Permaculture...

...Working with nature instead of against her seems like a good idea. I'm reading a lovely book called Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. The book describes a method of gardening and much more that works with nature and integrates land use by creating stable ecosystems that serve multiple needs such as food, fuel and clean water as well as respecting the part that all of life, including the so called "weeds" and insects or "pests", has to play in a balanced natural environment. What impressed me was the way in which a useless piece of desert was transformed into a living garden producing all the vegetables and fruit one could wish for. ThePermaculture website has some great links and the Permaculture Association is a good source of information on all aspects of this fascinating method of horticulture. This should be the future of gardening and could be one way in which many people could have a positive impact on global warming. Just finding out more about all the different things that a tree does was an eye opener. One of the principles of Hermeticism is that the Earth is alive. We need to learn to think in terms of living systems. All the billions of interconnections are what makes the living universe what it is. That is both science and magic, matter and spirit, in a down to earth practical way. Clean water. Clean air. Good food to eat. And lots of bees and butterflies. Paradise here on earth.