Growing in the eco-village

It’s Sun­day, and it’s pour­ing with rain at eco-vil­lage Zuiderveld. Y., three years old, is bored inside. We play with the Lego, but his eyes keep wan­der­ing to the win­dow. He imme­di­ate­ly spots it when one of his friends appears in the gar­den. Yes, there is a break in the rain and we can go …

The wheel of the year

For weeks, beau­ti­ful blue flow­ers dom­i­nat­ed the park oppo­site our house. But now that I final­ly get around to tak­ing a pic­ture, most of them have already fin­ished flow­er­ing. Large teasel plants are start­ing to take their place. Some­times I feel like I should be flow­er­ing all the time. Like I should be ent­hou­si­as­tic about work, …

Mud on my face

Oops, my foot almost slips away. I quick­ly take a big step to regain my bal­ance. It’s tricky with Y. dan­gling between my out­stretched hands. He is sus­pend­ed above a pool of mud that reach­es my ankles. The back­pack on his back does­n’t make it any eas­i­er. It was his idea to bring it with …

Building a home

A sub­urb does­n’t seem like a very log­i­cal loca­tion for the devel­op­ment of an eco-vil­lage. Liv­ing in har­mo­ny with nature while putting up some ter­raced hous­es, can you imag­ine it? Y. and I step out of our back door and into the mud. Zuiderveld is locat­ed in a swampy area that was tra­di­tion­al­ly used for agriculture. …

A move by moonlight

The big deliv­ery van races across the sea bed. The lit­tle boy turns the wheel with shiny eyes. With his arms out­stretched he can just reach it. Far too soon he has to go back into his car seat. It is only when we get out of the Euro­tun­nel that we can ful­ly believe it: …

Dreaming in the dark

The lights are always on. The Christ­mas tree out­side the shop­ping mall, the lap­top on my desk. But tonight I will leave the lights out and vis­it the dark­ness. Even the moon won’t show her face this night. Dark­ness. An uncom­fort­able word. A word wait­ing for Light. Away with the dark­ness of our igno­rance and evil. …