Category: low-footprint living

Interestingly, it seems to be the more comfortably-off demographics who give up easily and talk about wanting to leave the country etc.

And acting very theatrically distraught, talking like they are going to be in mourning for four years or whatever.

Even though they (we) are a lot more insulated from classist/racist policies and therefore would be much less likely to come to harm than so many other groups of people.

I think what it is, is that they are used to being able to buy their way out of any adversity, so they have not really developed resilience (including community-building skills).

As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another day, and we will always have work to do. Before inauguration, carry water chop wood. After inauguration, carry water chop wood.
<emoticon of lady shrugging shoulders like “meh, let’s get on with it”> #RideOrDie

Also I am copy-pasting from a FB post I made the other day. In which I expressed strong agreement with somebody who said — with regard to the escalating disasters, and the eroding insurance and government protections from same — that they actually decided to start leaning in to the dangers and hazards (not in a wild and reckless way but in a very methodical and carefully thought out way):

THIS. Same. On so many levels.

I go where I am called. Which is a big part of why I am trying to tell my fellow white boomers to stop this escape stuff. “Escaping” to other states or other countries where we will be just a bunch of entitled Karen’s. Be here now!

We are not helping anyone by trying to find the best place to escape to. And besides, there really is no place to escape to. Which you know already, if you have been paying attention to the news or even just the weather channel for the past few years or months.

Be with the people you love! Or the land you have developed an affinity for. And if you have neither, just be where you’re at, and really start cultivating community on the ground right now right here.

Please, fellow white boomers, let’s use our resources to help where we are. Sell that second house, cash out your 401k, whatever you need to do. And let’s put some muscle into this. We are all in this together.

Further exploration:

• How perfect. Desireé B Stephens newsletter in my inbox this morning, she is inviting us to 100 days of community. Here’s the link to the live if you’re not able to access them on sub stack. https://open.substack.com/pub/desireebstephens/p/day-1-of-100-days-of-community?r=2v5h8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true .

Here is an excerpt from Desireé’s newsletter where she introduces the “100 days of community” program:

“I recognize that many people, particularly white folks, are scared, confused, and waking up to a world that has just become starkly real. Suddenly, you find yourselves the hunted, the marginalized, and are realizing that you cannot save us—Black, Indigenous, and other people of color—because, truthfully, you haven’t yet saved yourselves.

“But that’s okay. Rest assured, you will make it through this. And the answer, as it has always been, lies in community.

“When you see the joy and resilience of Black people or the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, what you’re witnessing is the wisdom that we not only survive but thrive. That is the energy I want to guide you toward.”

— Desireé B Stephens

I have been following Desireé for a while, for anti-racism and decolonization work. Here is the link to her “100 days of community” invitation. https://desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&coupon=6a0af51e

This has been in the news a lot lately, people leaving Facebook and Twitter in droves, for the supposedly better, fairer new platforms. The intention seems to be to stop supporting corrupt oligarchs. As well as to escape from the increasing enshittification of the existing platforms.

As for my feelings on this subject, I say we’re in an imperfect world and we have to work with what we have. As long as most of the people we want to reach, and learn from, and support economically, and build community with, are still on the “incumbent” platforms, many of us are finding we want to stay where we are. I am in this camp.

And here’s somebody who summed it up really well:

“Have any of you considered that the changes to Twitter, Meta, etc. are intentional to get you to abandon the communities you have cultivated? Communities that have shown themselves to be powerful and they intentionally make these changes to destroy our communities. They don’t care about losing money — they have enough $$. They don’t care. But WE care and WE need these spaces to stay connected. NONE of them are actually “good”. We been doing the best we can.
Block. Mute. Go”
(Transcribed from a screenshot of what appears to be a Twitter post, by feministajones. I would put a link but I can’t seem to find her account.)

And this, from Black Table Talk on Facebook:

“This app [referring to TikTok] was letting too many Black people find alternate income away from slave wages.”

Yes, it has been quite evident that TikTok has been serving that function for Black people (as well as indigenous people and other people of color), and I 1000% want to stick around for that until it is completely demolished.

This is very important to me because TikTok, for a lot of us, was a huge learning portal (and still is? for the moment, to a degree). I learned how to curate my feed to prioritize content from Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color. Learned more about USA history and society in 2 years of being on there, than in my years of history and social-studies class in school. And later on I started finding fellow like-minded white people – lefty anarchists, decolonizing permaculture ppl, etc. I use TikTok as a booster channel, for dismantling colonizer / supremacy culture.

