“Kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm.” – Terry Goodkind 🕊️

GOALS THIS WEEK: Just survive the flu and don’t worry about the future.

Last Week: Spouting sunflower and rhubarb.

This Week: Trying to germinate pumpkin, watermelon, lavender, and cherry blossom.

HEALTH OVERVIEW:

Mental Health: Got to get the math decathlon details ironed out.

Physical Health: Whole house sick again, exercised Sunday, danced Sunday, did push-ups/gymnastics Wednesday, gardening Thursday and Friday somewhat tired/sore, but also feel a bit better/energized from exercising too.

Social Health: Very inspired to be gardening with my friends, trying to see their visions and bypass mistakes I’ve made for their gardens, it’s weird and humbling to see the landscape different from where I shaped it outside of my own home.

LIFE JOURNAL:

“Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.”
– Roberto Assagioli

“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”

–Mary Anne Radmacher

Saturday: Two weeks ago I grafted cherry tomato from my first year here onto an avocado tree in my daughter’s square-foot garden, this week my daughter said thank you. Last week I wanted to add new soil and turn the soil, but I needed more vermiculite and also wanted more compost, this week I have them mixed in a big storage box in the car, so that’s cool.

Sunday: Last week I exercised again, for 25 minutes. This week I was sick, so I didn’t exercise. I didn’t know how I would finish the projects I started. I did want to mulch, I relate fall and mulch. We put our fall indoor lights up, which felt tiring but good.

I like how the old grow bags blend to the tree bark, trying to use this tree as a planter for morning glories, not at all sure how much soil they need but trying anyways.

Hoping A the copper tape keeps slugs out and B I remember to keep the surrounding weeds off it in the case it does work.

Hoping the dish scrubber keeps slugs off long enough for the plant to be able to lose leaves and still thrive or at least survive.

Trying this system to water the tomato roots while keeping the leaves dry, the idea was from Grow, Cook, Eat, then I can also add a trellis there too.

The center tree has a tomato graft, I should have left the plastic on it longer, but didn’t so now the leaves are very dry… not sure if the graft will fail or work, but going to wait and see, it’s my first graft anyways, I’m glad I tried. My son has a new orange tree, first time mulching with rocks, don’t know if that is good or bad yet, these rocks are a little salty, don’t know if they will keep slugs off or not. It’s nice to have my daughter’s square foot garden still, it reminds me why I garden. For fun, to do something with my daughter and to leave something of who I was in the garden. The bamboo dried out from neglect mostly, some of the base roots are alive still, I’ll turn what is left to support for morning glory or tomato.

Cutting back weeds is a time to level out the extreme slope from high to low, whatever path gets layed someday will be easier with a level slope.

This is one of the most enjoyable spots for me, really unfinished and overgrown now, but something about it, there are a ton of wild chameleons, the air flow is fresh, it faces the rising stars in a South East way… I don’t know if I believe in energy spots or not, but there is nothing in this spot to explain why it feels like a good spot, the same plants/weeds as elsewhere, but for some reason a cool spot. I do like the rock wall I built here to keep in my dad’s smaller chihuahua.

Made this mulch around the sunflowers with dead climbing fern and dead Hapu’u fern branches, the Hapu’u fern is supposedly thousands of years old because it never dies, but instead falls over and regrows from a new spot… I find it inspiring, almost intimidating to use. I found a new garden quote I liked, something about use the good points of the garden, fix the deficits and make it an enjoyable place to be. Permaculture is cool, but focuses on 0 waste and bringing in only local supplies, I like to do those things, but I really like to not stress over 0 waste, but rather just reduce waste 50% if possible and I want whatever supplies I can get that I need no matter where they come from… I guess I’m not ready for a total commitment because I have little man power and work time, I want to do a lot with what I have and that means sometimes having good supplies that may or may not be found locally or on-site… but when I do make things on site, it does feel good.

On the left a large pile of sharp sticks to mulch, someday a hedge of Mexican Sunflower and Pananax, the cuttings are mostly doing well, this is the first time there was enough debree gone to be able to walk the front garden from the West side to the East side, it’s a long garden, but not huge.

Trying to see if the ferns can hold morning glories, I would love them to climb the branches and eventually send flowers dripping off.

We played a lot of music today, my son played all the instruments one by one, I put a bridge on a violin and then started learning to play the violin, the notes are “good daughters are elegant, G-D-A-E” I was going to tune it, but then I ended up watching a tutorial and enjoying playing twinkle twinkle little star. As I’m getting closer to hearing the pitches right I can kind of find my notes on the violin bridge, I noticed the bow was over-tightened and loosening that plus extra rosin on the bow and strings of the violin reduce the squeeky sound a lot. I never really intended to play violin, but my kids wanted some after hearing about Hayden who played violin and piano at a young age. It was really nice playing music today, it didn’t feel like a chore like it sometimes does.

