celebrate your amazing brain...

Meg put this post on the Permaculturevisions student yahoo group.

Did you know that the brain has amazing plasticity- moldability - is able to
make (and grow) more connections- so know that you are special..and science
now proves it. so tell your kids this.This is exciting because when you
accept this concept of plasticity, you realise that the brain is such a
powerful thing.

there was an experiment with 3 groups who have never played the piano.
group one watched the piano for 5 days (control group)
2nd group did piano practice for 5 days (basic scales)
3 rd group IMAGINED they were playing the piano.
and amazingly their brains improved as much as those who actually practiced
piano.
(what we don't know is this: did the ones who imagined they were playing
piano imagine scales or written music or particular pieces? I personally
would have liked to experiment with this..)
My mother started playing piano when she was over 65 and she believed in
keeping her brain active..
she never succumbed to alzheimers, but she did succumb to learned
helplessness in her last year at 81.

go to abc .net.au/big ideas - re Baronness Prof Susan Greenfield (oxford)
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2010/09/14/3010298.htm
you can download the audio

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about My visit to diggers

I'm excited about my trip to St Kilda Community Gardens in Victoria last Sunday.

I have added some shots to the folder on facebook called the Problem becomes the Solution. The Facebook link is facebook/permaculturevisions fan page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mt-Kembla-Australia/Permaculture-Visions-fan-page/277131803179

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=167613&id=277131803179&saved#!/album.php?aid=167613&id=277131803179

The whole veg-out community garden project is an example of how the problem becomes the solution really.

Parts in the old lawn-bowls buildings had maintenance challenges that required volunteers, once the community garden was formed the volunteers maintain the gardens with great enthusiasm and a productive reward!


--

April S-Kelly

Call 42285774
Fax +61 2 82087062 (from overseas) Fax 02 82087062 (within Australian)
Write: Cordeaux Rd Mt Kembla Village 2526 Australia

Students and Graduates Worldwide 46 Countries- Argentina, Australia - (every state), Azerbaijan, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Bermuda, Costa Rica, Canada- BC,ON, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Holland, Honduras, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jerusalem, Jordan, Kuwait, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Philippines, Portugal, Republic of South Africa, Qatar, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, UK, USA (Alaska, CA, FL, KS, HA, IA, IL, IN, TN, ME, MT, NC, NM, OR, PA, SD, TX,VT, WA, WI), Venezuela, Wanica. Can't find your nation? Get on board.
Scholarships for People with Special Needs and Opportunities, Discounts for Young and Retired Participants.

ISO 14000, We are a carbon-neutral office.
mailto:april at permaculturevisions.com
http://www.permaculturevisions.com
See Our Giant Portal related to Permaculture Design Topics: http://www.permaculturevisions.com

Please consider your environment before printing this email on old-fashioned paper.
Now's your chance to save paper, save a tree, save storage, save ink, save on indoor air pollution control and medicine, save on repairs for leads and printer, save power, save money. Save on having to stand up to attend the printer, save filing, save having to locate the files later, save having to type it all back in somewhere, sometime later.
Now's your chance to take this millisecond to get outside and throw any tomatoe seeds from your lunch into a pot plant OR pour out the dregs of your drink as fertliser. more

ABC TV big Ideas Podcast on climate change

we put up a video podcast on http://climatechangeandyou.blogspot.com
about carbon change and effects by ABC.net.au/big ideas
Everyone should watch this.

Permaculturevisions minute video on youtube

At last, after nine years of illness, technical difficulties and computer breakdowns, we have succeeded in transfering an analogue video to digital and uploading to http://www.youtube.com/

it's under the name Megamoneybox and below is the link.
here's the blurb. Permaculture is about growing food and http://www.permaculturevisions.com/ teaches you online with heaps of free information. This one minute video shows Lloyd aged 9 explaining about eggs and you will see the moveable chookpen. also see video bar below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVfJcQ6A2ps

Soil Carbon accreditation

Did you know that by keeping groundcover on the land you can increase the sequested carbon in the soil? even in low rainfall the grasses will collect moisture in the air.
and that the increase in carbon sequestion can be about 25 tonnes per hectare?