Update: Ugh. OK, it’s official, it’s real. The TikTok ban is actually a full ban. I had heard that it was just banning app updates. Very sad and angry, and horrified. Not really surprised deep down though, the way things have been trending.

Why is TikTok banned? What’s behind the law that shuttered the app? (CBS News) (And, I really don’t buy that China is a threat in the way they are saying. Our government has always tried to get us to look at China as bad guys. Is it to deflect attention from something else closer to home, one might be tempted to wonder.)

Any platform or post can present an unexpected opportunity to promote natural landscaping. I posted these comments in response to someone’s post on next-door. They were saying they are having to learn how to take care of their own lawn, since they have had bad luck with lawn services.

Instead of suggesting they get rid of their lawn, I simply shared information about elements that people can add to their yards. It helped that I had happened to see a display of gardening books at the public library that morning!

I am hoping that the desire for peace, beauty, and comfort & security may serve as a leverage point for people to allow more nature back into their yards.

---

You are part of a trend! A lot of people these days are getting back into doing their own yards. There are a lot of advantages, for example, you can really customize your yard to your own tastes and needs.

One of my favorite things, as a landscaper and a homeowner, is creating pockets of beauty and privacy in my yard.

This is a book I saw on display today at the public library. Landscaping for Privacy, by Marty Wingate. I looked through it and there are some beautiful examples of how to make little outdoor rooms and corridors, conceal tools & trash cans, etc. using plants and trellis materials and so on.

Here are some more great resources for people who are getting back into doing their own yards. This is a display of gardening books that I happen to see at city Island library yesterday. Vegetable gardening, privacy landscaping, etc.

Another book was about miniature gardening, which is basically making little dollhouse-size gardens. Not only does it sound like a fun and charming hobby, but it can also be used to test out ideas and plan your yard! Gardening in Miniature, by Janit Calro.

Added later: Another advantage of miniature gardening is that it can cultivate a refined gentleness and sensitivity. A person just has to be a little bit more gentle-handed to make a garden path that’s 1 inch wide, then to work on our usual human scale. Who knows, perhaps the natural appeal of crafting miniature worlds can even help cure the “permie disease” of compulsively seeking ever-larger acreage, when what we need to be doing is staying put and cultivating ever-deeper layers of fertility and abundance in our own existing urban yards and neighborhoods.

See my screenshots on my Facebook post here.

And regarding another post, about a historic house along the oceanfront highway:

Thanks for the info! I have always enjoyed seeing this unusual house along the A1A, and thought for sure it had to be designed by an architect.

And as a landscaper, and beachside resident myself, I love how the current owners have allowed the dense natural beach vegetation to become a defining note. Here’s the Zillow photo of how it looks nowadays.

Not only is this beautiful and affords privacy, but it’s a protective buffer against wind and water and salt. A friend of mine who grew up on the beachside in the 1950s told me a lot of the beachside yards used to be like this, with just a narrow, intriguing pathway through the scrub Palmetto thicket to get to the front door.

(The following was my response to a comment in one of our local eco forums, from a guy who has made his living in the lawn industry for 50 years. Basically saying he has never had a customer ask for native/natural landscaping, even on the barrier island.)

We are not a vocal or visible segment, as far as the sod-layer and lawn-cutter companies with the big ride-on mowers go. But we’re out here.

We don’t show up as a client base because we’re not asking lawn companies to do our yards — they don’t/can’t offer the services we’re looking for. Or in some cases, people with native plants or fruit trees etc. in their yards have had their carefully cultivated plants damaged by the lawn companies, so they have become leery of hiring them to handle the grassy areas of their yards.

Or in some cases, the grassy areas are so tiny that it wouldn’t even be worth a lawn company’s while, if the ride-on mower could even fit. (My yard doesn’t even have any grassy area at all.)

Also, many of us have yards that would be harmed by leafblowing and other activities of the lawn companies.

A few such homeowners go the route of hiring the local neighborhood guy with the push lawnmower. The local solo guy often offers more flexibility as far as not insisting on excessive frequency. And the small mower is less likely to cause soil compaction etc. And here again, this customer segment probably doesn’t even show up on the big lawn companies’ radar.

And there are only a few native/natural landscaping companies in this region as of yet. It’s very much a boutique service. Most of the ones I know are solo practitioners. Or maybe work with one or two helpers. And have little or no mechanized equipment, and no large equipment except the occasional rental for earth works etc.

So, most of us do our own yards. And actually, I suspect that a lot of us in the emerging “natural yard” and “rewilding” movement simply prefer to do our own yards. 

