Chrysalis Garden Care LLC

Question. Wonder. Listen. Play.

4/28/2019

This month I sat down with Tracey Byrne, a Seattle-based writer, educator, gardener, and all-around curious person. You can learn more about her work on her website, and read our conversation below.

Tracey and I at an undisclosed location ;)

Marisa: Hi Tracey!, I wanted to sit down with you in particular because we’ve been gardening over the last few years together in your garden and I’ve learned a lot. It seems you’re really able to zoom into the details of what’s going on with the insects and birds in your garden and also have that backed up by a bigger picture.

In our newsletter this year, we decided this year to focusing on how people are responding to this moment in history. There’s a lot of flux going on in big global systems and people are experiencing a lot of pain, fear, and uncertainty. I’ve felt a lot of inspiration watching the way you respond, but I’m not quite sure how to put it into world. So I wonder what intentions you’ve set, priorities you’ve made?

Tracey: Well you mention global systems, and I think the biggest thing for Brian and me when we’re walking out in the garden is that it’s a system. It’s an ecosystem. I think it’s important for me to look at the really big picture, which is what draws me out of the house and into the garden, with my camera, or my nature drawing notebook. If I’m working with children, we’ll start with the big picture - describing, noticing sounds and things - and then slowly move it down to what’s in your eye-view, and then focus on one small thing. And really become intrigued with it. Spend a minute or a half an hour drawing, taking photos, talking about. Maybe researching a little, finding out what the bug is, what it’s eating, what it’s doing.

I see all kinds of things when I’m out in the garden. I remember once I was sitting with you and we watched this weird looking blue many legged bug moving by, and it turned out to be some kind of wasp dragging a spider back to its lair. Those kind of things delight and fascinate me.

It’s important to me to really take the time to say “who is that?” or “I really want to take the time to get to know this creature.” It makes me feel like they’re part of my family after a while, and I feel a little protective of them. That’s what we’re trying to do in our garden. You can call it a backyard wildlife habitat or a pollinator garden or whatever, but mostly it’s a place where I’m inviting all the faeries in, whether they’re mammals or birds or bugs, they really need a safe place to be. And I feel safe out there too.

Marisa: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. One thing I love about working in people’s gardens is that the pace of weeding keeps me slow, so I get to notice more.

I think there’s some piece of that question I didn’t hear an answer to. Something more about your intentions and priorities in creating this safe space for everything that wants to emerge. Wanting to engage in a different way, not just researching. Watching.

A curious sighting in a Wallingford garden. Arisaema sp.

Tracey: Yeah, To take delight in it. I showed you my guiding principles that I’ve always had posted in my classroom. I give them to kids when I give them drawing journals. The four things are to Question, to Wonder, to Listen, and to Play. I think being playful is one of the things that really gets lost for kids nowadays. So one of my intentions for working with me, or working with students, is that we have choices. So we do decide what to do with our time. That it’s not just finishing something up quickly or check that box off, but it’s actually something that’s going to move you forward to a greater good. Or towards a place where you can be more comfortable.

Younger people especially have experienced so much immediate gratification. They often haven’t learned the value of patience, or the value of boredom. And I mean boredom in the broadest sense, where you have nothing to do, so all possibilities are open, and you get choices. I work with a lot of younger kids, maybe middle school age, where they actually get really nervous about having free time. So we have to create lists of possibilities, like what could you do with time when you’ve already finished your homework or don’t have anything planned? And that fills me with real great sadness, because I had so much of that growing up. I had a lot of permission, I had a lot of freedom, I had a lot of outdoors to play in and explore. And I had parents who were interested but not hovering.
Marisa: Yeah, so there needs to be a lot of room for people to allow themselves to be playful. One of the things on your list, Wonder, I relate to more as a sensation or a feeling. I can’t always just conjure it up. Question, and interrogate, I can totally just conjure up. Just finish the worksheet.

Tracey: Yeah, well the wondering for me is that magical part where there are no right answers. It’s what grabs you and pulls you in and makes you want to investigate. Wonder pulls you into details and makes you want to ask better questions and come up with better solutions.

Marisa: I’m reminded of this pattern, like in rivers, that they widen and have some braiding (diverge), and then they converge again into one stream. Spending more time in that diverging area might be helpful.

Tracey: Right, because you might not know where you are, or where you’re going to end up.

Marisa: Another element of your work, switching focuses a little, is that you just got an article published in Pacific Horticulture magazine that you quoted me in. It focuses on gardening in parking strips. So I was curious how you chose that topic and why it matters to you.

Tracey: Well, as far as choosing the topic, I always feel like the topics choose me. You know, I went back to school about 6 years ago and got my masters in Biological Inquiry and Teaching. My focus was on urban ecosystems and nurturing biophilia. The whole idea of having a biodiverse backyard. And in my teaching, how can I broaden this and get it to more people. I realized there were many ways of being a teacher. I’m more of a mentor, I guide by giving possibilities to people or being a good example, rather than having a lot of information that I need to impart.

