“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.” – Bill Mollison, permaculture co-originator Many things are required to heal our world. Removing the corporate elite from their current position as the de facto, unelected rulers of the world, is priority number one. There are
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Writings of J. Todd Ring: My Dream Homestead Garden – Or, Healing The Earth, One Carrot At A Time
A dream homestead garden? Ok, so this is not a subject to everyone’s taste or interest, clearly. Nor is it my usual domain, but it is related. I tend to write about politics, philosophy, social issues and social commentary, with forays into economics and finance, green living, health, and green
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Stop Flushing Away Our Future
This is a short article on a subject of critical importance to ecology, food security, water security, and our future. There are many ways that we are busily flushing away our future. (See Requiem For The American Dream, A Short History of Progress, When Technology Fails, Koyaaniskatsi, Baraka, The Road
Continue readingLeft Over: Vancouver Acquires Land from Big Steal Rail…
Vancouver to buy Arbutus Corridor from CP Rail for $55M Future route may one day include light rail CBC News Posted: Mar 07, 2016 10:21 AM PT Last Updated: Mar 07, 2016 3:49 PM PT Many Vancouverites, current and former, … Continue reading →
Dead Wild Roses: How does our garden grow?
Fairly well this year, as long as we keep up with watering! Le jardin chez Arbourist et Intransigentia Filed under: Housekeeping Tagged: gardening
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The therapeutic benefits of gardening and getting your hands in the soil
Studies have shown that gardening really is therapeutic. It has been found that there are compounds in the soil that, when they strike the olfactory senses, trigger a stress-relieving relaxation response in human beings. This makes sense, since we have spent ten thousand years digging in the soil, and associating
Continue reading350 or bust: Start A Garden, Change The World
Hope you are enjoying a relaxing long weekend Friday, as we are. One of the topics that has come up while we relax and sip our morning tea is the plans for our garden this summer. Besides just talking about it, my husband, also spent time this morning tending to
Continue reading350 or bust: Northern Gardening Reflections: A Mouthful Of Rainbow
Summer gardening season is in full swing. It’s time for fresh corn on the cob, cucumbers, tomatoes, and of course the ubiquitous zucchini squash to be on our supper tables. You’ve heard the old joke appropriate for this time of year – if people in town start locking their car
Continue reading350 or bust: Hope Is A Verb With Its Sleeves Rolled Up
Sometimes it feels like the forces working against a sustainable future for humanity – vested interests like Big Oil, Coal, & Gas, and the politicians they’ve bought, as well as an overall apathy among the general population – are too formidable to be overcome. We are so close to losing
Continue reading350 or bust: Meatless Monday Thoughts: The Stinky Circle of Life
One of the problems in our industrialized, heavily urbanized North American society is the huge disconnect between our food system, and the cycle of life and death that nearly every other generation of humans in the history of our planet has known intimately. As I sit here at my computer
Continue reading350 or bust: Growing Food, And Other Radical Acts
* It’s time for a tour of my garden, as promised. I should preface this by saying there’s a reason that I’m attracted to the randomness/wildness of the “hugel kultur” raised bed garden. (“Hugel” means hill in German – thanks Mom Polle – so saying hugel kultur – pronounced “hoogel
Continue reading350 or bust: Peonies And Economics
Our peonies, one of my favourite spring flowers, have just opened up. The peonies in our garden are a connection to one of my grandmothers, my father’s mother. She had a border of peonies at the front of her lawn that bloomed in a riot of crimson every spring. When
Continue reading350 or bust: Raised Beds And Riots
Another Monday and my hugelkultur piles aren’t done; in fact they are growing daily; I didn’t realize they were like rabbits, and would start reproducing at a crazy rate! As any of you gardeners out there know, when it’s time to get the garden ready, there’s no rest until it’s
Continue reading350 or bust: It’s Gardening Time
It’s a gorgeous sunny May day, and I’m busy building my “hugelkultur” raised garden bed at the edge of the conifer forest which covers some of our one and a quarter acres of Canadian Shield land. A hugelkultur bed is a raised garden bed filled with rotten wood. Anyway, one
Continue readingThings Are Good: Global DIY Window Gardening
A TED Talk by Britta Riley is filled with inspirational information about the online movement to get efficient, open source, window gardening. Worth every minute:
Continue reading350 or bust: A Bushel And A Peck of Tomatoes
We’re still enjoying the bounty of our summer garden in the form of plenty of fresh tomatoes. I’ve been looking for creative ways to eat/cook with them – even tomato sandwiches, which I love, can become tiresome. I’m not a hug…
Continue reading350 or bust: Kitikaanikamik, “Where People Come To Grow”
Kitikaanikamik is an Ojibway word that means “the place where things grow”. The Local Foods Initiative (RLLFI) in the northern Ontario town that I live in has applied to the Aviva Community Fund for “seed” money to get our s…
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