Urban Organic Farming

Found this interesting clip on Treehugger showing a family not only managing to grow organic food smack in the middle of urbanised California but are on the road to being fully self sustained.
Clip

Why Permaculture ?

For thousands of years humans have adapted to their environments through the process of design. Weaving local materials to meet their needs and interwining nature's patterns with their lives, indigenous communities live within the limits of their local ecosystem. Nature, technology and culture maintain a dynamic balance.

However, our modern day industrialized world has developed systems that can only function beyond the limits of local ecosystems. This means that someone else in some other part of the world is being exploited in order for us to live in this synthetic and unfair system. It is a sad situation that the majority of humanity are still unaware of these consequences. Today our global tecnologies are depleting the earth's resources, darkening the skies and waters with waste while endangering life's bounties and diversity.

The question than is; Can we invent a more comprehensive way of designing which will integrate the built world with the natural environment ? Can we find a way of life which will create harmony between nature, technology, and humanity ?

The answer is yes. Through collective efforts of communities that strive to live off a more balanced way of life, less profit driven lifestyles and more altruistic approaches, comes a philosophy and design science called Applied Permaculture. This umbrella term gathers a simple answer solution to many questions and problems that have been raised before and that have been applied by many ecological communities in many parts of the world.

In reality, living a more simplistic, earthy and holistic way that can do more with less while appreciating local resources to their maximum benefit. Permaculture shows us to a great depth, the relations between humans and their environments the path to syncronicity. From design and waste management, to growing of food, forest management, rainwater harvesting, ecological design and choice of safe materials for construction. It is a philosophy and a path that if taken seriously will open many doors to a happier and more tranquil way of life.

I would like to finish this blog with a guiding verse from Goethe....'Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.' Enjoy the earth with love.

2 interesting projests to make.

One of my favorite site is Instructables.com , a site dedicated to diy projects. Users post there projects with detailed how-to instructions on how they did their projects( hence the name).
Browsing through the latest posts I came across two prjects which were quite interesting and relevant to the permacultural ideal
The first is a "portable" shelter inspired by the mongolian yurt. It rather simple to build and given our climate i can see many worth while applications.
The second are a few ideas you can use to grow your own organic fruit and veg. There is nothing more sadisfying than eating something you have grown yourself.

I hope you find these links interesting :)
Ian

Lost words of wisdom.

Browsing around the net I can across this collection of WW2 posters. They're great , simple effective . It makes you wonder why we seem to need a do or die situation to do the right thing. In them days words like conservation , being frugal, saving were considered a virtue while today these are considered anathema! Media tells us to "buy", "shop till you drop" ,"travel more" , "what you had yesterday is not enough today".
Do we need WW3 to start doing the right thing again?

Interesting Site

Wild Plants of Malta is an interesting site with a large and comprehensive guide to the flora of the Malese islands.
Packed with tons of reference images and interesting facts, is in my opinion the best guide to our natural heritage and a worth while visit.
Great work , Stephen.

Sping in full Bloom.

Thou the weather begs to differ, we are in Spring and at Bahrija plants are in their full Glory!The parse Garigues vegitation is green with new growth and flowers are everywhere buzzing with bees getting on with their job. The are is charged with the sents of flowers and fennel.

Gladiolus byzantinus

Commonly known as Habb il-Qamh

Convolvulus arvensis

Field Blindweed or Leblieba tar-Raba . One of several species of Blindweeds

Antirrhinum tortuosum

Greater Snapdragon known locally as Papocci Homor

Glebionis coronaria
Lellux

Papaver rhoeas ,

Red Poppy

Iris foetidissima

Iris

Anethum graveolens

Dill

Malus domestica

Tuffieh Selvagg

some interesting facts

Did you know.....

• 1 ream of paper = 6% of a tree and 5.4kg CO2 in the atmosphere.
• 3 sheets of A4 paper = 1 litre of water.
• by recycling one aluminium can you save enough energy to run a television set for three hours.
• by recycling one tonne of paper you save 13 trees, 2.5 barrels of oil, 4100kWh of electricity, 4 cubic metres of landfill and 31,780 litres of water.