The challenge is designed to get you to convert a small patch of your yard to native plants and habitat, reduce chemical use, add water, etc.

I work in a nursing home and have very limited control over the outdoor spaces; we have a conventional mow & blow service that is hard to reason with and our department (activities) has to fight control for every inch of garden that we put in. We have been very slowly adding just a few native plants to the areas our department manages and in May I had picked up some native flowers and keystone edible native shrubs. It took months of arguing with other departments but finally just a few weeks ago I got permission to take over a patch of lawn and turn it into a native bed. It was hard work (I bribed Maintenance with gummy bears to do the digging) but we got the plants in and put cardboard and mulch over the grass, and put in our "please do not mow or spray in this area" signs that are the only way we've been able to keep the lawn service out of our garden beds.

And suddenly I realized I was doing the challenge at work! It was much more challenging; I have had to fight everyone to make this happen, from the building administrator to my own assistant who thinks native plants are just a fad. I still have no control over what happens on most of the property. But in my little 85-ish square feet, it's my little paradise! I went out to look the day after the plants went in and saw a beautiful blue scrub jay feather. The wildlife had found my plants, on the very first day. I'm so happy!!! The area I chose is right by where our residents sit outside in summer, so they'll get to see the wildlife, and later on pick the berries themselves. I hope this is just the start of a new era.

There's still more to go; I want to add a bird bath and over time fill in a lot more plants. But what a success I feel!

1. Yoga

I started practicing yoga when I was 8, so am a lifelong student of yoga and I'm a certified yoga teacher. Many of us in yoga talk a lot about the idea of what yoga looks like "off the mat." So you show up to a class at a yoga studio and can do a great tree pose that relieves your stress? Now what? How will you integrate the principles of yoga's root teachings, such as non-violence, in your home, community and world? What Heather Jo Flores said about how some permaculture programs focus more on sustainable garden design than on ethics of care reminded me of this. For me, I'm mostly here to learn the mindsets and big picture principles.

2. AI in Education

As I've mentioned before, I work in higher education and we're struggling with AI and its impacts on teaching and learning. I'm presenting at a conference on this topic in October, and several of the quotes from this section resonated with me around AI.

"Our ability to change the face of the earth increases at a faster rate than our ability to foresee the consequence of change." I'm reminded that in higher education and in life, humans often build the plane as they are flying it without thinking of the possible consequences.

"In chaos lies un­paralleled opportunity for imposing creative order." I love this. Higher ed feels very chaotic for many of us and I have a system I hope to share to help educators lovingly instill some order into their work.

"It is not the number of diverse things in a design that leads to stability, it is the number of beneficial connections between these components." I'm going to use this quote to help educators think about how they can build HUMAN and relational connections in their courses to build stability in our volatile era.

Happy to see this discussion of ethics and care prioritized as in so many spaces where I work, it seems like people have forgotten that ethics even exist!

A lot of my work in higher education focuses on inclusive teaching and accessibility. It got me thinking about the people who cannot easily access a sit spot to practice being in relationship with the natural world. Who has free and open access to such a place? Who does not? And in my example, what do we do when human-caused climate disasters make the outside work inaccessible.

One of the fears that drew me to this program in the first place is that when we need that time in nature more than ever to be well, that nature will be increasingly inaccessible to us due to extreme temps, poor air quality, and other disasters. And I imagine these will be most inaccessible to the youngest, oldest, and those with illness and disability. How can we be in right relationship with our natural world if we cannot access it?

Now for my reflection. I did get outside to my backyard once the skies and air cleared.

I noticed stillness in the trees, soft waves of movement in my tall grasses, and rapid speed in birds and dragonflies. I liked seeing how these different paces were distinct yet interwoven.

