 Hello again. So today I want to look at two particularly fascinating and huge books, you could say as well, literally in a physical way and also in terms of their content and their importance, I feel, within permaculture. So the first one is Bill Molisson's Permaculture Designers Manual. Now, as you can see, both of these books are rather tatty. I was lucky when I bought this one second hand in 1996. Mine has double-double sleeve paper cover for some reason and you can tell it's old because it has my old name in it before I became a Rania. Now this, so Bill Molisson and David Hongren started permaculture as an idea back in the 1980s and a couple of books were written. The first one was kind of David Hongren's PhD thesis really, but Bill Molisson was his professor. So this one and then later, or quite soon afterwards, Permaculture 2 came out. But essentially they were just a collection of ideas that were coming together and so in 1988 this book was published. Now there is apparently rumours that it's being in the process being updated, so it's in the sense that permaculture for me is something that's constantly evolving, like everything that's living, that the more people come into it, the more ideas we bring to permaculture, the more useful it becomes, if you like. Now the Designers Manual, this was really written for a group of people who were going out into the world and trying to fix problems that humans have been creating all over the place. And so this were very much the chapters of this book and the information and the ideas inside are very much aimed at people that will be going out and having to work in deserts and the tropics and the wet landscapes and cool climates and so on. And so there are chapters for these things, all of these things. There's a chapter on earthworks and earth-moving equipment which many people are unaware of. And really it kind of lays the basis of what permaculture is about, although if you read the first chapter or two around design, design methods and so on, there's quite a lot of things in here principles and things that really many people, if you've talked to them about permaculture or they learn permaculture now, will never have heard of. So it's very much, I would say, something to study because it's much more below the surface of permaculture than we might initially perceive. One thing I particularly like about the book is it's full of pictures, it lays out many of the original ideas that have become classic. Perhaps not so much the principles, some of the principles of permaculture we'll find in here. Some of the principles come from another book which I'll talk about next month, which was for me also inspirational and came out about the same time actually. But there's lots of fantastic photos by Andrew Jeeves, pattern understanding that's inspired a whole book that I'm writing at the moment. Bill put this on chapter four, he obviously thought this was quite important and essentially talks about how he just wants to start conversation so we can get into the finer detail of how do we use pattern in design successfully. You can see lots of beautiful diagrams. But yes, it's a big book. There's 550-odd pages. But essentially, how do you do permaculture in different climates? What they've tried to do basically is to accumulate all the basic information about wherever you are in the world and what you might need to do and understand about that place and how you do it but also what does nature do? And of course published back in the day where rather than having colour photos in between, generally in the text, they're all clotted into a collection of plates in one place which these days feels a little bit frustrating really, you have to go looking for that picture somewhere else. But an excellent book, quite difficult to sit down and read in one go, although there were some who would say, of course you can. Fascinating. Sometimes a little bit frustrating in terms of, for me, just the general layout of the book and what order things are carried with my current understanding and I think our general awareness in permaculture of how to use it now. Let's just say I'm looking forward to the update. Not a cheap book to buy because it's printed in Australia and basically it costs quite a lot to get it over here certainly to Britain. But essential reading if you're doing any permaculture seriously. The other book which is also fairly well worn, at least it is a hardback, but hardbacks in my experience eventually because people pull them off the shelves like this, particularly when I take these books on the pubic culture courses. That's the library that do that a few too many times and basically it starts to rip off. So my earth care manual is fairly well loved. This is Patrick Whitefield's kind of big book if you like that he wrote going back a decade or so now. Again a similar kind of size. But really what this book is this book is sectioned up rather differently. So whereas the designers manual, there's a lot of it is looking at the specifics of cool climates, hot tropics, that kind of thing. This one is looking more at water, soil, energy buildings and that kind of thing. Again, a lot of text. Again, a color section of plates. But lots of diagrams, lots of useful information, things, lots of checkboxes and things. The chapter on soil in here I've found particularly useful over the years. It's very good introduction to just generally what you need to know about soil and such around the soils chapter three. This one, this is a book though that's very much targeted at people in cool temperate climates like Britain and Northern Europe and so on. So there's very much a theme around that. And the last part of the book is about design. It's a useful start for me. It's fairly because I've written a book about design. It's a little bit short, but it covers all the main points that you need and helps put it into context of the rest of the book. So both of these books are excellent. The earth came manual would set you back a lot less money than buying a copy of the designers manual at the moment. And if you live somewhere like Britain, I would start here. But the designers manual really is an essential buy if you're doing any kind of permaculture. Both are excellent. Both books to probably dip into more than try and read from cover to cover. But either way, there's rewards inside, whichever you start first.