 Hello again. Today's question is, are there any downsides to doing a permaculture design course? Of course I will talk about all the benefits, which I would say there are many. I don't know about downsides so much, maybe things that you don't expect to happen. And so I probably should warn you about those. And the most obvious place to start is with money. Now, obviously permaculture courses probably going to cost you money to go on a course. Particularly if you do a residential course because that will involve accommodation and food and so on and those things you're paying for. But it's more what goes on after the course. It's not the course itself. It's what happens afterwards, the money you might spend as a result of doing the course. And perhaps one of the most obvious things for me at least was that I started buying a lot more books. So I did the course and I found myself fascinated by so many things and I really wanted to learn so much more. And so I spent quite a lot of money over the years on books and this is just a few of the books that I've bought since doing my permaculture course in 2004. Of course you might also want to do some more courses and there's all kinds of other things that you might spend money on as a result of doing the course and being inspired to do other things. Which then brings us on to the next thing which is time. Obviously the permaculture course itself is quite long. It's either a two-week residential or six-week ends and so that's quite a lot of time to take out of your life. But on top of that, like we were saying with the money, you're going to need more time to read the books that you buy, to watch the videos you want to do, to do all the learning, the extra learning that you get inspired to do as a result of doing the course. Also what happens is that when you learn permaculture you get what a friend of mine calls permagogles that are permanently stuck to your face and you can't take them off anymore. And essentially what she means is that when you look at something you see it in a new way, you see the world in a new way. And this can be both fascinating and frustrating. So nature suddenly becomes even more interesting perhaps than before, depending on how interested you were in nature in the first place. So walks take a lot longer than they used to because you start to see things. You might become a gardener and of course when you learn to garden you start to see so much more. You become a much better observer of the world. But the other side of this is that you might experience a lot more dismay. Now as bad as it gets here is probably the shrub planted on top of the sewage pipe. So the roots might get in there and cause some damage at some point. And the lack of a wind break where the wind comes from. And so it's not too bad here but if you go out into the world you're likely to see lots of examples of things being done very badly. Those real face palm moments. What were they thinking? And that can be quite frustrating and even disheartening. And so you've got to be ready for that. But at the same time it's good we know how to do things better and hopefully we'll be doing a bit more of that. Which brings us to our next reason which is dissatisfaction. Now having done a permaculture course felt a little bit like this water tank which was all that was here when we arrived compared to what we have today in the sense that this felt like what I'd learnt before permaculture even though I'd learnt a lot. How much of it was very useful to me so I felt quite dissatisfied about that. And also I started looking at some of my friends thinking how much do we really have in common especially having met some like-minded people that often happens. When you go on a permaculture course you meet like-minded people and you think you start to re-evaluate these things. Jobs it's not unusual for somebody to decide to leave a job that they weren't particularly happy in after doing a PVC even sometimes their home or dare I say relationship. Which brings us on to the last thing which is change. Now a lot of people come on a permaculture course because they're ready for change in their lives but it doesn't mean that it's going to be an easy thing to do. This used to be an eight foot retaining wall here which divided the garden in two and by making that change by terracing this area it gave us a route through it's created so many more opportunities it was a lot of upheaval but in the end it was worth it. So if you're not really ready for change then maybe you shouldn't be doing a permaculture course but if you are then perhaps it's the very best thing you could do.