“We’ve reached a time in human history when our global environmental crisis requires that we make permanent life-style changes. More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land. Silence is our meeting place.” – Gordon Hempton Gordon Hempton, and acoustic ecologist warns that silence, true silence, where man-made noise does […]
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying […]
“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau The woman frowns at me.“Fotos?” she asks.Her voice is clipped. I swallow, nod, and point at one of the labels on the table. “Sim.”My voice wavers.She sighs, turns away from me abruptly, grabs two labels from a display case and follows her husband […]
“It’s in the home or urban garden, where the effort you put into your soil can not only be felt in your hands and back, but also be tasted on the plate.”– Matthew Evans The sky above me is cloudless, and although there is still frost on the ground, the sun holds a promise of […]
“Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.” – Nelson Mandela I woke up yesterday morning with a message from Michael sharing his disappointment at having to cancel his trip to South Africa to visit his parents, daughter and granddaughter, less than twenty-four hours after he booked his flights. The discovery of a […]
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Gandhi The rains arrived, as predicted on the 29th of October. After a couple of days taking care of some chores on the land, I was grateful to slow down, huddle up inside, and catching up with friends. By the Sunday the sharka (pond or […]
Because we decided that we won’t do any big projects during Michael’s last visit, there was no need to book Tim with his tractor and digger, as that usually indicates a project involving multiple days of work. We always like to plan and book him well in advance, so we were quite relieved when he […]
“Happiness is that glorious feeling when everything seems right. When all of life’s twists and turns and jagged edges seem to fit together perfectly. In those often all-too-brief flickers of genuine happiness, every thought in your head is agreeable, and you wouldn’t mind if time stood still and the present moment extended forever.” – Mo […]
“Petrichor, the wonderful, soul-lifting smell you get after rain on earth, is thanks in large part to the metabolites of soil life. To geosmin. We’ve evolved around living earth, and our ability to sense geosmin could well explain why it feels so invigorating being in a garden, or so life-affirming to visit an ancient forest, […]
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” -William Morris “One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won’t solve the problem, and happiness does not […]
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