Spring Green

Hello, gardeners, the sap is running and our thumbs are twitching! We’ve already enjoyed the revitalizing arrival of the vernal equinox. We’ve accomplished the “spring forward” ritual on our clocks for increased daylight in the evening, spring breaks for students, spring training for baseball teams, and we’re ready to spring into action: replacing the ice under our thumbnails with compost!

Of course, Earth Day is approaching (as we all know everyday is Earth day). Springtime is a time of new beginnings, renewal, and vitality. The fresh maple syrup of the season sustains us happily until the honeybee hives produce their golden bounty of summer. Eggs are incubating soon to hatch and become backyard egg layers and chicken tractors for preparing and fertilizing our garden beds. April showers will be collected in rain barrels with soaker hoses attached to water the gardens. Worm bins are churning to convert table scraps into rich castings for making a nutrient tea or applying directly to the herb spirals of rosemary, basil, sage, coriander, and thyme, sack gardens of kale, spinach and lettuce, and raised-bed vegetable gardens planted to yellow squash, red tomatoes, green pole beans, orange carrots, and purple eggplant. Dwarf hazelnut and chestnut and cold-tolerant apple, grape, apricot, plum and pear fruit trees that were planted in the fall start to form leaf buds in the edible forest garden. Perhaps a tilapia tank brimming with fish is equipped with a PV-powered solar pump bubbling oxygen. Above the tilapia tank, trays of hydroponic watercress, arugula, bean sprouts, or mesclune greens dip their roots into circulating fish water. Piped domestic greywater spills into an adjacent bed of emergent sedges, cattails and grasses that filter and recycle water into the clay-lined, freshwater natural pool where children swim with delight when spring coolness turns to summer warmth. Then, from the wood-burning clay or stone oven, the delicious aroma of a gourmet organic pizza or hot apple pie wafts the air. Of course, the all-important odorless composting toilet is nearby…

Sorry, I find myself day-dreaming…but no; we are actually planning our 2009 GEM Permaculture Design Certificate course. Sign up today using green thumbs and black fingernails! (Click here for the GEM PDC link for more information and to print and complete the application form.)

Spring green is surely the loveliest color of all. Mai Phillips, John Sheffy and I, the GEM PDC course instructors, hope to see you in August, during harvest time to enjoy the fruits of our happy labor!

Best regards,

Victor D. Phillips
GEM Director (and Registered Permaculture Design Teacher via Bill Mollison’s Australian Permaculture Institute)

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