on growing wild

Grig, the capital of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia, is encouraging its citizens to let their lawns grow wild. The gir, as denizens of the city are called, who eschews a Western-style grass mono-culture in favor of a biotope of wild plants native to the high steppe upon which Grig sits will see their municipal taxes decrease. “Fewer boring lawns means greater overall happiness,” said Enddo Slamnyust, the city's mayor. “Also, there will be fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers entering our sewers and more places for birds and beneficial insects to nest, feed, and grow. My planning committee and I expect the increased levels of shade to help control the heat of summer, and more good bugs means increased yields of fruits and vegetables from the community gardens that are being installed on rooftops across our fine metropolis. Wild lawns make Grig a friendlier, healthier place.”

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lazy organic gardening

(Most of the knowledge passed on in this article comes from a few dozen Organic Gardening magazines I found in a dust-and-cobweb-covered stack in the barn. While printed in the late 1970s and early '80s, they contain timeless wisdom and much good advice.)

Throughout the spring and summer of 2012, this author has been conducting an experiment in lazy organic gardening (LOG). Among the benefits of LOG are a decreased workload, a drastic reduction in gardening-related stress, and three gardening plots nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors, wildflower-filled fallow fields. The inspiration for this method came in part from the Tao Teh Ching, specifically verse 7, in which Lao Tzu (via Jonathan Star, who provides the best translation of the text I have yet found) asks what an individual could do that the universe has not already accomplished for him, or her. Liking the sound of this notion and attempting to put it into practice, I started by digging out the plots to sixteen inches before setting in a three-inch-thick layer of composted leaves and grass, to which I added generous handfuls of bio-charred bamboo (wood-charcoal works just as well) before piling the dug-out soil back on. When planting, I applied thick layers of mulch around each newly-transplanted seedling (mulch was mostly cut grass with some leaves and twigs mixed in). (Next year, I shall raise my seedlings in a cold frame in hopes of a greater success rate, which this year was a dismal 15%). Then, I stepped away and waited, watering the plots (partly via small-scale drip irrigation) only when the first six inches of soil dried out.

Among the benefits of thick and early mulching include almost no weed growth and preservation of the soil's inherent, natural moisture balance. Bio-charring contributed to the vigorous and healthy growth of those few plants that survived my poor seedling-raising protocols, among them crook-neck squash, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, string beans, and green peppers. Pollination occurred quickly at both plot sites (two near the house, the other across the stream), given their proximity to large growths of jewel-weed, native and healing grasses (plantago lanceolata, p. major, taraxacum offinale, oxalis acetosella), and patches of wild blackberries that attract legions of industrious honey-bees which have made this little valley their home. At no point in the plants' life-cycles did this whorphan pull weeds, pick bugs, or apply chemical agents; the plants were left at the mercy of Mother Nature, who was fair in her attentions, sending pest-eating paper wasps to patrol the crops but also blighting a number of plantings, among them the cabbage and broccoli, which were completely destroyed. (This was an attempt to put the Taoist verse referenced above into practice by allowing the universe to grow the plants and to keep them healthy.)

For next year's growing seasons, I plan to take things further by trying a no-till method in which seedlings are transplanted directly into small, watered, composted holes in the lawn itself. Furthermore, I shall plant directly into the plot I made by dropping a four-layer-thick pad of cardboard (pizza boxes) onto the lawn and covering it with twelve inches of grass and leaves. (The original foot of material has composted itself down to just few inches, which I have covered with another foot of the same.) I aim to find (and perpetuate) varieties that grow well both in this clay-filled soil and in the local atmospheric variances, which include high summer heat, soggy springs and falls, and windy, cold winters. The ultimate coup for this lazy organic gardener would be to make tame crop species wild again so that they would offer their bounty to anyone passing by, blessing the bodies of persons-in-the-know with organic roughage and healthful trace minerals and strengthening the immune systems of persons brave enough to eat unwashed produce straight from the ground. Such is the life of the organic whorphan, he who would rather watch his plants get eaten alive than break out noxious chemicals; but to pump complex compounds into the soil and the air would be to try to do for myself what the universe has already accomplished, which, for now, is an abundance of fresh, organic vegetables. Huzzah, and, mahalo.

