"The best investment on earth is earth." - Louis J. Glickman
I came across this quote in my last year's diary when I was in the process of dispensing with another year. I don't have the faintest glue who Louis J. Glickman is, but I suspect he was fond of a bit of gardening.
Like many people, I lived in a lot of rental accommodation over the course of my life, but I am somewhat settled in a home of our own these days.
Ten years ago, when we spotted this house for sale it had many features we found attractive. The house itself is fairly prosaic and ordinary, certainly no architect's wet dream. BUT it had what many houses don't have these days, a quarter-acre section (or for the metric equivalent, roughly 1,000 square metres). Plus it was affordable and only about 1km from the beach.
The previous owners were transplanted from England and older than us. It was clear that they had favoured an English-style garden with roses and such which were not suited to our climate and had high water needs. Roses are lovely to look at, but we wanted a garden that would work WITH the environment not AGAINST it.
THE ABOVE POST WAS DRAFTED BEFORE THE February 22 earthquake in CHRISTCHURCH.
SO HERE IS THE FOLLOW-UP POST-DISASTER:
When stuff is laid out all over the floors of your house and you are doing the "trying to get your house back to some fit state", it is good to do something for which the results are immediate.
This weekend it gave me a particular solace to mow my lawns and weed the garden. Prosaic acts with such profound effects.
It's a corny cliche, but working with the earth is grounding, in a spiritual sense.
I came across this quote in my last year's diary when I was in the process of dispensing with another year. I don't have the faintest glue who Louis J. Glickman is, but I suspect he was fond of a bit of gardening.
Like many people, I lived in a lot of rental accommodation over the course of my life, but I am somewhat settled in a home of our own these days.
Ten years ago, when we spotted this house for sale it had many features we found attractive. The house itself is fairly prosaic and ordinary, certainly no architect's wet dream. BUT it had what many houses don't have these days, a quarter-acre section (or for the metric equivalent, roughly 1,000 square metres). Plus it was affordable and only about 1km from the beach.
The previous owners were transplanted from England and older than us. It was clear that they had favoured an English-style garden with roses and such which were not suited to our climate and had high water needs. Roses are lovely to look at, but we wanted a garden that would work WITH the environment not AGAINST it.
THE ABOVE POST WAS DRAFTED BEFORE THE February 22 earthquake in CHRISTCHURCH.
SO HERE IS THE FOLLOW-UP POST-DISASTER:
When stuff is laid out all over the floors of your house and you are doing the "trying to get your house back to some fit state", it is good to do something for which the results are immediate.
This weekend it gave me a particular solace to mow my lawns and weed the garden. Prosaic acts with such profound effects.
It's a corny cliche, but working with the earth is grounding, in a spiritual sense.
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