Permaculture applied to landscape design integrates each space with its regional & cultural context. This minimizes ecological impact while maximizing utility, aesthetic value, and quality of life. "Permaculture is revolution disguised as organic gardening" Graham Burnett Permaculture  A Beginners Guide Learn Permaculture in Philippines & 40 poor farmers learn Permaculture free! 72 hour accredited Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course 1-13 Nov in Cebu City. "Permaculture is a holistic approach to landscape design and human culture. It is an attempt to integrate several disciplines, including biology, ecology, geography, agriculture, architecture, appropriate technology, gardening and community building." Guy Baldwin The course's teacher is Greg Knibbs (www.edge5.com.au), from Australia- Greg has regularly teaches with the father of Permaculture, Bill Mollison, and has ongoing projects with communities, non-government organizations and private companies in the Philippines, West Africa, Cambodia and Australia. Over the last 30 years Greg has worked in the Environmental field and his expertise lies in Permaculture, Earth Restoration, Education and Design. Enrol now online! http://www.permacultureph.org/enroll.html Course Fee Php37,500 (or about US$875 depending on the exchange rate on any given day)- DISCOUNTS of up to 15% AVAILABLE FOR EARLY REGISTRATION! EVERY enrolled student in this PDC WILL ENABLE Permaculture Action Asia to teach Permaculture to 40 below poverty line beneficiaries FOR FREE in 2011 and set up 9 Permaculture demo sites Cebu province wide! Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/permacultureph Subscribe to our Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/permacultureph PDC 1-13 Nov in Cebu City, Philippines Permaculture Design Certificate Course Held over a period of 12 days, the curriculum for this course is based on subjects covered by Bill Mollison, widely regarded as the father of permaculture, in his book Permaculture: A DesignerÂs Manual. "Though the problems that face the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple." - Bill Mollison, Father of Permaculture The course includes:  Introduction to Permaculture  Methods of design  Pattern understanding  Climate  Trees & their energy transactions  Designing against disaster; fire; drought  Soil  Water  The humid tropics  Dry lands stragies  Humid cool to cold climates  Aquacultures  Earthworking & repair  Effective aid  Right livelihoods  Village development Php37,500 Course Fee DISCOUNT AVAILABLE! Discounts for early payments or early deposit of Php12,000. Reserve your place early and receive a discount on full fee: Receive the following discounts on course fee if deposit or full payment made before- 15 Aug 2010 receive 15% Discount- Php31,875 Total 31 Aug 2010 receives 10% Discount- Php33,750 Total 15 Sep 2010 receives 5% Discount- Php35,625 Total The balance of your course fee is due before the course starts. "It is our collective responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live" - Dalai Lama ABOUT CEBU CEBU was ranked third best island in Asia recently by New York-based travel magazine Travel + Leisure. Travel + Leisure magazine recently released the results of the survey, which covers hotels, airlines, cruises, islands and cities all over the world. http://www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest/2010/islands/asia-islands/23 Only a few minutes away from the city are numerous white sand beaches, crystal blue waters, and swaying palms, making Cebu a perfect destination for both business and leisure. Mactan Island is a coral island and famous scuba diving and beach site. It is also the site of the Export Processing Zone. Malapascua Island is endowed with white sand beaches and crystal clear waters, and the west coast is ideal for swimming and snorkeling. The sleepy little market town of Moalboal was one of the first places where scuba diving caught on in the Philippines. From here, you can dive straight off Panagsama Beach, which is home to an extraordinary array of coral, anemones, sponges, and a swarming host of brightly colored reef fish. Olango Island, 20 minutes from the airport in Cebu supports the largest concentration of migratory birds found in the country. These birds migrating from Russia stop here en route to Australia. See more at http://www.cebucitytourism.com/aboutcebucity.html "What Permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet" Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki- World renown Japanese-Canadian academic, science broadcaster & environmental activist. ABOUT US Permaculture Action Asia is a brand new non-profit social enterprise focused on Permaculture. We provide free Permaculture courses and distribute seeds and plants to low income beneficiaries. This program will start Jan 2011 Cebu province-wide, and from 2012, is to spread around Region 7, and from 2013, Philippines wide. Permaculture Action Asia manages 8 Permaculture demonstration sites (opening 2011) located around Cebu province. Our flagship demo site, Cebu Eco-Culture Club, showcases the 5 zones of Permaculture in a 64 hectare Cebu City site, and houses 40 beneficiary families as a model eco village. ENROL NOW online! http://www.permacultureph.org/enroll.html Hi there, We are a NGO in Philippines looking for volunteers on our eco farms (permaculture) . The volunteer opportunity is- After a 2 weeks permaculture course/orientation, Volunteers would work on the Permaculture demo sites and with below poverty line beneficiaries on their own sites. Alternatively, also in our head office in admin/clerical, marketing, IT or other capacities depending on skills of volunteers. -- JENSEN GO CHOW B Business/ LLB Executive Director Permaculture Action Asia, Inc. "Solving the World's Problems in a Garden" www.PermaculturePh.org www.facebook.com/permacultureph www.twitter.com/permacultureph www.youtube.com/permacultureph http://www.linkedin.com/companies/permaculture-action-asia-inc.?trk=copro_tab "Permaculture is revolution disguised as organic gardening" Graham Burnett ÂPermaculture  A Beginners Guide Unit 2, Ground Floor, Josepha Arcade, Sergio V. Lim Building General Maxilom Ave, Cebu City 6000, Philippines Phone: +63 (32) 412 4076 Fax: +63 (32) 231 7537

