I think I get this four-season thing now. It isn’t the subtle chill in the wind when the “Ber” seasons hit of home, but a pronounced shiver; a darkening in the skies; a want to spend most of the time hibernating. The stress to the body that these changes require ages you 10 years within 2 and slather on sunscreen like its lard. Maybe this is regular ageing and I’m just dramatic.
Spring has sprung, and with it all the little seeds. I’ve taken on the yard work since the man of the house died. The wood post holding the mailbox up front was rotting and it was time to replace it anyway, so I took the opportunity to “plant” a rock and succulent garden around the pretty new mailbox. It’s an experiment on xeriscaping. Xeri-what now?
Xeriscaping Xociety
According to wiki, Xeriscaping is the process of landscaping, or gardening, that reduces or eliminates the need for irrigation. Some of the newer houses in this area opted for xeriscape. Apparently, you can get tax rebates and garden discounts in California if you convert your grassy lawns to xeriscape. I just figured maybe if the mailbox plot is pretty enough I might convince my mother-in-love to let me convert her money-pit into an oasis. She’s played homescapes. She knows what’s up. While I’ve fallen into the gardening wormhole, I stumbled upon a few goodies:
Ugh. This dude’s content is so well made. The aesthetics are sugar to my old soul and inspiring me to imagine what a California-native cottage garden would look like. Maybe incorporate California Pipevines to help the dying population of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies? When we uproot endemic plants to favor exotic transplants, we disrupt ecological relationships. Before terraforming other planets, shouldn’t we first preserve and even rehabilitate devastated ecosystems around us? Speaking of terraforming, it seems everyone’s talking about growing weed in tents and figuring out the best set up for indoor growth and I couldn’t put to words where my misgivings about all this lab talk was coming from until I talked to a dispensary owner we were interviewing for Alab Assembly the other day. He said they were proud to only sell sun grown weed. Ah. So that’s a thing now. I’ll go back and ask if the sun-grown weed is cheaper for the free environmental labor you aren’t paying for, or if its more expensive because arable land is harder to maintain. He did mention it was a difficult fiscal year for the canna-business in general because of a sudden surge in taxes. Another question I wanna ask is how weed can be incorporated in permaculture. I still dream of living like a hobbit in the middle of a forest garden. Don’t tell my mother-in-love, she might stop letting me work the garden if she knew.
