Courtney Brooke: It’s a beautiful Wednesday morning garden session over here at the Gateway neighborhood. That’s some little garden gnome over here…
Good morning yarrow! Good morning snapdragons! Good morning oregano!
Sam: Wow! Like a little special plant kind of in the mix you know what this plant is right here?
Naia: What?
Sam: That’s a little carrot so we’re going to let it grow. Just it’s so small but you can start to see its little carrotness kind of poking out of the soil there….. yeah……so we’ll let it grow…….
Naia: It’s okay we can eat it when it grows…..
Courtney Brooke: What’s this, Naia?
Naia: Kale!
Courtney Brooke: Kale, wow….and what’s this?
Naia: Uhhh, Chickweed!….
Courtney Brooke: Do you like eating chickweed?
Naia: Uh huh….
Courtney Brooke: Me too. should we eat some?
Naia: yeah……
Sam: What’s what’s your idea about how to use the chickweed later today Naia?
Naia: Like put it in this smoothie……
Sam: Put in the smoothie for the kids play group today….
Naia: yeah!
Courtney Brooke: Wow, that’s so special. Morning NikiAnne……
NikiAnne: Hey!……
Courtney Brooke: What are you taking care of?
NikiAnne: Reclaiming the laundry line from the elderberries.
Courtney Brooke: Wow, look at those beautiful elderberries…..Yeah.
NikiAnne: They like the sun but so does my laundry and in this space I want the laundry to win.
Courtney Brooke: Fair enough fair enough. Good morning birds! Hearing those birds songs!!!!
NikiAnne: Hey bee! You’re up early…. so cold out for you.
Naia: What???
NikiAnne: There’s a bee. Well i don’t even know where it went….
Courntey Brooke: oh honey bees…. honey bees….Naia, do you love honey bees? Do you love honey
Naia: Uh yeah!
Courtney Brooke: Yeah me too. Thank you to the bees!
Sam: Yeah, I kept bees for maybe ten years and the biggest and best honey I ever got was the summer that Naia was born. And then we still have that honey, so the the thought is like maybe every year of Naia’s life we can give her a dose of the honey so she can have the essence of the flowers that are blooming at the time of her birth.
Courtney Brooke (she/her) is an ancestor who was a Social Ecologist, Regenerative Designer, and educator whose work aims to reconnect people with a sense of belonging to place. Her work in the world aims to address the root cause of today’s overwhelming ecological challenges – that humans are starved of a sense of belonging to the places they live.
Courtney Brooke was raised on a small farm in North Georgia, and has been guided by a lifetime of living close to the land. Her greatest teachers have been the Appalachian Mountains, the land of Aotearoa, and Selu, the Corn Mother. She holds a degree in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, and has 10 years of experience facilitating earth-based education, ecological landscape design, women’s rites of passage, and cultural healing.
Courtney Brooke has taught and facilitated environmental education curriculum, Deep Ecology, Permaculture Design Courses, hands-on craft and farming workshops, and Holistic Management to a wide range of audiences in nine countries from toddlers to adults and everyone in between.
Deeply committed to spreading the healing that comes from belonging to the places we live, Courtney Brooke is passionate about designing learning opportunities that celebrate life. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage where she tends the land, raises food, participates in communal ritual agriculture, swims in wild water, enjoys the mysterious blessing of being alive, and tends her own wild Hearth. She loves cooking home-grown and wild foraged foods, playing her flute to the sunrise, running on mountain trails, making compost piles, crafting from natural materials, and bringing people together to create beauty that feeds the holy.
