Nancy Reading

Welcome to permies Jovian. Your tiny house is cute! I have to ask - is the upstairs door for an extension, are they window shutters, or is it an escape hatch?

bump

What an awesome thread to 'bump'! I think I'll need to sit down and read it properly when I have time

It's hard isn't it? On the one hand we want our clothes to last well and wash well, on another we want them to be affordable, and another side to be useful or at least not harmful at the end of their lives (let alone during them!).
I have a wardrobe of clothes gathered over the last 30 odd years and many of them aren't really suitable to my life now, or don't fit me well enough to wear. We just have to make the best decisions we have with the knowledge, time and money we have. I'm washing them less - no one really notices if I wear the same top two or even three days in a row. Only buying 100% natural fibre if I do buy new. I can't do much about gifts, but not 'feeding the monster' I think is one way everyone can make a difference.

This thread is also apposite for my situation. I'd love more natural ways of creating warm microclimates that don't invove plastic - or glass due to the wind here.
Raised beds are supposed to help the soil warm up more quickly as dry soil gets hotter. But as said above, the wind chill on exposed beds can couteract this a bit. Has anyone some good microclimate examples to share?

When I learnt to play piano as a child I had a simple tune book that started off with the different notes in different colours. Gradually as you went through the book they turned black and (hey presto) I was reading music. I don't know whether colours might help with the dyslexia. If so you could probably get music already coloured in....
Ah ha! I wasn't alone thinking this and apparently it can help:

this instructables suggests chosing the colours that work for you and just colouring the notes - all the As one colour, Bs another colour etc. Apparently making a copy of music for dyslexic individuals is fine in the UK. There is more advice on the British Dyslexia Association page on music. Not one approach suits all.

I suspect that there are probably on line sites to help read music, although other instruments might be more tricky to visualise than keyboards.

I found this video of a planted wetlands area. I'm not sure what climate zone they are in, but I get the impression it is fairly mild winters.



I like the idea of making little islands like mini chinampa - the squash climbing the tree is pretty nice. I suspect that many of the trees wouldn't work here, as they would need hotter summers, but I'm tempted to try Taro in my polytunnel....

Oh I do like the diagrams in paul's first post. I think that is almost exactly where I am happiest - perhaps veering slightly into the science-y stuff because I like to know how things work (but Fukuoka helped me a lot with that). I also like that we have the freedom to be nice about activism and politics in cider press, because although I think dealing with people is the bigger challenge to 'saving the world', I'd rather just garden.