another post

today was the nicest day in sintra so far. the weather was great. warm and sunny. today i continued sheet mulching, planted a couple keyweeeeeee trees, transplanted a few things, made room for the herb spiral we are going to create tomarrow, and i did all this withought throwing up any fish.

the plan was for me to go south on monday, but howard and julia asked me to stay an extra day so we can build an herb spiral and do a few other things. i am very happy to be working for them. i like it here.

i kind of stopped washing my face and for the first time since i was 12 i havnt been braking out with pimples. but whenever i do wash my face or shower i brake out like crazy. i showered 2 days ago and now i have these big juicy pimples. i think it is because there are bacteria on the skin, good and bad, and when you wash you get rid of most of them but the bad ones are stronger and what not. the oil on the skin is probolly a natural protectant.

i remember when i was a little kid i would never ever brush my teeth. my parents would tell me to go to thebathroom and brush my teeth and i would go in and close the door and they would think i was brushing. but for a long time i didnt brush. i was going completely brushless!!!! and my teeth were great. and then i started to brush, and after not to long i got my first cavity. hmmmm.

let me explain why i ate fish today

for the past couple months i have been in the mood for fish. I havent ate any fish, chicken, cow or anything for over 2 years. lately i have been doing alot of gardening and in the process i accidentally kill worms and these big weird looking bugs. i think about that alot when gardening. then i started thinking about how every time i take step on the dirt im killing all kinds of organisms. in some sense i feel like i am absolutely no better then a fish, or a worm, or any kind of microorganism. therefore i decided i would eat fish tonight and see how it made my body feel. Before i started eating the fish i said thanks and all that. I wasnt just stuffing my face ya know. Respect. I didn't feel like i was doing something wrong. I ate slowly and gratefully.
The restaurant we went to was a favorite of howard and juilias. they said it was some of the best fish around. they told me how the restauant was family owned and the fish were caught in the ocean and not farm raised, and the quility was as good as it can get. When we got to the restaurant the waiter was really nice, he shook our hands and took good care of us. for desert i had some sweet cake that was made with alot of eggs and sugar. delicous. then we drank complimentay "fire water" which was some kind of liquor. vey very strong
ill try to get some pics of the event soon

long day

its after midnight, usually i am asleep by now. michelle is keeping me awake.
today i dug 2 big holes. and i planted bananas. the idea is for the grey water to fill them instead of going to a treatment plant. we are planting lots of plants around them to absorb water. good plants to put there are sedges, rushes, reeds and such. tomarrow i will propogate some canish. canish is popogated by root division. you dig the roots and there wil be a few nodules. just put them in there.
i also did alot of sheet mulching today. its kinda a pain in the but cause i have to walk down the road to a neighbors and take there horse manure, fill up a gabage barell then carry it over. back and forth back and forth. but its for a good cause. my butt is sore though.
i need to sleep

howard and julias

i really like working for howard and julia. they are great great great!!! howard is a teacher of contact improvasasion and julia is very pregnant. today i dug a rain garden in their yard. tomarrow i will plant it out with cuttings that we took from a neighbor of theirs who has a 30 year old food forest. the lady must have been 80 yearls old and she was digging out a mature banana tree to give to us. gheeesh. inspiring. her back is well hunched and looks painfull but she still works hard. i tried to take the shovel but she didnt like the way i worked it.
tomarrow or sometime soon i will dig another big hole and plant out a banana circle. we are planting a banana circle to take care of the blackwater. hopefully the banana and the other plants we plant with them do a good job of sucking up all that not so good stuff.

allison is getting married

allison and girard are getting married!!!! very very exciting. she will be my first friend to get married. girard proposed to her on chritmas eve in a gazeeeeeeeeeebo. the wedding is the may after this one. what will i wear, i do not know. do i need to get a haircut? maybe ill jsut wash my hair and that will be enough. maybe ill find a toaster or dishwasher in the dumpster to give them

everything always woks out and something will always lead to another

the most important life changing thing that i have learned in my travels through europe is that everything always works out as long as you make an effort, and also that one thing leads to another. Such as the time when i stood at a truck stop with my brother trying to get a ride to vienna , austria, we were trying to hitch a ride for maybe 2 hours with no luck. we were starting to think about where we might sleep. then the cops came and told us to move away from the intersection, so we walked to the gas station where we found our ride withing 5 minutes of that.
or the time that i was with my friend tim at the 2009 bi annual cheese olympics in switzerland for the weekend and we had no place to stay. we planned on sleeping in the woods but an amazing man named george hosted us the entire weekend. George gave us his time, delicous food and lots more. ill never forget him
life is incredible and we are so lucky to be alive.

and now i am staying with a couple who i met at my permaculture design course. i am working in theire garden in exchange for room and lodging and inspiration. they have a friend who has a retreat center on the tallest mountain in southern portugal. howard called the man tonight and asked if he was interested in having someone come down for a while and doing a work exchange. so, i think this will be my next destination. the man who runs the retreat center has been a buddhist for many years and is close friends with the dali lama. how bout that !!!!

i have a new place to stay!!!

the last few days i have been sleeping at the escola do terra, which is the school where i just took the 2 week permaculture course. last night joao taught me how to make rice pudding. it was delicous. so today i went and bought more rice and tried to make it on my own. i used rice milk instead of cow milk and banana instead of egg, and honey instead of sugar. it came out ok. not amazing, but it will bebetter next time.
there was a couple taking the permaculture course with me, howard and julia, who live across the way. they invited me to stay at there place for a week or so and do some work in exchange for food and lodging. they have a small yard with a few citrus trees and and alot of area for new plantings. they told me a bit of what they want and told me to be creative. i am a bit nervous to take on this project. some of the work i will be doing is , digging a rain garden, choppin and droppin, sheet mulching, worm composting, making keyhole beds, making pathways. i will also probolly propogate some plants. aaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllsoooooooooo, i might create a banana circle for the black water system. black water is the water with feces and urine in it. greywater is bathwater and water from the sink and what not.