I was born in the early 80s, raised on the rising curve of the ever-increasing labyrinth of digital distraction. I didn’t know plants. My family didn’t talk about plants. If anything, they were something to fear. Plants are poisonous or make us itch. They are full of serpents and ticks. Read more…
Something that has always set Permaculture apart from me is its rootedness in three ethics. Permaculture isn’t just a bunch of interesting design principles and useful techniques. It’s definitely not swales, or agroforestry, or hugulkultur beds – even if I love all those things. Permaculture is an art that includes Read more…
One Summer’s day, on a trail in an Appalachian cove forest in Black Mountain, a friend and Permaculture teacher was telling a story about one of the moments that changed her life. The trees listened in. Their roots held her words like the reflecting pool of a spring. Courtney shared Read more…
Going beyond the garden When I started practicing Permaculture, I wasn’t that worried about food. I lived in a household with two middle-class incomes. Rent wasn’t yet completely crazy in early 2010s Durham. I grew food in a Permaculture way mostly because it felt like the right thing to do. Read more…
In watching the current obsession with AI, I felt that it’s time to finally share my thoughts about using AI from a Permaculture perspective. Spoiler: I don’t like it. So why post a video at all? Does it really matter if you use AI or not? What does it have Read more…
I wrote this on 2017 as a call to the activists in my life and to myself. There is so much to feel sorrow and anger about in industrial civilization, and yet if we depend on it completely, we have very little power to change it. All the well-meaning posts Read more…
There are no mistakes in a forest. There is no problem that does not hold the seed of its own solution. There is no waste in a forest. There is no fertilizer, no irrigation, no weeding. Every being’s gifts are another being’s needs. We don’t have to do it all. Trees want to Read more…
What if we have everything we need? How does a garden begin? Past the first dream of ripe and gnarly heirloom tomatoes, and after finding the perfect space in whatever land we are lucky enough to be able to alter, how do we start our garden beds? One of the Read more…
My journey to Permaculture began in a community garden in 2011 in Carrboro, North Carolina. Like most people I knew, I didn’t know how to grow vegetables. I couldn’t identify one tree from another. I remember being asked to mulch a path and having to admit I didn’t know what Read more…
Look back far enough into where you come from, past the upheavals and displacements of history and the endless alerts of our anxious screens, and you will find people who look, sound, cry, smile, and laugh a lot like you and who lived in deep relation and skill with healthy, Read more…
