A Spring Ditty...

Started seeds for tomatoes (14 varieties) peppers (11 varieties) and eggplant (2 varieties) yesterday. With the cooler days and sunshine I hope to cloche a couple of the insulated raised beds this morning with greenhouse poly and let the soil warm. Preparing for direct seeding of brassicas, ie broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, turnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, collards, brussels sprouts...and for carrots, beets, and assorted other greens...yes, gardening season is upon us, even with our cooler temps. April through October and into November we could have edible plants outdoors. That's a good 7 months plus of growing season here in the Siberia of the United States.
When the tomatoes, etc get ready for their first transplant it will be directly into the pit greenhouse bed...where they thrive until I set them out around Memorial day. I've learned not to set out tenders too early...all I end up doing is fussing and covering, late frosts are killers. Go with the flow. The direct seeded plants in cloches can have remay cloth pulled over them to protect from light frosts and even short freezes.
Hope you all are enjoying the spring. A good friend spotted a red throated loon on her lake yesterday...I've had herons, both great blues and greens, and numerous water fowl on our pond...and the birds are singing the trees and plants to come out of their dormancy, but not too soon, please. Rhubarb is covered with pots to force them to stretch their stalks seeking sunlight...small leaf, long tender stalks.

Kudos to Walt Whitman

In the 70s I spent a great deal of time with a group of people who were adherents to the Sufi Islam tradition, one of whom I was particularly close and intimate with. In the 80s I spent 2 months at a remote hot springs in the mountains of Mexico, practicing asceticism...mostly because I was in extreme poverty, although I wanted for nothing. I met three Gnostic Christians, two initiates and one teacher...the two intiates were preparing for their life together.

I followed the principles of Taoism, especially just before and for a number of years after Cheryl and I joined in union. She, too, was on the same path.

I mention these people because they are all adherents of different philosophies, religions if you will...and yet were beings of great peace and wonder, of celebration of the physical world and bodies into which we've been born. No jihads, no condemnation, no threats of violence nor judgments...

Be in peace and wonder, feel your body pass through the air, smell the scents all around, listen to the birds singing spring alive. Smile and fill your hearts and souls with wonder.

~A song for myself, of myself

Partly Truth, Partly Fiction

The cooperative model, living near or where you work, using human power to get from point A to point B, building soils in a permacultural manner, cluster housing for community and cooperation...all are possibilities. (all of which we've been doing for the past 3 plus decades) But, here I am typing on a piece of electronics which has so much embodied energy in the extraction, production and transportation (many of the pieces parts "blood diamonds"), does it really matter that a beam of sunlight is powering it? We are all walking contradictions, partly truth and partly fiction...