I spent a few hours with a toad this week. I sat with it in the garden, watching its movements and observing they way it lives. I have had a fear of toads (and frogs and snakes too) since childhood, when I spiked a high fever involving hallucinations of amphibians and reptiles crawling out through […]
A predictable schedule works for our home. We have a predictable rhythm to our days. But summer seems to throw a kink in this wheel, making it wobble and veer to one side. There are more things to do in the summer, and as it seems, so many reasons to cast aside the schedule we’ve […]
It always seems like there’s something to complain about. Today, it’s the weather. A rainy day which is providing fresh water to our ground sources for drinking, to the crops and gardens that will nourish us through the winter, and the living systems that generate oxygen from our carbon emissions. So is the rain really […]
When I think about what it means to me to be a ‘Permaculture Parent’ I feel that it really is defined by my approach to life. Looking for ways to live more in line with the Permaculture principles is a way of approaching life. When I change, those around me change. When I learn, those […]
Summer has arrived, and so has an abundance of fruit! I am so excited to be preserving fruit from our land for the coming winter months. We have collected rhubarb and strawberries and wanted to preserve what we’re unable to eat fresh. I have been freezing berries whole and unwashed, so they don’t stick together. […]
“A weed is a plant whose virtue is not yet known” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson This is a photo tour of five ‘weeds’ likely growing in your yard that you can eat! We use all six to make our ‘weed salads’ which we eat all summer long! The children love finding and eating many of these […]
Spring is here! Which also means that foraging dinner from our yard has begun. Our asparagus is up and delicious when it makes it inside the house. It is often consumed as a fresh snack, so it never sees the kitchen! Our hostas have also started poking their spears up through the ground. When tightly […]
“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” ― Mark Twain I’m feeling freed by the presence of warmer weather! The children and […]
We have had a few frames from a friend’s hive from last year sitting on our back deck for a few weeks now. They have been awaiting our attention to process their wax to be used for sealing in the spawn during our mushroom cultivating efforts. This passive act of silently awaiting its purpose, or […]
“The healthy social life is found, when in the mirror of each human soul, the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the community, the virtue of each one is living.” ~Rudolf Steiner As I was writing my post yesterday about parenting from the heart, I recalled the piece I wrote at my first […]
