Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II
Tuesday gratefuls: Paul. Findlay. Sarah. Max. Claire. Kate. Michael. SPRINT referral. P.T. Halle. Shadow, outside again last night. World Allergy Day today. Morning darkness. Ukraine. Iran. Israel. Palestinians. Artemis. Planting. The fan. The heater. A full Moon in two days.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Clouds
Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. the watercourse way
Week Kavannah: Hearing on the side of merit
One brief shining: That first bitter taste as coffee hits the tongue, the body remembering, starting to unveil itself from the gauze of sleep, knowing from experience though not yet this day, the effect of caffeine on the eyes and ears, the mind as it changes attention from the realm of dreams to the realm of ever becoming apparent reality.
Artemis: Awaiting a couple of garden tools before I plant my midsummer seeds. Probably fussing too much but I want to do it my way.
Planting seeds during the hottest month of the year is new to me. I’ve discovered a guide to planting a fall garden which might involve cold frames over my outside raised beds. Perhaps new seeds.
I did order two bulbs of Music Garlic. I have to reserve space for them when I plant because they go in the ground in late September/early October. Love Garlic’s against the grain ways.
Artemis must live, mostly, according to the rhythms of seasonal change. And I love that. I say mostly though because the greenhouse part of Artemis allows me to push the outer limits of first and last frost.
Starting seeds early in Spring inside the Greenhouse will allow for transplanting as soon as a particular plant can tolerate Spring temperatures outside. Keeping the greenhouse warm and within a fairly tight temperature regime will give my Tomatoes the full growing season that they need to produce fruit. That means extending the growing season beyond the likely date of the first frost.
When living in short growing season climates, certain vegetables are unobtainable without a greenhouse. Now I have one and will able, in a very limited manner, to grow things year round.
This is as far as I want to go with juking soil and seeds. The only unnatural aspect lies in controlling, to the extent possible, temperature. Hence, the heater and the exhaust fan. I could work with humidity, too, but I choose not to. At least right now.
Great Work: Thomas Berry’s little book, The Great Work, identifies our era’s Great Work as developing a sustainable presence for human beings on Mother Earth.
On a trip to Denver from Minneapolis several years ago, I went north to Cody, Wyoming to visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. I finished the Great Work at night in the Holiday Lodge. Berry convinced me that rather than focusing on economic justice work as I had done most of my life that I needed to shift my energy, right then, to the Great Work.
A climate change conference put on by PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, at the University of Iowa, gave me even more reason. That conference inspired Kate and me in our Andover years, growing vegetables, fruit, nuts, and flowers. Taking care of bees.
Now the clown car that is MAGA and Trumpeting not only ignores climate change, but actively denies it. Right in the time period when drastic and difficult action must happen. Very. Bad. Timing.