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This land is your land. This land is my land.

   Carrie, our blue healer/rat terrier, will not be getting her Buddhist wings anytime soon. This morning while I was digging in the garden she did also. I got peas planted she got the mouse. The mouse was likely the one that ate a perfect little hole into the hidden backside of one of the canary melons. He ate all the seeds inside and when I picked it, it looked like a cute yellow birdhouse. Mouse eats seeds, dog eats mouse, I'm going with 'circle of life'. 'sides I was in no position to argue morality as I went on to use a little vacuum to suck up squash bugs. 

  The canary melons had basically all ripened at once. This meant, along with the watermelons, our every meal has melon. Deb and I brought some to the neighbors - and I guess for a while the mouse. See, I share! We Libertarians get a bad rep. The other thing all ripening at once meant was a spot in the garden was open. 

  Territory is not to be wasted in the garden. I shared last blog how the potato onions had perfectly matured and been harvested as the squash and melons started needing the space. This piece of companion gardening follows the logic of 'keep a root in the ground'. Basically meaning the fungi and microbes along with the worms and bugs are happy to build you good soil but they need solar energy - plants. The also don't need their surroundings torn up with a shovel. Best part is they work cheap as without them you're buying and adding soil amendments and pesticides. If you want to nerd-out read some of the websites and books on soil. Really, truly, I mean really fascinating stuff. Mother nature does that 'circle of life' stuff to the Nth degree. All I've gotta do is be patient, keep a root in the ground and search Google for any wisdom that people have noticed about which plants help or hurt as companions. Patience is the hard one!

  I'm trying push my garden. Not only to become fully productive before whatever Zombie apocalypse the future holds but also before my knees or heart give out! Beyond building the stone raised beds to sit on as I garden in my dotage, I need soil. Leaves, grass clippings, wood chips (Lord, tons of wood chips!) and my little underground friends make excellent soil... But, I'm out of my stash of leaves from the neighborhood. It's August and the lawn doesn't need mowing and it's August hot. Not the time to spend a day wheelbarrowing the next ton of wood chips. So this morning's digging wasn't truly inline with my minimal dig philosophy. It was more a rob Peter's dirt to pay Paul as I aimed to turn the large summer melon bed to a small row of fall peas. I guess my Buddhist gardener wings will be on hold. (Do Buddhist do purgatory?) 

  I will offer a little political thought as I just finished an excellent newish book and am halfway through another older but solid read. Tequila wars: Jose Cuervo and the bloody struggle for the spirit of Mexico is as the title describes a biography of Jose Cuervo and his tequila business before and during the Mexican revolution. THE STORM BEFORE THE STORM chronicles 146-78 BC of the Roman Republic. Essentially the Republic before/as it becomes an Empire. Each are worth your time but a minor point of the stories struck me as common to the history in both, land reform.

 Each Republic struggled with an uber wealthy landowning class. For those of you ready to run to the barricades - let's go slow here. A lot of people died in the Mexican Revolution. So too, the streets of the Roman Republic saw one of their bloodiest days over the Lex Agraria and a protracted mess. Neither left with a good straight government of the people. I will somewhat gratuitously add into the mix the ongoing war between 'Israel and the Palestinians'. (That is the best title I can succinctly offer for a truly bloody mess!) After all Israel was heralded in it's Zionist creation as "A land without people, for a people without land."  OK, OK, put that fully loaded Subway sandwich down on the ground. I'll also add in the good ol' USA. I'll just go back a few years so the wound isn't fresh. Let's go back to say the 'Trail of Tears' and my new home state of Oklahoma. 

  For those of you who don't have a phone to Google or Grok on - Trail of Tears is a beautiful pole bean (hey I'm a gardener 1st!) named for the military forced displacement of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma. "Forced displacement" sounds quite clean and neat, it was not. Do read about it there are a thousand bits and branches to the tale, not the least that the Cherokee and the other tribes were every bit as civilized and modern as their neighbors who wanted the land. They had title to their lands, appeals to the courts, heck many even had slaves on their plantations. (The Muskogee tribe just last month finally granted Tribal Rights to it's slave's descendants.)  

  There is a distinction. Rome and Mexico had cooler heads, peacemakers, compromisers. Jackson and Netanyahu let's say were/are more firm in their convictions. It is a distinction without a difference. Real people died. Ownership looks pretty with title insurance till title insurance doesn't mean beans.  

  Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. George Washington (a wealthy man who owned slaves and a surprising amount of land!)

  

"Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world." – Franklin D. Roosevelt (Scion of an uber wealthy family which gain some of it's wealth from slave labor and as President confiscated some peoples gold.)

  Sorry gotta go Carrie just walked by my window in the garden. She thinks she owns the place!

Doug A. 

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