solarpunknow

[solarpunknow]

I planted the trees whose fruits you will eat next summer,

I watered them and protected them

from deer and goats

Fed their roots and pulled the bindweed and blackberries vines from their branches.

Or, having found a neglected tree on public land,

I pruned away the tangle of invasive species

And dead wood

I picked the fruit, and told the parent with young children where to find the sweet plums

So abundant

Better to share than to let the fruits fall and bruise

And burst open

This fruit is a gift to you

From me

I thought of you as I looked through the branches, spotting the ripest and sweetest fruits to share

hi hello remember that the plum you are going to eat next summer is growing just for you 🤍

[solarpunknow]

For those wondering about using dishwater on plants, it's actually fine in most cases, unless you have a water softener, or are using bleach on your dishes for some reason. There's actually a lot of people doing this, it's called a grey water system.

One caveat is that you still have to be careful about bacteria from raw meat if you're using the water on edible plants. So if you're not a vegan, some municipalities consider kitchen water to need a more careful set up if you're doing to do it all permanent and permitted.

Today at work I was listening to gardening podcast, and it stopped me in my tracks because one of the hosts said that gardening in containers was inherently unsustainable, because you have to water them so much more.

Now, obviously I disagree, and I think it's unnecessarily discouraging for folks who for one reason or another are limited to growing in containers.

There are so many ways to address this, and perhaps the easiest (if you're growing ornamentals) is to grow drought tolerant species so that they won't be bothered by less water than in-ground plants. In fact, this can be a solution if you live somewhere with moist soils but want to grow things that like dryer soil.

Next, if you have drainage holes and put pots on the soil surface, roots WILL eventually root down into the soil. You can cut the bottom off pots or enlarge the holes to encourage this. I keep plants that like to spread (such as mints) in pots like these, and I don't water them. Because I believe in making plants find their own water, in general.

Next, if you want to grow more water thirsty plants, then look into reusing water. For example, a lot of people wash their rice or rinse their beans- you can water with that.

Do you wash your veggies? Water with that.

If you hand wash dishes, you can wash in a dish pan and then water with that (put the chunks in the compost though).

You know how they say to catch the water from when your shower is warming up? Water with that.

Use a dehumidifier or a/c unit that collects water? Water with that!

Get a rain barrel (or more than one) & water with that!

[solarpunknow]

Yesterday I had a rough little day and just needed some comfort food, and in the neighborhood I just moved into has a vegan fast food joint within walking distance, so I trotted down there.

And I found the guy staffing it sitting at a table and repairing some overalls! Full hand stitching with a sign up that said "closed for food restock and employee break till x time" which I honestly loved to see. I'm glad he got a break, and was doing something so cool with it!

I came back when it was open and I got to see that the "food restock" was a guy from the grocery store a block away hand delivering the produce, and they seemed like actual buddies as they did the deal.

Once I ordered, I sat and talked with this older woman in the neighborhood about how annoying people driving cars on the street were, and she was absolutely hilarious,then I had a vegan chopped cheese, grilled cheese, and milkshake, and it was phenomenal.

It was a nice microcosm sustainability moment. Everyone walked, I felt like I was in a community, and the food was fantastic. Great little moment that gave me an extra boost today.

[solarpunknow]

I frequently get serious climate anxiety and have been working on ways to meaningfully do things that are actually achievable given the constraints of my body (which is something I was not very good at when my body was largely functional).

Last weekend I came up with a plan, went to the native plant festival, got some native plants, and potted them for my friends who live in an apartment. The plants should all be happy in containers, survive some neglect, and be as beneficial as possible to native birds and insects.

Each pot has lance-leaf coreopsis (spring blooms), purple coneflower (summer), and showy goldenrod (fall). They’ll provide a much needed way station for birds and insects on my friends’ balcony in the the middle of town.

My friends were really excited to get the pots, and I’m proud of myself for setting an achievable goal and doing something that will have a tangible impact on the environment.

