permaculture

[Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>]

Charles,

> not try to implement a full design at once.... I think I have avoided 
> many mistakes... I initially thought... Maybe with experience one can
> know what is the best approach for a given location...

Mollison again:
"You see, if you're dealing with an assembly of biological systems, you 
can bring the things together, but you can't /connect/ them. We don't 
have any power of creation - we have only the power of assembly. So you 
just stand there and watch things connect to each other, in some 
amazement actually. You start by doing something right, and you watch it 
get /more/ right than you thought possible."
                       http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/Mollison.htm

Scientists like to talk about patterns, but are bad at predicting 
outcomes, but we predict the future to stay alive, so science is the 
book that holds a hundred stories but not the answer.  So we assemble 
whatever we can.  We need every capacity to assemble the desired 
future.  I guess we just start by doing something right.  And I think 
your right.  The more we think as we do permaculture, the better we get 
at it, until we are connected in ways we didn't think possible.  Y'know 
every time I almost lop off my finger with a kitchen knife I realize 
that I was thinking angrily about something other then cutting!  And we 
have dialogs with scientists, and read their stories, or dabble in that 
modern numerology ourselves as it moves us -- it is a powerful tool.  
And we keep trying to assemble "permacultures", those things that live 
and grow around us... and hope that we can keep our permacultures and 
our children safe.

Amanda says:
"Does it help to think of Permaculture as a craft?  A skilled
craftsperson brings many of the key aspects of science, and spirit, to
their work - yet is not too dogmatic about any of them!"

Yes, that works for me.

~Paul
(feeling extra smug/serene today cause I just spent the evening planting 
trees with my daughter and letting it get dark with nothing but candles on 
that gorgeous moon)