Destroyers or Healers
what will we choose?
Yesterday, it was 60 degrees on February 8th. I cannot believe I wrote that sentence. It felt like April. It felt like I should be calling for a delivery of mulch to arrive and shifting my energy in the garden from clean up to compost additions to prep for May planting. It was disorienting. I stood in the yard cleaning out parts of the coop that a family of mice had destroyed (don’t worry, I got traps set now) and shoveling the gifts my dogs have left behind that typically piles of snow help to degrade enough that by Spring their eye sore status is minimal. As I cleaned, I gawked at seeing the grasses green and many of our plants, questioning if they should emerge.
I struggle with it all. Sometimes, it weighs heavier than other times. Not just because my skis have been hanging in the garage during the weeks when I usually am exhausting the use of them, but because I wonder what lies ahead. As a lover of these lands and someone growing up who only knew the layers of snow that covered the forest floor, am I supposed to feel when I read info about how our forests will shift in the next 50 years? I am not sure. I am unsure how to garden or grow things when the ground won’t fully freeze. When is the soil ready? When should I sprinkle the poppy seeds if the snow that they need to be sprinkled on has disappeared? Was I still too early to plant bulbs? What about the garlic that needs time? If it sprouts before it should, how will it taste bitter?
These questions hang in my head like the varying coats required by the inconsistent weather these days. Yet, I sit here, watching the wind blow, and think of last night when the lightning revealed the hills and patches of snow that still exist as if they are holding on to winter just as I desire to. I think too about the ways, for centuries, the woods, forests, soils, and more have adapted. I think about how, just this week, I learned the land we care for was logged, yet when you wander the woods, it has rebuilt vibrantly to what it is now.
I don’t want to discredit what is clear in science, though. Our world is changing. Full stop. To deny it is to deny reality, but what I also hold on to, maybe with blind optimism, is the power our world has to heal. The power to reverse things. I remember reading a headline in 2021 about dolphins returning to Venice canals, waterways becoming cleaner, and our ozone healing. I fully believe humans have two choices: to be healers or destroyers.
Nonetheless, we cannot exist in just existential dread alone. Our best work lies in the vision and hope that I see written over the land I wander. The hope I see in the soil that once was sand, lifeless, devoid of moisture and organisms that sustain life. Yet, it now easily grows the heaviest-feeding vegetables and has gone from 2-4 bird varieties to over 35. This only indicates the bugs and food in the greater ecosystem here.
As I have been spending weeks in the Permaculture courses I am taking, I am constantly reading about how humans can use simple systems to make connections and webs that allow the earth to regenerate and heal the world we love. As a result, it only heals and connects us as humans to a deeper purpose between the earth and our community. I am learning it is all simpler than we have been made to believe. I see how humans can shift from destroyers to healers just as easily as the earth can heal if given the ability to.
To oppose and bring my belief in our power to heal the lands we call home, this week, I launched Perma Studio, a landscape design company focused on creating net-positive landscapes. I did this because I have spent years watching how land can heal with the right care, vision, and connections between humans and soil. I did this because I believe that the lands we call home have power in the health of our planet that extends far beyond us for generations. I did this because I sat in meetings listening to conservationists saying that there are x amount of acres in the county I call home owned by private landholders and only x amount they currently conserve. It clicked that even those private lands can make the same impacts through the right thinking, teaching, and connections, whether .5 acres or 100 acres. Every little bit helps. I jumped into this because, through the push of many around me, I realized I am uniquely designed to create this shift, particularly in our local area.
If you had told me I would launch Perma six months ago, I would have thought of all the reasons I wasn’t meant to do this instead of looking at all the reasons I could do this. I am still freaked out, to be honest. I still feel vulnerable in it all, but I also have a vision, space, sense of purpose, and more emerging in me that makes it clear this is what I intend to do. Many things emerged this fall that shifted my direction in life and made it evident why I am here on this earth at this particular moment. When I let go of Fresh Exchange, I didn’t realize where it would lead, but I believe sometimes we have to let go to have the space for what is next. This has been 100% true. It is hard to envision something when we are still holding on to what was too tightly.
Evolution and change are hard. I think it is so much so because we don’t always know where we are heading, even when we think we do. We can only see as far as we can in that moment. I know because I am in it. I am in the place of taking a risk, putting myself out there, and trusting it works. I have huge dreams for Perma. I have dreams that I know could change the community here regarding education and learning and reshaping how we care for the wild places we call home, but dreams are only dreams until we take steps to make them a reality. Just as seeds are only seeds till we place them in the soil to grow, it is all an act of hope that new things will grow.
I look right now at the state of the warming planet. A super El Niño has shifted our winter dramatically, and scientific research makes it clear we are only beginning. I look at it all, and I can feel the existential dread at times paralyzing, but in Permaculture thinking, when a pest or issue is identified, we don’t ask how to remove it, but instead, we ask what is missing in the ecosystem to bring balance. Maybe that is how we must perceive change as well. When the discomfort comes or the fear creeps in, instead of asking how we can get rid of the feeling, maybe we instead ask how this can inform us to make changes to bring balance and harmony and shift what is creating the fear in us.
