How to Find Joy

I found a quote the other day I really like:

"We don't know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that." Dr David Suzuki

I like it because this is what we’re doing. Experimenting. Building our resilience, our self-sufficiency, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels while the madness machine hurtles on regardless. As Leunig says, “Father, do not forgive them for they know precisely what they do.” We fortunate people with such relative wealth and education – who don’t know civil war or famine, whose children will grow up in good health, free to speak their minds, move around – we all have enough information about the state of the planet, it’s just about whether we choose to act. Our friends in Freo are.


Interestingly, for someone trying to reduce my dependence on fossil fuels I realise that in the last week I have used them in the car, the tractor, the pump, the lawnmower, the brushcutter, and the chainsaw. And the gas for the hot water. I am trying though. Very trying.

We mowed the lawn yesterday for the first time of the season and it is very beautiful, the last of the frost burnt grass is gone and nothing remains but lush green. The sun warms winter hearts and earth and the place to be is in the garden, making new beds, moving topsoil, stopping to smell the flowers.


Noah was attacked by an enormous pile of logs at cricket yesterday so this afternoon Rob and I returned to wreak our familial revenge. Airy-fairy theories on child raising are all very good but my son had been attacked. We took a chainsaw. I don’t think it will be trying anything again anytime soon and the trailer of firewood we ended up with was purely incidental.

With spring here the days of lighting the wood heater at night are coming to an end but we’re still stockpiling firewood so it will be good and dry for next year, burning easier, hotter and cleaner. We do have lots of trees on our block but we do try and resist chopping them down, disturbing ecosystems and habitats. The timber we got today was just going to be burnt anyway so we are utilising a waste resource, which always feels good.

How to find joy: Go to the asparagus bed in your gumboots. Pick about half a dozen spears. Gobble them up raw. Does it get any better than this?

“I’m grateful that I read a book in preschool.”
(Confused? Look)