Chronic reader, creative dreamer, a LOT of hand skills to make things real, intense health issues that limit my activity, but not my creativity or dreams. Moved to southern Missouri with enough tools and junk to build a life that might work well with my health. One of god’s gigglers, I punctuate with smiley faces and exclamation points when I type, and smile and laugh a lot in real life. (Often at things no one else understands.) And I both curtsy at people (even when wearing grubby work clothes) and purr when hugged, both online and in real life. “Normal” is not a word that has ever been used for me.
Been organic gardening all my life, and bought 4 acres that I have designed from the ground up. Making it happen is being the most fun I have ever had in my life, the best 3D jigsaw puzzle ever! Reading Mollison’s Designer’s Manual was like coming home, ah, THERE I am! A reality where I can use all of my multifaceted talents and skills!
Dumpster diver, recycler, second hand store shopper, I tell people I am attracted to rust and lace. I have violated every warranty I have ever met, I’m a tool using animal, and I use my tools to modify everything in my world. And it only gets weirder...
Bricolage: something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. Adding ier to a french word means one who does that activity. I am a bricolagier, the things I do are all made of a wide range of things that I have acquired from diverse places.
From a thrift store today...
Crap, on the new computer. The pics aren't rotated right :( Not liking this beast.... I'll fix them on the old computer. EDIT: Fixed...
Anyway. 8.00 each, enameled cast iron, HEAVY critters! Look new. No lids.
What were they made to do? Seems like a pretty specific shape.
I'm putting a garden bed back to grass. Lots of reasons all adding up to it's not worth the work to deal with what it needs. It's kind of the end of an era, it's been semi-famous on permies for quite a while!!
When Covid hit I called my landlord, asked her "Can I bring my tractor over to the rental and rip out the back yard and put in gardens? She said "Can I pick tomatoes?" "Yes, you know where we live!" (She did come pick!)
I just found a list of what got planted in that bed the first year: 27 tomatoes of all types, 23 vining plants of various types, a very crowded bit of row about 4 feet long solid with cantaloupe, approx 120 bush bean plants of 6 varieties, a few greens of several types and 90 or so peanut plants
I don't seem to have many pictures of the next couple of years, every year I improved it, every year I fought the maple tree seeds and roots. Lots of good production, at quite a high amount of work. Added an arbor that I put American flags and Scarlet Runner beans on.
2024 I got really extensive with it, attempted to remove all the bermuda grass that kept coming back.
Then went after the bermuda....
The Sound of Bermuda Grass (With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel) (There is a lot more to this song at the link)
“Fools!” said I, “you do not know
Bermuda like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you!
Kill your grass before it eats you!!”
I really improved the soil well and got artsy with the decor....
And had a HUGE crop!
....
But this spring I looked at it. Lots of life stuff going on. I missed covering it for maple seeds. The tree roots LOVED all the digging and amending I did last year. It was going to be major surgery to reclaim it from the roots and constant work to kill off all the maple trees that are growing. I don't have energy for it.
I cleared the bed. Took away all the plants, the wood chips, the arbors, everything.
I kept only some garlic, walking onions, parsley and flowers at one end. (Fake flowers, being a driveway marker I can see when I back in)
I put grass and clover seed in it.
The Yes, you may bed is gone.
Long live the idea of a Yes, you may garden in the front yard for the neighbors to pick out of.
Needed to be done.
I sorrow.
Timothy Norton wrote:Up here in the Northeast, in New York, my manitoba maples are HEAVY with seeds.
Ohh boy!
Cover any of your garden beds you can.
I failed at that this year, and am paying a heavy price for it.
The seeds are technically edible. Mom peeled us some,we tasted them raw, nope, toasted them in stuff like pumpkin seeds, that worked. Mom said she's not hungry enough to peel maple seeds, so it's not happening
I didn't manage to get covers anywhere on my garden beds. T
he maple helicopters have an awesome germination rate :(
There are thousands of baby trees...
I mowed places I don't usually just to kill the maple seedlings.
I don't know if this is accurate info, so I'll bump this thread with it and see if anyone else knows. I have always heard the root pattern spread of a tree is generally about the same size as the leaf canopy spread.
So, if that's accurate, you are far enough off the septic.
If birches are known to reach far for water and there's no other water but your septic, that might not be good.
Hopefully someone will know if I'm accurate :D
Welcome to permies, awesome first posts! :D
If you are in range, check again tonight. Solar wind is still amplifying, although the charts look clear right now, won't take much to make it spike again. And spiking makes lights!!
It WAS a coronal hole stream impact, not predicted by anyone, startled people.
An interesting point is I saw it because my pain/brain spiked the way it does when solar storms hit and I looked to see what was going on, as nothing was expected. I'm a good solar storm sensor :D Wonder if I can get a job doing this?