But I think there’s probably more coming, as far as more native/natural/edible landscaping companies emerging in this region as an option for people who prefer to hire a professional service to do their yards.

In other parts of the USA, and even here in Florida, natural landscaping — Including the category known as “edible landscaping” — is at least a little bit more visible as an industry category.[heart smile emoticon]

The company Cherrylake, and a coalition called Outside Collab that it’s part of (along with 1000 friends of Florida and other organizations), are doing great work in promoting awareness of natural landscaping.

There’s an annual conference known as Outside Collab that’s held virtually and in the Orlando area. Landscapers, builders, and others coming together to learn about & promote landscaping options that help with heat mitigation, flood control, restoration of pollinator populations, and all the other life-threatening issues we are facing. Locally, and nationwide, and worldwide.

As well as offering homeowners (and condo & apartment dwellers too) more options for adding beauty and variety to their little piece of ground. [wildflower and ocean wave emoticons]

Also:

For anyone reading this who is interested in finding out why our yards are such a powerful leverage point for addressing flooding, insect die-off, and other deadly serious issues, check out Doug Tallamy – Homegrown National Park.

The basic premise is that the amount of land covered by lawn in the USA totals 40 million acres! Greater than the total acreage of all the national parks! See https://homegrownnationalpark.org

“In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty. Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.” — Doug Tallamy, co-founder, HNP

And:

Also: we need to stop wasting money & fuel on constantly laying sod, And then having to constantly maintain it. Particularly on the barrier island. Dune vegetation is extremely hardy, as well as being beautiful. No irrigation required other than rain and dew. People don’t come to the ocean to see mini lawns in the middle of the street. Photo here shows a sidewalk strip where somebody appreciates the beauty and benefits of our natural dune vegetation.

And:

(I know I’m preaching to the choir here. I’m just writing this for the benefit of anyone reading this who might be able to use some moral support because they are dealing with unreasonable HOAs, mow-yahtzees, persistent social norms flying in the face of fiscal prudence & environmental soundness, etc. etc.)

I doubt that, since it’s on the beachside. There are a lot of people on the beachside who appreciate the natural dune vegetation and are not just doing this to be lazy.

Although, in this case, even if they actually were trying to be lazy, they end up doing the more beneficial thing. 

Here on the barrier island, this is a perfect landscape for curb strips and medians. I would expect they don’t hope the city “cleans” it up, because it looks much nicer in its natural state. There are six or seven different types of dune flowers and other plants in that one little space. Many of them are very loved by native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

It’s not only prettier but it is better for the environment. So it’s more in keeping with the purpose of this group. DREAM GREEN VOLUSIA!

The persistent idea that natural landscape equals “dirty,” and buzz cut equals “clean,” is a lot of what’s causing our problems with flooding.

The more dense vegetation absorbs more stormwater and creates a healthier soil climate. Healthy soil is better at absorbing stormwater too.

It’s ironic — constant excessive mowing, which we see a lot of all over this area, is not “clean” but is actually extremely dirty because of all the gasoline that’s burned. And there’s the noise pollution of that too. It’s become so normalized we forget to question how violent our so-called “clean” landscaping mentality is. It’s so flat and sterile, it looks benign. But it’s not.

Shine On, beautiful dune wildflowers!

And:

We also need to make our stormwater ponds look more like this. There needs to be less mowed area and more thick vegetation, constantly sucking up the water and keeping the water table from getting too high. And no chemical spraying.

This is one of my favorite ponds in town, great example on Palmetto right across from the Votran transfer station.

There’s another similar pond somewhere along LPGA, or at least there used to be. That one is good because there is a shaved pond right next to it, so it’s a useful study in contrasts. The natural pons are a lot more beautiful, and nurturing to birds and butterflies and other essential wildlife, in addition to filtering pollutants out of water more effectively and absorbing stormwater more effectively. Let’s join the 21st century — do away with shaved ponds! And other excessively mowed and shaved landscaping practices.

And:

PS. Full disclosure: I’m a landscaper also. My specialties include outdoor rooms / privacy niches; natives & edibles; stormwater sponge; biodiversity.

Now that I’m in my 60s, I prefer sending new gigs to the younger people who are just getting started.

My main work I focus on now is writing, design, & other education. But, that said, I still very much enjoy doing my own yard, and this type of gentle landscaping is possible for a person to do well into their old age.

In the photo is a book I picked up just now at the public library. 🙂 I love her style & examples. (Landscaping for Privacy: Innovative Ways To Turn Your Outdoor Space Into a Peaceful Retreat; by Marty Wingate.)

See the full convo, with photos, here in the Dream Green Volusia group.

