You know you're a permie when...

When you're shopping, and you see the word Soap Holder out of the corner of your eye and at first you think it says Sepp Holzer.

When you put a load in the washing machine, with every intention of hanging it to dry once it was done washing...only to get busy building a goose house and forget about it...and then realize you never hung it up and your jammies are still soggy in the washing machine. So, you throw on an old pair you hate, and hang up the laundry at 9:00pm by an exterior house light (some people have porch lights, I have a light that shines on my clothes line....), because you know you probably won't have time to hang it all up tomorrow morning either, because you'll be having a picnic with Paul and Jocelyn!

...when you are walking through the vacation home part of your neighborhood, and you have to convince the people you are walking with that it's not stealing to collect seeds from parts of the plant that are clearly protruding into the public space.

...when you've had your eye on some seeds that are not protruding into the public space, but the owners are actually there, and you make everyone wait while you ask permission to collect seeds from the property.

...when the owners are happy for you to collect seeds off their property, and they ask if you would like any of their clay pots they have been meaning to throw away. And now a quick question turns into an hour of carrying pots home.

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

Or disappointed because they're blossoming varieties rather than edible!

Lauren Ritz wrote:

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

Or disappointed because they're blossoming varieties rather than edible!

Or your immediate reaction to reading this is - what an opportunity for gorilla grafting...  I sooo... wish I was better at grafting, but I just don't seem to be doing it quite right, nor found a teacher that demonstrates in my learning style.

Jay Angler wrote:

Lauren Ritz wrote:

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

Or disappointed because they're blossoming varieties rather than edible!

Or your immediate reaction to reading this is - what an opportunity for gorilla grafting...  I sooo... wish I was better at grafting, but I just don't seem to be doing it quite right, nor found a teacher that demonstrates in my learning style.

Or when the visual of guerilla grafting both cracks you up, (Innocent neighbor "peaches?!" )  and makes you make a note in your files under "neat ideas."  
:D

When my son was about 5 we were driving around Chicago and he says to me “dad does that sign say International airport?”   I say yes, and about 5 minutes later he asks “where is the John Deere airport?”

...when you compulsively collect any seeds that you see. Hey, it might be viable let's give it a chance.

...when you plant those seeds here and there in empty spaces, hoping but not expecting much. and...many months later....a sprout!

...when something you planted many months ago that you had forgotten about, sprouts and makes your day!

When the spiders win the debate....

The other day I had a spider in the car, I didn't pay attention, rolled down the window, he blew toward me, landed on the emergency brake. He was there, hunkered down while I was driving, when I stopped and unbuckled he got brave, started waving his hands at me threateningly. I told him "Hey, I didn't tell you to get in the car! Don't you wave your arms at me like that! I didn't start this, I'm not after you!!"

Today I was taking that car again, opened the passenger side door to toss in the bags of stuff I was taking with me. That same spider had built a perfect web across the door frame, he ran when I opened the door. Oh, no, that's too cool, and you are the same one I was arguing with, I still won't hurt you. I shut and locked that door, opened another one to put my bags in, made sure I didn't roll down that window today.

I guess that car has enough of a bad housekeeping ecosystem going on that it needs predators. Spider wins. I will put effort into letting him be.

Pearl Sutton wrote:
I guess that car has enough of a bad housekeeping ecosystem going on that it needs predators. Spider wins. I will put effort into letting him be.

That's what the Clean the Interior of a Car badge bit is for: getting permies cred for cleaning the car you needed to clean anyway :-D. I may or may not have just done that yesterday....

Clean my car!? I have an ecosystem in there!! And on the exterior... The car came from the desert, the paint is slightly sandblasted. Just enough that in this climate stuff sticks to the paint, and then it gets mossy... My Volvo is moldy! Soon it will have tiny crustaceans on it!!
Clean my cars, HAH!!
The Dodge truck has mice. They eat the chicken food, since the back of the truck is the chicken coop...
I don't have filth, I have vibrant mobile ecosystems!

We consider having a dirty, scratched up, messy car to be excellent theft deterrent. No one looking at our car thinks we have any money or anything worth stealing!

... you find yourself playing out in the rain by diverting excess collected rainwater to the hugel. Observing thousands of sprouting tiny plants & a blue lizard. Much better entertainment than a chia pet!

When you're super excited about your recent purchase at the local chairty thrift store: two hand crank drills of different bit sizes, for $3 each!!!

...when your present to give to your mum is a stainless steel food container wrapped in paperbark and tied with string made from a vine, then when she opens it you throw the wrapping over the fence back into the bush land.

When your friends save their weed seeds for you : ) now I have fat hen seeds!

You keep forgetting that normal people think it's weird to pee on your rhubarb and asparagus plants to give them extra nitrogen.

