Nine's Bootcamp Experience (BRK)

Rio Rose wrote:Wait. Hold the phone. Knapweed is....delicious??? Tell me more! I knew bees liked it, but had no idea people might, also....
PS. Mystery plant I don't think is burdock- which tends to be fuzzier and more sage green in my experience. So nice to see seeds spouting everywhere!

Noooo, it tastes terrible. 😂😂

Burdock isn't actually a type of dock. It's Arctium tomentosum, while normal dock (and many sorrels) are Rumex. I compared some of the sorrels here.

It looks like something in the sorrel/dock/rumex family to me, too.

#67

Woke up to a snowy morning. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the snow. I know I enjoy the cooler weather, but the snow.. I love how quiet it makes everything. I love watching it start to melt in the trees and cause cascades of fluff as it falls onto the branches below. I love how green the greens look. It's also pleasant to be cool, start working at something and get too warm, and be able to cool off by taking off a layer. I'm not looking forward to the heat of the days in the summer where you can only take off so many layers and still struggle to be cooler. That's then, this is now. The snow was a welcome addition to my morning. It also watered all of my garden patch, so I appreciated it a little more.

We started out by digging big holes to plant apples trees and bamboo. Chris and I dug four holes each with a pick axe and shovel. Matt was walking around delivering the plants to their new homes, so I left Chris to help get those in the ground. I decided to go to the garden to shovel some snow onto my patch. More water for my future, lush garden.

After lunch, Chris, Alana and I worked on getting some things knocked off the 'prepare for tour/PDC' list. I wrote the list from the recent walkabout onto the whiteboard in the shop, then the three of us systematically erased most of them by the end of the day. I put some linseed oil on the Serviceberry Terrace sign. Shoveled mulch into a wagon then took bucketfuls of that to cover a pipe. Dumped the rest of it onto the mud puddle area near the Love Shack. Helped put some of the excess bark behind the Library around the tree bases. Moved a bunch of gravel around in buckets to make some areas less muddy and more walkable during wet weather, and then trenched around the base of a nearby hugel to get the runoff to irrigate instead of making a lake near the parking. The gravel and trench wasn't on a list, but I was tired of walking through huge puddles and all the sand/dirt/mud getting tracked into the Library. I'm hoping some of what I did helps with those. Later I consulted with Dez and Daniel as they were working on planning the Solarium build this summer. I had given all the design information that I'd gathered so far, but ended up answering a bunch of questions that had already been answered in that information.. Such is life.

By then it was the end of my work day. Whew. Ate dinner, then attended the Observation for Design seminar happening with Alan. This class has been feeding my soul. It's probably the most interesting thing I've been involved with since I've arrived. I can't wait for the PDC this summer because I long to learn more. He seems like such a fascinating human and is an incredibly competent instructor. I've been enjoying sharpening my senses and learning how to expand them for greater observation. That coupled with my newfound phenology interest has melted together seamlessly, and I love how these dots all start connecting. Having Fred around to identify plants has also been such a joy. He's a wealth of information about so many things! I feel like I'm probably bothering him with all my 'What's this plant? What about this one?' questions, but he's been a great sport so far.

I forgot my journal up in the FPH so I couldn't take a picture of it, but I had a couple entries for today that you'll hopefully get to see tomorrow!

Jen Tuuli wrote:
Noooo, it tastes terrible. 😂😂

😂 😂 Darn.

#68

Tuesdays always stress me out. The thought of having to be surrounded by a room full of people every week gnaws on me all day. The last couple Tuesdays I've had dinner by myself - the one night a week when no one is going to walk in the room and interrupt my chill. I can eat in peace. I look forward to these quiet nights, when I'm not stressing about them that is. Living + working so much around a bunch of other people is exhausting, and it's difficult to find uninterrupted time and space.