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routine – its power

Following a daily routine for the first time in many years, this poor, worthless whorphan has noticed his life improving. At the baseline of my routine are yoga exercises at dawn, noon, and sunset, three sessions of ten minutes each that have changed my life by bridging the gaps in the mind-body-interface, a deficiency common to Westerners. Then, I am losing weight and getting into shape by bicycling and by performing roughly four hours of yard or garden duty daily, including the hand-watering of three separate gardens. Thirdly but by no means less importantly, I am, even now, abiding by what I call EBOS, which stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, which means that every day after breaking my fast I use this netbook to write, to process pictures, and to edit graphics until its battery drains to about 15% capacity, at which time I turn it off because it starts to complain about needing juice. Fourth, I maintain and monitor a 45-watt, three panel battery array that charges a 12-volt, deep-cycle marine battery, from which I can charge headlamp and netbook and cellphone batteries and watch DVD movies occasionally, thus avoiding high electricity bills. Fifth, I allot a certain period of time each day to reading, to learning languages (I am currently learning Netherlandish), and to perusing various periodical, spiritual, and educational texts, so as to store in my brains as much as I possibly can of the information they contain (in order to know how to do many different things during the upcoming complete societal collapse commonly referred to as the Zombie Apocalypse).

I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.

Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.

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on individual ownership

Bicycling everywhere I go in this little town gives me certain glimpses into the private lives of the people living here that simply cannot be obtained by driving around in a car. For one, I approach people nearly silently, with only the occasional creaking gear or rattling chain to betray my presence, allowing me to observe them candidly until I am all but upon them (or at least until their peripheral vision picks up my whirling feet). Secondly, whereas when driving in a car one is prone to choose the most direct and well-paved path to get to one's destination so as to maintain a good fuel economy and to spend as little time as possible stuck in traffic, when riding a bicycle I take a variety of routes paved and unpaved, direct and circuitous, back-alley and broad-way, as I see fit and as my schedule allows.

By avoiding the beaten and asphalted paths, and by keeping my head on a swivel and looking into everyone's yards, I have made a number of judgments and come to a number of conclusions. The first of all these unbearably smug and better-than-though-art observations is that people living in close proximity to one another own items in such redundancy as to nearly boggle the mind. No matter how large or small a person's yard should be, it will be cut using a full-sized, gas-powered lawn mower. No matter how few obstructions and other solid objects that cannot simply be mowed over, they will be trimmed using a gasoline-powered weed-whip or edge-trimmer. Every yard – even the postage-stamp-sized ones – will have a shed of sorts for storing gardening tools; every home-owner – even the ones with more time than money on their hands – will rush outside and pay good money to have machines to do such work as they could easily do themselves at the cost of some sweat and a few minutes of precious television-watching time. Oh, if communities but had a central storage-and-loan shed for tools, a type of tool lending-library, a place where persons not interested in always buying such things as they might need to keep their property up to code could go and borrow a pair of hedge trimmers or a ladder. Imagine the volume of extra cash that would be floating around! Imagine the richness such a facility would bring to communities across America, people coming out of their homes and mingling with one another on a regular basis while queuing for tools, discussing methods of lawn-care and sharing freely of hard-won secrets, second-hand tips, and local advice.

The second observation I should like to make is that far too few people seem to be growing victory gardens, accepting rather the luxury of being able to buy their food at grocery-stores as some sort of Eternal Truth and wasting their time sitting around in air-conditioned houses eating cheesy-poofs and watching reruns on TV instead of mucking about in gardens where they might – oh cruel and terrible thought – stumble into conversation with a neighbor or passer-by. Square miles of good growing space sit wasted on grass; endless expanses of fertile soil stand planted with little more, perhaps, than a handful of ornamental flowers. Sew grain, not just grasses! Plant food, not just flowers!

Dear friends, I am coming to see the widespread use of television as the root-of-all-evil in America, that one main factor that has sent this once-fine land into a tailspin of societal and communal decline, that one primary thing without which ours would be a better, stronger, and more closely-knit nation. Without TV, people would not be constantly told to Buy More Shit, and without TV, they might get off their fat fucking asses and go outside for a nice, healthy walk now and again. Woe is unto us, sisters and brothers, fellow Lovers Of Liberty, we who reject the tenets of conspicuous consumerism, we who seek to be self-sufficient and self-reliant; our siblings have stumbled down the path of convenience and leisure, seduced into personal debt by the candy-sweet promise of touch-screen-equipped tablets and one-click-ordering, lost in a land of false and hollow hope, ensnared in the web of ubiquitous advertising, bled dry of honor and self-respect. Which way leads back out again, friends? To whom do we turn for salvation? The answer, in short, is that we must turn now to ourselves, setting such good and positive examples as might show our fellow Americans that there are other methods besides their ruinous ways. Mahalo, friends, and keep fighting.