When you feel guilty and lazy, for buying a can of pumpkin puree

..when stacking functions becomes a habit.
in this example you can see spent air (warm) of our old refrigerator is being used to dry some chilies. C'mon now, it is already blowing warm air!

@ s. ayalp - that is a brilliant idea! unfortunately, my fridge is right at the kitchen doorway, so I'd have to put some sort of higher barrier to stop people from trodding on it.

When you can't resist snagging just one single Walking Onion bulbil from a local restaurant's garden.  It has since sprouted, so maybe I can propagate it for more as I didn't have any before.

Nicole Alderman wrote:When your husband tells your child, "Don't worry, we'll never move. All our fruit trees are here!"

(Of all the reasons to not uproot a family, this is the first one that comes to mind, LOL!)

oh my lord, this is what I told my parents! The only concession I have is if I moved to larger piece of property. Dreams!!!

When you think you’re exploiting your local cafe by voluntarily taking away their entire day’s coffee bean waste (30lbs./15kg) daily, yet they think they’re exploiting you as a free labour & waste disposal service.

Many sources these days say that coffee beans actually harm the growth of young plants, so it might not be as great as it sounds. I’m still giving it a go though. Oh if only a beach of seaweed or a river of water weeds were nearby!

Tim Kivi wrote:When you think you’re exploiting your local cafe by voluntarily taking away their entire day’s coffee bean waste (30lbs./15kg) daily, yet they think they’re exploiting you as a free labour & waste disposal service.

Many sources these days say that coffee beans actually harm the growth of young plants, so it might not be as great as it sounds. I’m still giving it a go though. Oh if only a beach of seaweed or a river of water weeds were nearby!

When you live near enough to the beach that you can fill your car with sea weed during your lunch break at work and think that's not only normal....but awesome!  (People I work with actually walk by my car "to see what funny thing Greg has filled his car with today"...fortunately they all like me and get a kick out of it...they also get a kick out of telling me that my Yaris isn't a truck)  

Sorry for the sea weed bragging Tim, but if it makes you feel any better I'm totally jealous of your coffee ground hauls.

Greg Martin wrote: When you live near enough to the beach that you can fill your car with sea weed during your lunch break at work and think that's not only normal....but awesome!  (People I work with actually walk by my car "to see what funny thing Greg has filled his car with today"...fortunately they all like me and get a kick out of it...they also get a kick out of telling me that my Yaris isn't a truck).

Haha I considered relocating to a different office just to be closer to the beach to do the exact same thing you do! But the fuel cost would be too high to justify the long daily trip.  And yep my wife says we don’t live on a farm so I should stop treating the family car like a tractor.

When your childhood best friend, whom you haven't seen in 20+ years comes to visit, and you load her car full of perennials and some decks of permaculture cards!

You don't have quite enough money for an excavator ... but you really want to build hugelkultures

You read the forums on permies.com even when you don't have a speck of dirt to your name (aka moving), save a potted plant that is "borrowed".  

When you find yourself stealing empty soup cans out of the garbage, to use for your mini-stove experiments.

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:When you find yourself stealing empty soup cans out of the garbage, to use for your mini-stove experiments.

I go to the recycle place just to get cans for my solar etc experiments. That's some of my favorite shopping!

You know you’re a Permie when …

It’s Spring here with +30C (95F) days, but all the ‘Northerners’ are experiencing Autumn and incessantly talking about Rocket Mass Heaters.

Rocket Mass Heater? I don’t need no damn Rocket Mass Heater!

F Agricola, whenever I'm writing a seasonal dailyish, I think of you guys. I feel silly writing about fall and my son starting school while you're down there in spring, likely annoyed at all this talk of fall that doesn't apply! Maybe we need some southern-hemisphere dailyish writers to write about heat and growing things when we're all shivering up here!

+1, I've had enough of Fall, already.  Let's skip Winter and talk Spring!  :)

I think it`s time we slapped together a spring-has-sprung thread.

Nicole Alderman wrote:F Agricola, whenever I'm writing a seasonal dailyish, I think of you guys. I feel silly writing about fall and my son starting school while you're down there in spring, likely annoyed at all this talk of fall that doesn't apply! Maybe we need some southern-hemisphere dailyish writers to write about heat and growing things when we're all shivering up here!

That's okay Nicole, it's the same feeling we have when you guys are sleeping and we're wide awake - daily dailyish??!

Gotta admit though, seeing the photos of snow-strewn forests, roads and driveways helps us feel cool when it's sweltering here.

When you come home and before you visit your cat you visit your indoor blue ice cream banana tree.

and when your "you know you're a permie when..." thread has ten pages of responses .

You know you're a permie when you mom says you need to mow the pasture and your response is to quote Ruth Stout about not doing anything you don't want to do.