[solarpunknow]

(This is a work of fiction, meant to be a window onto what a transitional time between now and a solarpunk future might look like)

Another week, another completely different job. This week (and actually likely the next three weeks), we are on a suburban lot, single(ish) family home. You ask how could a job on a suburban lot take three weeks? Well that would be because we are changing nearly every aspect of the yard, and re-doing some work that had been done (a gentle reminder to diy'ers to check out a few books and check the zoning code before doing construction! It turns out a lot of those rules are there for either safety or usability! Who knew!).

Let me describe it as it is now: a large, lumpy mostly grass lawn between a house and a greenbelt, a brick patio surrounding a deck, but the deck is about 30cm taller than the patio, which is an uncomfortable distance to step down for the average person. There's also a corner that they'd tried to kill off Himalayan blackberry by layering down cardboard. That didn't work, by the way.

The first step is removing the non-native grasses that made up what used to be a "lawn", then we'll build a patio re-using bricks from this and other sites, and then we'll wrap up by planting the rest of the yard to native, or near native, plants. They are not, shall we say, avid gardeners, and this particular site gets a bit too toasty and the soil drains a bit too well to be a good candidate for water-loving western-style garden crops. So we're focusing on plants that are going to thrive in this particular location with minimal tending required by the family, and focusing more on those that will support native pollinators and other insects, rather than those that would require harvesting and tending.. Ideally we'd be planting in the fall as the wet season got going, instead of now as it's drying up, but we're laying down a thick enough mulch and picking drought tolerant enough plants that they should settle in just fine. The rainfall has been really variable these last few springs, but not as dry as the one in 2024, so I hope that the plants will get themselves established enough before summer.

[solarpunknow]

A weekend in a solarpunk future

Today was quite the busy day- and it was spent almost entirely outdoors.

This morning was the monthly 'get to know the plants around you' meetup. The idea behind this group is that 3 people (This time it was me, A., and C.) who are very familiar with the native plants around here and their uses, as well as the invasive species around here and their uses, lead a group through one of the local parks, and we teach the new comers what we know. We get a lot of people who have just moved to town and aren't yet familiar with the local ecosystems, those who didn't grow up foraging or working with plants, and of course some retirees who are looking to connect with nature in a way that they couldn't during their working lives back in the 2010s and 2020s.

We started by going over plants that get confused by beginners a lot (western bleeding heart vs herb robert, mahonia vs holly, that sort of thing), then moved on to the most common and vigorous native plants, and how each of us uses them in our lives (stinging nettle for tea, pesto, soup, the fiber for cloth, etc). We finish out the meetup by identifying the most... shall we say, vigorous of the invasive plants, and how to safely remove them (I mean, some have sap that can hurt you, so it's good to point those ones out). Some make tasty food, but we discussed how to safely compost the rest of them.

Gotta be honest, turning a problem (invasive species) into a resource (fertilizer) fills me with a sense of satisfaction like no other. C. usually takes the ones that are good for making fertilizer (invasive buttercup, bindweed, Hyacinthoidess, etc); I'll take the English Ivy and Himalayan blackberries home because my pet goats love to eat them. They also love bindweed, but I can share.

Anyway, we show the new folks how to identify and remove them, and then we put their new skills to the test. It's really starting to make a noticeable effect in the areas we visit, and I have to hope that every one we teach keeps practicing on their own.

Of course, removing the invasive species is only one part of the solution, but that's a whole different post.

This afternoon was a work party at the community/foodbank garden, which is always a good time and opportunity to connect with others. Back in the day I would've been confused by what a "community/foodbank" garden was, but honestly, it works. People who can, come and work in the garden and take what they will use for the next week. People who aren't able to donate their physical skills come by the food bank and are able to get the food they'll use in a week. It used to be that people thought there would be too many "takers" and not enough "workers", but it turns out that working in large groups, in close connection with the land, knowing that you're helping not only yourself but others in your community is hugely motivating for a large segment of the population. It's also awesome because the people who run the garden are super passionate about sustainable gardening and figuring out how to make gardening accessible to everyone in the community who wants to, so people feel comfortable coming to learn and then taking the knowledge and skills back to their neighborhood hub/commons gardens. Really, in the past ten years, the number of people who have started incorporating native plants, started mulching, stopped pulling out plants that support native insects, built rainwater and grey water irrigation systems and so on has really blossomed. The city is so much greener (and cooler) than it used to be, both metaphorically and literally.

