.

Thank you all for being part of my life and being on this path with me. I love you all, no matter how near or far you may be. If you ever find yourself struggling, feeling alone, need a fresh perspective, or just want to connect, please get in touch with me anytime! I’m just a phone call or a text away. Let’s make 2023 a wonderful year for all.

Starting a list … What else would you add?

• Leaders of all countries stop jetsetting around the world doing telethons for the military-industrial complex

• Landscapers who don’t actually care about trees and plants quit the landscaping profession and find their calling as barbers or something

• Environmentalists stop rhapsodizing about electric cars already, and start advocating for 15-minute cities and public transportation

• No more international climate conferences take place in person; do it by Zoom

• Come to think of it, let’s do that for all international government meetings, at least the ones that involve crossing oceans

• Supermarkets, restaurants, and other retailers, and industry, stop shoving single-use plastic down our throats

• We totally dismantle white supremacy culture and decolonize the world.

— Come to think of it, that last one would pretty much take care of all the preceding ones, wouldn’t it — and a lot more besides! #Decolonize #DismantleWSC

And with that realization I am suddenly not feeling so cranky at all anymore! Let’s get on it in 2023! Happy New Year and much love to you all.

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!