Two signs:

STOP HOARDING HOUSING! Live in it, rent it out … or sell it to someone who will!

STOP HOARDING LAND! Open it to public use! ReWild it! Stop mowing empty lots.

My new project. I painted signs on both sides of an old piece of plywood (that I had been using for a block party sign some years back). Now I’m putting the sign temporarily in front of various offending properties in my neighborhood, and taking photos. One of the biggest house hoarders conveniently left a sign-hangable post on their property even after the for sale sign was removed. This place is now bank owned (oh yippee — so we go from a local househoarder to a national or global househoarder). [crying and horror emojis]

I’m just hoping to raise awareness and get more people questioning our concept of what property rights are. Maybe they need to evolve. I’m tired of nobody questioning that all someone has to do is keep the lawn mowed, and pay taxes (If they are even paying their property taxes), and that’s all they owe the community. But let someone try to squat there and everyone will be on it like a sonnet.

PS. These vacant properties actually tend to be excessively mowed. Could be native duneflower meadow or scrub or even trees, but it gets mowed constantly so it doesn’t even serve the basic default natural functions of heat mitigation, stormwater absorption, erosion control, pollinator habitat, biodiversity. I have seen lawn crews literally mowing sand.[Angry emoji with mouth taped shut by cuss words]

And, In response to a fellow citizen who commented that she fully supports my efforts, but pointed out that there are county statutes against putting a sign on someone else’s property. And also that, even absent a statute, lawyers just could have a field day with it:

Thank you. And to be clear, all I do is prop up the sign for 30 seconds on a vacant lot or vacant building, so I can take a picture of it. Then I take away the sign. It’s designed to be portable and reusable.

Also, I totally encourage everyone to make their own physical or electronic versions of these signs! If electronic, it’s easy to paste them onto their favorite images of their own neighborhood vacant properties that are creating “rich blight.” And the photos can be taken from the public sidewalk, and then the image can just be electronically pasted on to the photo. In other words there is no need to even go onto a property at all.

The image with sign pasted on can then be posted on social media, shared with local neighborhood groups and local government etc.

I don’t know if I’m the first one who coined the term “rich blight”, but I did mention it in a 5-minute speech I gave back in 2015 called “filling our empty spaces”. It was for the first Daytona Elevate, a mini TED talk type event.)

Further exploration:

• Theaster Gates, Chicago, Black Cinema (Mr. Gates, an African-American potter and activist, was a great source of inspiration for my talk).

• “Filling our empty spaces,” talk by jenny nazak, 2015 on the Elevate YouTube channel.

• Vacancy taxes are a thing in many cities now. I believe strong towns even has some articles mentioning them.

Googled and found this article this morning, after reading a thread on Deep Adaptation about the LA fires. People are asking, “what now” after this disaster that has left communities in ashes. Some respondents pointed out — by way of illustrating what tends to happen, or not happen, in the wake of disasters — people in western North Carolina are still living in tents, in subfreezing temperatures and snow.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14271267/amp/winter-storm-states-americans-living-tents-hurricane-season.html

Notice (in my Facebook post) the second screenshot, which is taken from the same article regarding WNC, a link to an article about fires raging in California.

My reason for including this is that there is an ecological connection between the torrential floods and raging wildfires. That connection is, a broken water cycle. Capitalist global north human activity has disrupted the water cycle. There are ways to restore the water cycle, and some organizations are actively involved in doing so.

One organization I recommend checking out is called Water Stories. Their entire mission is the restoration of the water cycle. Their various channels (email newsletter, website, YouTube etc) offer an incredible amount of information. They also teach workshops. I have often invited my local government officials to attend their virtual workshops. And I have attended several as well. And I have often screenshot their water-cycle diagrams on my various pages, and in my emails to government officials etc.

I also recommend you follow my friend and colleague Chris Searles – BioIntegrity. His strategic small-scale watering experiments in central Texas and across the western USA are showing some very promising results.

And: Any of us that have a residential yard, or even a common area of an apartment building, or are part of a church congregation or school community — we all have an opportunity to help restore the water cycle via our choices of how we manage our little spots of land that we steward. Please get active in giving input to any organization you belong to that has stewardship over a patch of land, even if it’s only a fraction of an acre. What we do with our land management choices not only has immediate effects on the micro water cycle, but furthermore starts a beneficially-contagious visual norm.

My comment in response to a post where residents of a high-rise condo building said they want to have a community garden but management won’t let them because “liability” and “someone might get bitten by a snake”:

How disappointing. It’s a bad attitude on their part. And I don’t accept that insurance won’t allow that. This is the leverage point you guys have to work on: work on your management. Keep up the pressure.