Monday: Last week finished social studies, trying to remember to review “Mankind the Story of All of Us,” Children of the Nile and Nebakanezer and Cesar and Pharoh, Daniel Tiger, and music lessons. This week we went to the zoo with a pack of kids, it was a completely different experience, it was fun having snacks and playing and catching up, our zoo has a sloth, an alligator, some goats, two tigers, an emu named Bling and a playground, it’s a great small zoo, but it feels scortching hot so I don’t go often. There is also a really cool black swan. After going to the zoo we went to mulch a pathway which is my kind of party. I got to give away some more of the sunflowers, I don’t want to have a lot of annuals to replant, so I really like the Mexican Sunflowers better than Mammoth sunflowers, also distributed most of the rhubarb that I don’t really care for either… one little girl was really attached to a morning glory, which was so cute. I hope the kids have fun watching the sprouts grow bigger.

Tuesday: Last week we cleaned the bathroom, decluttering our stuff as well which takes more time. This week planted about 80 pumpkins in grow bags and about 80 watermelon, very tired. My son helped, he can get grow bags when we run out, mix soil, fill soil and place seedlings, that was cool. But it was just tiring. I have been at half strength since at least Friday, that makes me a bit sad. I want to pick up a rock, but I can only lift it 2-4 inches and I want to lift it up to set it on the 3 foot wall.

Wednesday: Last week we finished out the computer coding. This week we are headed toward the math decathlon, I finished the questions and chose the dates, looks like we will go camping soon. Did martial arts, which felt nice. Another scout wanted to participate in Clutter Fight Club, so my daughter got pumped up about it, which was cool.

Thursday: Last week I made some progress for the pumpkin patch. This week I’ve got the straw, but could use 6 bags of steer manure compost and 7-10 bags of mulch. I spent a lot of time gardening, I put new sod on my daughter’s green roof, potted up strawberries/tomatoes for a tower garden, pruned the strawberries, delivered that to town, got straw, and dropped that off to the pumpkin patch site. I switched my patio plant area from deep beds to shelves for small plants going out. I started cleaning up the walkway next to the stairs, I’m leveling the front garden path with trimmings as I go. I weeded around my daughter’s playhouse, there is one spider in there I will probably evict to get it more kid ready again, cut down the net that was around it…

Friday: Last week a lot of math was going on. This week we made strawberry cake, it was pretty good, tasted like a cookie though, which is not the worst, but I prefer a light fluffy cake texture more. I was hoping to branch out from math to music and we did, so we started one new math class. We had three piano students, which was awesome. We were so tired I didn’t think we would do much math or music, but we started a math class, we had three students, we did computer coding and three new students did piano, so that’s awesome actually. I give all the credit to the kids, they are good kids open-minded to learning rather than dragging their feet.

How’s it Growing?

Cherry Blossom – Cold stratified, soaking. ⌛

Lavender – Cold stratified, soaking. ⌛

Rhubarb – Germinated in 2 days via paper towel. Grown. Distributed. 🦋

Sunflower – Germinated in 3 days after 24 hour soak in cup of water, sprouting well. Grown. Distributed. Extra growing. 👍🏼

Morning Glory – Germinated in 1 day via cup of water, moved to paper towels, moved to grow bags. Grown. Distributed. Extra growing. Planted in my front garden too. 🌱

Roma Tomato – Germinated in 2 days via paper towel. Grown, doing well almost reading to distribute. 👍🏼

Clover, Alfalfa – For the Hilo Garden A. 🔮

Something new this week: Finally figured out the math decathalon questions and that made life easier, not doing it was draining me more than I knew.

Something good this week: Helped a friend figure out a wedding gift choice, it’s good when you can help a friend.

Something unexpected: The zoo was a different experience together, I didn’t realize that it would be so different.

🦥

2 thoughts on “🍁 2022 Thirty-Fifth Week 🦥”

Lovie Price says:
September 19, 2022 at 5:13 am


this is fantastic..i still so love your back yard!! great job- ive never done any grafting, but maybe someday up in my woods by the new shed/cabin:)

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Sakura says:
September 19, 2022 at 3:33 pm


The forest seems to be greener on the other side of the fence, I love your backyard, cabin, and trees better than mine! 🌳

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