D…Dad?

Very nice! A previous owner of our home left us peonies and I love them. Get that garlic in!

Now is a great time to plant garlic, provided you’re in the northern hemisphere. Here in New England, around Halloween is prime planting time

We have lemon thyme as well as your standard garden variety (hah!) thyme. They split readily to make new clonal cuttings, and I’ve rarely had one fail regardless of the timing of the division. We dry it for use in teas or for cooking, and it makes a good ground cover partner for plants like strawberries. The small flowers help to support solitary bees as well as parasitoid wasps, which help to regulate the insect pressure on the thyme’s plant neighbors.

Here’s some data on the benefits of thymol from the NIH

Great stuff! That’s how we do it too

Only the puns

Interesting.

The times I’ve sheet mulched with materials that required removal, said material was only removed for replanting

These are great! I <3 mushies

Awesome photos, thank you for sharing! You’ve made me envious, I’ll have to grow some of these next year

Planting Justice is a permaculture nursery in Oakland, CA,. Here is a video from Andrew Millison’s channel highlighting the work they do. Besides being jealous of all those heat-loving plants I can’t grow, their efforts towards reparative justice and providing inspiring work and living wages, especially to former inmates, is truly inspiring.

This variety is called ‘Red Fuseau’

The seeds should germinate just fine under your cardboard, unless you’ve got a ton of the species that need light to germinate (most don’t, in my experience). That’s awesome though, I can’t tell you how excited I am for your project!

just some Heather

Heathers play a huge role in providing forage to a number of butterflies, moths, and bees, so great job!

Here are the 17 pawpaws (Asimina triloba) I planted today around the property

Nice!

some new plants

What new plants?

Boo lazy habañeros, do yer jerb!

Sent this to my wife when my sample came back clear this morning, great timing as always XD

Attended a fair on Saturday as a vendor but didn’t make back the table fee, which is really kind of a shame. The weather was brisk and incredibly windy, which contributed to folks not really coming through. While I lost some cash doing it, maybe half of the other vendors had broken tents and merchandise by ninety minutes in, so I have to be grateful that our plants are a little heavier than that and I bring enough weights to hold our tent in place. What I missed in dollars I may have made up for in contacts, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

My parents visited for the first time since our daughter was born, which was really nice for everyone involved. They even babysat so my wife and I could go out for our 7th wedding anniversary! Five minutes into being seated at the restaurant, my wife took my hand, gazed deeply into my eyes, and said “do you think she’s behaving for them?” XD

(mod hat on) It might not seem like much ado for you, but I think posting about your plan would be a good starting point for some conversations and might encourage some other folks to emulate you /mod hat

Did they talk to you about solarizing next spring using tarps? Given what I know about your rough geography, that might cut down on your time between weed seed germination and die off. In the meantime, check with the pet store you’re a regular at and ask after their pallet slips for your cardboard sourcing. Because their use might be on food bearing pallets, they have stricter rules than other shipping box cardboard and also don’t have flaps to worry about overlapping.

but just looking and seeing some truly cosmic stuff in front of your unassisted eyes hits different.

It’s so true. I’ve gotten to see them before, way up Maine, but not as brightly as this evening and it was breathtaking. Our whole dead end street was all out at the same time, we could hear each other marveling at it all