Find as many like-minded residents as you can, and approach management together. You guys can do it! I know you can.

The snake thing is just silly. Snakes are just part of Florida, and anyone can get bitten by a snake anywhere anytime, theoretically, but in practicality, snakes hide and they really want nothing to do with us. If anyone should get bitten by a snake it’s me, constantly walking barefoot in my native & edible forest yard.

Official boards who use “liability” are using it as a stopper, they just don’t want to deal with it, but as more & more of you guys get together and raise your voices, and keep emphasizing the benefits, I think you will prevail.

You may even be able to get the landscaping company on board, because they’ll still be earning the same pay to landscape the non-edible areas. You do have to make sure they stop spraying herbicides, pesticides & other toxic stuff, otherwise your garden will be ruined.

Pay the landscapers to start adding native flowers and native shrubs; that will help with pest control and also help make sure beneficial insects are able to live there and help your food garden.

All of that said, sometimes for a condo it makes more sense to support local farmers and get delivery from Natural Concepts Revisited LLC, Keely Farms Dairy, Kelly Kretschmar, & others who deliver and/or offer CSA subscriptions, like a lot of us have started to do, than it would be to try to start a community garden where management isn’t friendly.

Long-term plan, if management is really unfriendly about lots of these kind of things, it may be time to bring in new management. Being hostile toward environmentally healthy options, when those are also the healthiest thing for people, it’s not a luxury we can afford any longer.

Best of luck to you, <community member> & everyone — and keep us posted on how it goes! Share on Beachside Neighborhood Watch if you like, you might attract some more support from residents of other condos and buildings nearby. There is strength in numbers!

More thoughts:

• In my first Permaculture Design Certificate course, back in 2005, co-instructor Larry Santoyo told us that his favorite permaculture designs are ones where there’s not a garden in sight. Not meaning that he hates gardens, just meaning that people have got a missed perception of Permaculture, because so many people focus on the idea that they have to grow their food by themselves. So what Larry was saying is, for example, that if you are a bunch of residents of a high-rise building, it may make more sense to support your local farmer than to try to start a garden on the premises.

• Personally, I would like to see the condo residents be able to do away entirely with the conventional landscaping. Mowing, purely ornamental shrubs and all that. Cut all of that out, and use the savings to let the residents have native and edible landscaping on the entire premises. Maybe part of the money savings could be used to buy extra insurance.

Important note for community activists:

If you are like me, and have put yourself out there as an activist and educator in your community, you may find yourself getting a steady stream of requests for your time and expertise. You may, like me, offer your services pro bono to marginalized communities in your area, as well as certain select public projects.

But: Many of the requests that come your way will come from people and groups who are quite wealthy not only in terms of money, but social capital/influence as well. YOU get to decide who gets your expertise for free, who needs to pay (and when those well-to-do groups push back against paying, which they typically do, feel free to send them to YouTube), and how much of your time & energy you choose to offer. Just because you have a passion and a mission for community resilience doesn’t mean you have to open a vein and show up with a shovel to their private project.

Not only have you put in the time and money for your education and apprenticeship and continued learning, but if you are like me, you have forgone a considerable amount of income over many decades in order to choose the path you have chosen, community educator. Please don’t be shy about either insisting on money* (or other compensation you prefer), or simply limiting the amount of labor you expend.

In the case of the above, I satisfied myself by offering my true best advice via posting my response to a post in a very large local forum where a lot of mainstream audiences will see it. In other words, I expended relatively modest labor for a potentially large community-awareness return. I have a personal stake in community resilience, and so the labor I expended to offer my best advice via that comment is a worthwhile trade-off for me. Bonus: I didn’t even have to leave my bed! It’s early morning, still dark and I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet. I would call that a win-win-win.)

* Regarding money, I’m getting away from the consulting model in general. When people aren’t willing to pay (whch, frankly, is appallingly often — People don’t even question that you would naturally want to show up for free, and in person yet!), I steer them to the vast realm of free info that’s out there.

And when people are willing to pay, I steer them to practitioners who are still in the thick of their income-earning years. Myself, as a person in her early 60s who owns her house free and clear, and has no kids or grandkids to support, I have the luxury of not needing to seek money. But, if I then offer my highest level of expertise and labor for free, not only will I be closing young people and marginalized people out of a potential income opportunity, but I will be perpetuating what I might call a norm of “toxic volunteerism.” (This is a phrase I just recently thought of, but it may already be a phrase in the world; someone out there may have coined it first.)