Day 2: Ecology...

Today's focus was ecology. We began with ”the can game”, where we ordered the various elements of our surroundings in terms of their importance, in order to better understand our place in the earths ecosystems. Bood Carver's summary, “The sun is most important, we are the least important. It’s okay to be cannibals…as long as we don’t eat Permaculturalists.” The game was reinforced with a viewing of a section of BBC documentary The Secret Life of Plants with David Attenborough. We followed him to the forests of Borneo, and the Namib desert, the remote island of Palau, among others as he examined the complex interconnection of living things in nature.



After lunch we took a trip to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden where we visited the scent garden and the medicinal garden on the way to a small forest by a cool shaded stream; here we took note of the structure of ecologies looking for patterns and niches.