Tag: gardening

Finding Our Tribe

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“This is the hardest time to live, but it is also the greatest honor to be alive now, and to be allowed to see this time.  There is no other time like now.  We should be thankful, for creation did not make weak spirits to live during this time.  The old ones say ‘this is the time when the strongest spirits will live through and those who are empty shells, those who have lost the connection will not survive.’   We have become masters of survival — we will survive — it is our prophecy to do so.”

“Humanity must shift from living “on” the earth, to living with her.” — Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is from the Cheyenne River Lakota (Sioux) Nation of South Dakota.  He holds a Masters Degree in Native American studies and Communications.  He is a storyteller, poet, university lecturer, scholar, essayist, cultural interpreter, and a peace and human rights activist.  Tiokasin has been described as “a spiritual agitator, natural rights organizer, Indigenous thinking process educator and a community activator.”  One reviewer called him “a cultural resonator in the key of life.”

My new hero – Ruth Stout. I’m implementing her mulching ‘system’ in my back yard.

Garden expert and lovable eccentric once said: “At the age of 87 I grow vegetables for two people the year-round, doing all the work myself and freezing the surplus. I tend several flower beds, write a column every week, answer an awful lot of mail, do the housework and cooking-and never do any of these things after 11 o’clock in the morning!”

Her second book, Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent was first published in 1961. She died in 1980, at the age of 96.

Edible City — The Movie

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Edible City is a feature-length documentary film that tells the stories of extraordinary people who are digging their hands into the dirt, working to transform their communities and do something truly revolutionary: grow local Good Food Systems that are socially just, environmentally sound, and economically resilient.

Energy is best focused on solutions.

New sights and sounds

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The senses are overwhelmed here at the homestead in New Mexico. So much to study that it has been difficult for me to know where to begin.  I had to introduce you to someone I met while weeding the raspberry patch. I stopped everything to take some photos of him.

natgeoa012
Calligrapha vicina / Calligraphy beetle

I was quite literally stopped in my tracks when I saw him — I had never seen markings this intricate on a beetle or bug in the Midwest and was taken by how much they looked like the hollows in a guitar or musical notes.  Lucky for me, there are experts on site and all I needed to do was ask.  The calligraphy beetle.  But, of course!

There are many more creatures here that I have never seen in the wild; roadrunners and lizards to name a few.  The lizards are quite funny to watch but hard to capture on film.  I have set a challenge to do just that.

I am learning after my first week in New Mexico and hope you are enjoying following my adventure in WOOFing.