To say I was excited when this book arrived in the mail would be an incredible understatement. Since my husband and I married we have been searching out and trying to find a place to settle down for good, and one of our criteria is that it has to have the potential to grow a vibrant, interactive community if at all possible.  After reading Sharon Astyk’s Making Home, wherein she breaks down the sustainability and community potential of urban, suburban, and rural life, I was even more certain that we were on the right track with this. Superbia, by Dan Chiras and Dave Wann, is packed full of ideas to revive and enrich not just suburban living, but neighborhood living in any environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods

Chiras and Wann begin with a detailed history of the suburbs; when and why they were built, and the advantages that people were looking for when they moved to them. They then go on to point out the deficiencies in suburban living, including the cost to the environment and human interaction- that indefinable “something” that makes a bunch of people living in houses near each other into a real community.  My husband and I had read something from David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture, in which he lays out very systematically how suburbs could be revamped to be productive and sustainable neighborhoods with people cooperating and building upon their strengths. Astyk also give many ideas and examples in her book, Making Home. This book takes it a step further, listing and explaining thirty-one different ways in which we can work together to bring our neighborhoods back to life, creating a healthy, sustainable environment- essentially changing suburbia into superbia.

The whole process begins with having the vision, and often this begins with one person who then spreads it to others not just by sharing it verbally but by beginning to make changes on a personal level and leading by example. One of the things I thought was most interesting was the idea of working with the strengths of the people in the neighborhood. Bob might be really great at remodeling and could use his talents to help others make their houses more environmentally friendly. Mai might raise goats and share milk and cheese with the whole neighborhood. Ahmad could use his van to take people on trips to the dentist and such so that the people could cut down on car ownership and make a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly neighborhood, and so on and so forth. This is more realistic that saying that everyone has to grow their own food, or everyone has to learn how to keep chickens- because not everyone has the time, ability, or desire to do those things. In superbia each person contributes to the community as a whole in the way that he or she is most able to do so.

Chiras and Wann guide us through the process of building superbia, from the dream to the implementation. They give suggestions and advice, knowing that every neighborhood and community will have different visions and capabilities. They offer ideas for everything from making a neighborhood workshare program to retrofitting homes, and neighborhoods, to be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. They discuss car sharing, composting, and chicken raising, and urge neighbors to have regular gatherings like potlucks as well as having shared spaces like parks and a central meeting house- for Muslims, a Masjid would be vital. Every suggestion will not fit every situation, but there are so many that I am pretty sure that there is something in there for everyone hoping to create a more sustainable and vibrant community.

Chiras and Wann write in a very engaging, interesting and upbeat manner, full of hope and encouragement. They also give real-life example of people who have done the things they are suggesting, showing that they aren’t just spouting pipe dreams or unrealistic ideas. Their hope and enthusiasm is contagious, making the reader want to start making changes right now, wherever they may be.

So, how about you? What ideas do you have for turning your neighborhood into superbia?

 

(NOTE: As with all of our reviews concerning books that are not directly related to religious issues, please remember that we do not wholly endorse all and everything that is in the book, and that, since these books are written by non-Muslims with a different world-view from our own, you will find content in them that may not be sound within our own Islamic ‘Aqeedah. We review them keeping this in mind, and hope that you will understand them in the same light, insh’Allaah. If you find any statements of scholars that discuss or give more detail about a practice discussed, we advise you to take it from that reliable source.)

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This morning I heard some people complaining about the rainy weather. In a drought affected state.

Hello?

The children and I, on the other hand, are overjoyed with the rain, after having so little of it when we lived in South Carolina, and, before that, Shihr, Yemen. We tend to rejoice when we hear the first drops falling on the roof, and never let ourselves take this blessing for granted.

That being said, planting wildflower seeds in the rain on a cold day is not exactly, well, fun.

Still, we have persevered, finding that the fun and optimism inherent in gardening helps us deal with the uncertainty and sometimes frustration at not being in a house yet. Planting a seed is an act of hope and faith, and seeing the beautiful plants that come from it a constant reminder of the wonder, beauty, and perfection of Allaah’s creation.

