decompression & reintegration

waking up from a nap that lasted a solid 15 hours.

              a smoke & a coffee.

                       sounds of the city supplanting birdsong & the rustling breeze.

or

glimpses of reality

it's been a week of slippery days since we left Cayuta Sun, the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, the beauty of the swamp and the white pines, new family & friends, shooting stars, camp coffee & stretch breaks...

             and already i want to go back. so let me take you back with me.

                                  allow this semi-domesticated monkey to reminisce awhile

                                                   & ease my weary way back into a world

                                              that consistently forgets the simple joy of being.

or

bottled swamp magic

bear with me as i dive into the murky waters of memory in hopes of re-entering society with my heart full of hope, my mind full of heart, and my blood full of swamp muck;

& beware that the memory of this mind operates, as does much in this world, in discordant pulses.

so if it's a chronological narrative yer after, create the connections in your mind based on your own imagination & experience, as i have in my own.

i remember late nights starting at dark-thirty and ending around a hundred o'clock...

      where the time of day was only as significant as how many hands of light we had left...

                  and a horn would blow to warn that the time to collectively gather was at hand....

a community formed beneath the protruding lower extremities of the white pines which would, depending on the relative location of the water table and humidity, droop or engorge with water and stand erect at a jaunty eye-poking angle.  

i remember staring at the roof of the cocoon of a tent, feeling all the indicators of human habitation: the crunching of forest detritus, the murmur of conversation, rhythmic snoring strategically placed throughout the trees, the alien sounds of zippers thoroughly zipped.

the experience of outdoor living taps a primal aspect of the bipedal primate mind.  it's as if we recall the mores and customs ground deep within our bones by countless generations of our migratory ancestors.  masks tend to drop quickly, fomenting genuine experiences.  it seems almost ridiculous how fast a self-selected group in relative isolation could bond, but bond we did. with a quickness.

the purple-footed tarp people (love that tribe) call it 'exponential friend growth.'

"Turns out we're all connected......which is weird."       -senor sass

this rapid micro-community development was possible in no small part due to the existence of a mycelial network of talented, capable folks who are developing a community of their own up there in the Finger Lakes. we were all privileged to stumble into it. 

  

     The days were packed to bustling with intensive information transference and tactile activities.

Always moving from patterns to details the curriculum led us through a history of life to the present and begged the question: "What is life here to do? And what is our role in it?"; helped us further develop the foundational ethics required of conscious beings bent on the restoration, regeneration and sustenance of life on earth; outlined the core principles of permaculture, or the "thinking tools that when used together allow us to redesign our landscapes and communities in a world with fewer resources"; and brought us to interconnected specificity, tackling topics from whole systems design, (community) ecology, reading the landscape, natural patterns, site assessment, liberation ecology, economics, soil, compost, water & landform, climate & change, appropriate technology, waste, permie plants, polycultures & guilds, design strategies, (agro)forestry, mushrooms, animals, renewable energy, and eventually, intentionally or not, to social permaculture & small group dynamics.

                          sheesh. i'll upload some notes if i don't abandon my robots.

the mornings began with a member of the group sharing something: a stretch, a song, a chant, a breath,  a poem, a meditation, a moment.  and each morning was precious...each pulsed with connections...and i let go of many things...and i finally hugged my uncle jonny and let him slip back into the web of life...and i gathered energy...and i saw beauty in the world...and i laughed at the joke of reality...and it was like drinking life through a straw everyday.  and hell's bells that smoothie was pure.

how many new sets of eyes were collected there!

     the owl eyes that unfocus to catch motion and take in the whole scene
            the green eyes capable of discerning the forest from the trees...of differentiating the        

                       herbaceous layer of the land
          the blue eyes that can see the sheets of water sloughing over land and the vapor in the skies
                       the fung-eyes that notice networks of life below the duff

               the dark eyes that find paths glowing in the starlight.

everyone should feel gooey swamp mud squishing through their toes

          & the smoothness of a beaver's toothmarks

                   & the exhilaration of running barefoot through the trees,

                           & scratching a hog till it squeals in pleasure

                                    while, feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, you lick your chops.

with televisions abandoned, we found more entertainment in the pig channel, the sunset channel, the campfire channel, the same-bat-time-same-bat-channel channel, and the shooting star & satellite shows on the nightsky channel. Commercial-free, we could see that the only thing this media wanted us to buy was into life: to look & see & say, "yes" & "please" & "thank you."

this media taught that the planet will provide food & fuel & all things we need to build homes & communities & beneficial interactions between we humans and the web of life...

