Philosophy

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Blazing Swan 2015

2015/04/19 Danielle 0

A couple’ve weeks ago now (time flies! I meant to write this post just after we got back) we just spent the long weekend at the Blazing Swan festival, dancing and exploring and engaging with some quite amazing artworks and people. Blazing Swan is an offshoot of the famous Burning Man festival in the US, running in rural Western Australia. This is the second year it’s run, and I think it’s doing really well. I thought twice about writing about this, because on the face of it a music & art festival has nothing to do with sustainability or permaculture […]

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Abundance

2015/03/14 Danielle 0

Abundance is such a lovely word. It brings to mind the idea of an elegant sufficiency, of warmth and safety, of sharing. In the garden the other day, I stopped for a moment and I thought: this is abundance. The sun was shining, the air smelled of green, growing things, and there were bees and paper wasps buzzing around the flowers collecting nectar and, at least int he case of the wasps, (hopefully) killing the various insects which eat my vegetables. I had just picked a bowl full of cherry tomatoes from the vine, and collected a couple’ve warm, fresh-laid […]

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Cats and Permaculture

2015/01/12 Danielle 0

Cats are often – almost always, in fact – regarded by gardeners and permaculture practitioners as nuisances at best. Words like vicious and useless are applied, cats are describes as being inclined to torture and kill small animals and birds if they can get access to them. I don’t understand where this animosity comes from. Cats are no more nasty or cruel than any other predator. Feral dogs will hunt animals, run them down and worry them to death. Chickens will peck a smaller bird, like a pigeon, or a small animal to death and then eat it if it […]

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existentialism

2014/10/21 Danielle 0

This is a nerdy post – because I am, fundamentally, a nerd. A plant-loving dirty-finger-nailed wannabe farmer nerd, but a nerd nonetheless. Or geek. Whichever the fashionable term is at the moment. Also, it’s kinda long. Sorry about that. I believe that technology – computers, robots, spaceships and space travel – are awesome. I’m also aware that technology is a spectrum, ranging from more efficient shovels to bicycles, the idea of surgeons washing their hands before surgery through to vaccines against cancer-causing viruses, sailing ships to electric cars to rockets that can take a human to the moon and back […]