“You don’t get over the shadows inside you simply by walking away from them.” – Pico Iyer I pried my eyes open and tried to focus on the white doctor’s jacket that swam into my vision. “You are a tough woman.” He said. I didn’t feel tough, but I was alive. The pain I experienced […]
“Happiness does not depend on outer things, but on the way we see them.” – Leo Tolstoy With our tickets booked for our June visit to the land, I’ve done some research to see what we can expect temperature wise, especially as none of the future comforts and conveniences are yet in place. It seems […]
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius- The most important thing we are learning with our project in Portugal is to cultivate patience. Not easy, but definitely crucial, as there is not much else we can do, living so far away. Since Michael’s visit in […]
“In a very cold night, even houses want to have houses of their own to enter inside them and feel warm!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan My wife , many years ago when we first moved to the UAE, wrote a blog post titled “I love winter”, and in that article she says she never thought […]
“Filthy water cannot be washed.” – An African Proverb The importance of fresh drinking water cannot be overstated, and as we get our small piece of paradise ready for our eventual habitation, we realized that we need more than an open well for a source of clean drinking water. After a long deliberation, and […]
“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do. “– Barbara Ward – We learned in April that land clearing is not the same as gardening, and that we will have to approach it in a more efficient way. Our visits are short, and […]
“It all comes with the cold water.” – An Islandic saying to remind someone that if you are patient, things will fall into place. As the temperatures in Portugal are plummeting, and Michael is heading there tonight, it may seem rather ironic and perhaps a tad cruel that I would reflect on the warmth of […]
“The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.” – Simone de Beauvoir – “I’d like to go home now.” […]
“. . . it is our dreams that tell us who we really are and what is important to us . . .” – Paula Constant – As our eventual plan is to combine the barn and ruin into one house, and with Michael always looking at the “bigger picture”, often to my chagrin, he […]
“The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t.” – Joseph Jenkins, from: The Humanure Handbook I completely agree, when people make statements like: “We do not have a symbiotic relationship with the earth anymore; or, we live wasteful lifestyles.” And when people […]
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