I wish the snow covered the garden, and I wish my kids could have enjoyed all their ski lessons this year with the powdery, creaky, fluffy snow I knew as a child. I wish their sleds were grabbed every day after school. I wish for it all. I wish I didn’t wake up wondering if the ground has stayed cold long enough to grow things the way they need to be. I wish for so many things, but I now am asking, how can I use these wishes as energy to move me to make changes, to shift the world, or for that matter, take them as an opportunity to learn what the land here already knows, how to adapt so we can heal as well.
This is my new landscape design studio, and I am currently open to residential, commercial, and consultations for 2024. I just opened my books for the year, and I hope I get to work with some amazing humans this year. I hope to help you envision the places you love being a net-positive to both you, generations to come, and the larger ecosystem.
I am open to people outside of northwest Michigan on a per-project basis. You can email me at hello@permastudio.com to begin discussing your project and set up a 1-on-1 call with me.
4 Places to Check In on Mid-Season
The paid subscribers of the email receive a guide that walks them through the entire season we are in. It has plenty of ideas, inspiration, and more about how to live in this season. One of the things I suggest is to keep tabs on 4 areas in your life throughout each season. In the guide, I give info on how to do this, and we check in once a season as well to begin and end or transition from one season to another. That said, I thought it would be a nice reminded of the 5 places to check in on now that we are halfway through winter:
Inner Personal: This is the internal parts of you. How are you doing? How are you feeling through winter? Where is your spirit? Where is your body? How are they all doing in relation to one another? Have you been feeling certain things are helpful in enjoying this season?
Relationships and Family: This is all about the people in your life. Both the ones that have continued to be there, new ones that have emerged, and even ones that have found new places, whether for that season or not. Taking account of your relationships, how you engage in them, and why is important, as winter can feel really isolating.
Career and Personal Pursuits: What we pursue in our lives, whether a career, business or just personal passions, are all important to connect and gauge how you are feeling and doing with them. Maybe you haven’t spent enough time working on a hobby this winter the way you thought or maybe you have been avoiding something in your career. This is a good time to look at all this and see what can stay the same or shift.
Place or Home: Where we lay our heads and call home is really important to us as humans. How has your home been a comforting place this season? Are there things you are seeking to find ease in your space? Are there things that could change to make it a more inspiring, comforting place?
You can get more out of these reflections as a Paid Subscriber, but I hope this gets you looking inward this season.
On my mind this week
I have been DEEP in course reading and work, but I have also spent time thinking and doing some other things to offset all the intake of info I am constantly doing. I am loving it, but being back in school as a parent is a wild experience, so here are some things inspiring, bringing me joy, etc, this week:
Though I went back to Instagram, I still much prefer Pinterest as an outlet for a bit of dreaming, curating, and more. You can see all the things I am dreaming about and thinking of here.
I am back on the Sourdough bread-making routine. I got off the train. I decided to use this recipe to get myself back in it, I just don’t do the bulk ferment instead I make sure I make the dough, do the folds, and let it sit near our stove while I cook and then before bed put it in the fridge overnight before making. Works great! I won’t be one of the sourdough people who post their bread, but I can attest it has been solid every time.
In March and April, for about three weeks, I will be in England around Surrey/London, mostly visiting family and enjoying a very English spring, but I will have my eyes on a few gardens and landscapes while I am there. I am drooling over The Eden Project, The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Newt in Somerset, and Hauser and Wirth in Somerset (this is a Piet Oudolf garden). So, I am excited to see them all in this season.
Studies such as this one on the impacts of monoculture farming are super important to see shifts in how we obtain food as humans. I am glad to see headlines like this more and more. I think over time, we will see these models as extremely archaic.
Patterns. I have been studying them extensively for the last few weeks. Patterns in movement. Patterns in rhythms. Patterns formed in nature. Etc. I will share more, but patterns are constantly on my brain right now.
What are some things that have been swirling in your brain this week?
Still time to sign up!
If you want to come and plan your garden with me and others, now is the time to become a paid subscriber as it garners you access to the Intensive along with:
50% off my Beginner Gardener Course (takes it from $200 to $100)
a year’s paid access to the newsletter
4 seasonal guides to walk you through the entire year thoughtfully
$75 off a $125 1-on-1 personal consult for your garden
It is a really amazing and lovely way to keep you in the right direction with your garden in order to have the best success this year!
This week, I also shared these posts for subscribers:
How to Pay Attention This Week - The moss and lichen have something to teach us about enduring harsh times.
There is No Rushing- February is a month of patience and nourishment
The Running of The Maples - The snow receding and the shifting energies of the land and self
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