We have numerous seedlings started now, most of them heirloom varieties of vegetables we love to eat. Prudens Purple and Yellow Pear Tomatoes. Sweet peppers and hot, eggplants (okay, I don’t really love them, but I do have some affection for them, anyway), pumpkins, watermelons and summer squash galore. Lavender, lemon balm, mint, oregano, thyme and sage. Just today we replanted some of them into bigger pots so they could spread their roots and get stronger in the couple of weeks before the last frost date.

A couple of days ago we were able to go to the house and spend the morning planting. Nusaybah, Hudhaifah and Mu’aadh helped me with this. We planted a raspberry bush, a blueberry bush, and a grape…well, I don’t know what you call a grape plant. But we did plant one, as you can see:

And, our raspberry bush:

 

Sadly, for some reason our blueberry bush is not present in our photo gallery, mash’Allaah, but it is there, and we are looking forward to seeing how it settles into its new home.

In the photo of the grape…whatever…above, you can see part of two planting boxes we placed along the back fence. I had planned on planting marigolds there, but I forgot to prepare the seed ahead of time. I wanted the flowers to cover up the lovely (not) fence that separates us from an equipment yard, abandoned house, and two large, very rambunctious and decidedly carnivorous guard dogs. I also wanted them because they remind me of my sister Patty, who passed away while I was in Yemen.

I couldn’t plant them though, so I will have to find another place along the fence somewhere to sow them once we have prepared the seeds properly. Instead, I planted sweet peas- the lovely smelling flowering ones as opposed to the edible peas that we all know and love. Also, calendula, poppies, and echinacea, among some other lovely blooming medicinals.  I love growing at least some of the herbs that I like to use all the time, even if I can’t grow enough for our complete supply for a year. It’s especially good for the children to see what they look like before they end up in their teacups or slathered on their knees in a spit poultice.

 

Our Hugelkultur bed is progressing wonderfully, alhamdulillah.

This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago:

Then, like this:

And now, it looks like this:

That is where we planted some of our potatoes and a couple of other exciting bits and bobs of plant life.

We also transplanted organic broccoli, cauliflower, collards, and lots and lots of lettuces into the box bed near the house because we all love salad! We figured it would be a perfect fit for our Zone One.

 

 

We had to put the fence around it because of two neighborhood dogs who have taken over the neighborhood, making their own little gang and terrorizing smaller animals, people, and, of course, newly planted lettuces. We plan to do this with as many beds as we can.

The wire is low enough to lean over, and Khalil made one of the long sides so we could open it for weeding and such. The bed is just the right width to make this very easy, as we found out when we planted all of our lettuces.

In the bed next to this one we planted peas, purple bush beans, carrots, onions, and the rest of the lettuces and some spinach that wouldn’t fit into this bed.

We also planted some herbs, but we’ll go into that next time, insh’Allaah

Here are some stilllives with lettuce:

 

and

And look at this one:

 

and a lettuce landscape:

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The mantra of Reduce- Reuse- Recycle is gaining popularity in America- but in many places, and with many people, it is simply a way of life.

Check out Second Time Around at Yemeni Journey to see how some people truly take it to heart and live it, rather than just saying it. Then leave a comment below, or at YJ and share ideas on how to make these a reality in your life!

 

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A few weeks ago a box arrived at our soon-to-be-new-house (insh’Allaah) by mail. In it was a variety of lovely things, including two books. One was a wonderful cookbook (to be reviewed in the future, insh’Allaah) and the other was a book on gardening. Now, I love well-written books, and I love gardening, so I was excited to dive in and see if this particular book would manage to bring those two loves together.

A few weeks and 576 pages later, I can say without a doubt that it did. I expected to read the book in a dip in and read a bit fashion, skipping from subject to subject; instead I found myself literally reading it from cover to cover. The authors are bright, interesting, and experienced, and all of these things show through in their writing. The book? The Essential Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal.

 

The Essential Urban Farmer

This is not the only book I have on this subject, but it is, so far, the best. The book is divided into three sections. The first, designing your urban farm, is filled with practical advice on finding, evaluating and planning how best to use your own urban farm site. The second section discusses growing vegetables from the ground up- literally. Choosing vegetables, soil fertility, creating garden beds, plantings seeds and saving them are just some of the topics covered in this section. Raising city animals is covered in the third section, where Carpenter and Rosenthal discuss bees, poultry, rabbit and ducks. Then come the appendices. I never thought I would get excited over such a thing as an appendix, but I these are wonderful. I have already referred to them numerous times, and I have only had the book a month or so. Topics covered include (but are not limited to) soil testing, calculating how much to grow, succession planting, organic fixes for diseases and pests, and starting an urban farming business. Yes, I actually read the appendices as well! They are well organized, and the information in them is presented in a clear and easy to use manner.