I noticed a paradox between randomness and order in the dozens of honeybees in my creeping thyme (I just learned what it's called). I know many of us are worried about pollinators, but I've never seen so many bees in my life. Have I done something right that set them up for success? The bees simultaneously seem to move very randomly and yet if you soften your eyes and slow down, there is an overarching pattern of movement. Throughout the yard, I see things that repeat, but not exactly or perfectly.

The air is hot, but it's a good hot. Not the hot of extreme heat we've been experiencing. A simple summer hot.

My yard borders a wooded area and the neighborhood has many trees that provide us with ample shade, and I also notice that one of the oldest and biggest trees in our neighborhood is missing this summer. It was cut down in the fall because it was moving into a powerline. A massive, old oak. I notice its absence in the skyline. I feel like I'm the only person who notices.

Finally, I take in the negative space amidst all of this life, and feel life there too. Most of what surrounds me is air and ether. In my creative arts practice, I'm currently very interested in the beauty and interest created by negative space, and I'm wondering about how that might show up in my permaculture studies too.

Thank you for reading.

But while I was lost, time felt endlessly heavy, bottomless, like it stretched over an era. Weeks felt like years, days were nights, nights were endless days. I wasn't safe to sleep at night. I learned that a few times the hard way, when my eyelids turned to boulders, and I couldn't push myself to keep them open any longer. Oh my soul, and that cold, that biting, painful, cold. To this day, I still don't like to be cold.

As time wore on, I started to believe that I had always been there, that I would always be there, and there was no point to hope for me. I stopped praying for better. God couldn't hear me anymore anyway. The golden thread that had always kept me tethered to all that is had slowly burned away, and I hadn't even noticed. If I had surely, I would have tried to smother the flames burning through all that was up to that point and ever could be.

And I didn't know how to find my way. Likewise, I didn't know how to stay. I was both far too young and far too old. I should have known better, and yet, how could I? My mind's never worked like that, so I chose survival. I pushed down the fear, the cries, the panic. I went along because there weren't many options. And when there were, I would choose the lesser evil of the two.

Black eyes, black pages, a black path down an unknown street. Black boots standing on my chest. I can't breathe. Black tracks creeping up my arms, blackened veins under my sallow skin. Sunken eyes, the light behind them burned out. Swollen hands that didn't look like they belonged to me. The soles of my feet scraped and bruised from running.

My name is not Chloe, who is she? Where is me?

Survival. That was all there was. It didn't really matter much what happened to me. I didn't belong here but I didn't belong there, and if I didn't belong anywhere, I might as well just stay right here?

I was lost, and I was trapped, but I survived.

One day, there was a light, one I swore to protect with every ounce of courage within me. The light stuck its hand down into the dark pit and started lifting me off of that unknown street. Some feet from the bottom, I realized the light was no longer lifting me, I was climbing all on my own, the light was only holding my hand. A steady presence, a reminder of all that is and could be. And while I recovered myself, I couldn't have done it without the light and all the love surrounding me.

I'm currently in the module on climate, microclimates, sectors, etc and I'm starting to think through sectors for my project design. One thing I'm struggling with is understanding (and therefore creating my own) sun path/ sun sector analysis. I have seen a lot of sun sectors visually represented as degrees on a circle, for example this one mentioned in the module:

https://www.permaculturewomen.com/megangamero/

and also in the video by Pippa. I don't quite understand what these mean. In Megan's example, does this mean that from 60 degrees to 300 degrees on the circle, about 3/4 of the total circle, gets sun in the summer? If so, how does that describe different areas like afternoon sun or morning sun? As someone who has lived in Florida or Georgia my whole life, having 6 hours of sun from 7am-1pm is very different than 11am-5pm for example, and have really different plants that can thrive in those environments. But I don't know how to map this.

I am familiar with tracking the sun during different times of year, and using that to determine where to put plants because I have done that for years. But I have only ever done that by looking at the sky and basically just keeping that information in my brain lol. So it appears in my mind as as like a half dome where I visually know where the sun is. I'm not quite sure what format to use to track this?

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!