The School of Life (9) - Ecology

By chrysolite, 28th Sep 2010 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/1mpjx2-3/
Posted in Wikinut>Health>Mind & Spirit>Self Help

This is part 9 of a series of 12 articles about what they should have, but didn't teach us in school!
Today: Fancy word, but nothing much happened in the "ecology" department since the 70ies, what can WE do to help the planet?

• Definition
• Our little house in England or how it all started
• Feng Shui is worth applying!
• Eco living too expensive in England?
• Update from Spain
• DIY Ecology?
• Does "ecology" mean that one has to give up certain things?

Definition

The Oxford Paperback Dictionary 1994 on ecology: noun: the scientific study of living things in relation to each other and to their environment.

Too bad, maybe I've chosen the wrong word! Why? Well, because I'm not scientific at all, just common sense and studying books on living things in relation to each other and to their environment. Save my environment to save the planet. Do it yourself again? - Yes, because nobody else will do it for us.

Our little house in England or how it all started

So, let's see. We were happy in our little mid terraced house in England. It was made of bricks and wood, some plasterboard, still the original drafty wooden windows and doors, gas central heating, small front and backgarden. Just like millions of others. Well, almost happy. The house is made of good and breathing material, so we are snug and warm, but always with fresh air around. As I said, the wooden window frames were a bit drafty. Yes, well, I just will not grasp the idea of double glazing which simply turns the rooms in your house into a toxic chamber with damp walls. Double glazing companies ensure you now that they have solved these problems with little vents on top of the frame, but whenever I visit a house with double glazing, I soon get very tired or fall asleep (if I get away with it!), because of bad air and low oxygen levels.

And we didn't have wall paper, just painted the walls with environmentally friendly paint, but I can't help feeling that this still wasn't good enough, we should have chosen some "green" paint. Next time round then.

When we bought our sofa, well, after much deliberation we opted for an orange futon (we are mad!). When we came home, it smelled so nice and I looked at the label and saw it was made of hemp. So that gave me the idea to get a hemp carpet to accompany it. Finally I got lucky in finding one. But I really wanted to get all these electrostatic, chemical wall to wall carpets out of the house and replace them with wooden tongue and groove flooring with hemp carpets on top. I can hardly imagine anything more unhygienic and dirty that these chemical wall to wall carpets, especially in toilets and bathrooms! Ughhh. That was last year's project. To redo the entire bathroom and get rid of this horrible carpet.

And I really do love hemp fibre. Bit by bit I'm going to replace our cotton curtains with hemp curtains. Do they make hemp towels already? I wish they did. I found that 100% hemp jeans are so much softer than cotton jeans (I'm even told that the first ever jeans were actually made of hemp), so I can only imagine that hemp towels might be a lot softer too! Somewhere I read that one can make building material from hemp fibre mixed with lime. Well, if anybody got the recipe out there, I sure would like to know. It's supposed to be hard as concrete. I quite fancy making a conservatory out of this material.

Of course, I'd like to have a biological toilet, a wind generator and solar panels on the roof to be as independent as possible and as environmentally friendly as possible, so I'm studying and investigating if this is doable in our situation, but so far I couldn't come up with a affordable solution. Any DIY suggestions out there?

And the garden, well, it's being converted this year into a herb garden, the total herbal experience. No lawn, just stepping stones and herbs everywhere including bushes and trees with medicinal properties in either their leaves (walnut, birch, gingko), their flowers or fruits (elderberry, wild rosebush, hawthorn, sloes, apple, chestnut, linden) or bark (birch, willow) etc. All the other berries, like blueberry, gooseberry, blackberry, raspberry, brambles and wild strawberries are in place for years and give us more than sufficient fruit. Of course I'm completely mad, a small garden can't carry big trees, but I intend to cut them back, sort of midi-bonsai trees, well, we'll see how it goes.

I've even got a spot where "wild, edible" vegetables (either leaves, flower, stem or root are edible, just to oppose Monsanto, of course) and a small spot of barley grass to make juice freshly whenever I want to. And there's also a small spot where flowers grow that are edible for salads. Thought I'd do one of these for quick access as one does tend to be too lazy to fetch them otherwise.

Feng Shui is worth applying!

And what about Feng Shui? That's brilliant stuff. And in the beginning it was quite laughable. Before we painted the sitting room, I had written on the wall in pencil North, South, East and West to make sure I'd get the right colour, the right objects etc., etc. in the right corners for my husband and myself. I went for days drawing up charts and in the end I found it all made very good, common sense. There's one thing though before you start with Feng Shui: You have to remove the clutter and once everything is in place you have to watch out for clutter like a hawk. Not an easy task in such a small house, but it's possible and I know I'm winning one day! ;) I find Feng Shui principles fairly easy to learn, fairly easy to apply and the benefits are outstanding. And you certainly don't have to deal with "sick building syndrome" and similar if you get your house sorted out with Feng Shui.

Eco living too expensive in England?

Yes, I wish I could build a proper eco-house, self-sufficient and built to Feng Shui principles and seeing that we'll win the lottery soon ..... ;)

The study of living things in relation to each other and to their environment would probably include neighbours too. We've actually got two nice neighbours and the rest is indifferent. The interest in neighbours on our estate is truly underwhelming. I sure wish we could relate and interact more with each other and share experiences with "green building and living", but I'm afraid, not yet. I just hope they don't use too many chemicals and toxins in their gardens .....

Update from Spain

Made me laugh, what I had written so many years ago (we hadn't won the lottery, but made it anyway!). Now we LIVE "ecology". We had bought 7000 m2 of land with an old 30 m2 stone cottage on it, no water, no electricity, far away from any road or civilisation. After 8 years of walking our talk, we are still not connected to any "grid". A small solar installation provides light and topup for mobile and netbook, rainwater flows into our 12.000 litre cistern and if we need more, we have to bring it in from a well nearby. And we've got 3 compost toilets! Have I mentioned that we don't have any bills to pay anymore and that this is the best of all?

We cook on gas or a wood fire, we even built a proper bread oven from local stones and a drum of an old washing machine and we have to dispose of our own rubbish. This still is very, very difficult as the supermarkets just WILL insist on wrapping everything up. Little by little, though, we are producing more and more of our own food and therefore don't need to buy things in supermarkets anymore. That's how we can live actually with very little money.

DIY Ecology?

Yes, I guess WE have to do it again. YOU and I and HE and SHE, everybody. Consciously interacting with nature, caring for our environment, reducing chemicals to exactly NIL (I'm working on that one, but it's sooooo difficult, because I'm a child of this civilisation as well!). At least, after 8 years, our piece of land is 100% free of chemical fertilizer and herbicides. And in our cottage you will find no more chemicals than washing-up liquid and hair shampoo. I've tried to make my own, but it was not very good. Anybody got a good recipe out there?

To help further with at least the environment of our little valley here, I'm making the Agni-Hotra fire morning and evening and that seems to help a lot. Never mind religion, never mind sacrificial fire, they had to call it something back then, but burning cow dung, ghee and rice clears the atmosphere even inside a house, helps the environment and the ashes provide first class fertilizer and even medicine! Read up on it, try it out, it's brilliant!

Does "ecology" mean that one has to give up certain things?

Yes, I guess it does. We are creatures of habit and so we might miss all this civilised convenience for a while until we learn to "live simple" again. Now, I don't want to change back anymore, because I feel so much happier and I actually AM so much healthier. The proof is in the pudding, they say and maybe the grass IS greener on the other side. Try it out and see!

As always, working for

A SUCCESSFUL, HAPPY AND HEALTHY FUTURE

Thanks for calling in!

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