GreenieBeanie, I tried the .Mac service and was actually very disappointed in it - but that is a completely personal observation here. On June 18th I instead registered the domain name http://www.myblogpix.com (aptly named) and use it for hosting all my blog pix on my blogs (I maintain three blogs at present). For $11.95 a month I have 2 Gig's of storage, 25 Gigs a month in transfer allocated, and can have up to 25 email addresses that will hold 2 Gigs each. It works for me. I love iPhoto too BTW. It has been my primary means of keeping my photos organized on my Mac. Since I moved to Louisiana on March 15th of this year I've taken over 2,200 photos! Yes, that's a lot, but I figure a digital camera is such a wonderful thing and years from now the photos will still be in pristine condition - no fading, cracking or crumbling. And of course - I make regular backups to DVD to insure I never have to worry about losing my precious photo collection. A few days ago I started writing a Mac Software blog. I plan to add a brief review and link regularly to some kind of useful Mac application I run across. While some may be commercial (shareware) I am planning to try and cover only freeware applications as a rule of thumb. I'm finding my passion for gardening and my passion for computing work so well together it's as though that's how it all was meant to be from the get-go. I am Borg. You will be assimilated... Here is a link that might be useful: My New Mac Software Blog

Not a problem. I think I would go with painting the whole back wall the darker colour since I have the dark tv and bookcase. I think part of it has to be the starting point. When we moved in the walls were baby blue, the mantle was golden oak and the hearth was raised with shiny black stone with a golden oak trim. I painted out the gold trim on the fireplace too (the doors and the vent were gold). All in all, a not so great room. As far as moving the furniture that's not really possible as it's not a big room by any means, maybe 13 x 16. Oh, we do plan on replacing the floors with a wider planks and a darker colour (hopefully sooner than later) so I will even take ideas for a new hearth. This is something we knew was temporary and thus inexpensive. Yes, it is a salvage piece and there is some history, I would have to contact the previous home owners (who we are still friends with) as to what it was. I don't think I would demo it but advertise it for the taking for whoever would like to remove. It is marble and unfortunately, the people who put it in really did a terrible job as in it is misaligned and they went so far as to colour in the light marble with permanent marker, no joints line up, it's off center. So, my beef is if it was so important to you to have this piece - hire professionals to install as the original homeowners did it themselves. I will even take suggestions for the mantle.

SC, good stuff you have there! Thanks for looking it up for me. I am always fascinated with the kinds of songs people have on their playlists. My own taste is eclectic -- some would say bizarre since I don't see anything incongruous about following, say, Kiri Te Kanawa with Doug Kershaw. I'm a child of the sixties, too, and earlier. In the fifties, I adored listening to the Louisiana (Luzianna) Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry. (Whew! I get nostalgic for the crackles and pops of atmospherics, and the electric smell of hot vacuum tubes.) I think I could appreciate an iPod for bringing all the good songs together without all the garbage that every era also produced. But one thing I miss nowadays is the variety: I know some people who only listen to one type of music, and I am as uncomprehending of that as they are of my attitude of throwing it all in together and listening to whatever comes out. Lydia, what do you mean? Nigh on fifty years and I still haven't lived it down! It's a family story, a tale on me that gets trotted out too often by someone, if I'm not telling it on myself. :-) Seriously though, I know what you mean. I hope Grelobe lets us know how things turned out. As for sports: I suspect that many of us here at RP once loved athletic endeavors, but perhaps never as much as reading. I was a basketball guard back when girls played half-court. At the time I resented the forwards getting to shoot the basket when we guards only got to steal the ball from the opponent and advance it to the midline, where we had to screech to a halt (so as not to step over the dratted line and get a penalty) to advance it to the glamour girls of our own team at the other end so that they could score. Watching modern women's basketball, though, makes me think of the grace and finesse that was required to play half-court...full-court appears to me to be just back and forth, back and forth most of the time. I ran track, too, including hurdle jumping. Loved snow skiing and I was still doing that as recently as ten years ago, but I doubt that my knees would let me now. So, anyway, younger readers are probably interspersing books with sports, but we of a certain age have had to let some of the physical activity go. That's probably why you don't read much about sports from us.