Expanding Green Man’s Grotto

We’ve started expanding Green Man’s Grotto. We emptied one of the old raised beds by transplanting some orange butterfly weed, hairy woodmint, and swamp milkweed partly into the existing GMG and partly into a new section. Next we’ll double the depth of that old raised bed and use it for a kitchen garden next year. Then we’ll transplant what remains in the other old raised bed into that expanded section of GMG and then double the depth of that raised bed for the other half of the kitchen garden.

Continue reading →


A damp but thoroughly enjoyable morning at Hardin Ridge.


A personal calendar

The way we organize our year is a reflection of our values—that is a commonly observed truism. My family and I share many of the usual holidays with the wider American culture. We also decline to observe a few of them for various reasons. In some cases, we weight the days differently than usual, or attach differing significance. The seasonal change we’re experiencing here in Indiana has me thinking about all of this.

Continue reading →


Happy Equinox! Happy Hobbit Day!

The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.


Hobbit Day is tomorrow, September 22nd. Are you making your preparations?


The death of the queen has some people pining for the Great Chain of Being. I’m also not a fan of the acid bath of modernity and capitalism, but the re-sacralization of the world will not be accomplished through bad models.


We’ve been hoping for a dragonfly or two to find out little wildlife pond. Well, tonight we have a swarm. I assume they’re feeding on mosquitoes, which are plentiful on a humid evening like tonight. I have no idea if they’ll come back but watching dozens of them swooping and swerving is amazing.


Finished reading The Hobbit. It’s been a few years since the last time I read it. Now moving on to The Lord of the Rings.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.


Douglas Rushkoff was invited to speak to a group of tech billionaires about the future of technology, only to find out that what they were really interested in was how to survive a collapse of their own making. He’s written a book about it. /via Cory Doctorow


Interesting page on permacomputing, a.k.a., “radically sustainable computing.” Plenty of links. This is way out of my league but some of you may find it valuable.