& reinforced that "we are nature, working." (-penny livingston)  

dreams were shared and tended to grow intricately patterned.  selves were exposed & accepted.

o ye gawrds! the walls of stone! glacially-gorged and worn smooth by water for millenia... steep paths held erect by the sheer will of the trees, leading to secret glens & pools below the falls... and standing in the roaring rush of water shooting down a narrow channel & feeling all the bullshit and baggage sloughing off yer spirit to be diluted and worn to infinitesimal grains downstream.

i remember the fire-red salamanders and i recall a certain undine bathing in a stone pool.

i'm getting lost now. i think i could spend a lifetime reliving the experiences i was fortunate enough to have gathered this summer. but now it's almost lunchtime, and, in the interest of making a long story slightly less long, i'll try to wrap this thing up and savor it later.

Time seemed to stretch out during the first week of the course.  Each minute contained an hour's worth of experience. Each sliver of the crashing moon going dark marked another week's worth of life seamlessly stuffed into a day.

Then as we entered the Practicum and the second week, cause & effect kicked in.  Time is a slingshot, apparently, so if you stretch it, it'll shoot. with a quickness.  

but you're still living the same amount whether time is moving fast or slow.  it just takes a little longer for everything to sink in when time flies fast&true.

We had 3 days to clear up the site we had spent 2 weeks preparing and we finished too fast. A day and a half was all it took before we were packing up our moldy pillows, soggy shoes, loose gear & memories.

howling a fond farewell, Kevin&Kyle&I piled into kyle's pickup while the breath of the trees commingled with the clouds & unleashed an o-so-appropriate torrent.  

we began our reintegration into the paved part of reality slowly, in fits & starts. sleeping under the stars, moseying on down the Susquehanna, connecting with friends & fellow stewards, staring into fires, sharing food, savoring the water from each place...

and as we've all drifted back homeward, we've passed into the embrace of families...who cushion our landing.  rest assured: we'll ripple...we'll take the understanding we've found with us back into the pool of society... we'll plant seeds and continue collecting and sharing knowledge, food, medicine, water & life.

because we must.

because life begets life.

because we are here, now,

                    surrounded by insurmountable opportunities,

                                (because we are human)

                                              we will begin climbing

                                                          by observing, interacting with

                                                                  & optimizing natural cycles.

functional interactions will multiply

and that shit will creep.  

yes.

please.

thank you.

Coarse Woody Debris

or

walking the unmowed path

::(begin transmission):::

composing this post, swinging in a gentle forest breeze, nestled in my hammock snug between the white pines, I struggle to condense and organize my thoughts.

This trip started a lil less than 2 weeks ago, yet it feels as though a warped bubble of spacetime has surrounded me.  Time moves slower here. Like when we were young.

The glens, hollows & swamps up here near the Finger Lakes resonate with something deep within my bones.  These are, after all, the stomping grounds of my Cree forebears, but there's more to it than that.  There's a sense of community budding all around... of neighbors helping neighbors... of progressive thought processes... of regenerative stewardship of the land we rely on to sustain us. And it is invigorating.

Our first week of the work-trade kept us busybusybusy.  As a group we've inoculated shitake mushroom logs, roofed a teacher-space, cleaned and patched the yurt, helped out with animal and garden chores, cleaned out the composting outhouse, dug a french drain around the Octagon (our outdoor classroom), rigged up the outdoor kitchen, built scrapwood trash/recycling receptacles, repainted signs, engineered ventilation for the top of the yurt, cooked, ate, drank & laughed together.

The camp is oddly quiet now,with half the group still off somewhere recuperating from the Grassroots Music Festival, but tomorrow morning we'll be bustling again.  The Permaculture Design Certification Course starts next saturday and we have a lot to do before the other 26 students start showing up friday afternoon...

Here's one of the best bits, though: the course hasn't even started but the learning process is already in full swing.  Each of us offers unique insights and information and we've collected in this shared space off the swamp road. 

We make. We sweat. We share. We live.

And the coyotes hoot and howl like drunken hooligans in the night.

And the ancient grandparents of the white pines in these woods keep silent vigil over the camp.

And the stinging nettles nourish us.

And raspberries have never tasted so sweet.