Pacific Horticulture has been really open to publishing my articles and it segues with what I’ve talked about in my blog, which is urban biodiversity and nurturing biophilia. Those are my big focuses for nurturing ecological stewardship and outdoor play.

The most recent article was the fourth that I’ve done, and it’s all about making urban wildlife corridors. That’s important to me not just for the creatures that inhabit them, but it gives neighbors the chance to have an everyday experience with nature. The pollinator parkways or gardens just attract so much. They not only are beautiful, but they take a lot of pesticide load off of what’s getting pulled into the sewers and off the street. You don’t have to maintain them with leaf blowers, which are one of my personal pet peeves. They create spaces for the creatures that are getting driven out by all of the development.

Here's the garden Brian and Tracey have built as a safe space for all the creatures. Summer 2018.

Marisa: Yeah, I see in the beginning of that answer a way you’re opening an invitation for people to connect. And just leaving it out there for people walking by it, whether they’re going to the bus or whatever they’re having to do anyway. They’re just getting a little dose or invitation into this process of wonder and play.

Tracey: Yeah, and in Seattle there are so many wide parking strips. In a lot of places they’re called hellstrips, they’re maybe full of rocks or weeds or they’re too far away from the house to be anything anyone wants to put much attention into. They might get driven on, and like you wrote about, they get abused in a lot of different ways. So by making them into spaces that look like gardens, whether they’re full of wildflowers or berries or vegetables or shrubs and trees, it just creates a whole different kind of space. I love walking around our neighborhood here on Capitol Hill because there’s a real diversity of parking strip gardens. Every one helps. It takes a little at a time, but it gives back instead of taking away.

Marisa: I heard you use the term “biophilia” and I was wondering if you could go into that a little more.

Tracey: Yeah, I like the sound of the word. Bio-Philia just means “love of life.” E.O. Wilson, the famous ant guy, talked about biophilia as being more of a spiritual connection that you would have with nature and a lot of people have kind of spectacular eye-opening experiences that might draw them in. I think of it more in the way of what happens with a child who is born with a natural sense of wonder and who is allowed to go out in their backyards and play. They just have a sense of rightness. I start thinking about that feeling you get when you just know you’re in the right spot, and you know you’re connected to everything, and the borders dissolve. People who’ve had that sense of biophilia, it changes how they approach everything. They don’t make decisions out of a sense of duty or what they’ve heard is right, but it comes from deep inside because they have a love and connection.

Marisa: Yeah, it’s been hard for me to figure out how to navigate this climate change issue, because there are a lot of solutions being promoted that don’t feel right to me. They feel really unrelated to me to that core sensation of “the world works”, and it has a system that it’s working in. So it’s hard for me to see that link when the solutions are really high-tech or involve a lot of modification to natural systems.

Tracey: Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t know how to really make good intuitive decisions. If they haven’t been allowed to have that freedom to know what’s ethically sound. An example I can give is when I was teaching elementary school I was seeing a lot of adult issues getting pushed further down into the curriculum. Where all of a sudden you have fourth graders being taught about endangered species, and the need for them to be concerned about pollution and runoff. A lot of these kids didn’t even have a connection to the park in their neighborhood. Instead of already loving to go outside and play and climb trees and catch turtles and frogs and get muddy, they were being concerned and crying and making posters about eagles whose eggshells were thinning. Not that these aren’t important issues, but as far as developmentally appropriate, these kids were being burdened with adult issues when they should have been encouraged to have a joyful and playful relationship.

Marisa: And in a way it problematizes them and their impact on the planet. Like, if you want to climb a tree are you hurting it? So there’s a way that even beyond just distracting from the potential to develop a relationship with nature, it actually diminishes the potential. It helps people construct their sense of identity as harmful.

Tracey: Yes, and they end up working from a place of guilt rather than a place of love. I think it just changes the way you approach things. When I research for articles, I try to find people who are making good decisions and coming up with good solutions or who have been role models for me. Even when I present some pretty hard statistics about what’s going on, I try to have an open hand to offer the information rather than be shaking a finger. So they can absorb it at the rate that works for them, and a little at a time. To say “Wow, that would be really lovely to turn our parking strip into something. I’d love to grow some herbs.” To start with that rather than saying you need to take out your whole lawn and stop using weed and feed and your dog’s going to get cancer and your kids are going to die. That’s not going to encourage anyone to join you.

People need information, and they’re only able to absorb what’s appropriate for them on their timeline. Everybody’s at different places in both their emotional and worldview growth to be able to take in certain things.