Speaking of greywater, that's tomorrow's project. This evening is for listening to the chorus frogs and relaxing on the back porch.

[solarpunknow]

(This is a work of fiction, meant to be a window onto what a transitional time between now and a solarpunk future might look like)

Today is one of my favorites, at least when it comes to work: on-site removal of invasive plants and their conversion into fertilizer to be used on the resident's food gardens.

Of course, not all invasive plant species are easily composted, and even the ones that are have to be treated a bit differently.

This plot is small, in town, and has a strong population of Spanish Bluebells, which are unfortunately extremely aggressive in our climate, and capable of spreading both by seed, and tiny bulbules that fall off the main bulb as you pull them up. They're also poisonous, so not a good forage crop, alas. The technique we're using today is hand pulling them all up (after loosening the soil gently), and gathering them all into two 50 gallon barrels. The barrels contain them, and will fill with rain water, and in some months, the dark, potent smelling water can be filtered and then used for fertilizer. The bulbs and seeds never touch the ground again, so there's no chance of contamination.

Unfortunately, this is not a one and done kinda job- we will definitely be back in future years- and for ever couple of weeks until the bluebells stop pushing up new growth and instead go dormant for the summer dry season.

While we're working on removing them, it doesn't really make sense to grow anything fragile or brushy on the plot, so for now, we're just encouraging tough plants that will survive getting bluebells pulled up around and through them, like clover and yarrow and wood sorrel and the like. Eventually, the family will be able to join their neighborhood disbursed garden commons and help raise local, organic foods and also plant the native plants that support so many of the beneficial insects that have been struggling from the population crash.

Those insects used to be really under appreciated, but now it's common knowledge that they support pollination and that having a healthy ecosystem helps prevent the plagues of plant "pests" that people used to spend so much money and effort trying to eradicate! Turns out just letting some of those native wild flowers grow in and around your garden has a massive impact! Who knew! Beauty and bounty all together!

P.S., here's a good old resource for more info about planting plants that support beneficial bug species! Of course, being decades out of date, it focuses on the non-native plants that the research back then focused on, but it gives you the idea! https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/pnw550.pdf Native plants also attract and provide habitat for beneficial bugs, and what's best for each spot is going to vary- a lot.

[solarpunknow]

You've got, starting from top right and proceeding clockwise, a parlor palm, a philodendron, a prayer plant and a kroton mashed together, and a Dieffenbachia.

Is anyone able to identify this plant for me? Someone sent it for my dad’s funeral but the card doesn’t say what kind of plant it is & I don’t know how to care for it. I’ve tried plant identifying apps but keep getting different answers

[solarpunknow]

I like solarpunk as a theme or concept, but most solarpunk art doesn't quite work for me. For the most part, you've got Manhattan, But With Lots Of Trees or Happy Cottagecore With Robots.

What's missing, for me, is a sense of connection with where we are now. Both of the standard solarpunk visions present a world that has already been completely transformed. There's no hint of what it took to get from now to then, no evidence of what people had to overcome, to sacrifice, to pull humanity out of its ecological nose-dive.

I'd love to see a solarpunk city depicted in the process of being rebuilt. Show me old buildings being torn down, and new ones being built from the salvaged materials. Show me a tower with hanging gardens and wind turbines that's clearly a modified, pre-existing structure. Show me a lovely green zone that's still expanding into a reclaimed industrial park.

Maybe it's just me, but depictions of good futures fell like pure, unattainable fantasy without a connection to the present. For me, hope comes with imagining the path that gets its there.

