You know you're a permie when...

May 20, 2019 07:39:12

When an “invasive” weed shows up in a garden bed and you are more interested in its usefulness than than the peas you planted.

May 21, 2019 16:33:27

You know you're a permie when .......
your grandma looks at you like you have two heads when you try to explain nutrient accumulating weeds
And your grandpa makes an effort to not do the above when you mention berms and swales😄

May 22, 2019 05:05:43

When your yard is full of buckets and milk containers for various projects.

May 22, 2019 08:30:03

When you pull more stuff out of the village dustbin than you put in.

May 31, 2019 11:57:17

Jolene Jakesy wrote:When your yard is full of buckets and milk containers for various projects.

... and salvaged doors / windows

... and stacks of cardboard

... and piles of rocks

;)

May 31, 2019 12:01:00

You REALLY know you're a permie when the first garter snake sighting of the season happens to be a pregnant-looking lady weaving her way up your cordwood walls on a chilly, blustery day, and all you can think is "I hope she finds a nice cozy spot in my walls to birth a hundred more voracious slug eaters"

May 31, 2019 12:37:31

When you’re bartering your “extra stuff” on the local buy-and-sell for wood chips, leaf bags, seedlings or old tools...

May 31, 2019 17:56:53

When coppicing willow on Wednesday you observe a bird scolding the dog in a certain area of willow. You wonder if there is a nest nearby. On Friday you see the bird again and start watching for the nest. Sure enough, there it is!

May 31, 2019 18:13:34

Jennifer Meyer wrote:I have celiac, too. I simply don't let anything in the house that has gluten, dextrose, maltodextrin, or MSG.

We had to add citric acid to this list .....

You know you're a permie if you just spent ALL AFTERNOON on this site, planning, dreaming, wishing.....

May 31, 2019 18:36:48

Adele Poe wrote:
You know you're a permie if you just spent ALL AFTERNOON on this site, planning, dreaming, wishing.....

Welcome to Permies! It sounds like you belong here

The rabbithole is deep, but oh, so fun!!

May 31, 2019 19:27:43

Mandy Launchbury-Rainey wrote:When you pull more stuff out of the village dustbin than you put in.

My. Every. Saturday. Afternoon.
Sometimes I make a second trip to get more good things!

May 31, 2019 19:30:20

When you rescue volunteer vegetable and herb seedlings, and also harvest some weeds to eat... before you turn the compost piles.

Jun 01, 2019 00:51:16

Adele Poe wrote:

You know you're a permie if you just spent ALL AFTERNOON on this site, planning, dreaming, wishing.....

This is my socual media. Literally. First thing in the morning. Through too hot to work afternoons, and if I can't sleep.... I think that's why they made me a moderator, to give me something more constructive to do!

Jun 01, 2019 00:53:23

Just wombled 20 trays of bean trays out the bin. Made my day. Now THATs being a permie!

Jun 01, 2019 00:59:57

When your five-year-old son goes around the house turning off all the lights (leaving you with just the oven light as you cook dinner) to save power, and says "We don't need lights on because the sun is like a giant lightbulb."

And, he also just wants to watch youtube videos of people building houses and watermills. So proud of my boy!

Jun 01, 2019 17:35:08

When you have arguments with family members about why they shouldn't pull your "primary decomposers" (mushrooms) out of the grass.

Jun 05, 2019 23:15:51

You know you're a permie when moving rocks and lifting lots of dirt is a good workout!

Jun 13, 2019 16:20:02

When you're at the grocery store parking lot, and your 5 year old son points to the lavender bush and says, "Do the bees like this plant?" You reply, "Yes they do! That's lavender and bees love it!" And he replies, "Then why aren't there any bees on it?" He was right, not a bee in sight, even though the parking lot was full of lavender bushes and other pollinator-friendly plants. So then you get to discuss the lack of habitat and water for the bees and the use of insecticides. I'm still amazed at how observant he was!

Jun 15, 2019 10:51:26

When you pull weeds at your parents to help out... then bag them all as free mulch

Jun 19, 2019 13:35:45

When you find a blooming palm tree and stick your face right up next to the flowers to count and admire over a dozen species of bees/wasps/flies.

Jun 19, 2019 13:41:18

You hesitate to move to south Florida, not because a hurricane could destroy your house, but because your concerned about your future food forest.

Jun 27, 2019 21:47:11

There was a piece of tarp bolted to a shelter in my field that was starting to fray due to age and needed to be removed before one of the ducklings tried to chew on it. I was working along it, unbolting a section at a time when I came across a momma spider with what were clearly egg mounds webbed to the tarp. I took out my Swiss Army Knife and used those ridiculously small scissors to carefully cut off a 3" x 6" strip and fastened it back on the shelter, all the while reassuring momma that I didn't want to hurt her or her eggs and that if she'd just stay with them, I'd put them where they'd be safe.
Sometimes you don't ask "why" - just "why not"?

Jun 29, 2019 10:06:34

Devin Lavign wrote:When visiting friends and family you keep catching yourself heading outside when you need to pee, forgetting that is not considered polite.

as well as...

Secretly going outside to pee on plants wile visiting friends and family as you noticed some really needed the extra help as they were looking so sad.

To add to this one, that I found myself doing while attending the 2019 PDC at Wheaton Labs

When doing a two week PDC, you observe the pee patterns of other students, and in the second week you pee in the places the others have neglected.

Jun 29, 2019 12:11:11

Devin Lavign wrote: in the second week you pee in the places the others have neglected.

