Samuel Martin

This Reverence for the Bees podcast series is so awesome I was actually moved to create fan art!
The goats, the loving, the Blorp!, The Arrogance Whisperer, the rich info and reflections on many interconnected key issues... Thank you, both!

Here is my take on The Arrogance Whisperer, with the movie-poster-ish gibberish at the bottom being a selection of possibly not-exact quotes from this podcast and others.

Thank you, Paul and Geoff! You both shared hard questions, deep answers, and your worldview on so many topics! Thank you for being generous and candid about things that are not always easy to talk about.

Awesome review, thanks guys! I wasn't even there, just followed it on twitter, and I can feel that the effects of this conference will be felt for years.

My two cents here is a bit off-topic and should perhaps be in a thread called "How To Make Permaculture More Mainstream?", but here goes:

Paul, if one of your long-haul aims is to get as many people as possible to know about permaculture and act on that knowledge, I think your circle of influence and interest needs to expand into familiarity with more mainstream things such as Halal tradition.

To me, that you hadn't heard about halal before 2014, despite North America having a huge muslim population and being deeply tied to the muslim world - at the very least since 2001! - is like a huge warning flag that you're missing out on some basic but crucial general knowledge to reach out to people who are not already permie geeks. I got a flashback of Geoff Lawton in your recent Q&A podcasts with him, when he mentions being somewhat shocked that students show up at a PDC not understanding what is meant by "level" or "on contour". It's like "How can you be here now and not know about this!?"

I don't want this comment to be a flogging; you rock the house very nicely, sir, and have enlightened more than your fair share of strangers I'm sure, and have my admiration for a variety of other reasons. Y'all need to go have a beer and a chat with locals on another continent a bit more often, is all.

Paul and Manfred, I commend your vulgarization skills. Sunlight as a force that gives a kick to one of many balls in a space capsule. Works for me!

Given that "the bigger the entropy, the lower is the working capacity of the embedded energy," and that energy is never lost or gained, does it follow that entropy has no end, no maximum, no final measure? It would explain what Geoff Lawton means when he says "Entropy is increasing all the time" in one of his DVDs.

Example: When energy is eventually released as heat in the atmosphere, and seems useless to us living on human timescale, it is possible that a few hundred thousand years of continuous slow release of heat may foster the right conditions for some living organisms who continue turning sunlight into new assemblages. And on and on somewhere else in the universe even after our sun explodes.

This is becoming a bit far removed from the more important matter of making a good life for ourselves on this planet, but I think the concept of entropy is quite a bit clearer now.

Question for Geoff :

Entropy often comes up in your teachings.
I think I understand the basics of entropy in thermodynamics (which some say is a sure sign that I DON'T understand it!), but I'm having trouble making links with permaculture specifically. Could you expand on what is the interesting part of entropy for you?

Kim Arnold wrote:I have this question every single time I watch one of his videos: Part of Geoff's formula for designing permaculture seems to rely on leguminous trees. I've searched, and haven't found any that grow in my area (USDA Zone 5). Are there substitutes for that -- other kinds of trees? groundcovers? different kinds of shrubs maybe?

Thanks!

Remember the Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), it is a wonderfully useful and very common tree in many cities, and there are many inermis varieties which don't have spikes. If you actually search google with "nitrogen fixing zone 5" you'll find a boon of info on all sorts of big trees, small trees and shrubs that might suit your needs.

Metaphysical and spiritual endeavours do coexist with activities that care for the earth, and observation of nature has been recommended by scriptures and mystics from all over the world for centuries. The reality of an organised learning situation is that you have a limited amount of time and resources at your disposition, which can be used to either deepen your understanding of spirituality and of multiple facets of the present moment, or to deepen your understanding of physics, biology, horticulture and design. If you try to do both at the same time, you're not devoting proper attention to either.

Nice one, D.Logan!! I looked up the Kentucky Coffee Tree and that is most definitely it. Gymnocladus dioicus is its scientific name. A very interesting prehistoric tree, like you mention. Its leaves grow late and fall early; great for letting the sun through during the cold parts of the year.

It appears that while Montreal gets much more temperature extremes, it is also in a microclimate not unlike that of Southern Ontario, thus the US Midwest, where this tree is more common.

I'm psyched, thanks for your help.

Can anyone help me identify this leguminous tree growing in hardiness zone 5a (Montreal, Canada)

It produced fruits in late summer/autumn (september/october); numerous hard, dry, dark reddish brown pods containing 2-4 seeds, very similar to the fruit of Erythrophleum Suaveolens. It is also somewhat similar to Balizia peeicellari.

Inside the pod is a greenish membrane with a texture and smell reminiscent of the "honey locust" Gleditsia triacanthos fruit.

The fruits are staying firmly attached on the branch all through winter.

I managed to knock some fruit from the 10 meter high tree today. Here is a picture of the fruits (in casse you can't see the image above): http://www.pinterest.com/pin/444378688203864491/

Alternatively you can try googlemaps; it's the first tree on the corner of that median strip when you spin the camera towards the right http://goo.gl/maps/iuias

What could this tree be?