“All true wealth derives from biological processes.”

:::(end transmission)::

an ionised nocturne.

the homestead weathered the quick'n'dirty storm that just rolled across most of the country no worse for the wear.
came home to find the chicks snuggled safely in their coop and a smattering of natural debris scattered amidst the prolific detritus of multiple projects in various states of disrepair.  all is chaos in the wake of a shua-storm.

things happen so fast these days. a year is only 1 / 31st of the time i've been gravity-glued to this living rock; a week 1/1612th; a day one / eleven-thousand-three-hundred-twenty second...th....counting 7 leap years...no wonder times a-flyin.

big changes are blowin in with the silver iodide-laden superstorms.  it's less than a month now...barely 1/1612th of my perception-filter (read: TIME)...and i'll be on my way to the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute for their 11th Permaculture Design Certificate Course...

my longshot application yielded a spot in their Work-Trade program...

my mind races ahead of itself these days,

existing in a magic fairyland of permaculture, building&creating, honest labor, good folk & good food ...

exactly as my days should be structured...

 but first, a trip north with my brother, through durham and it's reportedly vibrant urban ag movement; capon bridge, WV to visit folks i'm blessed to've met at Taproot; and on to Ithica to check out the Veteran's Sanctuary before checking in and making camp for the 9 day pre-course preparations, 2 wk course, & camp clean-up... 

so there's the pitch. you're welcome. to the right is a link to my indiegogo campaign. i'm trying out this crowdfunding doo-dad. i earn so little money you would probably pity me, but i assure you, i eat like a king...an old-timey third-world country kind of king (that cooks), but a king nonetheless....!

i did a little math though, and if 293 people on the planet, with the interwebs, could slip me a 5-spot, before June 28th, i could afford the round-trip, the tuition, and have some funds to help out with the rent when i return from an income-free month&a-halfish.

think about that: 293 people we know out of at least a couple billion possible humans, doesn't seem too difficult...

imagine if every person online with an interest in spreading permaculture, sustainable living, community-sufficiency or yard farming in its many incarnations contributed $5!

i'd be a millionaire!

i'd buy up your mineral rights & give em back to you in perpetuity just to snub the mother-frakkers!

seriously though, can you help me get the word out?

click the link & share it with your peoples.

all the little buttons are there.

they make it easy.

let's make life a little easier...

perturbance in paradise

when it looks like it's been blasted with a shotgun...

 feast & famine

my posts have become increasingly cerebral & cryptic, i fear.  that's generally how i cope with hard life-stuff...by flipping that weird mystic-switch that enables me to observe my participation in reality while remaining emotionally detached. sheesh.

recognizing that, i tend to actually deal with the big-picture problems best by dealing with small, practical tasks. 

& dealing with bugs:the good, the bad, the beautiful, is one of those recurring tasks this time of year.

look for flea beetles. they hop like fleas. and are small like fleas.

i steer clear of the term 'pest control' for the same basic reasons whatwhy the term "systems of control" bothers me: i'm a strange human with odd beliefs....but i suppose we could just call that a person.
the goal is for us to graduate from Pest Control to Integrated Pest Management and eventually to Stewards of Balanced Ecosystems Capable of Self-Regulation...
 That said, you'll never catch me sprinklin 7dust or even Bt in my garden. Homemade natural products are more my style: they take a lil time but they cost less & tend to smell much better.
     I need to slow the flea beetles down so they don't decimate my eggplants before the plants are big enough to handle them or predators find the feast.
         Creating Pest-Deterring Concoctions, like Potions, is a subtle science and an exact art, and all you need are a few basic ingredients:

• hot peppers: i save pepper seeds&scraps in a big freezer bag as i process them through the summer&fall so i have a solid stash for spring. you could probably use dried peppers in a pinch.
• garlic: is magic
• liquid castile soap: i like peppermint from the All-One-or-None! man's kids
• water: also magic

All you do is make a "tea" out of the peppers and garlic. You can steep it in a bucket of rainwater for a day or two or do it on the stove in a couple hours (about 30mins of work over the course of a couple hours).

I have a 1/2 gallon sprayer so I started by putting 2qts of water in a pot and turning on the heat. You can make your batch to fill your sprayer or make extra &store it in the fridge, you'll need enough for at least a coupla days.

Then chop, smash, slice, chew up & spit out or otherwise release the essential oils of the garlic (small bulb for a half gallon, big bulb for a full gallon; tops & roots if ya got em) & drop it in the water.