My last house I'd tell the guys "pee on that plant, please!"
Want to weird your dad out? Tell him where to pee in your yard

It DOES weed out the kind of men I don't want to date anyway...

Jun 29, 2019 19:12:59

When you find a flower growing out of the concrete and decide to let it stay and see what it can do.

Jul 01, 2019 21:15:50

... when you realize that pool parties have changed.

... it's getting late in the planting season so you quickly cover 3000 square feet of lawn in black eyed peas before it's too late. More for the 8 foot roots than the food.

Jul 03, 2019 09:11:30

Mike Barkley wrote:

... when you realize that pool parties have changed

My pool party even has a life guard!

Jul 03, 2019 09:35:56

If you check Permies.com every five minutes, just in case there have been new and interesting posts, you might be a permie.

-CK

Jul 11, 2019 12:27:10

When you get sick and are blowing through tissues and decide to cut up an old baby/recieving blanket into washable tissues. And then wonder why you didn't do this years before!

Jul 11, 2019 12:31:51

When you go on a hike, and both you and your husband just have to get pictures of the composting toilet :-D

Jul 11, 2019 15:00:13

Nicole Alderman wrote:washable tissues

receiving blanket is a great source for these!!
(someone gave me some microfiber washcloths, and I find that for tissues they are amaaaaaaazing. The softer, the better)

I had a few permies moments these days--- most involving garden centers/arboretums/planty places and me being that annoying person asking about all the edibles.

Jul 23, 2019 04:22:50

Huxley Harter wrote:You hesitate to move to south Florida, not because a hurricane could destroy your house, but because your concerned about your future food forest.

When Irma came thru, one of my Papayas lost all of its leaves, but not the fruit! My Mango got slightly.uprooted, but we propped her right back up and had a bumper crop of mangos this year! One of our Avocados got knockec over, we couldnt get it back up, so we cut it back.down to the ground, thinking it would not come back. Well shes back, but unsure if it will produce since it was only a couple of years old at the time.

Jul 23, 2019 17:33:11

Nicole Alderman wrote:When you go on a hike, and both you and your husband just have to get pictures of the composting toilet :-D

Hi nicole, what kind did you get and what did it run you?

Jul 24, 2019 08:39:05

So I watered a friends garden why he was on vacation and he wanted to pay me. I didn’t want paid and ended up with a gift card to go to the outback steak house. 9 months later my wife and I get a free date night and head out. My wife was looking over the menu and said she was going to order chicken. I said absolutely not, we have 20 chickens in the freezer and we are at a steak house! She replied she likes our grass feed steaks much better and we have a freezer full of them too. A wow moment when we realized we eat better from our farm than the best commercial steak house society can provide. The beer was good (local brewery) , the steak was ok, and the vegetables were all crispy and tasted the same. I guess if we want to go on a diet we will go there again.

Jul 24, 2019 19:01:53

You know you're a permie when you stop to consider which is more permaculture friendly - squirrels spreading seeds, and providing food for the local predators(to distract them from your chickens), or a freezer full of squirrels AND the tiny crops of produce you managed to salvage from them...

Jul 27, 2019 18:39:08

...you use your "to go" containers in the car for seeds you found along the creek when going on a short walk with your guy.

And your fingers are tingling from plucking nettle seeds that you hope will continue to ripen and be viable (nettle seeds not shown).

Oh, and you wish you had your backpack because your shirt pockets are NOT big enough for the seeds, plantain, horsetail (pocket sized amount of plantain and horsetail not shown) and other wild medicinals you want to harvest.

Aug 08, 2019 19:20:12

When yard maintenance, function stacking, zero waste and fermentation all combine into weirdness...
I live with my mom, she's out of town right now. Her car is not here, so her garage is usable space. It's been very hot, alternating with very wet. The grass here at this rental got deep. I brought the riding mower over from the property to cut it. The mower has needed it's oil changed for quite a while, and hey, nice flat cool, dry garage! So I changed the oil, the drain is bizarre, there's no good way to get a container under it. It spilled a good amount of oil on the cement. I was in a hurry, needed to take the mower back before sundown, told it I'd get back to it. Few days later it was still there, and had run across the garage. I raked up a bunch of the grass clippings and put them on it to soak up the oil (looked like a berm in the garage!) It got a good amount up, but a bunch has soaked in. Looked it up online, they said to use dish soap (do NOT want to hose out that garage, it slopes the wrong way) degreaser ($$$) coke (UGH!) but since the coke was just for acid, I decided to use vinegar.

Mom has things she keeps up with here that I haven't been managing to, I realized I hadn't fed the kombucha, and it was not a happy fungus. So I brewed it more tea, opened the jar, tasted it, WHEW worst acid I have ever tasted in a kombucha jar. Poured it into a container, cleaned and fed the scoby, it's all happy again. Eyed the acidic kombucha... and poured it on the concrete to remove the oil! Looks like it's doing well! I have visions of the next tenants after us spilling something sweet there and having a zombie scoby form...

Mom leaves, the world gets weirder :)

Aug 10, 2019 21:59:23

When your husband complains because your bags of frozen berries don't contain the fruit they claim to, but rather berries from your garden

(He was trying to find frozen mangoes for our smoothie, but just kept finding frozen blueberries or blackberries or raspberries, LOL!!! What can I say, the bags are great for preserving our harvest

)

Aug 11, 2019 12:27:01

You are excited when your neighbor plants 3 new trees in their front yard, and then disappointed that they aren't fruit trees.

Poop goes in a willow feeder. Wipe with this tiny ad:

better than composting toilets

https://www.richsoil.com/willow