…it’s only by losing something that you can determine how much you value it. Therefore, the best strategy for determining what truly matters to you is by cutting things out of your life, then seeing what you miss and what you don’t.
Mark Manson
This year has felt very much like this. My goals for 2021 focus squarely on “do the things you stopped doing” that I care that i stopped.
Art
Exercise - running specifically
Writing
A sapling apple with recently applied wood mulch. A residential mower/tractor is in the background.
Things are starting to slow down at the Orchard as the weather cools down. A little at least because there’s still Stuff What Grows everywhere that needs maintenance. But, the major efforts are mostly done.
We are starting to work on projects for next season like preparing plant guilds.
Plant Guilds A guild (or ecological guild) is any group of species that exploit the same resources, or that exploit different resources in related ways.
The idea with guilds s to stack as much utility adn diversity into a small an area as possible. Nature doesn’t waste space so we shouldn’t either.
We planted two apple trees a few months ago and are planning to plant guilding plants early next season as they start to mature. Hopefully, the land will be more productive, still, while the apples grow up.
The easiest way to do that is to sheet mulch under the trees which does a few things.
Or do it, you rough up the soil. I scraped the grass from the ground and spread it back over the area.
An apple tree sampling with the ground around it scraped and hoed.
You can see I did a medium thorough job…
Then you lay down cardboard. That keeps the grass there so it can decompose and provide nitrogen (green). The cardboard both acts as a weed barrier and a carbon (brown) source.
An apple sapling with cardboard laid out covering the ground under it
Make sure you remove any plastic tape off.
Then you cover it in some sort of mulch. We still have some chips left from the last drop so I laid it on pretty thick.
A close up of completed chip mulch 3 inches thick
Then I did it again.
Another sapling with completed sheet mulching
And that’s it. Some of the best permaculture stuff is the easiest and laziest.
_All cart
Chip drop distribution venue Our second chip drop developed a bad case of wasps so distribution was stalled while we worked that out. Turns out to be easier than you think to fix.
Wood chips are hospitable to wasps for nesting because they tend to be loosely packed, dry, temperate and easy to turn into best paper. They can get in there and work quickly.
Not wanting to render 10yd3 of wood chips useless it’ll toxic, we sought non chemical was to drive them out. Turns out the simple thing to do is make the pile inhospitable. We took away the “dry” and “temperate” by training a garden sprinkler on the pike for a few days last week. Today, the pile feels like a furnace. The water kickstarted they composting process. So not only is it no longer dry. But it is also 160+ degrees in there.
So… back to shoveling it around the yard. No wasps but back to sweaty yard work. A pyrrhic victory of a sort.
BlackBerry patch which has overrun its boundaries. 15 by 15 feet. 
_Blackberries
It’s been a journey for me with this yard. Like, I didn’t really get how much work it was going to be and how difficult it was going to be to get through some of my own mental baggage around yard work.
Of the many things I’ve been working through with myself and working on around the yard, the blackberry patch was an early beneficial project. With out getting into the meds that is my psychology, re-taming the blackberry patch was bite-soiled project with bite sized project which was good for getting my past some of my internal stuff.
The first year was just cutting out the dead, which was a lot. We weren’t sure if they’re one year or two year canes - actually, we may not still be sure - so had to do multiple cut/check sessions over the course of a few months. We mostly go that solved and go to the point that only “stuff what produced fruit” remained by the end of the first season.
The second year was better defining the actual edges of the patch. Further escalating at the start of the season this year uncovered stones through what seemed like the center of the patch to give it aisles for easier pickings. However, now that other areas near the patch are in better shape, we think that’s actually edging.
The second picture is the current patch. it’s about 7x15ft (maybe closer 12ft diameter as it is round-ish). The tree on the left is apple and we are starting to think that the patch is supposed to start at the drip line which would mean that it is about 5 feet out of bounds. That five feet is about where those stones are.
Sooo……. what is currently a “center aisle” may actually be the original containing wall… O_O.
Oops?
No justice, no peace.
The world keeps breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces. Just when it feels everything you know has been atomized, we invent new levels of dissolution. I’d be impressed if I had the mental energy to think about it. Right now it’s a struggle to remain positive about anything. And there are positive things happening.
Bloody hands there. 
Bloody hands everywhere..
Alyska and I went down town early Saturday morning. We wanted to see what the capitol and state street were like after the protests. We tried to balance between seeing, documenting, and experiencing the streets, the destructoin, and the reason were, as a country, have gotten here.
It was difficult not to feel like a tourist in an art exhibit both because the broken things have been boarded up and the city is coordinating ways to help vent some of the anger through an art campaign. People have been cleaning up.
Commissioned by the city. 
Please respect. 
Respect reserved.
Out of pain and atomized glass, there’s something getting built on it. In so ways, this is good and in others, bad. Painting a veneer of over the anguish that has brought us here doesn’t fix anything. But that veneer being an attractive way to present that anguish helps keep people looking at it and thinking about it. And I’m there, taking pictures of that veneer. I wasn’t at the protests and I haven’t said much about the situation - I feel like I’m only tenuously holding my own atoms together thinking about COVID, my and Alyska’s high risk, having started a new job (same company, different role), and the demands of the permaculture garden we’re building. 
The property damage is a release valve. People’s lives are under all this and that’s the important piece. Property can be replaced and people cannot.
There’s people under here that shouldn’t be. 
I hope something greater can come from all of this. I have to hope for that because I can’t really see much beyond this veneer. I can see some of the pieces, maybe see how some of it can fit together, but there’s a lot of fragmented stuff out there to bring back together.
Say their names. 
Love trumps. 
Love matters.
Minuet has taken to burrowing in the winter. It is disgustingly cute.
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