Between Tide and Time

By Sara Jo Kinslow, Eco-Restore

December 5, 2025

The Shape of Change

At the edge of winter on Fidalgo Island, the landscape feels suspended—quiet, breathing, waiting. The alder leaves along the Guemes Channel have fallen, their scent mingling with salt and cedar as tides lap softly against the rocky shore. On still mornings, fog drifts low through the evergreens at Washington Park, and everything seems to pause between inhale and exhale. This is the season of slow transformation—when the land, the sea, and we ourselves are invited to rest, reflect, and renew.

Permaculture’s twelfth principle, “Creatively Use and Respond to Change,” asks us to see transformation not as loss, but as invitation. Change is inevitable—but how we respond shapes everything that follows.

Change as Opportunity

Hiking beneath the cliffs of Deception Pass, you can feel how water and wind have sculpted stone over centuries—each shift, each tide, shaping something new from what was. Change is nature’s way of carving possibility into permanence.

In our gardens, too, change often arrives unannounced: a dry spell, a shifting microclimate, a fallen branch that alters the pattern of light. Rather than resist, we can respond—choosing varieties that thrive in shifting weather, integrating water-holding swales, or turning a shaded corner into a haven for ferns and mushrooms.

When we respond creatively, we turn uncertainty into evolution. This is the essence of living in rhythm with place.

Composting: Transformation Beneath Our Feet

Even the smallest acts mirror the larger cycles around us. Take composting—the quiet, alchemical work of returning what has been used to the soil. Every peel, stem, or spent stalk becomes a gesture toward renewal.

On cool winter mornings, when the compost heap steams in the chill air, it feels like a living metaphor for transformation itself: decay as heat, surrender as sustenance. A handful of finished compost, dark and rich, is proof that endings are simply another form of beginning.

Composting teaches us that nothing in nature is wasted; everything becomes something else.

What might be ready to break down in your garden—or in your routines—to make way for what’s next?

Weeds as Messengers

Walking along the bluff at Cap Sante after a rain, the scent of wet earth carries stories from the soil below. Dandelion rosettes cling to gravel paths, and chickweed threads across the damp ground. Their presence isn’t defiance—it’s dialogue.

Weeds appear to heal what’s been disturbed, to cover and nourish bare soil. Deep roots pull up minerals from below; soft leaves blanket the surface against erosion.

When we see weeds not as intruders but as indicators, they reveal what the land needs to restore balance.

Try listening to them this winter. What are they telling you about compaction, moisture, or imbalance? In every observation lies the seed of adaptation.

Responding to Change in Our Gardens and Ourselves

Standing at the tidal edge of Similk Bay, the rhythm of change is visible—the sea moving in and out, the eelgrass swaying between exposure and shelter. Gardens move this way too: shifting, retreating, returning.

Change doesn’t come to undo us; it comes to refine us. In responding with care—adjusting our plantings, enriching our soil, or simply pausing long enough to notice—we align ourselves with the living intelligence of the land.

How might your garden look if you greeted every change as an opportunity to deepen connection?

How Eco-Restore Can Help

At Eco-Restore Consulting & Design, we understand that adapting to change is both practical and personal. Through site-specific consultations, we help you read the subtle cues shaping your landscape—soil patterns, water flow, seasonal light—and respond with creativity and resilience.

Whether you’re reimagining a garden bed for changing light, building healthy soil systems, or finding beauty in natural evolution, Eco-Restore helps you turn transition into transformation.

Visit eco-restore.com/hello to sign up for our monthly guides and articles, and receive tools, reflections, and inspiration for living—and growing—in rhythm with the Pacific Northwest.