Christopher Weeks

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:I really appreciate this kind of thread. And because I am always looking for plant ID's, my thoughts....

a different daisy

Flea bane daisy?

dunno...pretty

Yarrow!

For sure! I knew both of those at some point, but I have to know them often enough for them to really stick.

More stuff I don't know -- but I have room for letting nectary form.

Bee balm?

Yeah! This one I didn't know but the pictures on the internet agree with you 100%. :)

my plant-ID app says these are Black-eyed Susans, but it's the only plant here that's fancy.

Blanket flower?

Neat! I've never heard of that, but it sure seems right. I should go look at the foliage to be sure.

Good luck with a short, productive, and bearable recovery period and an improved quality of life in the end!

Wild lowbush berries, trailside, right off the plant and into my mouth. Hopefully they're starting to dry a little because it's late in the season.

I'm specifically thinking about the bushes that grow around the rocky edges of this granite clearing (Right here, if anyone needs that much precision: https://maps.app.goo.gl/AstCaUQdZQMjLZzJ8):

For about two years, I've been toying with what this thread should look like. I have threads where I post about specific projects like foraging or building a henhouse. And other people have 'pictures of my garden' threads that I enjoy seeing. So I know there's a place for this kind of thing, but I'm even still not quite sure what I'm going to put here.

We bought 20 acres in the woods of northern Minnesota in February of 2020. We arranged for some professional remodeling while we lived in town and drove up here every weekend to move stuff into the garage and work on the house and yard. We finally moved in in October and sold our other house shortly after. If you include that year that we didn't live here, this is my sixth year learning to garden here. Most of my property is on glacial till. It's about 50 feet deep where the house is and in one back corner it gives way to peat bog, so there must be a gradual raising of the bedrock but I don't have well-reports every 100 feet, so I have to guess about it.

I live on Blackberry Lane and wild blackberry is a significant weed here wherever there's sun that gets through the canopy. I've been sort of informally calling this place Blackberry Acres.

Everything grows very slowly here. I suppose it's because water vanishes instantly into the ground (seriously, I've never had a puddle) and takes nutrients with it. Trees are slow, slow, slow -- spending 2-3 years on underground growth (I think) before they start to produce seriously above ground. I don't know what things will look like fifteen years out, but I have reason to believe once they get going, they go just fine. My annuals hate this place. The most obvious avenue to success is to grow in a layer of compost on top of the sandy soil/turf. I don't love the contents of the only bulk compost option I have, so I've been experimenting with dragging organic matter out of the woods and various mulches. I get some produce, but I'm glad to have a day-job so we don't go hungry.

I'm going to just drop a big wop of images that I've capture in the last three weeks here to get this started. (TIL: there's a 30-picture limit per post!)

The experience isn't perfectly tailored to your needs, but it seems like you could do worse than to spend a week (or year) at the WL Bootcamp to get a feel for western Montana including the area, climate, and gardening.

And welcome to Permies!

I can usually cure earworms by "playing" Windy by The Association in my head. I don't know why that works for me, but it almost always does.

At about 17:40 in the following video, Rick shows how to make chard-based Dzotobichay (ancient Mayan tamales). I prefer them with a lot more chard -- double or triple, and wilted before I mix it with the masa.

I’ve seen some anti-mullein sentiments online recently so it was nice to see this.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this thread progresses. I spent a semester in high school and another one in college taking welding classes. So I feel like I have a lot of the movements needed -- I can push a puddle of metal in tiny circles with my flame or start an arc with a stick and keep it without welding my stick to the work surface, but I'd need to walk into an already put-together welding setup and get a refresher. Neither class equipped me go to the hardware store and figure out what I need to buy.

I use Thai enough that I grow it year-round in the very limited space I have to keep things alive through the winter. Lemon basil is a nice-to-have.