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Notes from the bunker -Spring

  If you want to find the most interesting things in my garden you have to go to the edges. It's the first full day of spring.  This being Denver, after a couple weeks of 60°s to finish off winter, I'm looking out at 3 or 4 inches of snow and ice. Highs today perhaps the 30°s. Nothing really unusual in that. My desk calendar might be printed in black and white "SPRING BEGINS" but any gardener knows that it's not that binary a world. Heck it's not even analog as in a smooth gradual transition. Weather at a mile high is predictable in the sense that winter will be colder than summer but not in the sense that you can't have an 80° day in February and a freeze in July. It's more a what are the chances thing.
 That gamble is part of the joy of gardening. It's also why the heart of my garden is located in the best sun, in raised beds with the best soil and best access to water. Ya gotta stack the odds some years just to have a chance.
  Ah but those edges of the garden you can gamble a little bit with. You know the spots where you weren't going to do anything with otherwise and the main garden is full. Those are the perfect place to gamble a bit.  Perhaps with a plant that can tolerate some shade or maybe ones that don't need quite the fussing and watering that comes naturally to a plant in a prime spot. I can 'save' a little space by putting the spinach in an area that will be shaded out when a tree leafs out. The spinach doesn't like the heat so it might even appreciate the shade at the end of it's season. Or our original nectarine tree which was placed in a great spot for sun, shelter and attention. When it died, I had planted it's daughter in our front yard further from attention and shelter from storms. It's doing fine. For some plants though it's just a matter of the garden is full and I need someplace, anyplace to plant this. Try a bad spot or just let the thing die. Yup gardeners always want to tuck it in somewhere. It's our nature. When Kelly sent me some beautiful red potato onions they had to go out by the alley. (a true edge) See, onions are tough to place near good companions as they don't like peas and beans. Plus my strawberry patch (which onions like) was already inter-planted with the Green Mtn potato onions so space.. where? The alley's soil hopefully has been improved with some dedicated mulching and the removal of the Elm. Time will have to tell good bet or bad idea.
  The nice thing about planting the edges is honestly it's more interesting. It makes you have to think. There is plenty of logic and beauty to a thousand acres of wheat in precise rows or arcs. Stick a garden on a quarter acre minus a house and a garage and how do you not waste the north side which is shaded ground? That takes a lot of ice tea to get to that aha moment and a lot of those 'experiments' are frankly utter failures. Meanwhile you are still growing tomatoes beans carrots and peas so you eat and have a reason to keep gardening.
    While preparing to write this I was drinking my coffee and checking emails and all the notices. You know the notices "due to COVID 19 we are blah, blah, blah" with some PR speak about community etc. Two notices caught my attention. They were headlined "Price controls set on toilet paper" and "O'Tooles is closed". The price controls almost had me spitting out my coffee, till I realized it was a South African newspaper I subscribe to not here in the good ol' USA. O'Tooles is however real. It's our local garden center. I don't need anything but damn.... Toilet paper and gardening stores closing now it's an apocalypse!

 Wanna hear some non-mainstream thoughts on a pandemic instead of the hour of local and national news telling you to wash your hands and bump elbows to show we can all get through this. (All while scaring the crap out of you, and acting like they had told you about this long ago and you just forgot!) (I mean in the last election was the subject of pandemic even brought up? How about the stock market crashing or the destruction of the currency?)
  On the edges of our society those discussions were passionately happening. Chris Martensen hangs his hat on the liberal side of the fence. He's been passionately arguing that peak oil and climate change will collapse our very fragile very complex society. He's been thinking and offering advice on how to survive that sort of collapse. Now, the only thing that has peaked in oil is the price so he might (time will tell!) have been absolutely wrong on a lot. Back in January however he said very clearly this virus is something important. He went all in with a daily series of Youtube videos talking about what governments needed to do immediately and how to protect yourself as governments were not reacting quickly enough.
 Over on the very far right of that pasture fence the Skousens hung their hats predicting if not nuclear war than a pandemic would collapse our complex and thus frail economy and how to prepare. Again missed it on the nuclear war thing but on the edges you have to not think of it as binary or even analog. You have to think of it in terms of what are the odds that it will snow in July. Or perhaps you just notice that both are talking about how complex systems are fragile and fragile things break when they get bumped. This is thinking on the margins it shouldn't be where you plant your whole garden but there is value there.
  On the other edge there is the thought that this is all perhaps a bit over done. Perhaps overdone with an agenda ( or )  to move the herd onto that nice shiny truck. Or perhaps no agenda just a few clever folks taking advantage of an emergency that presented itself.
 Heck I'm sitting here with a shaved face so I can wear a N-95 face mask when taking my mother to her doctors appointment. I gotta do the odds. What is a beard worth!?  Now I'm not suggesting anyone plant their whole brain in the edges. But be aware of those edge places. Distill for yourself if a mainstream that 18 months ago (heck 3!) couldn't spell pandemic has it right. There is no refunds on life it's yours you own it. Self govern!
  Let me finish with a thought and a link for those of you who might not be gardeners and perhaps are worried about all this mishegoss. We're all going to die. There feel better? OK, OK there is another piece. There are a lot of things you can't control. If you fill up your time and attention with those things that you can control you will worry less and worry is bad for your immune system. It's spring start a garden. Worry about the tomatoes and let the things you don't control worry about themselves. Take measured risks on the edges and watch what is perhaps one of the best videos I've seen for these interesting times. Doug A.

Comments

  1. How about this idea: 1) everyone who is vulnerable should shelter in place, 2) don't close anything and allow the virus to spread through the part of the population that can handle it safely, 3) Once enough people have gotten it and recovered we'll have herd immunity to protect those who shouldn't get it. This will buy us time to develop the normal vaccines and cures and, maybe most importantly, not trash our economy.

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  2. Doug, once again, I simply love your writing style (and no, I don't say this as an attempt to get you to pick up the tap on our next 'losers-investment club' outing - if Armageddon doesn't come before Churchill's is pen again), I mean it, love your stuff.
    Now, you know me well enough to know this, but I suspect that most reading this don't know me at all, so I'll use capital letters; I'M NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST!

    So with those words firmly planted, imagine how great it will be for the couple of billionaires (who own the monopolies on vaccines) who have been heretofore unsuccessfully trying to crush the anti-vaccine movement, now that the whole world is clamoring for a vaccine.

    Goes to your comment; "Or perhaps no agenda just a few clever folks taking advantage of an emergency that presented itself."

    Things that make you go; "hummmm"

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