More Seedlings at the Center of the Universe

More and more lights are being switched on in the basement. In fact, we’re almost full up! We’ve got three shelves going now, the bottom one with heat mat, the top two for “growing up” and cold germinators. I also have  a couple of flats sitting on the shelf in the porch, behind a curtain: …

A Room of One’s Own – A Common Space for Communities

This is an attempt to reboot my reporting.  I am discovering a lot about the world, others, and myself, at record speed. Gotta write it all down! And I’m going to need some new Categories. Here’s where the blog undergoes its next transformation. ~ In our town, where can a group of people go where they …

Power Down

Do you think about the future? Do you wonder what it will be like? Or do you live like it’s always going to be the way it has been? ~ I found at least 5 entries like this one, all in drafts, abandoned. As I prepare for the growing season with more resolve and urgency …

Transition: Becoming Indigenous to a Place

During the Transition Training we watched a lot of images and videos of Transition Initiatives, and at first I watched them with mixed feelings of joy and anxiousness. My heart sank because I inevitably thought: “I can’t make that happen.” That sinking feeling stems from the fact that, though I arrived here over 11 years …

Transition Initiatives: the Giving of Gifts

I discovered Rob Hopkins’ book, The Transition Handbook, about two years ago and it immediately struck me as the right approach to our problems – climate change, peak oil and economic crisis (all bound up together, of course) – and to our solutions (grassroots, positive, pro-active, hopeful, inclusive). It still took me a long time …

Another Composty Day – and Our Garden

I set up the kindling dryer – very simply the old soil screen under the shed roof. Amie and I hauled some more kindling, because I figured once it starts snowing it won’t be visible and for the picking anymore. I also finished the putting to bed of the beds. As I was looking around …