Home, emotional permaculture, and the inner landscape
Let's talk about mental health as a component of the ecological design process.
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Access to land & stable housing is an essential part of the “permaculture” conversation.
Let's talk about how "permaculture" is a myth without access to land, stable housing, and safe space.
Permaculture thoughts: transition, harnessing chaos, making friends through seed swaps & plant sales
Sharing about how distributing surplus helps us to connect with others in community and renewing my invitation to join us in these #freepermaculture spaces!
On chaos, decomposition, daily practice, and permaculture
Musing about compost, chaos, fertility, and our collective resistance to change and/or attachment to the status quo. (We love change in the garden but fight it in our own lives!)
Wild Women Writing Challenge
Establish a writing habit by doing it every day for 40 days. Original daily prompts included.
Who invented permaculture?
Who invented permaculture? hint: it wasn’t Bill Mollison and David Holmgren Bill Mollison, often credited as the “founder of permaculture,” was an Australian traveler, scientist, baker, fisherman, gardener, autodidact, and writer who researched and published extensive genealogies of Indigenous Australians, and…
5 Reasons You Should Take this Online Permaculture Design Course
Best online permaculture course for women and by women
Heather Jo Flores
Heather Jo Flores is the founder and director of Permaculture Women's Guild, Food Not Lawns, and the freepermaculture project, and creates about half of the content in our course.
How to write good
Timeless tools for writers of every genre I work with a lot of writers who are just beginning to publish their work, and though their steady flow of amazing ideas blows my mind on the daily, I notice a handful of…
How to Critique Writing, using the EMMA method
A writer who critiques her own work has a fool for a critic. We fear honest critique, but it is possible to learn how to critique writing in a helpful way. But a critical fool wielding careless words at a writer…
Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post: Greater than the Sum of its Parts
A perfect blog post is equal parts niche, quirk, facts, assets, and carefully-targeted SEO keywords. Anything less will get lost in the abyss of the internet within minutes after you post it. There are a million articles on this topic, but…
Murder your darlings, but DON’T kill your heroine!
Why you should cut your ego out of your writing…but still let your strong female protagonist live to tell the tale. “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your…
Tropes, Women, and the Heroine’s Journey
Is There Such a Thing as a Feminist Trope? What do you think about these ideas? Check out these references: Wait, What is a Trope? Is There Such a Thing as a Feminist Trope? A trope is a formula for shaping a…
How to Learn Permaculture for Free
A hands-on guide for the frugal beginner to learn permaculture without spending any money.
Ethical Marketing: Pro-Tips for Your Right Livelihood
Essential tips for online entrepreneurs, especially if you’re relatively new at this and have spent any time at all resisting learning about “marketing” because it’s yucky.`
The 7 Most Important Things I Learned as a Front Lines Activist
#6: Never, ever call the cops. I see you out there, fighting. I half-wish I was there too, and half-am-relieved to be hiding in the mountains here because I see history repeating itself, magnified exponentially, and when I see y’all getting…
How to be Invisible
One woman’s quest to see and be seen By Heather Jo Flores (a tangent) So much of what we talk about these days seems to boil down to issues of visibility and invisibility: Black people are invisible Women are invisible…
Desire, Home, and the Destiny of Vicinity
Wherever you go, there you are What do you want? Back in 2015 I spent the entire Spring and Summer touring around the USA for Food Not Lawns. I taught workshops, turned lawns into gardens, and made hundreds of new friends.…
How to let go: a guide to being happier, healthier, and more creative
releasing old pain by dealing with grief, caring for your body, making art, and getting dirty Sometimes it seems like everybody has some version of Post-Traumatic Stress. If you’re at all aware of the world outside of yourself, if you live…
Patriarchy is dying but it’s gonna take a minute. Don’t get tired.
Don’t get burned out, because the bigger battle is yet to come. They’re trying to exhaust us. Don’t get tired. Trump was SO mad that anybody would consider pulling down the statues of the patriarchs. Well, you know I definitely vote…
On permaculture, entitlement, and that pesky third ethic: all aboard the elephant in the room
The permaculture design system, which contains the specific set of ethics, principles, tools and techniques, offers an opportunity for individuals, families, and communities to create a living human culture that nourishes, rather than annihilates, the Earth.
Design anything with the GOBRADIME permaculture design process
An easy, circular permaculture design process for gardens, community projects, creative work, and so much more. (excerpted and fully revised from my 2006 book, Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community.)…
Decolonizing Permaculture: Bridging the gap between privilege and oppression
by Heather Jo Flores As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015 First of all, I want to say that I do not represent anyone but myself, and though I have vetted this article with several peers…
To the woman who says she’s not a feminist: guess what? Yeah y’are.
Here are twenty reasons why you’re a feminist, and why you should stop telling people you aren’t. Twenty reasons why you might be a feminist, even if you insist that you aren’t: Yep, feminists made it possible for you to have these…
Wanderlust vs. Mommylust
A letter to women who are trying to decide whether to be a childfree digital nomad or settle down and have kids To the young women I see all over social media, asking: Should I find a partner, have a child,…
Aw Hell No! A checklist to keep narcissistic energy vampires from getting anywhere near you.
There is absolutely zero benefit to trying to have a reasonable relationship with an unreasonable person. It’s a horrific lesson in the power of entropy, at best. At worst, an extended interaction with an abusive or narcissistic person can leave…
Artist Statement and Teaching Philosophy
Here’s a quick list of links to the free, mutual-aid offers I bring: Free book and gardening classes at foodnotlawns.comBecome an ecological designer at freepermaculture.comMake new friends at permaculturewomen.com More about me Hola! I’m the author and founder of Food…
How to Write a Heroine’s Journey: toward an Ecofeminist Storycraft
On traditional storycraft, patriarchal conditioning, and how a woman might approach slaying the beast from a different angle. This essay was originally published as part of my MFA Thesis, in Spring of 2014 “The mystery of human destiny is not…
The universe inside my pussy
by Heather Jo Flores “I have the universe inside my pussy.” Annie Rose looked at me like I was out of my mind, then burst out laughing. “Go ahead and laugh,” I said, “Get it out of your system. And…
The fledglings, a crow story
I have had several profound interactions with crows and other birds in my life, often at times of great change and upheaval. The following story is about two interactions I had with baby crows, fifteen years apart. I found a…