Eyeball or measure the spicy peppers. You're shooting for about 1-2 cups per gallon of water. Drop em in the water. Invoke something, say abracadabra, pray, meditate or medicate as the water begins to simmer.

i took off the lid for the photo, but seriously kids, put a lid on a pot when you're trying to get liquid hot, it's way faster and uses less fuel. thanks. stepping off the soapbox. boil it for about 10 minutes.

now shut off the heat, cover the pot, and let it steep for another couple hours. you can pretend you're soaking beans, lay in a hammock, go get your feet dirty or otherwise occupy yourself as the concoction gets spicier.

a point comes in the steeping/cooling off period when i inevitably want to taste it. so i do & i recommend it. i probably wouldn't take a shot of the stuff unless i was coming down with something, but i like to dip a finger in and touch the tip of my tongue a few times. when my tongue tingles in a fashion that i imagine would be torturous to a tiny creature, i know i'm ready for the next step.

strain the spicy liquid & go toss the solids in the compost, your worms won't like it and neither will your chickens...you might be able to train a dog to fear you if you're evil, i s'pose. i recommend compost.

now we're ready for our decoction to become a concoction. add your castile soap ::(sidenote: i like the bronner's cuz i keep it around for all kinds of stuff, other oil-based soaps would most likely work just as well, e.g., horticultural oil or even murphy's oil soap in case of desperation)::

The general rule is to add 1-2Tbsp per gallon of water.

Give it a stir & presto-chango! 

If you're particularly sensitive to the spicy substance Capsaicin you might want to put on some gloves now.

Fashion a funnel & fill up your sprayer. Head outside armed to the teeth with your pepper spray & start misting them lil buggers! 

At this point i pretend i'm in an unpublished prequel to Ender's Game as i rain burning oils onto the world of the buggers.  

 make sure you hit the underside of the leaves too.

watch them buggers drop. even slugs wilt from the stem. a thousand tiny voices scream every moment...all life is suffering.

necessary&beautiful.

quickly cultivate shallowly around the plants before &/or after you spray to expose the eggs and larva that the mature beetles drop into the soil below their favorite foods. keep spraying until they move on, their life cycle is disrupted for the season, or a predator population emerges... and let the most resilient survive to feast another day...

 to feed a mouth other than ours.

zero grow thirty.

last night at the behest of b. fleischmann's sendestrabe i was visited by a strange dream:

nighttime porching, just chilling in my chair with company, eyes forward,

and an infrequently recurring character whom i call the dream director, a slight long-haired egyptian fellow (i presume), appears with an egg on the porch.  wielding the egg as a wand, his eyes compel me to pay close attention & the egg glows&shudders.

it's hatching now. reds crackling into orange&yellow hues and a tiny ball of flesh emerges, glowing too. she darts flying to bounce around the space of the porch as if we were surrounded by a twilit force field only to land by the door transforming into a 3-4 year old blonde-haired little girl asking "how did i get here, da?"

to which i reply chuckling, "why, i've known you since you were just a little chick!"

then the dream director leans in close to murmur mysterious things about transitive states as i am waking up.

sometimes life throws curveballs, or the house stacks the deck, or our karma runs deeeeeep, or whatever.
     just one more way that gardening mimics life, or further evidence that nothing in the universe is  
                  connected. ha.

the garden and life teach patience many ways & one of those is the proclivity towards failure.  sometimes experiments don't work.  but there is no waste in nature so there is no failure in our future:

only opportunities for learning.

time is room to make mistakes. 

time is room to become better.

so what can the gardener do?

• plan for loss: attrition occurs even in balanced ecosystems
• recognize each unsuccessful experiment as an impetus to growth, adapation & evolution
• never stop trying... in fact, try harder: increasing the amount of attempts can only enhance the eventual amount of optimal outcomes

   the weather here has been behaving as if climate change was a theory, not a hypothesis, and local weather patterns were influenced by shifting patterns of global climate...or further evidence that nothing in the universe is connected. ha. 

   

   how about out where you are?

  

 as i sit in the midst of what i hope to be the last cold storm front of the season, i'm beginning to see the wisdom in falling far behind this year.  with temperatures still dropping into the 40s at night, i'm suddenly proud of myself for only planting out a dozen or so tomatoes in the gardens that i frequent. i'm sure as shit glad i haven't planted peppers or eggplants.

but the southerly winds of change are blowing in, and zero grow thirty is fast approaching... 

