Homesteading for a Happier Child and Community

Dreaming We are dreaming about moving to a new place. For us that means selling this one and buying another one of approximately the same price, which means that, if we want to move, we need to move out- out of Brookline. We’re currently in a 1050 sq.f. basement apartment in a condominium. We adore …

Ecological Manifest

The world outside Sometimes I wish I never had to leave the house – even though “the house” is a small and light-deficient, though blissfully cool, basement apartment. “Leaving” means going out into the din of air conditioners and leaf blowers (see yesterday’s post). It means walking past shop after shops selling plastic junk, $800 strollers. …

Summer Noise: A Rant Against Leaf Blowers

Ah, summer, you break my heart. After long months of snow and frost, a long stretch of grey, rainy weather, summer’s arrival is very welcome. The warmth, the sunlight on your skin, the summer hat, the smell of sunscreen… People smile, say hi, drivers find more courtesy and patience, kids come out to play. But …

Toby Hemenway’s book “Gaia’s Garden”

  Just published a review on Suite101.com of Gaia’s Garden, the book that led me to Holmgren’s Permaculture. I  tremendously enjoyed reading Hemenway’s book and I hope the review does it justice. I also hope that, once we have some land, I can put the permaculture way of gardening into practice. I might have to revisit …

Philip Lorca di Corcia’s picture, again

That picture, again…: the tensions. We are looking at them, intensely, but they have their backs to us, unaware, busy. They are public now, in all their nakedness, but their interaction is most private, hidden from us. The mother is washing the child (a foot), but no one (but the jet of water) is washing her. The water isn’t …

Who Remembers Ernestine Huckleby?

A photograph I was leafing through an old National Geographic compilation book called As We Live and Breathe, The Challenge of Our Environment, when I chanced upon a two-page spread devoted to the Huckleby family and a large photograph that took my breath away. I reproduce it here, not knowing who the photographer or copyright …

I planted…

… six kinds of basil! Six! They’re in clay pots perched on the ledge that surrounds our basement entrance. Sounds gloomy? No: they’re in the sun! They’re soaking up the sun and soon we will harvest some of that energy for ourselves. I plan to get more herbs (last year we successfully grew basil, cilantro, rosemary, …

Holmgren’s Melliodora

Holmgren’s place I’m oggling David Holmgren’s Melliodora, or at least what is avaiable of it for free on the net (the whole e-book seems worth it but is still AUS$35). You can check it out yourself here (go to publications, click on the e-book, then scroll down to the free demo). The Melliodora project is a model of what …