My Garden of a Thousand Bees

My Mom sent us this link to an episode of Nature entitled "My Garden of a Thousand Bees". It is an absolute delight!

Image credit: Bumble bee with flower

A nature photographer during Lockdown films a full spring and summer season of native bees in his unruly backyard garden in London. The photography is amazing; the bees come to have individual personalities and the photographer is funny and humble as he explores this micro-world. CLICK HERE to watch

Related article:  ‘No Mow May’ Gives You a Reason to NOT Mow the Lawn: Leave the Weeds to Feed the Bees

Infectious Laughter on a Train and Brave Woman Leads Sing-Along

Here are two videos featuring people who lifted the spirits of other passengers while riding on trains. Enjoy!

 

 

 Spreading the Joy of Laughter on a Train

  

 Brave woman inspires train sing along

Rundown apartments reborn as food-forest co-living Agritopia - Kirsten Dirksen

This video depicts an exciting urban sustainable-living project in Portland, Oregon created by converting apartment buildings and the weedy lawns and parking areas that surrounded them into a thriving Eco-village. Anyone interested in solutions to the many ecological problems we are facing, or preparing for what seems like an inevitable collapse will find many practical designs and design-principles to inform ones own action steps. This video gave me a feeling of hope!

In 2007, Ole and Maitri Ersson bought a rundown apartment complex in the city and immediately began to de-pave parking lots to make room for what today is a huge permaculture co-living space and urban food forest.

Today, the Kailash Ecovillage has 55 residents who all help farm where there was once pavement, grass, a swimming pool, and an overgrown weed patch.

The community is well-prepared for systems collapse; they have extensive rainwater collection and storage, plenty of produce and they process their own sewage. Their permitted sanitation project complies with international building codes for compost toilet and urine diversion systems and turns their pee and poop into nitrogen and compost.

Here, nearly everything is shared. There are two community electric cars – donated by the Erssons who no longer have a private car-, shared bicycles (and bike trailers), an extensive fruit orchard, berry and grape patches, and a considerable community garden space. Photovoltaics provide about two-thirds of the energy consumed by the complex.

Neil Robinson is the community’s full-time farmer who has sold thousands of dollars of Kailash produce at farmers markets. He moved in as a way to prepare for systemic collapse. “I wanted to learn to grow food and then have a system that could step in. We have water, we have food.”

Ole explains, “We’re in this zone where it’s not a question of if, but when, we’re going to get a Richter 9 earthquake… that’s going to break all kinds of grids, the power grid is likely going to go down, the sewer grid almost undoubtedly and it’s probably going to take months, if not years, to get the sewer system going again.” Their sanitation project can absorb 60 adults for months.

Rents here are lower than the Portland average because the Erssons want Kailash to be accessible to all income levels. There’s a 300-person waitlist, but Ole hopes others will follow their example.

“If you look at it from an economic perspective no business would want a complex landscape like this because it’s way too much maintenance, but what you have to do is turn the maintenance over to the residents, and then they do it: they get joy; it’s an antidepressant; it’s a way of creating food; it’s a way of creating community; so you have to do it in a certain way, but it’s definitely a lot more work than the typical grass and shrub landscape for sure.”

Reposted from Fair Companies

Bee Bricks That Help Thousands of Solitary Bees Are Now a Requirement for New Buildings in Brighton

 By Andy Corbley

 

Since 250 of the 270 bee species in Britain are solitary buzzers, the city of Brighton and Hove is establishing mandates to use “bee bricks” in construction of all buildings above 5 meters to help encourage these solitary species to nest in them.

Bee bricks are what appear to be blocks of Swiss cheese but which are actually a normal building bricks created with small cavities into which bees typically nest. Old brick buildings and crumbing walls have been observed as excellent habitat for bees, and so Brighton and Hove are trying to deploy this simple invention to offer more room on the metaphorical bed for the pollinating insects.

FULL article, CLICK HERE

 

Jerusalema Challenge - Elephants, Giraffes and People in Joy!

I dream of a world where all our relations with the natural world around us inspire this sort of feeling of spontaneous joy as expressed HERE.

God’s Great Reset Will Soon Begin - Shunyamurti Teaching

I've always been intrigued with philosophies that speak of our human incarnation as a "simulation". This is a viewpoint that seems to bring unity between the world of quantum physics and spirituality. In this world-view, ones beliefs have more effect on your experince than actual reality does!

How do we make sense of these chaotic, challenging times we're in? Many faith traditions are saying that there are signs we are in the "end times" these days but the ones I appreciate most are those that say these end-times are the precursor to a time of re-birth and integration.  Shunyamurti, in this talk, offers this sort of hopeful message.

Though I'm often "turned off" by those who adopt the Guru-role, especially if they didn't grow up within its culture (in this case, Hindu), I found myself resonating with this teacher's message.  Shunyamurti gave this talk early-on in the Covid lock-downs and encouraged people to use the loss of physical freedom to go more deeply within.

 

 

A Message of Hope and Science - Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

"Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don’t want."

Bruce Lipton PhD is one of my heroes! With a strong background in cell biology (see short Bio below) he does an amazing job tying together Quantum Physics and the biology of Genetics to build the case for how our beliefs have a lot more to say about our gene's expression than most of us were led to believe. He has been a voice of sanity throughout the pandemic with his urging to "dial back the fear, and dial up the love"! - LINK

Here, in his latest video he builds on one of his key themes: our power to profoundly effect our experienced reality with our thoughts. In this hopeful and inspiring message he councils us not to fear the breakdown of society as we know it because it has been our modern Western society that has led us to this current Sixth Mass Extinction. If you've been feeling despair at the state of the world, this video will give you a new way to frame our World situation.  

Good News! A Message of Hope and Science - LINK

  "A miraculous healing awaits this planet once we accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the Garden, rather than fight over the turf." ~ Bruce H. Lipton

Bio: Bruce H. Lipton, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Stem cell biologist, bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award, he has been a guest speaker on hundreds of TV and radio shows, as well as keynote presenter for national and international conferences.