Confessions of a Pizza Cook

or

My Garden is Bolting

or

lady kaos & her disciples come home to roost.

ok interwebs, here it is:

                      what happens when you are over a transitive verb?

                                       a whelm (hwelm, welm), v.t. 1. to submerge; engulf. 2. to overcome utterly; overwhelm:                 

                                                            whelmed by misfortune., if you were.

are you like me? 

       do you shut down entirely?.

                    how do each of us deal with the confluence of our individual realities?

                                      how do we adapt&grow within confining stictures?

there's a story that i wish to tell & it has to do with lessons learned...

                 with mysteries of the present.....

                and the future of the Shua & all his Industries,ICC*

              Consciousness is a whiffletree, & we're all at bat.

BEGIN: if April Showers bring May Flowers, do March Showers bring February Flowers? OR The Presence of the Present. OR The "M" is for Motivation:

Experimental Propagation requires 3 Ingredients:

1. mushrooms with mycelial "stems"
2. cardboard
3. pasteurizing water (about 170degrees F for 1hr)

After Cardboard Pasteurizes:

1. separate layers
2. slice mycelial mass from the part yer gonna eat
3. place thin slices between cardboard layers

1. roll into a burrito
2. place in an airy ziploc bag, like this old green bean freezer bag.
3. wait. watch, aerate every once in awhile.

sometimes life appears as a cyclical, vacillating series of funks.... of ups & downs, strikes & gutters, Dude. & i'm sure it is.
it is.
but how can we wake up every moment?

maybe from the love of family....

       maybe from the love of plants.....

         maybe from the love animals......

         maybe from the love of fungi...

maybe from the love of All that wasisbeing. right now. all the time.

but sometimes it feels like everything i've done is the hardest thing i've ever done.

even though i know the truth is that life gets easier & easier

the more i know, the more i grow...

etc.,etc., et cetera.

& sometimes i feel that motivation is impossible without community.

CONTINUE: A Boy's Gotta Eat, OR Lessons in Sustainable Economics:

1. If you're like us you have some old carrots, celery & onion in the fridge. 
2. Maybe add some garlic when you call it mire poix (meer pwah)  & sautee it

     There's a general delusion that independence & self-sufficiency are hallmarks of our particular brand of freedom, but if you learn from the vast majority of human experience inevitably you see that the most just egalitarian societies considered community inter-dependence vital to each individuals relation to the natural world & each other.

     So  here we are  somewhere between Babylon & the Promised Land, struggling to wiggle our way to freedom in a sea of seemingly oblivious consumption & rampant ego-politik.  The prospects are daunting, but that's just because opportunity abounds. 

1. drop some OG ground beef, love, Joe Mama.
2. Pour some tomato paste in there, if you've got it.
3. Boom: Bolognese Sauce; Beef&Veggies

   A permaculturalist sees problems as solutions, yeah?

   And said permaculturalist is part & parcel of the economic system that's evolved in the wake of the cold cold war.

  

At this point on the thought train, an angel of some sort should whisper that Bucky Fuller quote in your ear:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

We exist in a reality that requires money, real or imaginary, proper or improper.  I'd pee my pants in public for the opportunity, sometime in the future, to be an integral component in a communtiy so coordinated that no cash was ever required, but here and now thisguy has rent, utilities, student loans, vehicular woes... you know: the whole torrential burden of 'earning a living' on a planet capable of supporting life. . . for free.

My brother has engrained the concept of Congruence into my psyche (thanks, Esau :) ).  And I think my brain-soil conditions are finally conducive the germination of such a meta-seed. Which leads here:

When I grow up, I want to be good & do good things.
  Then I grew up & wondered what 'good' was.

After some significant mental fermentation I concluded that the most undeniable good stems from the dis-/re-appearing knack of optimizing ecosystems to sustain human life:  gardening for biodiversity.... Realizing that the Garden is spaceship Earth & we were never driven out, just blinded by self-deception & self-interest.....

But the Glory of the gossamer web of life's interactions still pulses
through microbes&mycelia
ladybugs' lil aphid lions
teeny little wasps&caterpillar carcasses
migrating birds
voles&snakes
pollinators & pollutants
a wobbly axis
starlight
&
water
all flowing into our food.
All life depends on varying states of decay & that is good.    

