Thursday was all about Permaculture. The concept is that we can grow food in our yards through a permanent agriculture, wherein we would plant trees, shrubs, and perennial plants that produce edible parts. In particular, permaculture strives to mimic natural ecological systems so that we don't need much in the way of external inputs. That way we can produce very local food with very little environmental impact. I am planning to try to incorporate this into my ornamental designs in the near future.
Friday, I attended several interesting lectures, including a lecture by Richard B. Primack of Boston University who shared his recent research. His goal was to find out if global warming is affecting plants and animals in Massachusetts. Using plants in both Boston and Concord, MA he has been able to compare the flowering times of many plant species in recent years with historical records. He had some very clear evidence that global warming is already having an impact on our local flora.
The highlight of Friday was the keynote address given by Dr. John Todd, a biologist/ecologist/ecological designer who has developed several interesting alternative technologies. In particular, he's known for the creation of "living machines" which use living organisms to treat contaminated waste water.
Saturday was also a good day, and included the most curious of the lectures I attended. Will Bonsall of the Scatterseed Project discussed something he called veganic farming. It is basically a step beyond veganism combined with organic farming. Basically his idea is that one should maintain soil fertility without animal manures, but rather by sustainably harvesting fertility from forests. Fascinating, but I'm not quite ready to go this far.
I'll add more on Saturday here later.
Addendum: On Friday night, after the keynote, I joined two of my new comrades for a drink in a local bar (The Salty Dog). We three certainly felt like fish out of water (or more like plants between paving stones). We'd been spending the whole day thinking about how to save the world with landscaping, and then we went to a bar where... well, the rest of the patrons were certainly not thinking about the world. Their main concern was earning free drinks.
I was more interested in finding out if I had the right stuff to be a cowgirl.
Yup, that's me on a mechanical bull.
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