[solarpunknow]

The reminder we all need. ☀️🪴

[solarpunknow]

Solarpunk work day

So I've spent the last two days pulling out invasive species! Which, honestly, is very tiring. I'm really glad we have a four-day work week, but even so, I'll be glad to get home and relax. I'm working with Wren and Bobi on this site which, before the mass migrations north, was someone's second (third?) home, and there had been some attempts to incorporate native plants into the landscaping, which is awesome. Unfortunately, who ever had been taking care of this land didn't recognize that Spruge Laurel (Daphne laureola, not a spurge and not a laurel, but a stinky, poisonous daphne) was an invasive species and had actually set up irrigation for some of them.

Now, of course, it's part of the climate immigrant resettlement housing network, and the land around the house is being transformed to be better habitat and to grow food. It's steep, shady, near saltwater (on a fucking cliff in fact, why did rich people think it was such a good idea to build on these crumbling cliff sides anyway? It still has about 30 meters until it gets to the house, but still), with native soils, so it's not a great option for so-called western-style agriculture, but it will grow our native plants quite well.

Pulling out the spurge laurel, and the Himalayan blackberry, and the english ivy, and the vinca, cutting down the english holly, and digging out the italian arum is only the first step. We need to help a healthier ecosystem re-establish. Fortunately, there's already beaked hazelnut, salal, service berries, dewberries, and evergreen huckleberries that are surviving despite the carpet of invasives... and the particular pruning choices made in the past. Who thinks it's a good idea to hedge prune a hazelnut???? As we pull out the ivy and others, we'll be replanting the native woodland strawberry, riceroot, springbank clover, native oxalis, western bleeding heart and western lily of the valley, which in addition to holding the soil in place with either be food for native animals or us. Or, as is the ideal case, both. There's a lot of culturally relevant foods in that paragraph, and it brings me joy to see them becoming a bigger part of the people's diets again. If you want to learn more about them, I suggest reading up on the ethnobotany of the Salish peoples. It's really interesting!

On Thursday we'll be renting a truck and trailer, and taking all the invasive species that we've pulled out to the folks who specialize in composting invasive species. Eventually all this stinky daphne will be a really nice compost for someone's vegetable garden. Which is a welcome and encouraging thought.

That's just this year of course- going forward for quite sometime will be regular invasive species removal, along with harvesting of nuts, berries, and roots, and pruning of the berry bushes. Can't do a controlled burn so close to housing, and it wouldn't work on the English ivy anyway. So manual pulling it is.

[solarpunknow]

OK, so this is apparently a thing that is not known, so:

In a controlled, intentional, prescribed burn, the goal is NOT to burn down an entire forest, and every tree in it.

- it can be done to maintain grass lands by not allowing trees to get established

- it can be done to maintain an oak-savanna ecosystem, where it does clear out very young, non-fire adapted trees, but leaves the mature oaks.

- it can be done in a ponderosa pine forest, clearing out in invasive species but leaving the pines

- it can be done over a camas field, leaving the camas and other fire-adapted species, but burning invasive or aggressive species that would otherwise out compete them.

- I've read it can be used to maintain the Native Americans' berry patches, but I haven't read into that yet

- it can be used as part of a strategy to reduce the fuel for mega fires.

Prescribed burns are about maintaining ecosystem health and diversity, not about destroying them. Banning prescribed burns was part of what colonialists did, because they assumed they knew better than the native peoples. It has caused a lot of problems, including habitat loss.

Please read further, and don't dismiss it out of hand. A whole lot of us were raised on the idea that fire is always bad, but it's not. Here's one place to start reading:

[solarpunknow]

March 13th, 20__

It was a hard, but good day today. Wren and I both have wednesdays off from our job, so we went out to Peigi's place to work on getting the garden there reading for the growing season. It was unseasonably warm for March, but then the last three years in a row have been the warmest globally on record. So, really, while I'm glad the sun has come back (less than a week until the equinox!), I'm worried about the heat waves and wildfire smoke that will certainly hit us this summer. Ugh, not looking forward to that. Just, hopefully no actual wildfires here.

Anyway, it costs a whole two hours worth of wages to drive out there, so we try to spend the whole day when we go- and yes, we've designed the garden around that. We packed a lunch (sandwiches with my sourdough and some black bean tempeh we've been working on), and a plan to fill the day.

