Carrying out the Great Work of making an ecologically durable and decent society will require us to confront the deeper cultural roots of our problems and grow out of the faith that we can meet the challenge of sustainability without really changing much. The evidence, I think, shows that we will have to change a great deal and mostly in ways that we will come to regard as vastly better than what exists now and certainly better than what is in prospect.

— David W. Orr

As I am running out of my green, white and oolang teas during the covid19 lockdown, I got an opportunity to diversify my teas and change my tea habits. An interesting addition to my teas comes in the form of Blue pea.

There has never been a grand plan or design for our garden. Our little wild garden, shaped by all its inhabitants including us, has emerged organically over the years. Even while I am sure that this garden wouldn’t have been what it is without our participation, our approach has been that of minimal, gradual changes called for by our needs, and in response to the garden itself. Being what it is, our garden has some mysteries in stock, that it often reveals.

It was while trying to harvest Ivy gourds from a vine that had climbed up a henna tree, that we found a hive of the red dwarf honey bee. Delighted as we were about Ivy gourds, we were more delighted that the red dwarfs had made our henna tree their home.

a naturalist is more a poet than an engineer

— Ramon Margalef

I have a small pile of sticks and coconut shells that have accumulated in the garden. As I can’t compost them, I thought I’ll make some biochar to use in the garden. Looking around a bit, I found this low-tech way of making biochar and I think its a good simple way to start.

The allotment garden page where I found this video also has an article about how to charge or activate biochar

Unlike other natural systems (e.g., a coral reef or tropical rain forest), the agro-ecosystem always contains a particular “keystone” species. That keystone species is Homo sapiens. It is a species that engineers its own environment far more than any other species in history, a fact that would make ignoring its ecology naïve; nevertheless, its “ecology” involves a structure that no other species has ever had. It has the ability (or is it a need?) to communicate ideas from individual to individual, perpetuated to heights that are magnitudes larger than any other organism in the history of life. That is, our species has language with which it creates structures of culture and society, of economics and politics. As the keystone species in the ecosystem, our special nature becomes part of that ecosystem. The agroecosystem is thus endowed with not only traditional subjects of ecology, but also with the immensely complicating aspects of this particular feature of the keystone species.

— John. H. Vandermeer (Preface, The Ecology of Agroecosystems )

“All that effort is ultimately going into trying to make something that is effortless.”
— Andy Goldsworthy (Rivers & Tides)