changes

Front yard perennial pollinator native sustainable grass replacement project - Update 2024-01-01

I planted seeds as the sun set on the first evening of the new year. (Not to be overly dramatic about it or anything, this is just what happened.)

Continuing my belligerent contrarianism to neighborhood lawn and garden norms by planting pollinator-friendly native drought-resistant perennial wildflower seeds all over my front yard. The yard that I didn’t once water in 2023, and that I woodchipped over a couple of months ago. The yard where this summer I let a volunteer/“weed” yarrow grow large and bloom in the middle of the “grass” rather than mow it down. That yarrow showed me what the yard actually wanted to do, so I am helping it actualize that now. (Note to self: I should have gotten some yarrow seeds to give it companions; I wonder if I can find some today…)

I feel like I probably shouldn’t be able to do this in January, but it’s 40 degrees, the ground is bare of snow, the chips are not frozen together. It is supposed to get colder any day now, and snow significantly, so this won’t last. These are seeds that can/should be planted in fall so that they can cold stratify over the winter, then sprout in spring and summer. Seems much better to have them do this in the ground than in a moist paper towel in a freezer bag or something, since I still can.

My method is digging holes in the chips (which have started composting beneath the surface but after just a month or two aren’t there yet), filling each hole with two scoops of organic planting soil I purchased, then planting a recommended group of seeds in that soil. My thought is that I’m basically mimicking seed starters or pots, but while the seeds are stratifying the composting chips will at the same time be improving the soil under and around their immediate little soil spot. Or the composting could burn up the seeds, too, I guess.

Have no idea if this will work or at what scale, but I feel it’s worth a try. I don’t have much to lose but an afternoon’s time and the cost of some seed packets and soil. And the earth is maybe going to burn us off anyway if more people don’t start doing more stuff like this, so might as well try.

Types of seeds planted or that I will plant soon:

From seed packets purchased at Millcreek Gardens a month or two ago:

• Showy Milkweed
• Butterfly Flower Milkweed
• Echinacea (Coneflowers)

From a seed packet purchased via mail from Plants of the Southwest a couple of years ago

• Rocky Mountain Penstemon
• Chokecherries

From paper and plastic bags of seeds I harvested from sheep ranch and national forest land around my wife’s family’s cabin in upper Weber Canyon:

• Arrow leaf Balsamroot and/or Mules Ears Wyethia (I harvested these in the same bag)
• some kind of lavender fleabane daisies or asters that I really like
• shrubby cinquefoil
• two kinds of sagebrush

Standalone post link: Planting Seeds on New Year's Day

☑ I have obtained a copy of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, the latest album by Big Thief.

☑ My copy of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You features two 180 gram recycled vinyl LPs, one marbled red-orange and the other marbled turquoise-grey, housed in a heavy gatefold sleeve with an accompanying lyric booklet. The sound of this vinyl is amazing and is one of the best and only vinyl sets I have picked up in a while.

☑ I have played three-and-a-half of the four sides of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You on my living room stereo, in the presence of my children and our dog. (It was bedtime before we’d quite finished, and unfortunately, due to deteriorating behavioral fidelity, the sounds of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You needed to be terminated prematurely before the final tracks played.)

☑ Prior to this inaugural listening of the Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You vinyl in my house, I did force a premature mid-episode termination of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, all the while recognizing that the phrase “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” sounds more than anything like it could have been lifted from dialogue or song in an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

☑ I have created a ‘Collections’ section on this website, and In that section I have created a ‘My Favorite Music of 2022’ collection page, and on that page I have added Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You as the first album in that collection.

☑ I have declared (here, right now) that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is my frontrunner and album to beat for the prestigious honor of being my ‘AOTY’ (album of the year) in 2022.

☑ I have now included the title and phrase Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You at least eight times in this post, and, in addition, have included the title and phrase My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic at least three times.

Standalone post link: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You - Achievement Unlocked!

This is a placeholder for an essay I hope to finish and publish here someday exploring my thoughts on this topic.

Standalone post link: Why He/They?

Some things I’m working on and thinking about now…

Now

• I’ve started up this website again.

Next

• Winter break is almost gone - I’m returning to work later this week.

• Taking up snowshoeing.

• Might still actually plant perennial/wildflower seeds in my front garden on New Year’s Day in hopes they will cold stratify in the ground and sprout in the coming spring and summer.

• Create and update activity logs on this website and on topic-specific social media platforms such as AllTrails, Goodreads, Last.fm, and Letterboxd.

• Cultivate a more consistent writing and learning practice through notemaking and zettelkasten-ish methods, and share some of the results on this website.

This page was last updated on January 1, 2024. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’ +

Standalone post link: Now and Next (January 1, 2024)

Cleaning up a bit to begin actively using and sharing this site in 2024.

• Home page:
  • slightly modified introductory blurb
  • created a placeholder for my unfinished “Why he/they?” essay
  • created a “Featured Note” section on the home page and populated it using a new taxonomic parameter
  • temporarily reduced numbers of ‘recent updates’ displayed so that only updates that are actually recent are displayed
  • temporarily hid gallery images until I share more recent images in future updates
  • temporarily hid the “Featured / Longer Things” links as I evaluate whether I want to feature those things going forward.
• Updated the menu, clearing out “digital garden references”
• Updated the header to display differently on all pages except the home page
• Updated the title and blurb for the taxonomy tree page
• Updated the ‘Now’ page, making it a ‘Now and Next’ page

Standalone post link: joshuawxyz changelog 20240101

I kind of forgot how my website works. Oops.

And if anyone out there actually subscribes to this RSS, just a heads up that I am messing with it and it is about to change to be more conventially formatted…

Standalone post link: Forgot

Standalone post link: Favorite Albums of 2023

Standalone post link: Books

— date: 2023-01-08T23:02-7:00 draft: true title: “Bleep is good” slug: “Bleep is good” formatsandgenres: [“updates”] images: [] videos: [] people: [] places: [] seriesandsources: [] topics: [] workscited: [] tags: [“forjoshuawxyz”, “readinglog”] booktitle: “” bookauthor: “” currentlyreading: true datestarted: 2023-01-08 datecompleted: 2023-01-08 percentcomplete: “” coverimage: “” booklink: “” —

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Standalone post link: ''''

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Finishing up a winter holiday break and starting the new year with this ‘now’ update. Spent a lot of nice, casual time with my family, and successfully avoided doing any work off the clock, other than glancing at my email occasionally and making a few notes and plans (see below.)

• I’m trying my hand at digital gardening and note-making in earnest, using Obsidian as my primary tool. My new digital garden is private, but I may publish elements of it here once I get things more established.

• Winter break work plan, which I hope I can hold to once actually back at work: also adopt a digital gardening approach at work, with a view to develop a new knowledgebase for library and technology staff, create and curate more learning resources, etc. Our websites and instructions are showing their years.

• Developing new workflows and methods for MARC record acquisition/creation/editing and other obscure but necessary library and technology inventory tasks so as to be able to focus more energy on digital collection development and the resource creation mentioned above.

• Trying to predict the Newbery by focusing a lot of my reading on middle grade books, especially some of the likely contenders. Goal is to predict the Newbery or at least to have a good chance of already having read the winner before it wins. Underlying, better goal is simply to find/read/recommend good books for kids.

• Getting beyond overthinking and overreading about films and finally just going to see a bunch of movies. I’ve joined a flexible 2023 watch challenge on Letterboxd, and then I’ve created two other watch challenges for myself: the Silent Films x Public Domain Challenge 2023 and Spielberg 2023.

This page was last updated on January 3, 2023. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. +

Standalone post link: Now (January 2, 2023)