See, we haven't been out there since the end of fall, and the crocuses out there have just now started to bloom. (Ours bloomed the last week of January, but we're pretty close to the water and they're halfway up- well I was going to say mountain, but with Mt. Tahoma right there that seems silly. Halfway up a tall hill? They're at roughly 2000 ft of elevation, and we're barely at 300. Still high enough we don't have to worry about the rising sea level though!) So today we went around and took down the temporary deer fence from the last two years (yes, that really should have been taken down last fall, but, well, life happened. What matters is we're getting back on track now... Right?), weeded two 4ft by 70ft rows, refenced one of them, and sowed fava beans as a cover crop/deer lure in the other. We also talked about putting in a real, sturdy deer fence- I think we can afford it this year, and Peigi and xyr parent, Nancy said they could pitch in.

Did I mention that we're getting to garden/farm/forage Peigi and Nancy's land in return for sharing the harvest? It's a pretty sweet deal, and the only reason why Wren and I kept our place in town.

So, anyway, out at Peigi's, we grow the plants that appreciate cooler temperatures (because that urban heat island effect is real! our place is toasty, and I don't appreciated it), plus the plants that are riskier to grow on urban soils, namely root crops and low growing leafy greens. That leaves the fruiting crops and heat lovers for our place (tomatoes, green beans, eggplants, corn, squash, etc, etc. And amaranth. Because amaranth is awesome). Well, and the raspberries and such, because up until now our place has been better protected from the deer. Small yappy dogs are good for that!

Anyway, it's still a bit early to start things out there, as they're still getting hard frosts and a little snow, but I sowed some fava beans, and while the deer have munched on the garlic, it's still there. I'm hoping that with generous enough fertigation that garlic will size up and make a decent harvest. Yeah, yeah, the deer ate them last winter and you'd think I would learn- what, the deer fence? Why didn't that keep them out? Uhhhhh, well, it's not a great deer fence. It wasn't actually a deer fence, or it wasn't originally meant to be for deer, it was originally an electrofence for sheep. And sheep are less nimble than deer.

And since no one wants to hunt the deer any more because of the chronic wasting disease and the cougar and other predator populations haven't rebound yet, there's too many deer, and this is the hungry time of year. So they're a bit desperate, and willing to eat things they normally wouldn't bother. Like garlic. I'm frustrated, but I can't blame them. And I certainly don't want to eat them myself. Ugh. Thus, getting a better deer fence, and in the meantime planting the favas as a distraction. Hopefully it works.

Where was I? Took down the fence, weeded the garlic/other things bed, sowed fava beans, covered them with fall leaves from like 6 months ago, put the fence back up around the garlic bed, checked under the mulch on the other beds (which, the soil looks so much better than it did three years ago! It actually looks like soil now! Deep mulching and cover cropping and patience for the win!). Wren was displeased by all the native black berry, but come on! Having that as a weed instead of the (invasive) cutleaf blackberry? I'll take it! I'll take it home, that is! I'm going to set up a really simple trellis and see if I can grow it semi-domestically so that it's easier to pick the berries. As tasty as they are, the vines are just unpleasant to walk through.

We also went through the wooded area and took out more invasive blackberries and did a light thinning of the native berries there. We really haven't touched that area, so it's super thick and very hard to work through, and it's mostly salmon berry. We'd like more thimbleberry, salal, and huckleberry, so yes, we did remove some salmon berry to make room for the others. I feel a little guilty about it, but it is the most abundant. I put them in the back of the truck and will post to the local groups to see if any one wants some. Not quite the right time of year for transplanting, but they're still dormant, so as long as they're mulched well and watered this year they should do fine. Also worked on expanding the trail, and checked on the nettle patch but they're still doing nothing. Too cold yet.

Now I'm back at our place, and it's time to do a little resting and relaxing before the next work day.

[solarpunknow]

This is a work of hopeful fiction. Any resemblance to real places or people is entirely incidental and not at all based on any one you know. Characters were created using dice for randomization, for funzies.