The curly girl

When I was a little one, a very little one, I had a head full of curls that shined auburn in the sunlight and stuck out in all directions. One of these curls fell from the centre of my head, at the hairline, right down my forehead, entirely naturally. So people took to reciting the nursery rhyme when they saw me:
there once was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the centre of her forehead.
and when she was good
she was very very good
and when she was bad
she was horrid.

When I was about three, I had had enough of hearing all this, over and over again, and so I got the biggest scissors I could find from my mother's drawer and after a little perspiration cut the curl clean off. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and felt regret for the first time. Yikes, as it lay in my hand. My distinguishing mark.

When people saw the curl gone, they were shocked, but then they just said oh well, and got on with it. This was what got me the most. The oh well, and getting on with it. I think I expected the nation to have a suitable mourning period and then we could get on with it, maybe a week later when we had all cried and cried and loved together (or whatever my three year old sense of things dreamed up). The curl never grew back.

and when she was good she was very very good
and when she was bad,

she was horrid.

Green oasis

Criteria for a green oasis:The fundamental element of the oasis must be plant systems consisting of multiple species. The conditions for the air, water, energy, soil and fauna must continuously be improved, and pollution must be reduced. The local care-takers must maintain the oasis in a sustainable manner, using a minimum of energy. The oasis should generate more energy than it consumes. The oasis must be ecologically cultivated by applying, for example, a compost system instead of using pesticides and artificial fertilizers.

Arsenic- contaminated mulch is being spread across South Florida's flower beds, gardens, parks and playgrounds.

We strive for the former, while accepting the inevitability of the latter. What I have a hard time coping with sometimes is the fact that the latter exists at all, sort of spoils the fun of the green oasis, being it or living in it. We are such funny creatures in the ways we have chosen to live.

And life can be so much fun, too, when we let our natural intelligence out to play.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than againstnature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted& thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions rather than asking only one yield of them & of allowing systems todemonstrate their own evolutions.

So this is a definition of a philosophy of working with nature that is very appealing to me at the moment. I'm very keen on green. The window spaces have all turned green and sprouting. The sunflower shoots weave in and around and through each other, making different dances every day.

I am learning.

It's good to repot little shoots when their root systems outgrow the pots they're living in. Otherwise things can get tangled. I have to brush and oil my hair every now and then because it moves like the sunflower shoots. I am a sunflower shoot in need of repotting.

I sit in the pot I've been in for the past while and continue to grow. It gets crowded in here. Soon enough we'll have to move. To a bigger pot. More growing room.

In the meantime, I'm planting everything I can get my hands on.