 I took this photo on the beach at Saltburn-by-the-Sea at the end of 2024 - the world feels like a pretty scary place right now and its often hard to see how we are going to get out of some of the huge messes we are in. But the beauty of this moment on the beach watching the light fade at the end of a hard day did give me some hope that it is worth keeping on keeping on doing the things we can for better ways to live on this planet. It’s been 10 years this year since I launched my right livelihood project Kt Shepherd Permaculture just after I completed my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design. Through this last decade this design has been amazing - its been there by my side through some of the most significant events of my life, adapting and adapting again to the flow through multiple grief, illness, a move to a totally different life, slow recovery and new love. Over the last 6 months I’ve had a growing awareness that some of how I spend my days and seasons needs to change though and so through the early months of 2025 I will be designing my new right livelihood project. I’m really looking forward to where this new life chapter will take me and to sharing it with some of the wonderful folk old and new in my life. 
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Card Deck Review The Cultural Emergence Empowerment Deck is the latest creation by permaculture designer and teacher, Looby Macnamara. The deck contains 96 cards, and each one features one of Looby’s beautiful hand drawn illustrations. Although the deck is designed to be used in conjunction with Looby’s ‘Cultural Emergence - A Tool Kit For Transforming Ourselves & The World’ book, published by Permanent Publications in 2020, it's also a great ‘stand alone’ tool.
The deck features cards from the following areas of Looby’s work - The Cultural Emergence ‘phases’ (tools for balancing life), ‘practices’ (tools to embody regenerative habits) and ‘principles’ (tools to support effective decision making), the design framework from People & Permaculture, the Design Web and cards representing the 7 Ways To Think Differently, (growing supportive mindsets from systems of limitations). The last category the card deck includes is about the 8 Shields Model, designed by Jon Young, with the aim of deepening our understanding and practice of nature connection. It was really great to be part of a workshop Looby facilitated at the Permaculture Association’s ‘Festival Of Permaculture’, to explore how the cards could be used both personally and in group settings. Some of the ideas shared in the workshop that fit with Looby’s intentions for the deck as a tool included - creative work, decision making, journaling prompts, problem solving, coaching, designing, and self care practices. I use card decks from a wide range of disciplines in both my personal and work life and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the Cultural Emergence Empowerment Deck can be used on a regular basis, especially as part of my permaculture design projects. Book Review Jan Hoyland is a professional garden designer, consultant, educator and author. Jan is also a smallholder on the wild moors of North Yorkshire and it's through this aspect of her life I first connected with her stunning photos and wisdom on social media. I was so excited when Jan first announced the arrival of her book and the experience of my first read of it has been just as powerful as I had hoped.
The Alchemy of Gardening is a beautiful mix of the story of a garden, regenerative horticultural advice, gardening history and memoir. Jan’s reflective and accessible writing style invites us to share her journey of how she used a deepening connection with nature in her gardening practice to manage a new diagnosis of a life changing chronic illness, a story so similar to my own. The chapters in Jan’s book take us around the Earth based spirituality Wheel of the Year. Through the eight festivals of that Wheel, Jan draws upon permaculture principles, philosophy and her own extensive knowledge and experience to offer the reader everyday practical seasonal gardening tips and insight into how transformative the human relationship with land can be. Jan’s wise and wonderfully reflective words are illustrated with stunning lino prints by Sally Zarenco another North Yorkshire based creative. You can buy prints of this work from Sally’s website Ashford Cottage Design The Alchemy of Gardening is an important addition to the bookshelves of gardeners, permaculture designers, chronic illness folk and anyone interested in the essential role that furthering nature connection plays in the healing of Earth. You can buy The Alchemy of Gardening from York Book Shop  Some of my favourite books about death and dying Throughout 2024 I am starting to do more work around death, dying and grief again. This blog post contains some of the resources I refer to in the various events I am involved with.
