Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

We had a fantastic day yesterday at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew in London. There are some pictures on my other blog if you want to look.

World Population Map

I was looking for an image of the world this morning for the kids to plot some things on for school. Whilst looking I came across this image  which is a map of the world’s population. I thought it was really interesting. I’m obviously familiar with where the highest and lowest populated places are in the world, but I’ve never seen it in form of a map image before. H/T Resilience Science. You will need to click the image to view it in a larger size!

World population map

Oh well!

I really hadn’t noticed! I thought Summer was just finally getting going yesterday. No, my mistake it’s more rain today. Too bad, it’s over again. Maybe the sun will find us next year in Canada!

Community Hub

We went on a home ed visit this week to a self sufficient holding in a village nearby. It was a really wonderful and eye opening visit. Learning about how they live on the land they have, producing their own energy, food, water (via rain!) and all of the bureaucratic tape they have had to get through was fascinating.

They are totally off the water system and recycle all of the water waste they produce, through an enlightening system of filters, reeds, ponds and willows. They even have a composting toilet! Their energy is produced via wind turbine and solar power, which produces enough for them to be able to sell some back to the national power grid.

The community element they are building up was like music to our ears. A few years ago they began to make weekly vegetable boxes up for people to buy. These are only open to people within two miles of their farm, as they want to serve the local community. They have never advertised these boxes, word has just spread around the area. People collect the boxes on a Friday, and a little community forms, with children running around the farm to see what is growing, and adults conversing – if only for a while.

Over time little connections have built up for the family, for example, locally they will help out a friend they know in exchange for wood, another contact exchanges work for horse manure! Like wise, these same people will help out the owners of the holding we went to in exchange for vegetables, straw, chickens or eggs. They met their best friends through helping to rebuild a bridge!

The owners vision was that more holdings like his would spring up in communities across the country, thus benefiting the communities they are in and becoming part of a community hub.

I’m not sure if they owners are Christian, but what they are doing in the area around them is so kingdom. It was a real encouragement to us.

Snow

Today I have to echo Erin’s post from last week – White.

I can’t get my head around the weather at the moment. We had a mild winter and have had a really strange start to Spring. Today we woke up to our second snow fall of Spring! On Friday it was a beautiful spring day with temperatures of 64F – today it is around 38F! What a fluctuation! Mmmm, and there are still those in denial about climate change!