parenting

Permaculture Womens Guild

Despite what Western media commonly reports, there is permaculture in Iran.

Permaculture Womens Guild

COVID-19, time to embrace complexity By Luiza Oliveira As expected, COVID-19 has been spreading exponentially (1). Safety measurements have been oriented by the World Health Organization (2), and many countries have been experiencing lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, so together we can “flatten the curve” (3,4,5). It can be challenging to keep up with the worldwide news without feeling ungrounded, but it is important to not lose sight of the complexity of this situation and only focus on the COVID-19 challenges itself. I tent to see this global quarantine experience as an opportunity to embrace and learn from complexity in order…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores By no means an exhaustive selection of great plants for gardening with children, the following twelve plants can all be direct-sown, grow quickly and easily, and are fun to harvest for food, cut flowers, or seeds.​Corn.Popcorn is always a hit with children, and many varieties grow quite well in a home garden. There is also a vast array of interesting Indian corns available, in a rainbow of beautiful colors. Sweet corn is another option, and nothing compares to a fresh ear right out of the garden as a refreshing snack on a September day. Gourds.Small gourds…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Heather Jo Flores I am primarily a food gardener, but there are a handful of flowering medicinal plants that I always include in my garden. Not only useful for home remedies, they provide beautiful cut flowers, improve soil and attract beneficial insects. Many of the plants listed here are commonly bred and crossbred to produce ornamental variations, so be sure to note the species and choose the non-hybrid option. Ten Medicinal Flowers to Grow ​Here are my 10 favorite medicinal flowers and some tips on how to grow and use them. Angelica (Angelica archangelica)A tall, self-seeding biennial that smells amazing…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Julia Pereira Dias A lot of our expectations are not our own. Culture shapes what we think about the world, about what people, including us, should do and how we should all be. Cultural norms — which are nothing but expectations — define what success is, how a marriage is supposed to run, how children are to be raised and even what happiness consists of. Social animals that we are, we strive to adhere cultural expectations, lest we be excluded from the happy zoo of conformity. If you have any doubt, think about how you raise your children. Why would it possibly stress…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Priya Logan One of the most impactful books I have ever read was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is a memoir transcribed to a personal assistant by a French Journalist, Jean-Dominique Bauby. Where the autobiographical tale picks up, he had spent several years with a rare and completely debilitating condition called locked-in syndrome. It is a beautifully recounted, brave and soulful work. It hit a deep chord because I was also working as a personal assistant for a man in his mid-thirties who had become tetraplegic in his late teens. He had been unable to move anything…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright As always, I was fascinated by what happened in Davos this year. If not necessarily encouraged. Donald Trump criticised climate ’prophets of doom’, pronouncing the amazingness of the USA and promoting their fracked gas as a safe solution to energy security. On the same stage, Greta Thunberg gave all the adults in the room a good talking to about the rapid action needed to tackle climate and ecological breakdown to provide her generation with a future that they can thrive in. HRH The Prince of Wales told us that we have just ten years to get our…