Bradford Death Cafe Living With Death exhibition Leeds City Museum Creative Dying - My own advanced care plan “When I Die” a blog by me (includes lots more resources) A Lasting Legacy - how to have a more sustainable funeral Full Circle Funerals - great, progressive funeral directors in Yorkshire Poppy’s - great, progressive funeral directors in London Dying Matters - creating an open culture around death, dying and grief LGBTQ+ death, dying and bereavement resources PDF lgbtq_death_dying___bereavement_resources.pdf  Quite a few garden projects have been started over the past few months. The relentless wet weather has meant that progress has been slow, but some things are starting to take shape now. I’m going to be writing some blog posts about specific designs, but for now here are a few photos of the general scene!  These old fence posts are on their way to become some raised beds for the wildlife garden  Pallet Pot Palace! The plan is to have a green roof on here too.  Moving established ‘meadow’ plants from a border area where I will be placing raised beds  Cardboard and woodchip mulching the border areas where raised beds will be going. The beds will be planted up with perennial pollinator attractor plants  More fence posts lining up to be repurposed into raised beds  Stumpery development  I relocated this insect habitat pile to access the fence and make additional composting space  More composting space is always an exciting thing!  The new habitat area with more space and more visible to folk walking by on the pavement  Happiness is also organised wood piles, whatever the scale!  Windowsills full of emerging new seedlings destined for the edible garden at some time in the next few months.  Seed sowing on the kitchen floor (will it ever stop raining!?)  And finally, I said goodbye to this little old lady last month, 20 year old Socks loved spending the fine (and not so fine!) days of her twilight years hanging out in the catio accessed through the kitchen window. Her sister Sooty is still very fit and well and I’m sure that once the rain stops she will be back outside to watch the world of Saltaire Rd go by.  Notice board/insect habitat It’s just over eight months since my border collie Floss died. Two and a half seasons have passed. Ever since then I’ve had a strange low level disconnect from my garden, which is the opposite to what I predicted. Yes things have happened, (nature doesn’t stop for grief, luckily), but it’s all felt mundane, hard work and to be honest, a bit pointless. So its been really useful today to look back at photos I’ve taken in the garden over that time and be reminded of some times where I felt my garden holding my hand as I’ve wandered through these weeks and months. Here are a few of them.  Perennial ‘meadow’ outside my front door  Edible garden June 2023  Another view from the ‘meadow’  My garden hosted the plant nursery for Shipley In Bloom this summer  Gorgeous print from Black Lodge Press  My lovely friend Laz came and did a photo shoot in the garden, they are a wonderful photographer!  Fire bowl, part of my Samhain celebrations gathering  Soil building with leaves  Gathering ‘meadow’ plants for seed collection  The composting zone is undergoing a time of transition, updates to follow!  My favourite sit spot is way too big without Floss Book Review Lyme disease - Borrelia burgdorferi , is a disease transmitted to humans by infected ticks and found throughout all areas of the UK now in woodlands, fields, parks and gardens. It remains poorly understood by public health systems at a time when the number of people being infected with this multi system illness is rapidly increasing. Patients and practitioners have found it difficult to obtain reliable and effective information, test results and treatment. ‘Lost In Lyme’ sets out to address these challenges and is a welcome accessible tool to inform and empower both people living with Lyme and the health care practitioners treating and supporting them.
‘Lost In Lyme’ by extensively experienced medical herbalist Julia Behrens and chef and nutritionalist Daphne Lambert, is a new, well researched and super accessible resource and practical tool kit. Its format is clearly laid out chapters with short blocks of clear text, photos, diagrams, tables and illustrations which is a big help to those of us with foggy brains, one of the most common long term symptoms of Lyme. Behrens and Lambert’s work includes chapters on; An in-depth introduction to the disease, diagnosing and testing, medical and herbal treatments, (including using herbal treatments to support the use of lengthy courses of antibiotics treatments), plant profiles of herbal treatments, nutrition and recipes, growing herbal treatments in pots and gardens and self care. Included in the self care chapter is Julia Behren’s inspired holistic model, STEPS ( Social, Time, Emotional, Physical, Self), a tool about self awareness of concerns, needs and strengths in living with long term Lyme Disease. As I enter into my seventh year of living with a chronic Lyme Disease diagnosis I am once again incredible grateful for the recovery improvements I’ve made since the early long years of some hugely debilitating symptoms. I continue to experience some long term disabling Lyme related issues though and ‘Lost in Lyme’ is presenting me with new and easily applicable ways to start exploring different ideas for improving some of these     I recently created this ‘Meadow’ t-shirt and tote design for Permaculture Magazine. The ts and totes are ethically produced by Teemill and now available to buy via this link - I’m currently working on some further clothing designs, sign up to my newsletter to find out when they become available.
 Creating new gardens In a totally unplanned way, this year I’ve joined the volunteer planning team for Shipley Town Council’s Shipley in Bloom project. Its been great to get involved with the creation of two new gardens in public spaces in the run up to the Yorkshire In Bloom judging, which happened a couple of weeks ago. I’m now looking forward to being part of the long term plans for growing spaces in Shipley which includes a lot of regenerative visioning and doing for both communities and environment.  Giving donated raised beds a makeover!  New raised bed garden on the neglected and unused tarmac area at 62 Saltaire Rd   Planting out a mini edible food forest outside the Post Office in Shipley  Mini edible food forest Floss. April 2010 - March 2023 This spring in my garden (and all other areas of my life), has been totally dominated by the death of my best buddy Floss, who died at the Equinox. At 13 years old she’d been fading for several months and although her death wasn’t unexpected, the anticipated then actual grief of loosing her from my life has been huge. As a result some core things planned for the garden this spring including taking regular photos have happened late or not at all. Here are pics of some of the activities and events which have taken place.  Early annual seeds for the edible garden were eventually sown, not that early! They occupied the kitchen table for the first few weeks post sowing.  Other edible garden seeds were sown directly into a raised bed in mid April  Removing the mulch of woodchip from the raised bed prior to direct seeds sowing revealed a super healthy worm population doing their soil fertility magic.  I built a pallet structured insect habitat (or ‘bug hotel’), near my garden gate and within clear sight of both pedestrians and road users travelling by. One of the functions of the garden is to provide inspiration to folk in my local community. (I sowed some annual wild flower seeds in compost on top of the pallet stack, the bubble wrap is to keep the birds away until the seeds germinate)  I’ve been creating some weather proof signs for different areas of the wildlife garden for visitors to my garden.  Small areas of the perennial meadow were cleared to the ground with a strimmer and then plug plants grown from perennial flower and grass seeds in early March were planted out. These will grow to full hight next year.  My local Green Party did great in the local elections, it was a pleasure to have their presence in the edge between my wildlife garden and the busy main road. |
