Almost any time we’re mentioned as a state

Someone on the town crew was out with the boom flail mower, mowing on the sides of the road. Ostensibly, it’s to keep the drainage channels clear and to reduce plants from reaching out into the road. Guy mowed my entire front row of ferns, skipped some lilies, then mowed down my flowering and decorative grasses. At one point, he must have lifted the boom to avoid an Iris, but then brought it back down on another flowering grass in the middle of my front gardens. They’ll survive, but my front garden is going to look destroyed for a few weeks at least while they recover.

In more positive news, we had some friends and their son visit on Sunday. My wife took the other ladies around to walk in the gardens at one point while I was cooking - I found out later that we’re part of the inspiration for some folks who are looking to start a sober living space!

600G of strawberries retails for £4.50 (Tesco). If this whole setup cost only a million pounds, a producer would have to grow 133,333,332G worth of strawberries to pay it off, and this assumes nothing breaks (ever) and that there is some way to harvest that many strawberries without paying labor, packaging, licensing, and other costs. I feel like this was a cool tech demo but that’s about it

I bit the bullet and ordered some shirts to wear while I’m working the market stand, and I’m hopeful that they make everything more cohesive. Logo is the front, catchphrase is the back:

I helped a friend out of a bind this week, and tomorrow I’ll be helping another friend start to transplant his garden from his old house to his new one. Hopefully this heat dome doesn’t ruin our efforts.

Thanks, I’m really proud of everyone who donated their plants and time, and for the folks in town for showing up like they did.

Congrats!

Our town library’s plant and bake sale happened on Saturday, and we raised over 1200 dollars for the programs they put on - a 107% increase in donations from last year!

I’ve basically run out of small pots for bringing plants to market, but choose to see it as proof that my seed starting has gotten much more consistent. I do need to find more though, because I have something like 300 seedlings that need more space. Sent some texts and emails and also metaphorically begged for them during the plant sale so hopefully folks come through, since I refuse to commission the creation of more plastic.

We’re almost to our daughter’s 9th month of life. We’re both overtired and feeling overworked, with precious little of the time we used to spend on hobbies or couple-time. That said, while there’s been a shift towards an expectation culture in the house (vs an ask culture) we haven’t had the sort of challenges listed in that first paragraph.

Some things probably working for us:

• We’ve been together for over a decade and in our home for 9 years

• Our communication style is productive even during arguments (“I feel” statements are much more positive than “you” statements)

• We’re majority wfh so we have the capacity to buffer each others’ needs as parents throughout the day, rather than leaving everything to one person or having additional financial stresses with childcare

Some things definitely working for us:

• Calling each other out for awesome parenting, because very few others will and it’s amazing to feel that validation

• Proactively taking something off of each other’s plates, whether that’s cleaning or laundry, dishes or bottles, whatever task is getting done is one that doesn’t have to be done later

• Knowing about spoon theory and being sensitive to how much bandwidth each other has left. It’s way harder to recharge from past depleted, so being flexible and recognizing when I or my partner are reaching that point and stepping in or voicing a need for support goes a long way for both of us

How do you find the mental fortitude to ignore the stupid bs your partner does or says?

I mean, we’re both sleep deprived so I’m sure there’s stupid coming out of my mouth too. I think it’s much healthier to laugh or work to improve the condition causing stress than it is to feed a negative cycle. If either of us are escalating we missed a chance to bolster each other.

How would you describe love to your partner a year after having a baby?

Gratitude. I feel incredibly fortunate to have a partner who puts in the effort and has put in the effort to help build the communication style that’s worked so well for us.

Is there any way to know if you and your partner are going to make it and remain a couple after having a child?

It really helps to have a relationship built on respect, and knowing enough about yourselves to approach challenges constructively. Build a good foundation with each other, learn to communicate positively, and do your best.

My brother got my wife and me some miyoo minis, and I’m almost through TLoZ: Minish Cap. He loaded the tiny best set so I have too many choices and haven’t picked what I’m playing next

Welcome! We’re glad to have you here!

It’s not so much the crop you’re growing, but the weedy species around the growing space which will try to get to that space and will entangle themselves in the plastic interweave. Trying to remove them by pulling will just rip some of the material apart, which means bits of plastic left behind and greater opportunities for even more weeds to make it through.

Juniper helped dig up and split her very first plant, but very much enjoyed pulling them back out when we were potting up the cuttings.

We got accepted to both of the farmer’s markets we applied to this year, which means I wont have to find homes here ror the thousand-plus plants I started in our house. And the weather and overnight lows are finally reaching a point where I can start hardening off and transitioning them outside.

Today we’re out turning over the raised beds and surrounding mulch and soil to rebuild the beds, which I’ll do every few years. The chickens are out appreciating the easy access to the bugs and double checking on my angles of repose

If you mean agricultural felt, carry on. Other than that, most woven landscape fabrics are plastics and will not only break down and get into the soil but also make removing plants which grow through it harder to manage or remove

We’d love to see your project over in Nature & Gardening! I don’t know what your litter bags are like but your local library is likely to have old issues of newspaper that would also do the trick with a few layers put down. Some of those bags can have plastics which will break down and get into the soil organisms that do all that nutrient cycling for your plants, and your food.

Good luck!

Last week I solicited a donation for our town’s seed library, which is hosted by the town library. They’ve never had so many seeds to give out or use for the community garden, which donates all the produce to the local schools and food bank. Here’s what ours looks like (imgur) for anyone interested in helping their local library set something like this up.

Yesterday, we played And Out Come the Wolves for Juniper and she seemed to really like it, she even started singing along with me (singing is doing a lot of lifting here, she’s not really doing words yet)

Our six month dr’s appointment is Friday, and let me tell you just how excited I am to ask the pediatrician about sticking to the vaccine schedule as it existed when Juniper was born, or about our options for speedrunning vaccinations should they begin messing with the certifications or supply chains.

For the past two years I’ve been communicating with the planning board of the next town over, regarding supplying plants for them to redo the municipal plantings with genetically diverse natives. With the forest service suspending the tree planting programs using IRA funds, I am unsure whether their project is going to move forward. Here’s hoping it does - we’re one of a number of small nurseries who would’ve been tapped (hah! tree pun) for the project.

In other news, our six month old is figuring out standing on her own by holding on to objects. I’d say more but I have to go clear everything off of everything 🙄

“I forgot one thing about the guy who had gained the ability to fly - it was actually only for a foot or two, and only an inch or so high”

• The Vandals, An Idea for a Movie

<3 I have a hard time believing that a conversation between us would be intended as anything but constructive.

Despite being deep in the feels of the day, I agree with you; I try my best to be that force for good as well, and live up to being the person she and other people have believed me to be capable of. There are days it’s difficult to see myself the way I view them, because of how well I can see my own faults and mistakes. That’s not to say that they didn’t have those same types of self perception, but those foibles seem larger when we’re looking at ourselves, I think.

I have high hopes of being that kind of role model, dare I say, hero to our daughter. My wife surely feels the same drive in her own way. But there’s something about having a grandmother figure who lived through desegregation and suffrage that seems, I dunno, grander (or at least more impactful) and it saddens me that she’ll only know her through memories, rather than firsthand.