So, could you buy a farm, plant a garden, raise a bunch of animals and become a successful urban farming businessperson just with this book? Well, no- but that would be too much to ask. The Essential Urban Farmer does, however, lay a very strong foundation for doing each of those things. It discusses not only ideas and possibilities, but also the nitty gritty lowdown on what different projects and ventures entail and precise how-to and how-not-to advice and directions. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of rolling up their sleeves and working to make their little patch of urban land into a beautiful, productive farm- on whatever scale they are able.

(NOTE: As with all of our reviews concerning books that are not directly related to religious issues, please remember that we do not wholly endorse all and everything that is in the book, and that, since these books are written by non-Muslims with a different world-view from our own, you will find content in them that may not be sound within our own Islamic ‘Aqeedah. We review them keeping this in mind, and hope that you will understand them in the same light, insh’Allaah. If you find any statements of scholars that discuss or give more detail about a practice discussed, we advise you to take it from that reliable source.)

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Well, we aren’t in our new house yet, but we are wasting no time in making the lawn ours, as much as we are able.

Last Friday, Juwairiyah and I were able to go over to the house and plant some bulbs on either side of the front walk. The soil was full of earthworms, which excited us considerably- but it was also full of paint flakes, bits of garbage, and lots and lots of glass bits from when the windows were broken out of the house. Not a good place to grow food, but we figure we can grow color, anyway, insh’Allaah, by planting lots and lots of flowers here and in other marginal areas along the sides of the house.

 

 

We planted tulips, crocus, hyacinths and daffodils. We bought them over a week before we planted them, and they weathered through a storm with six inches of snow, but I am hoping for the best with them. There is also a clump of some sort of flower that grows from a bulb already there, so it will be interesting to see what blooms. We picked glass and little bits of plastic and soda pop bottle covers out as we went (yes, we were wearing gloves) and Khalil took out an old rotted stump. I thought it added character, but that only earned me an eye roll as he pulled it out.

 

 

 

 

Next we plan to sow a mix of annual and perennial wildflowers there around the bulbs. Sukhailah and Juwairiyah mentioned trying to plant a perennial climber of some sort along that front area as well, that would climb up and around the black iron railings and perk the place up a bit. They’ve started researching that, so we will see what comes of it.

 

 

 

In the back there is not so much glass and debris, but we are not sure if the soil is contaminated with lead (the house is over one hundred years old), so we decided to bring in garden soil to put on top of what is there. We are on a very tight budget, so we had to plan our garden around what we could do, not what we really really really wanted to do, which was to plant a food forest throughout the lawn. Khalil did an amazing job of building four raised beds out of scrap lumber from the house. He even had to take the boards off of the front windows when I said I would like a fourth bed if it was at all possible. He wasn’t sure if the wood was treated or anything, so to be cautious he decided to cover it with a dark plastic from the garden center. We don’t know how this will work, but again, we are doing the best we can with what we have.

So far he has built four beds. Two are directly behind the house, and two are near the back fence. Funny thing about that area by the fence is that it is filled with onions! Apparently some previous owner of the house had a great liking for onions.  It seems as though the two by the back should get sun most of the day, while the ones near the front will have slightly less. One of the beds at the back we are turning into a Hugukultur bed, digging deep and removing some of the soil and then filling the hole with small logs and sticks and leaves. We will do an upcoming article on that, insh’Allaah.

We also plan to plant all around the fence in the back yard, lots of climbers to help us feel a little bit, at least, like we aren’t in the middle of a sprawling city. We are doing the potatoes in potato towers, and herbs and such right out the back door on the small deck that is there. Wherever possible we want to implement many Permaculture principles, to get a feel for how it could work for us both here in the city and on land when we are able to get some. Reading about something is one thing, but the real value- and fun- comes when you put it into practice! Of course we will be composting as well, both with a traditional compost bin and a worm bin. We will let you know about those and other related  projects as they develop as well, insh’Allaah.

