Someone at last Thursday’s dinner asked me if we who live here in this three-house village eat together other than during our Community Dinners (which, starting this month we reduced from once weekly to every other week, for the time being), and I said no, because I, for one, couldn’t stand it. I need my solitude! 

She then said that even so, most people couldn’t live with other people the way you do. That they prefer to live alone. (A note here: it’s true that though we don’t share meals on a regular basis, we DO live together, in that each house has three bedrooms, for three people, with kitchen, living room, bathrooms in common.) I told her that for me, it’s a good thing because it forces me to deal with my shadow on a regular basis. Each time someone annoys me, I look to their behavior as somehow reflecting my own in a way that I hadn’t recognized. Once I re-educate myself, then the situation with the other, invariably, clears.  

Indeed, usually the other person doesn’t even know what’s been going on inside me! Which is fine, the less drama the better.

Lots of folks gathered, neighbors and friends, about 16, as I recall, including Sam, who came for the first time. 

Sam’s on the couch, next to Camden.

Then, on Saturday, we gathered again, those of us who live here, plus Neng and Ben, who want to join our work parties so they can become more familiar with permaculture.

We needed to find out whether or not we have all the ingredients for soil blocks for when we start planting in February. And we do! So nice not to have to purchase anything this year, not even seeds, since, I think I’ve said before, we are finally saving our own.

Plus, we needed to clear out a back room and reorganize it. 

Here’s Joseph and Neng. Joseph is still checking soil ingredients. Neng is hauling out a bucket from the back room.

And here’s Ben, hauling out another bucket.

P.S. It turned out that missing ingredients for soil blocks in the main greenhouse were all in that back room . . . Plus lots of other stuff, like four soil thermometers . . . Huh? Why? Because we have trouble staying organized, so we don’t always know what we already have. 

We did give Ben a chance to follow Marita out to the compost piles, to help her turn them, and thus learn something about that aspect of this operation.

And, before they left, I lent them Charles Eisenstein’s remarkable book, SACRED ECONOMICS: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.