PLANTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE FIRST THING I’VE NOTICED, WHEREVER I HAVE TRAVELED

Even as a child, I used to have my own planters filled with petunias. I learned about fuchsias and how to start them from cuttings, covering our patio with pots of them. I used to walk around the neighborhood and take cuttings of neighboring plants if their owner let me. Later on I learned to love my mother’s homegrown vegetables, and when I discovered edible wild plants in our yard, a whole new world opened up. Besides the occasional wild greens picked from weedy patches, jars of blackberry and wild plum jams started piling up at our house. On weekends, instead of going to football games with other kids, I poured over landscaping books from Sunset, fantasizing about fabulous gardens.

THEN I BECAME A GROWNUP, WENT TO COLLEGE AND GRAD SCHOOL, AND PURSUED A CAREER AS A CLASSICAL MUSICIAN.

I still am a classical musician, and I love my work, but I never could forget the plants. I’ve always had lots of them, even in the tiniest rental apartment in New York.

Fifteen years ago, I bought the nearly half-acre property I now own and started planting. My goal was to feed myself while making my yard a more lush and beautiful place. Sometimes plants died, sometimes I had to transplant them to a better spot in the yard, sometimes they did pretty well. I made plenty of mistakes along the way. I started reading about permaculture and watching beautiful videos made by well known permaculture designers.

OBSERVATION IS CRUCIAL TO PERMACULTURE; AND WHEN I STARTED TO REALLY OBSERVE MY GARDEN, IT TAUGHT ME MANY THINGS ABOUT SUNLIGHT AND SHADE, THE NEED FOR HEALTHY POLLINATORS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTHY SOIL.

“What we have done, we can undo. There is no longer time to waste nor any need to accumulate more evidence of disasters; the time for action is here… What is more, we will either survive together, or none of us will survive.”

BILL MOLLISON

AND AS I LOOK AROUND MY WORLD HERE, I SEE EVIDENCE FOR THE NEED TO ACT.

Bats have nearly disappeared, and I’ve noticed that my car’s windshield almost never has any bugs on it anymore.  I never get bitten by a mosquito, and I rarely see the clouds of insects around street lights that I used to see. We don’t have as many swallows nesting in our nesting boxes as we had before (they eat insects). So in the last few years, rather than looking at my property as solely a source of food for me, I began to look at it as a place where all creatures can eat. I plant flowers that feed bees of many types. When a lot of plums drop off the tree because we just didn’t get to them all, we leave them there on the ground and watch them get covered by honeybees, who eat their fill before smaller creatures finish the job. We put up Mason Bee houses, and they are slowly filling up.

After much searching for ways to heal the land, I’ve decided that Permaculture, with its clear focus on limiting consumption and inputs, (reducing plastic waste and other trash), as well as on fostering diversity not only of species but also of relationships between species, provides guidelines for everything I’ve been trying to do. The first ethic of Permaculture is Earthcare. It comes even before Peoplecare. To focus only on our needs at the expense of the needs of other creatures is human supremacy and results in collapse of species and ecosystems, as we see happening around us. And the more we care for Earth, the more she gives us. Once we made a conscious decision to care for the smallest of creatures on our land and declared our property an Insect Sanctuary, we noticed a richness and bounty that we had never had before.

There can be enough for everyone.