the little wild kingdom

i could get out today and it was nice enough to even break a sweat!

did some weeding and gravel picking out of a garden and buried some chicken bones and a bag of bean pods and then tried to get the poison ivy out of some bushes but i couldn't find any of it at all.

another bit of weeding and burying bean pods and other worm food in a garden so that is nice to have that space back in my room here. it's almost looking civilized (not really but it is an improvement that i put some box tops and flats away so at least less visible clutter - plenty more still to deal with when i have the gumption).

rains yesterday and last night and cooler out today but i'm quite happy to do some reading and not much else. it was a busy week.

two days of good enough weather to get outside as much as my body can take. plenty of projects to choose from and things to get ready for the season.

i think today i'll get the north garden scraped and weeded as much as i can get done. i have the garlic in there to work around which will slow things down for part of it but i don't have to do everything in one day.

the edges are in pretty good shape except for the north edge along the grass which constantly gets invaded and weedy, but the two thyme ground covers are doing their jobs in smothering there and i hope it will keep spreading... where they grow a lot of weeds don't but i still do have to weed them here or there. the taller thyme grows faster but i'd like the lower growing thyme to take over more of the space so i need to trim some of the taller back a few times a season to let the lower growing thyme spread more.

the east edge is more work than i want it to be with some Creeping Jenny that i'm trying to replace with the lower growing thyme. the CJ does help keep other weeds from having it easy in that space but it isn't working as well as the thyme does so i'm going to keep trimming and removing it and encouraging the thyme to completely take over instead. weeding CJ out of the thyme is not easy as i'd hoped but eventually it will get done.

i didn't plan on being outside as much as i was out there but i guess i'm in a little better shape than i thought. will keep at it again tomorrow.

i've not looked at the north garden for a few weeks. it hadn't started sprouting too much yet back then. now in half the area i planted the garlic it has a lot of what look to me to be clover sprouts. i have had clover growing at times in the north garden so this isn't a big surprise but the amount of sprouts coming up is what is making me curious. last year i grew garlic in this same area and there wasn't this kind of issue. so it is going to take me some time to get the garlic weeded finely and i may not finish it for some time or whatever, it's going to be a play by ear kind of week at least. i'm glad i did leave enough space between the garlic plants so that i can get the scraper in there but i'll still need to do some finer weeding by hand and with the knife to keep it all under control.

flowerbug said:

aka flowerbug's chaos, methods and whatever bits that stick along the journey...

i'm not going to duplicate all of my posts here from my thread at TEG or my website so you have your homework set for you if you really want to follow closely. oh, also my thread on the permaculture site which is broken a bit at the moment until i fix it (again! grr!)...

first of all:

TEG: https://www.theeasygarden.com/threads/stubbed-toes-and-mud-pies.21224/
Website: http://www.anthive.com/
Permies: https://permaculturenews.org/forums/index.php?threads/songbirds-roost.12530/

if that isn't enough i have plenty of other links that will take you a long time to work through
all those resources and reading suggestions...


http://www.anthive.com/project/notes/

https://www.weforest.org/page/newsroom

https://www.soilsforlife.org.au/home/index.html

https://soilandhealth.org/

http://columbiabasinpermaculture.com/

http://landresources.montana.edu/nm/

http://www.talkingfish.org/

these last two show only a few of the projects i have followed for years to show what is possible in even some of the worst conditions.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sadhana+Forest+Haiti/@18.0427155,-71.7635496,3530m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8eba2e27874a6ba5:0xd4977f2fd2cfd39b!8m2!3d18.0468326!4d-71.762317?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.8720385,35.6311368,145m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Click to expand...

I figured "oh, in maintenance back in 2019, well I'm sure 7 years later the cite is working... nope. but i was excited about a permaculture forum!!!

Rillowen said:

I figured "oh, in maintenance back in 2019, well I'm sure 7 years later the cite is working... nope. but i was excited about a permaculture forum!!!

Click to expand...

sadly that forum was closed down for various reasons. there were a lot of great people writing there and i miss a lot of them.

however you can reach it via the wayback machine:


all pictures i post to SS and TEG are usually posted first to the various projects on www.anthive.com

i just don't have any journal or blog there at the present...

it is morel season here and i found four small ones while walking back towards the house. with all the rain we've had this is not a surprise.

i'll leave the small ones alone so they can keep spreading more spores around but if a nice bigger one pops up i'll bring it in and rinse it off (saving the rinse water) and then spread that water around some other places.

got the back, side and some of the front mowed, but i'm not in that great of shape so i quit at the halfway point (which isn't really halfway as it is likely more like 2/3rds of the way) and called it enough for the day. will finish up tomorrow...

i had to take a break part way through what i did today, but some of that is due to so much pollen in the air my lungs weren't happy being out there. oh well, tomorrow it will get done.

before mowing i had to do the usual oil change and since i wasn't sure how much oil i would need and the oil i had on hand was enough i had to run into town to get some more.

so i got to meet the new hardware store (well it's the old hardware store now being run by other people) people and was glad to see them as the previous owners didn't much care to run it and they also tended to hire people who didn't care to be there so it wasn't a place i'd go to when i needed something.

today was busy, but i got help right away, maybe it was their first day open? and it was someone happy to be there! assuming wife and husband team and family of at least 3 or 4 kids. so when they rang me up the Mom was teaching the daughter how to do that and make change.

now i will add it back onto my in-town stops again as i often need things here or there and hate to run many miles further to get them. i'll be happy to support a local business as long as the people treat me well. i don't mind paying higher prices as the trip alone to various towns and back is going to cost me another 5-10$ at least just for gas and also it will take more time. so... yay!

got the oil changed without issue and the mower started up easily enough (four or five pulls - not bad for a nearly 30yr old mower, but it has had some service calls here or there when needed).

turned out i didn't need the oil anyways but now i have it for next year...