Isn’t it stunning? This is the current position of all the cargo vessels in the world. Just cargo vessels – I’ve set the filter to remove the passenger ships, the tankers, the fishing vessels, all the other types of sea traffic. How do we prepare for when those ships stop, or, if we are smarter than I think we collectively are, when they start using fuel that is clean and…
There was an article in “The Conversation” this morning about the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, planning to release a statement called “The Measuring What Matters” statement. It’s a plan to track wellbeing using about 50 indicators of how Australians are doing. Chalmers said the traditional economic metrics – GDP, income, employment – didn’t tell the whole story. Other things also mattered. No shit, Sherlock.
Think globally, act locally”, “People of Place”, Rewilding” – these are all concepts to do with connecting with our physical being, a living creature occupying a niche in a particular place on a living planet. It’s a key to our survival, but it’s also glorious to kindle awareness of that.
I’m not a fan of winter. I like light and warm. I like being barefoot and outside. Winter always comes on me unprepared. So the equinox is a good warning. It’s like when the kids are playing hard and having fun and the games are getting a bit manic, and you give them first warning – half an hour more and it’s time to come in and get cleaned up.…
I love the chair. It saves me the angst of murdering perfectly healthy seedlings, or worse, being tempted to plant them and use up all my precious garden space on more basil or zucchinis than any household can stand. The chair brings me into lovely conversations with passers by who garden, even just pots on highrise balconies. Because I am sharing what I am myself planting, it creates conversations about…
A key insight of permaculture thinking is that there is no such thing as “side effects”. Everything has multiple effects. Everything exists in a networked ecology of interdependencies, ripples, cascades and risk insurance redundancies. So verge gardening has to be looked at as a sector analysis that takes account of all the “wild energies” of “the public”, and some of them are quite wild.
Here we are in the odd position of celebrating Halloween, a festival that, in European tradition, marks the start of winter, when thoughts turn to mortality and all around are reminders that every living thing dies. But tonight I will light the fairy lights in the carport and dress up, I think perhaps as a dragonfly, or maybe a mud wasp? Some predatory insect anyway, and make a batch of…