Blurring boundaries

This is an updated edit of a post I wrote a year ago about this little space for collating and sharing. I created it to be part online jotter, part open journal; a space online for me to collect and share observations, experiments, resources and reflections relating to my exploration of permaculture and social systems design.
I had created some containers to think about the learning in relation to; myself, my garden, and the social systems I focus on in my work. I’ve always liked categories and organsing things in ways like this. I’m trying to unlearn this reductionist tendency which obscures relationships and connections.
A year on and my mindsets have shifted, I have been through quite a process of learning about the complex ways in we are connected.
I‘ve come to realise that I am in my garden, and my garden is in me. By which I mean that when I am physically in my garden, I am part of the systems of connections of the garden and living creatures and plant life in it. We react and respond to each other. And my garden is me, it helps to keep me mentally and physically healthy, it feeds me (only a little at the moment, but I plan for that to change) and I it is in my mind even when I am not in it.
Similarly, I am in my work around social and environmental justice, and the work is in me.
In a post on Permaculture and Emergence, Jennifer English Morgan explores what she calls Emergent Design. It is about living intentionally and being present. It involves holistic and regenerative living. It emphasises conscious engagement, and the exploration and refinement of self.
Through engaging consciously, we become an alert observer of our experience and an active participant in the process. Design choices are explicit interactions with the world around us. At the core of design is an intervention within a specific system, with the intent of manifesting or tracking a particular outcome, by using and monitoring an appropriate process unique to the situation.
This little space online is where I’m sharing some of my intentional life.
Below is what I posted last September about discovering permaculture.
At the beginning of 2018 I set an intention to find out what permaculture is. It was a term which seemed to appear every now again in my periphery. Not in a noisy way, clamouring for attention. Rather, in a vague, intruiging and gentle way. On a number of occasions over the last few years I made a mental note to make time to explore what it was all about, feeling rather attracted to a notion that it had something to do with nature.
I already had a book, called People & Permaculture by Looby Macnamara, and it was through her website that I found an Introduction to Permaculture weekend course at Applewood Permaculture Centre. I had decided that I wanted to take a course, as I wasn’t getting around to the reading much of the book (even though I had owned for quite some time). I submitted a training request and booked onto a course taking place on 10 & 11 February.
As the date grew closer I became worried that I wouldn’t fit in, that other people would know all sorts about plants and things, and I would be much too urban. My motivation for learning was around social systems and systems practice. I was curious to explore how a permaculture design approach with a focus on co-operation, connections, relationships, abundance and harmony, could lend insights to my work with people in Dudley.

Of course, the weekend was wonderful, I met so many really lovely people and learned heaps and heaps. It was as if I got two courses in one, because all the nuggets about nature in terms of landscapes translated immediately in my head to social systems. Plus it was a joy to observe and experience Waterloo Farm, the home of Applewood Permaculture Centre, in both winter sunshine and a thin blanket of snow (thankfully we were all cosy in the yurt when the snow started coming down).
In the spring I returned to Applewood for a four day Activating Cultural Emergence course. I discovered that I actually already owned four books on permaculture(!)… and bought a further two (which I’m actually reading). I listened to podcasts and watched videos. After some consideration I decided to jump in, and signed up for an online Permaculture Design Course with Advanced Certificate in Social Systems Design developed and taught by 40 women who have come together through the Permaculture Women’s Guild.

