Build the Environment

Ladybugs Loving the Chamomile

When issues in the garden arise, avoid focusing on trying to solve a single problem.  Instead, step back, view it from an eagle eye view and focus on building the environment as a whole.  Provide nature with everything it needs to thrive and it will be able to take care of itself.

When you try to solve problems individually, you end up bouncing from issue to issue playing whac-a-mole as you try to contort and control the environment to your will.  If the environment has everything it needs, everything will stay in balance and issues will sort themselves out on their own.

Things Aren't Always as They Appear

Madre de Dios River - Peru - 2013

Sitting at a table on a patio at a restaurant with about 10 other people on the absolute edge of the Amazon Rainforest in Peru, the year is 2013.  Trees tower above us and I stare, mesmerized, at the slowly flowing Madre de Dios river which sits a few hundred feet in front of us.  The restaurant is empty except for us.  Hundreds of different types of birds make their presence known in the distance as the sun dwindles across the cloudless sky.

Hey James, what are you ordering?  John asks me from the other side of the table.

I think I'm going to get the fish - I respond as I glance back at the menu.

John leans in across the table and says in a quiet voice - Don't order the fish.

Why not?