the energy descent

I'm reading a good on permaculture. It's not a detailed "plant this here, and that there, and lay out your water collection this way" kind of book. It is a design philosophy overview. It was written in 2002, and is still way ahead of me in thinking through the things we need to do to figure out living in a world where we slowly transition off of the fossil fuel buzz we've been on for really only a few decades. Today's sharing: Reduce, reuse, recycle always sounded like a neat, tidy mantra to help you figure out the right thing to do in life choices. Well, the author goes this two better, and I hadn't even heard this till reading this 9 year old book. refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. Damn, I was feeling all righteous green by at least filling the recycling tub each week, and I'm doing the least useful thing on the list. He starts with refusing to consume at all, and finding another way to accomplish your goal. The main thrust of this section of the book is that we are so immersed in the addiction to fossil fuel powered life that we can't even see the alternatives we could be doing. This book is very dense in ideas and observations on moving to a sustainable life, but it's also pretty spare on writing style, so it doesn't bog you down, although I'll need to read it again to catch more of the insights that went past me while I was mulling over the ones that caught me first.

sprouts up 2011!

Here are the sprouts. Here we have peppers and some impatiens on the left. We usually buy impatiens plants at the home supply store, but we collected seeds last year, and are doing these from those seeds. Should save a lot of money if they work out.

And here are some of the tomatoes. This is second try on the tomatoes. I did something wrong on the first batch, they died. These look like they will be fine.

Put up rabbit fence and repaired the deer fence this past weekend, so things are slowly getting in gear. Bought some CPM ( composted poultry manure) and spread it on the strawberries, hopefully at the right dosage. We are winging it! CPM has a lingering stench- be sure to wear clothes you plan to wash right away if you get too familiar with the bags. Also planted my first two apple tree graft experiments. I don't think my graft technique is too good yet, so I will not be surprised if they don't take.