The PermaDesign Weblog, with Nate Downey and Melissa McDonald!
Adaptive design conference set for Santa Fe
From my latest column:
When I received the invitation to speak at the annual conference of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), my calendar looked clear a year down the road. The epicenter of the five-day event, Santa Fe, meant I could commute to the gig by bike, and that’s always a plus.
07/06/2016 | (0) Comments
Monsoon!
This is a great video from our friend Art Ludwig. It is an informative piece shows how the intensity of rainfall correlates to runoff from a variety of surfaces. This is particularly important in the Southwest as we move into monsoon season.
06/13/2016 | (0) Comments
Get Your Bird Address
As many will recognize, a hat tip must go to President Abe Lincoln for much of the language woven (forced?) into this piece. My only regret is that I did not come up with its almost-obvious title, **The Get-Your-Bird Address,** until this morning.
05/02/2016 | (0) Comments
The Evolution of Ethics
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849. Exactly 100 years later *A Sand County Almanac* was published. At the outset of the most famous essay in that seminal book, Aldo Leopold describes how our ethics have evolved over time. When Odysseus comes back from 10 years of war and 10 years traveling home, he quickly hangs 12 of his slaves. In Mycenaean culture, nobody blinks an eye. Slaves were property, and a guy like Odysseus could do whatever he wanted with his property. Today, on Earth Day, we should wonder if our ancestors will look back at the way we treated our planet with as much disgust as we look back at the actions of Odysseus.
Personally, I'm elated that Tubman will replace Jackson. The video below is about an 11-year-old girl who wrote President Obama about putting Tubman on a bill. Now...if we could only get Leopold to replace Grant on the $50, we'd be heading into this century of climate crisis and resource depletion on a much stronger footing.
04/28/2016 | (0) Comments
Water and Lead Shouldn’t Mix
When the local paper reveals that there's been lead in the water of your hospital since (at least) 2011, the Flint fiasco seems closer to home.
04/27/2016 | (0) Comments
The Unseen Network
We have known for some time that many plants have the ability to directly communicate with one another. What has become more evident over the years is the amazing extent to which this is happening. This informative piece in Scientific American delves into some of the shuttling of information and nutrients takes place beneath our feet.
04/04/2016 | (0) Comments
Water, Water, Everywhere, Let’s Harvest It in Flint
"If I had the ear of a presidential candidate..."
Here's my solutions-oriented take on the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Thanks, *Green Fire Times,* for asking me to write it!
04/01/2016 | (0) Comments
Not Just in Flint
Water harvesting is a big part of the solution that we mostly ignore.
03/30/2016 | (0) Comments
Slow Money
Mix Green Money with Slow Money, shake it up a bit, and you get the current issue of a must-read eco-journal. I was honored to write for this same magazine a year ago (in the Water Issue) and was psyched to be able to be part of a Slow Money conference panel in San Francisco a few years back. As the Bioneers are correct to remind us, it really is all connected.
03/28/2016 | (0) Comments
