Wishing you all a wonderful fairytale filled Christmas

 

And a Happy New Year. 

I leave you in 2013 dreaming of sustainability, connectivity and thoughtfulness in the shape of this beautiful fairytale home built by Simon Dale for just £3,000.

Via Higher Perspective.

Imagination Foundations 2013 Global Cardboard Challenge Video Contest Winners

Fantastic to see kids outside and being creative. Hats off to the Imagination Foundation for inspiring everyone to do just that.

Brian Sutton Smith

"The opposite of play is not work. It's depression."

By Brian Sutton Smith

RSA Shorts - The Power of Empathy

Note to self: no more "at least"..........

Bee Raw

It's always nice to hear about a thoughtful, concerned business owner and Zeke Freeman at Bee Raw is just that.

"........ [the owner] actively promotes the importance of American family-owned apiaries and works to educate the public about beekeeping and its vital role in agriculture. Freeman is committed to supporting artisanal beekeepers and farmers by ensuring that they receive a premium price for a premium product.

Finally, and possibly closest to Zeke’s heart, the Bee Raw Foundation was formed in 2013 with a mission to help save endangered bees and promote crucial-to-the-planet sustainability."

Follow this link to take the pledge to save the bees.

Found via GOOD.

Wildflowering in my old hunting grounds - LA

On the theme of rewilding urban sites Fritz Haeg has created a rehabilitation project called Wildflowering L.A., in which native wildflower seeds were sown at 50 sites across Los Angeles County this fall.

He has partnered with Los Angeles Nomadic Division and the Theodore Payne Foundation, an organization that promotes preservation of California native flora and an old favourite of mine.

Article here.

A 140 acre forest is about to pop up in Detroit

 

"Hantz Woodlands (formerly known as Hantz Farms), has reached a deal with the State of Michigan to purchase 1,500 parcels of non-continuous land for the price of half a million dollars and plant urban forestry in place of blighted and derelict properties that scatter the landscape."

At The Urbanist Dispatch.

Will Beckers

Fantastic willow artist Will Beckers.

Dog and fox form a friendship fit for fables

"Once upon a time, deep in a Norwegian forest, a man named Torgeir Berge and his dog Tinni came across a wild animal that would change their lives forever: a fox Berge named Sniffer that grew to be the dog’s best friend."

And so starts an article over at Cottage Life. Check out the rest of the article if only to see more photos.

Delightful.

Schoolyard Farms

Love, love, love it.

Schoolyard farms gets my vote.

Buddy Bench

We are in good hands with thoughtful, kind and resourceful kids like Christian Bucks.

When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Thanks to Brenda for introducing me to this beautiful poem that reminded her of the passing of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela 1918 - 2013

School's Out: Lessons from a Forest Kindergarten

I found out about this film through an interesting article over at Slate.

Details about the film and how to buy it are here.

Wonderful.

Child in the City

The 7th "Child in the City" conference on child friendly cities is being held in Odense, Denmark next year, between 29th Sept and the 1st Oct.

"The conference will provide a platform to disseminate good practice, share experiences and test new ideas with a world-wide network of practitioners, researchers, academics and policy-makers."

They are calling for papers: no later than 31 January 2014.
 

The kids don’t play any more

"In hunter-gatherer societies, children play constantly until late adolescence. But today, as Prof. Whitebread observes, play has been almost squeezed out of their lives by a risk-averse society, by our separation from nature and by our widespread cultural assumption that “earlier is better.”"

Excellent article by Margaret Wente at The Global and Mail.