The Australian soil Accreditation scheme is working to changing the way farmers manage the land in order to "catch" or sequest carbon in the soil. They are paying farmers right now to trial the process.
This fascinating scheme might even rescue us from climate change.. It's the great seed of an idea. goto http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2008/s2490568.htm for more information.

read about it on http://www.amazingcarbon.com/Jones%20-%20Australian%20Soil%20Carbon%20Accreditation%20Scheme.pdf
also read their other info on http://www.amazingcarbon.com/
check out our climate change blogs. http://climatechangeandyou.blogspot.com/,
http://greenhouseclimatechange.blogspot.com/, http://reduceclimatechange.blogspot.com/

a true duck story

a light hearted, heartening story.
This is great! Something really cute happened in downtown San Antonio this week. Michael R. is now an accounting clerk at Frost Bank and works downtown in a second story office building. Several weeks ago, he watched a mother duck choose the concrete awning outside his window as the unlikely place to build a nest above the sidewalk.The mallard laid ten eggs in a nest in the corner of the planter that is perched over 10 feet in the air. She dutifully kept the eggs warm for weeks, and Monday afternoon all of her ten ducklings hatched.Michael worried all night how the momma duck was going to get those babies safely off their perch in a busy, downtown, urban environment to take to water, which typically happens in the first 48 hours of a duck hatching. Tuesday morning, Michael watched the mother duck encourage her babies to the edge of the perch with the intent to show them how to jump off!The mother flew down below and started quacking to her babies above. In his disbelief Michael watched as the first fuzzy newborn toddled to the edge and astonishingly leapt into thin air, crashing onto the cement below. Michael couldn't stand to watch this risky effort. He dashed out of his office and ran down the stairs to the sidewalk where the first obedient ducklingl lay stunned near its mother from the near fatal fall.As the second one took the plunge, Michael jumped forward and caught it with his bare hands before it hit the concrete. safe and sound, he set it by the momma and the other stunned sibling, still recovering from its painful leap.One by one the babies continued to jump. Each time Michael hid under the awning just to reach out in the nick of time as the duckling made its free fall. The downtown sidewalk came to a standstill. Time after time, Michael was able to catch the remaining 8 and set them by their approving mother.At this point Michael realized the duck family had only made part of its dangerous journey. They had 2 full blocks to walk across traffic, crosswalks, curbs, and pedestrians to get to the closest open water, the San Antonio River . The onlooking office secretaries and several San Antonio police officers joined in. They brought an empty copy paper box to collect the babies. They carefully corralled them, with the mother's approval, and loaded them in the container. Michael held the box low enough for the mom to see her brood. He then slowly navigated through the downtown streets toward the San Antonio River . The mother waddled behind and kept her babies in sight.As they reached the river, the mother took over and passed him, jumping into the river and quacking loudly. At the water's edge, he tipped the box and helped shepherd the babies toward the water and to their mother after their adventurous ride.All ten darling ducklings safely made it into the water and paddled up snugly to momma. Michael said the mom swam in circles, looking back toward the beaming bank bookkeeper, and proudly quacking.

here's a great story - for doubters

If you ever doubted the power of one,

or the power of one little seed,

or the amazing power of nature...


Then read this:

Ref SMH 14 Ref SMH 14th 2008
FROM A SLEEPY SEED, AN ANCIENT TREE BLOSSOMS
JUDEAN DATE PALM RADIOCABBON dating has confirmed a Judean date pain
seed found in the ruins of Masada and planted three years ago is 2000 years old.
The seed has grown into a healthy 1.2 metre-tall seedling,
surpassing the previous record for the oldest germinated seed - a
1300-year-old Chinese lotus.

The tree has been named Methuselah after the oldest person in the Bible.
It is the only living judean date palm, the last link to forests that once shaded
and nourished the Middle East.

Sarah Sallon, a director of a natural medicine reseatch centre’
in Jerusalem, became interested in the ancient palm as a possible
source of medicines. She enlisted an expert in indigenuos fruit tree
species, Elaine Solowey, to coax the seeds out of dormancy.
One sprouted.
Scientists estimated its age at 2000 years based on carbon dating of other seeds at the site, but had no way of testing the planted seed without risking its survival.
After it germinated, Dr Solowey found fragments of the seed shell
clinging to the roots, enough for dating.

The seed dates from 6OBC to AD 95
That placed the seed at Masada around the siege in 73, when,-according to the historian
Josephus, neañy 1000 Jewish Zealots in the fortress committed
suicide rather than submit to the Romans. They burned their food
except for one cache, to show they did not starve to death.

“These people were eating these dates up on the mountain
and looking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were
going to die soon, and spitting out the pits,” Dr Salon said.
“Maybe here is one of those pits.”
Archaeologists found the seeds in 1965, but they sat in storage for
four decades before being planted.
Dr Sallon and her
colleagues hope to cultivate more ancient seeds and reintroduce the
Judean date palm to the area.