Sautee/carmelize/burn:

1. garlics
2. onions
3. sliced oyster mushrooms.

How can you monetize that? Seems almost blasphemous, right?  

 That mysterious angel's appeared again, just out of eyeshot, whispering stuff that Bucky pointed out 43 years ago:

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Here's the crux: how does a body earn a living by simply living inside our current capitalist framework?  

put it all on a pizza & bake it. yum.

How can we align our requirement for capital with ideals of mutualism & free association?

“It's a sticky wicket,” so the lady says, and it's understandable to be overwhelmed. I forgive me.

But like Will Allen, that giant scion of urban agriculture said,

“When you start a project everything's not gonna be perfect,

but get something started.”

The time has come for a better brand of business; for local entrepreneurs working to humanize the economy; for micro-enterprises banding together to subvert big boxes; for growth, adaption & evolution.

     It's been a year since I started trying to earn income in the field of suburban micro-farming.  I installed a few gardens, talked to lots of folks at market, raised & sold heirloom plants & produce, dug swales, hauled tons of mulch & compost, sweat & bled, lashed together bamboo structures, battled cutworms & cabbage butterflies, prayed for rain, wallowed in the dirt & just barely scraped by. 

     I felt guilty charging money for doing what I want to do anyways, which resulted in me working much more: slinging pizzas at night to ensure all the bills got paid and picking up remodeling work where&when I could to cover operating expenses.  I must have a case of ridiculitis; I'm still doing that.          

Maybe there is in fact some buried imprint coded into my personality that causes me to cringe at the thought of capitalism founded on usury, and to fear what i'd become with wealth & power.

And that's probably healthy, what with Mammon masquerading as “free trade” and all, but it's certainly unhealthy to allow that fear to paralyze you.

I'm hypothesizing that it's possible to make money without guilt by focusing on:

Transparency, Education & Coordination.  

I have one more revolution around the daystar in this place, and as long as i have these feet i want to leave fertile footprints in my wake.  So I have one year to improve the land where i stand, to optimize growing conditions in my garden, to pass on this practical knowledge to neighbors, and to connect with others who share similar goals. 

I'd better get crackin.

* an Imaginary Company Corporation                           

                                      

summer wind-down.

... the average rate of consumption per person per day in the US is 575litres :that's: 151.899gallons. <http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757&transpose=row>

Our Household of 3 robust, adult american specimens consumes an average of say 21-42 gallons/person/day (not counting rainwater and occasional water reuse or water we consume at work or drink-products we purchase), mainly depending on whether the rain barrels gone empty, i presume.  Containers can be thirsty buggers.

in mozambique, the average person would be consuming 4 litres::1.05669 gallons  of  agua . . . total: cleaning, bathing, drinking, cooking. 

so add the highest and lowest

151.93 :: 152.95569::152.94 = dumb on the abacus :: calculator :: calculator using the 2 decimal places i counted on the abacus = i'm dang dumb on the abacus...forgot to carry the one.

and divide by two

458.83569 /3= 152.94523 average of my first three stabs at addition without paper and pencil /2 = 

to get

76.472615. . .the crazily rough average of the water consumption of the most average person on the planet... that's slightly less than China on the graph.

So at the house we're consuming on the level of, say, wealthy urbanites in Bangladesh or Kenya.  

With the leak in the water line at the rate of flow measured by Kenny from the county, our house will wash 16,000 gallons of water into the stormwater system that pools up on occasion due to organic debris accumulations on a neighbor's back fence.

16,000 gallons per month  /30 days = 533.3repeating gallons per day /3 people = 177.77repeating gallons per person per day.

25.88 gallons more than the average american.

our main city supply pipe is corroded and water was shooting into the sky (though now it has a patch on that particular leak which has slowed the flow considerably), and that's just a lil more than what the average american is consuming everyday?

it's like everybody here has leaky pipes and hasn't recognized it yet....

water. it's so important to think about that They made it an element.

          

it's so nice out i wanna go dig some swales...utilize the filtering function of the intricate web of life that exists right beneath our feet: plants and fungi absorbing, purifying and releasing 

water 

that literally falls from the sky(!) and bask in the glow of the changing of seasons....

summer seem(s/ed) short and powerful hot but there were many merciful relief storms that washed over us.  i've just now almost drained the 275gallon rain tote plus 20 gallons i had stored from the winter to start the wine cap mushroom bed.