My first week at Songaia ended with what seemed like an army of Songaians wrestling with a gajillion pounds of grapes and apples, and pressing them into juice or sauce. Really, it was only 360 pounds, but try telling that to my sore muscles. 

I came to Songaia knowing nothing about gardening except that the stuff that comes out of gardens tastes pretty good. Now I know almost nothing about gardening, which is a step up. :) My background is filled with books, problem sets, and white offices—pretty different from the semi-chaotic, sun-dappled garden at Songaia. It’s a welcome change.

Some things I’ve learned, in no particular order:

• Grass is the most annoying weed. 
• Composting. In more detail than I probably wanted to. :P
• The word hugelkultur sounds like a German pastry, but is actually a method of creating a nutrient-rich bed you can plant things in.

And also that permaculture is pretty cool. It feels to me (warning: garden novice :P) like it mimics the variety and complexity of nature, which I think is usually the best tactic. A lot of great technology comes from taking techniques from nature.

And, since this is my first blog, I guess I’ll close out with some things about myself:

• I love food, which is why I’m here. Grazing on the garden’s various fruits is one of my new favorite pastimes. A couple of years ago, I volunteered at a restaurant kitchen for fun (just chopping up vegetables for broth and watching them during dinner service). 
• Hobbies include games, mostly of the card and video variety, and reading. My favorite book is Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.
• Buzzfeed tells me I’m pretty evenly right- and left-brained. Buzzfeed is a pretty trustworthy source, so I guess it must be true. :)

Cheers,
Amy

As a cold developed I was stuck not doing much work in the garden, but instead I focused my attention on healing. There was something depleting my energy and that something made every morning when I awoke a dreadful experience. 
Instead of giving in to the sickness, I told myself I wanted to wake up brand new as the birds call  the earth to do every day the sun rises. 
My grandfather has always told me it is a good day when you wake up and hear the birds singing. When you wake up and sickness shrouds your being like a thick veil, it's hard to see the sun's rays shining through and you anticipate a gloomy day as your body drags along trying to keep up with your mind's expectations. 

However, our mind is a very nifty tool. If we wake up despite whatever adversity loomed the day before and grab the sun's rays reaching down to lift us out of bed and embrace the light that motions us to lift our heads and leave the dream on our pillows, sickness is a much easier thing to let go of. In this day and age, sickness is all around us. 
Our air, water, soil and perhaps most species are diseased. Our minds are diseased. These steel giants which breathe dark clouds and spit dark water are draining us of hope. However, as Helen and Phil reminded me, what shadows the light within can only drive us closer to enlightenment. The soil understands this. When something dies, the soil does not weep, it turns it into something new, something fertile. The soil will know how to heal the Earth so as soon as we do our job to keep the soil healthy, we are keeping our health in order as well. The soil takes death and turns it into flowers. 
The sun will continue to rise and every morning the bird's song reminds us that it's a brand new day. The heaviness of the dream is behind and the light is ahead to lift us. What reflects in our world, is what we're building inside ourselves. If we build health and happiness, our surroundings will reflect the same. With this, there is hope. 
With a community like Songaia reflecting health and happiness, there is hope. 

"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world would be clean." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

I left Songaia two weeks ago – a busy two weeks running around to a few of the stranger corners of Portland looking for a place to live. I toured houses that until recently had been growing serious amounts of weed in the basement, houses where the roommates dressed all in purple and told me about how in summers they’d put out an above-ground pool for the raccoons to play in. Houses that grew their own hops, houses that brewed their own beer, houses with chickens and ducks. It was a stressful few days, but now I’m all moved into the passive house at Kailash Ecovillage, have already started training for my new job at a community garden, and am enjoying my first weekend. But the first I want to share a paragraph I started back at Songaia:

A few nights ago, Songaia had a meeting about a major issue affecting the physical site – a developing reality regarded as negative needs a response. A series of detailed site maps were projected on the screen: the present situation, the impending impact, several possible responses to mitigate the worst harms. People asked questions, a few got up to point ideas out on the map. The discussion was orderly, playful, and constructive. Plans were proposed that – whether or not they are ultimately implemented – would represent major changes and potentials for growth. Forces outside of their control were accepted, and paths were sought to allow the community to respond creatively to the forces impacting it, to capture energy and opportunities from the change. The community has not decided which if any possibilities it may pursue, but it seems clear that they are not going to just sit and let circumstances happen. I hadn’t thought before, but the intentionality in intentional community can look out as well as in. This, Songaia, is permaculture. 

What I meant, writing that Songaia is permaculture, is the way the community responded to a challenge. Disruption was treated not as something to draw a red line against or try to control, but as a source of creative force, a change that can perhaps be captured through careful planning. This is core of the permaculture design principle that doesn’t just apply to plants.

Today was sort of a smelly day. 
I had the pleasure of chipping food and plant waste into the compost bins with Douglas and the scent was enough to turn every one of my insides and twist all facial expressions into unpleasant formations. I had to remind myself that this was good, that it would turn into something full of life, full of microorganisms, tiny vertebrates and invertabrates, all working together in the perfect balance of air, water and heat. 

When we peek inside the compost bin all our eyes can see is a pile of soil, but what our eyes don't see is that this pile holds an entire world of connections. The soil is but one microcosm inside our planet and if we give it what it needs to be healthy, it will give us what we need to be healthy and we will hopefully go on to use the energy given to support something in need and if a stream of healthy relationships continue, we are left with a healthy Earth. 

There are infinite connections in the world and Songaia has proved to contain a strong connection between everyone inside it's own community - when help is needed, there is someone who can provide what is asked for. 

In a world full of needs, there is always help and if we broke down concrete barriers and wooden fences, what we needed might be nearer than we expected and what we have to offer might be of use to someone also just as close.