On this rainy, chilly day I find myself alone in the house for the first time in over a week. My in-laws are here, and over the weekend we had a crazy house full of friends and family – eight adults and two kids, all sleeping over. I love extending the dining table to the …
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Other Goings On: Racking the Wine, Painting Earth Day Signs
I see it only now, at the end of the day, how much was accomplished: cleaned out the chicken coop, Â collected four eggs (we’re back to four!), inspected the beehives, painted the last of the signage for our town’s Earth Day, and racked the wine. Â Four. Amie paints her own sign in the new basement …
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Medicine Garden
This, dear friends, is a massive apothecary! The beginnings of it. Some of these envelopes hold just 5 seeds. Many hold seeds that need scraping with sandpaper and intricate regimes of warm-moist and/or cold-dry conditions. Some will take years (years!) to germinate. Suffice it to say, these aren’t your average lettuce seeds. Each one is …
Grief under the Full Moon
Though very tired I went on the Full Moon Walk yesterday evening, a lovely tradition or what we hope will become a tradition, when a group of us walks in the dark under the full moon, either quietly or in conversation. The clouds drifted apart enough to let the moonlight through only at the end …
Please Choose THIS Door
I had an interesting day yesterday. It didn’t start out promising. My car had failed inspection the day before and needed fixing, so I was dropping it off in the next town over, at Mike the Mechanic’s. Â It’s not like Mike the Mechanic has an inviting waiting room or a replacement car service. It’s just …
Applying the Pattern Language (ii): Inviting Entry, Making Connections
Back to patterns! Having a plan for the slope has re-opened my mind for the immediate front: the balcony, the level stretch of garden up top, the top of the driveway. This is what it looks like right now: I already analyzed one of the more general  problems: the negativity of this space. There are some more specific …
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A Pattern Language for Building for Life: Positive Outdoor Spaces
I got Christopher Alexander(et.al.)’s A Pattern Language from the library a few days back and am just blown away by it. This man had such humble, democratic insights into the task of the architect and a real feel for natural, beautiful,  human and humane living spaces. His book first proposes patterns for building cities, towns, neighborhoods. About …
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Clarity, in Pieces (ii)
The Thirteenth Moon Even if you have lost heart She puts a tide in you Even if you have lost heart You will be moved You will be all lined up The soil has tides Bedrock has tides The horizon heaves She will drag even you “That turns out to be a place where it’s …
Poem by a Friend
My friend Janine, fellow Transition worker and fellow blogger, has written a gripping poem. It haunts till the end. This is the beginning:                      I dreamt a sword fight broke out in the cornfield   …
On (Not) Saving the World, One Element at a Time
(I’m thinking of this third post today as a Transitiony kind of post…) When I show people around the place, I finally (after five years) feel like it’s all coming together, and that’s because I have started thinking in terms of elements. Breaking the enormous task of creating a “sustainable place”  up into elements allows me …
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