Habitat is the interaction of the things in a place – living and non-living. Our interactions contribute to the creation of habitat whether we are conscious of their effect or not. Being conscious of our actions' effect, we can choose to contribute to improving habitat for all living things.

We had the “Bee Candy” demonstration Sunday. It was 8 of us learning to assist bee colonies to survive the winter. We are setting up stands for the hives that will go to Ruth's and David W's places and we built our first Warre' hive components to see if we want to offer an event on building those at the API.

It was interesting to talk to beekeepers compared to talking to transition folks. I am generalizing of course. To beekeepers it is all about the honey at the end of the year. To transition folks, its all about adjusting to peak oil and climate change.

At API we have been talking to people about looking up from their individual interests to see how 'what they do' fits in with everything else. Think about how habitat is created. We tend to think of habitat as something we must maintain for some other poor creature that we have endangered. What about our own habitat as it becomes a danger to us?

A habitat, like a rain forest, is a collection of things. But the important part of a habitat is how the interaction of those things creates the flow of nutrients through the system. The fact that humans have these things called money and markets does not change the fundamentals of interaction creating habitat. They do not change the fact that the quality of our individual lives is derived from the volume and quality of that which flows from those interactions.

As a gardening team, we are thinking about how our actions impact our habitat. We are thinking about our own interactions with the flow of time and money. We are thinking about the resources we have, after providing our own needs, that can be used to assist other living things in their contribution to the habitat. We may not be able to figure out how to get a return in money or products but it is still worth the effort if our actions improve the habitat and thereby our quality of life.