Ten months and one week after making the decision to move, it’s finally done – the great adventure to find a new home and start a better way of living! The process aged me 100 years but it’s done and a new adventure has commenced.
The original idea was to buy a farm and live off the grid but the Universe wasn’t down with me doing that right now. Still, the new spot looks like a farm house and has enough ground to fake being on one. Sometimes the Universe doesn’t give you what you want; it gives you what you need, so now it’s “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”.
The plan is to turn my place in Midrand, Johannesburg into a self-sustaining, self-maintaining, lush, urban food forest based on permaculture principles; then teach others how to follow suit. A new website called The Right Fork has been started to store all the info you will need, (although my mom thinks it’s much funnier to call it Veroniqueville). :)
The ground has been sorely neglected. It’s a desert of dead, bare sand and half dead everything else. The first week focussed on only 2 things – getting the door and window locks changed and working, and watering the garden. Within 3 days it was already looking greener.
It’s funny; at one stage I just wanted a lush green lawn to go and lie on – now that I know better, I look at gardens like that and see a water hogging wasteland instead of the tropical glamour punted in the magazines. All this grass will come out eventually, watch this space.
So why “The Right Fork”?
It’s about coming to a crossroads in your life and having to make a decision about which path you’re going to choose. I “woke up” a couple of years ago to the fact that the way we humans live on this planet is not great and have been singularly driven to start doing something about it ever since. It’s also about choosing love over fear; compassion over hate and revenge. It’s about coming face to face with some pretty hectic challenges and having to choose your reaction to each one. This has not been an easy journey and the temptation to go to “the dark side” is ever present; but the force is strong in this one and light will prevail! :) It’s about taking responsibility for everything that happens in your life, good or bad. It’s about understanding that the power of choice is presented to you a hundred times a day, not just in the big life events.
It’s too overwhelming to try and change the governments and banks bleeding us dry, or multinational giants wrecking our environment – but changing ourselves and how we live is something each one of us can do. I had to take a whole lot of left turns before getting to the right fork in the road; which road will you choose?
Filed under: Thoughts on Life
by Veronique Palmer via Views from Veronique
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