So, this is the beginning of this year’s gardening journey. If you have any helpful comments, experiences or advice to share with us, please make sure and comment below. We’d love to hear what you have to say!

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Lessons learned through life- and through time spent in a garden. Check out my latest post at Yemeni Journey:

What We Leave Behind

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Self-sufficiency, or as close as we can come to it, has long been something that my family and I have worked towards. We’ve planted vegetables on balconies in Boulder, Colorado, in our backyard in Liberty New York, and on our rooftop in Ma’bar, Yemen, among other places. We strive to live a simple life in every way possible, focusing on minimalizing materialism while stressing the importance of family and community and all that they encompass. It seems clear that with many of the issues facing the world today we all have to be aware and do what we can to live in a manner that accommodates some large changes that could, insh’Allaah, be coming our way.

Making Home: Adapting Our Homes and Our Lives to Settle in Place (Mother Earth News Books for Wiser Living)

Sharon Astyk does not spend a lot of time in Making Home convincing us of the realities of Peak Oil or climate change, or that change will likely come to our society sooner rather than later. Instead, she works on the assumption that the reader already has some knowledge of this, and is looking for ideas on what to do to get through whatever this future may hold.  After a brief first chapter discussing why’s of what is happening, she gets down to the nitty gritty of planning and preparing, right now, for a future without many of the conveniences that many people hold to be necessities, like electricity and flush toilets.

Astyk  understands the need for people to make fundamental changes in their lives in order to adapt and be content in the places in which they choose to live. It goes deeper than actions such as buying a certain type of lightbulb or a hybrid car. Indeed it settles into the very core and essence of our existence, an existence in which we must learn to celebrate simplicity and learn to live without many of the extras we take for granted. Instead of looking for different ways to do all of the things we are now capable of doing, we must instead question why we do those things, and, in many cases, choose to not do them at all. An example of this is in her discussion of heating. Instead of coming up with an elaborate alternative energy scheme that makes it possible for every room in one’s house to be 80 degrees all winter long, Astyk tells us that we have to learn to think of cold and heat differently, focusing instead on wearing layered clothing, drinking warm beverages, rising and sleeping with the sun, and utilizing localized heating in rooms as necessary.

This is also a part of Islaam, Alhamdulillah. Sheikh Muqbil, may Allaah have mercy upon him, once said, The matter is simple, insh’Allaah- it is not necessary to restrict or oppress ourselves, but az-zuhd is better, and the state upon which the Prophet, may Allaah’s praise and salutations be upon him and his family, was upon is best. It has been narrated from ‘Umar, may Allaah be pleased with him, and look at its truthfulness, “Prepare yourself for a rough life, as indeed the blessings do not endure.” (Narrated by Ibn Abi Shaybah in “Kitaab al-Aadaab”,  Its chain of narrations is weak, however it has other narrations which support and strengthen it)

It is necessary that we prepare for rough times, and prepare for hunger, so that when the matter occurs we do not remain as though we are young chickens- it is necessary that we become accustomed to deprivation. And Allaah knows best.”  (“Fataawa al-Mar’at al-Muslimah” Pages 368-369))

In Astyk’s descriptions of the ways her family has already made so many changes and are living happy and fulfilled lives on their small farm, I see many of the same adaptations we made when we lived in a mountain village in Yemen with no power or running water. I once explained to someone that it was like cutting the static out of our lives so we could really live, really experience the world in a more immediate manner. Since returning to the States we have striven to retain and continue to practice what we learned there in as many ways as are possible, so that our family of nine has a carbon footprint that is less than most American couples have. It is a conscious choice to do what is right for ourselves as individuals, as a family, and as a part of a larger community and society as a whole.  Astyk’s Making Home is full of practical, sound advice on how to live in a simpler, more immediate manner, and weather whatever storms the future may hold.  And the success is only with Allaah.

(NOTE: As with all of our reviews concerning books that are not directly related to religious issues, please remember that we do not wholly endorse all and everything that is in the book, and that, since these books are written by non-Muslims with a different world-view from our own, you will find content in them that may not be sound within our own Islamic ‘Aqeedah. We review them keeping this in mind, and hope that you will understand them in the same light, insh’Allaah. If you find any statements of scholars that discuss or give more detail about a practice discussed, we advise you to take it from that reliable source.)

 

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