Hills Happenings 2012

Greetings from the Hills Local Permaculture Group Core Team for 2012. We’re looking forward to a year of hands-on permaculture in our local communities and lives, and to connecting in with and being part of change-for-life in the wider world community.

The team met for a visioning/planning morning in February, keeping up the best traditions of the Convene Team with a fine spread of food to share, inspiring conversation and a magnificent salad of ideas for the year. We finished with a bonus tour of Nathalie's amazing water-thrifty garden, which managed to look well-kempt, beautiful, productive and lush even in the shrivelling heat of February.

As with the last few years, we have a core team of five, with a slightly changed membership. Sharryn and Elizabeth are continuing on the team this year, joined by Nathalie, Krystylee, and Trish.

Thanks go to retiring team members Silvia, Rosemary and Joy for the amazing amount of work and care that has gone into every aspect of HLPG over the last few years, from vision-holding to producing newsletters with global cult followings(!), keeping everyone in touch through emails, maintaining records, liaising and being available on the phone, planning and organising, making sure there are enough chairs and cake ... all the small and large details that have kept HLPG life humming along. Best wishes for the unfolding of the new ... looking forward to seeing you all during the year at HLPG events.

This year the Hills Local group will be focussing on sharing and assisting each other with the small and practical details of implementing permaculture in our lives. We will still be gathering on the morning of the 3rd Saturday of each month, still sharing a cuppa and potluck morning tea or lunch, and we will also 'do and learn' a small something...' This may take the form of an activity such as pruning fruit trees, or building a biodynamic compost pile at someone’s house, or jumping in the creek for some revegetation work, or designing a chook pen for someone’s odd-shaped back-yard ...

One of these gatherings will be at the Silver Tree Steiner School, as a very small thankyou for their very kind assistance in providing a venue for us to meet at for the last couple of years. The new 'sustainable' school is looking amazing, and has come along even further since our tour there in December last year.

There will also be a couple of slightly larger-scale events. We will be teaming up with the wider Permaculture West mob the first Hill's Permablitz at Kristylee's in June. We hope to be able to build on the learning that P/West has been harvesting through permablitzes around Perth, to make the organisation of further mini-blitzes and full-scale permablitzes in our local group easy and fun.

And later in the year we plan to host a local 'surplus-share'-fiesta... an opportunity to share produce, seeds and cuttings, skills, learning, inspiration, ideas, food, fun and time in the name of permaculturing the world starting with our local community/ies.

The Hills Local Permaculture Group meets once a month on the third Saturday of each month, 10am to 12pm. The next Gathering will be on April 21st 2012 at the Silver Tree Steiner School in Parkerville. See web page at xxxx for details.