It has rained here for nearly two weeks. Never saw so many blossoms on all of our fruit trees. God willing, we will have an abundant fruit harvest this season. Southern Illinois is quirky in early spring. Most of the yearly 50 inches of rain seem to fall March, April, May. Hard to get crops in the ground. This is where diversity gives us a solid foundation that will translate into yields across the year, through the winter and into next spring. I remember vividly a couple of years ago when we had a serious freeze for a week and temps dipped into the lower twenties. Every leaf and blossom in Southern Illinois seemed to turn black. We have over two hundred and fifty species of plants in cultivation and we utilize plants from all over our ninety-five acres. Even though fifty of our species suffered the freeze we still had over two hundred species of edibles, medicinals and utility plants to garner harvest from, plus hundreds of plants on the rest of the farm and bordering properties. Permaculture is about diversity. It is about poly(many)-culture. If the conventional monocultural mindset pervades all of our thinking where does this leave in our daily lives: isolated, defined by sameness. You know the picture. Think and design for diversity. Yours, Wayne