There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi

A couple of weeks in Greece slowed me wa-a-a-y down. We Americans just live too fast, too wastefully and make life too complex it seems to me now.

A week of walking everywhere in an ancient village on the Aegean Sea reminded me there is nothing new under the sun. The tiny village of Molyvos (Mithymna, its ancient name) on Lesvos with its 1,500 residents has city planning down cold. Sustainability never looked as lovely to me as there. The well preserved Byzantine castle crowning the hill was once conquered by Achilles during the Trojan War. They revere their history instead of razing it for more profitable land use. It’s a really old, traditional, authentic village. I couldn’t help but slow down to an ancient pace complete with afternoon naps. 

In America we are just starting to re-embrace zero lot lines, city centered growth and pedestrian centered towns, but the Greeks have been living that way for thousands of years. The US Green Building Council latest initiatives for Designing Green Neighborhoods and Green Remodeling are good steps toward sustainable by design. But this is only news in America, since much of the older world it appears to me, has been designing this way for centuries, but Newbies are US, we seem so ethnocentric that we think we have invented green. Much of what is green now, once was simply common sense or locally available materials. 

I loved walking the narrow stone streets, covered with wisteria and lined with buildings made of heavy stone. Their retail shops are on the ground level with living floors above (with the view of the sea.) The stone homes and buildings all have natural air-conditioning; windows and doors with coloured shutters that open and close for cross breezes or insulation against the sun’s afternoon heat.

We could learn a lot yet from the Greeks. Athens, busy, bustling and crowded was a pedestrian delight for me. While in Greece for 14 days in late September I managed to eat 32 meals (and at least 20 Greek salads) outside in sidewalk cafes. Sidewalk cafes that didn’t have cars roaring by, only an occasional motor scooter. All those meals were of foods of local origins, prepared in simple and tasty ways.

I loved the reuse of materials evidenced in my favorite image of olive oil cans repurposed into planters. This shot is from the middle of Athens just down the hill from the Acropolis. I noticed several interesting repurposing of containers for gardens all over Greece. It inspired me to embrace repurposing instead of purchasing in more creative ways. 

Repurposing can be seen in my burgeoning garden but my son says it looks like a junkyard. One man’s junk is another one’s treasure, right? But he’s a good sport and helped me drag home a robin’s egg blue toilet to live with a peeling row boat. His dismay is matched by my creative optimism of converting both these castaways into garden focal points. A garden must have interesting focal points according to all the garden designers.

That lovely aqua colored toilet is going to become a planter, the tank filled with Equisetum hymale (horsetails), elegant and stately, and the seat portion will be home to a collection of succulents. I envision the toilet planter near the lilac bush and surrounded by sweet peas and lush greenery. It makes me smile to think of my "altar to pees”. It looks really terrific in my mind.

Now the row boat, that’s different, its going to become a sandbox for my grandsons aged 2 and 5. I’m designing a sail affair that will double as a cover to keep out the cats when the boats not sailing the seas with the little boys.

I’m really getting into reuse. But first I must get revved up again; I may be on permanent slow because I barely got the fall garden chores handled before the snow arrived.

US Green Building Council
Cascadia Chapter (Seattl, Portland and BC)
http://www.cascadiagbc.org/