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what to do to help our war effort

Often over the past few months, while conversing with seemingly intelligent, apparently clear-thinking individuals, I have run into indifference and ignorance toward the fact that America is at war. For over a decade now, this nation has waged its wars in strange and distant places, battling fierce peoples in dusty villages, fighting a mysterious, shiver-inducing organization that, as would the hydra, grows new heads to replace any old heads that get lopped off, mozambiqued, or otherwise violently removed. During these conversations, my counterparts nearly always ask, “What is it that I can do, personally, to help our boys and girls win these wars that we have sent them off to wage?” To address this question, and to free my heart of much worry and consternation, here are two things that the person interested in helping America win the wars that she is waging can do: first, reduce the amount of gasoline consumed; and, second, plant a victory garden.

As to the first point, gasoline, a strategic national resource, is distilled from crude oil, which is pumped from the ground by states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. These states not only promote and fund terrorist groups and terrorist activities, they also regularly violate their own citizens' human and civil rights. By burning gasoline in our own cars, we take it away from the cars, boats, and airplanes of the military; by burning gasoline, Americans fund terrorism, since the money we pay goes to the aforementioned states, which fund terrorism and violate basic human rights. The patriotic American wishing to avoid funding terrorism will stop driving his car.

As to the second point, ours is a fertile and rich land capable of producing great varieties of vegetables in abundant numbers. In the spirit of our forefathers, and of their father's fathers, the self-sufficient, self-respecting America will, wherever she is able to, erect and maintain a garden in which she grows anything and everything she can possibly grow. She does not purchase apples from New Zealand, cabbage from Brazil, or soybeans from the People's Republic of China – she grows these things herself, tending for her plants with loving care and patient foresight. It matters little if she maintains a single pot filled with herbs or a plot of raised beds running the entire length of her driveway; what does matter is that she honors our warriors' sacrifice by making a few sacrifices of her own.

These are but two, relatively simple things that persons can do to ween our country off of its addiction to foreign oil and artificially low prices and to free up logistical and manufacturing capacities for use in the general war effort. Perhaps we might later organize aluminum and steel drives, and set up Exchanges for Neighborhood Self-Sufficiency and Self-Reliance, but, for now, let us focus on these two primary objectives: to stop using so much damn oil, and to grow ourselves what food we ourselves consume. Please remember to spread the aloha, and to keep your heart light, and buoyant. Mahalo.

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regarding victory gardens

Friends, citizens, patriots: Please join the nationwide movement for greater self-sufficiency and improved life satisfaction by planting a victory garden. In the past, during episodes of perpetual war and stagnant economic possibility, our parents and grandparents rolled up sleeves and sunk fingers deep into the cool and blessed soil. They did not moan, they did not wail, they did not complain – they planted victory gardens.

We – you, I, and all of us – currently endure wars on multiple fronts, wildly fluctuating food prices, foodstuffs genetically modified and contaminated with pesticides and petroleum-based fuels and chemicals, and environmental degradation caused by poor political policies and by short-sighted agricultural and business practices. With the global food-supply-chain growing ever less sustainable, and with food manufacturers seeking to maximize their profits at all cost by saturating their products with fillers such as salts, sugars, and fats, now is the time, and today is the day, to take fate into your own hands and to sew for yourself the seeds of a brighter and more independent future. (Solar, wind, or water generated electricity used to run a water pump or the like can be stored in 12 volt, direct-current batteries, which can themselves be tapped to heat water, to cook, and to recharge the batteries of cellphones, netbooks, headlamps, and tablets; renewable resources abound, coal or crude oil do not.)

Anyone, anywhere, of any age and activity level, has the capacity to plant a garden, and, thereby, to liberate her own little slice of America from self-imposed reliance on foreign food producers, corporate farms, and plasticized, processed foodstuffs. For persons living in urban areas: Research square-foot-gardening (or square-meter-gardening); for persons living anywhere: Research methods of gardening using raised-beds; for persons with available acreage: Research closed-cycle systems, hydro-culture, drip irrigation, and methods for feeding hydroponic crops from a Tilapia pond's runoff. Tips and strategies for planting a victory garden of your own can be found motherearthnews.com, freecycle.org, or at many other gardening, off-the-grid, and self-sufficiency websites.

We cannot wait any longer to free ourselves from our current slavery to petroleum products, corporate farms, corporate food processors, the idea that things are easy, or the idea that someone else must grow our food for us. We must act now, each one of us breaking a single chain in the ever-tightening, ever-restricting bonds of the capitalism-driven enslavement of hard-working, crop-producing people around the world; building a victory garden on your balcony or in your backyard is an easy and fun first step in the process. So join us, fellow Americans, join us, and celebrate increased food Safety and greater personal Happiness by living, and eating, well.

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