Marisa: I like how you’re looking at starting points, and the idea of an open hand rather than focusing on an end goal where we’re all perfect and living in harmony with nature. What are some of the ways you’ve seen that are most effective for people to start that process? What are some of the ways you’ve seen kids you’ve worked with join up with that spark?

Tracey: I have lots of funny stories about kids. I’d say in the garden, I had one young girl who had to do a project about composting. She and her group did the research and they made a nice powerpoint, but I noticed some of the information they had seemed a little wonky. I asked her if she’d ever seen compost, or if she composted at home. She hadn’t, so I invited her to come over and check out my compost bin. I couldn’t believe it. This was a girl who wasn’t really into getting dirty. She dove right in and scooped up handfuls of compost, and couldn’t believe the amount of life that was in it. She thought it was going to be stinky, or dry dirt. When we got back to school, she had become a poster child for what real compost was. She joined up with some other kids and they started getting composting going on in the kitchen. They said “it has to happen!” That was really fun.

Another great story is taking a group of kids to the zoo, with artists from another high school, these were 9th grade boys mostly, they just weren’t interested in doing the art part of the trip. I took them off and we were going to see the giraffes, who happened to be mating that day. It was eye-opening for everybody. Those kids were all so interested in what was going on. It was really fascinating and real life and awkward and funny. To be with 9th graders in a mixed group and there’s this sex going on. They all became really interested though, in giraffes, and what was going on at the zoo. It changes the way they approach things - they wanted to come back.

Marisa: What I got from that answer is that you just have to go out into the world and something will shock you into awareness. And just be open to it. There’s not this one particular method, just be out and it’ll come to you.

Tracey: Though I do know if you go walking with a pair of binoculars around your neck, you can guarantee you’ll be stopped by other birders.

Marisa: Yes, you can set yourself up to get more hints. My last question is about what is inspiring you lately? What are the pathways you’re starting on?

Tracey: Well, the big picture stuff is I’m really happy to see that there’s people pushing back against GMOs and there’s a lot of hope for real food labeling. There are a lot of younger people who are interested in doing farming in more old-fashioned ways. Getting away from using any kind of poisons or toxins. I like that because when you start talking about food and food systems and health in general, it’s a system. We’re all suffering from poor decisions that were made by our grandparents and parents generations, and it would be wonderful if in the next 10 years we can really have some wake-up calls.

That’s the really big picture. More locally, I’m excited to see more and more people who are putting up little signs that say “pollinator garden” or planting out their parking strips. Who are raking instead of using leaf blowers. And when I thank people who are doing that, they say “yeah, there are some cities who have outlawed these things!” It’s not just the noise, it’s all the other consequences.

When I use the word consequences, I think that’s the other part of it. If people start to take more responsibility for their small actions and responsibility or being willing to look at the consequences of the ages of making poor decisions. I’m a little bit hopeful. I don’t think it’s a huge movement yet, but I think there’s a really strong undercurrent, like you and your friends, who are just getting out there and letting people know that there are alternatives. The paradigm being offered isn’t the only one. There are lots of other ways to approach things. If you slow down and relax a little bit into what you’ve got in your own backyard you’ll feel a little better about how much you know your neighbors, human and plant.
Marisa: Yeah, and how much of nature is already going on. That it’s not as suppressed or hidden as we sometimes think of it as. Yesterday I was working in Wallingford and a racoon came and ate a chicken right in front of me, like it was shopping at the grocery store. It walked right into the coop, picked a chicken out, and killed it. That’s probably happening every day in Seattle. The natural cycles are not so far removed.

Tracey: Yep, all we have to do is open our eyes up and see them there.

Marisa: Is there anything else you want to say? Is there an invitation you’d like to cast out to people that read this?
Tracey: Go outside and play! And be open to possibilities.

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Low Maintenance Gardening Part 1: What Do you Want?

4/28/2019

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Most people want a low maintenance garden. Even people who love gardening don’t necessarily want to commit to a particular schedule or workload. However, I’ve noticed that “low maintenance” is a term that’s used a lot of different ways, and it’s really helpful to clarify what a particular person means when they are requesting it.

In any garden, I start thinking about the purpose of the garden. A purpose might revolve around particular values a person wants to practice living in their garden, or a particular way they’d like it to contribute to their life. The purpose can also help guide you towards particular maintenance strategies. Birds and insects benefit from the abundance of material, cover, and forage that exists in “messier” gardens, which means less work for the gardener. Once a purpose is defined, I look at how that purpose will best be enacted. What might success look or feel like?

When one of the key elements of the garden’s purpose is ease of maintenance, I first check for stacking functions. Is there something that the person loves to do that qualifies as maintenance? For example, harvesting routines can accomplish a lot in the garden and can be quite simple (more on this later). So I start with a few simple questions:

1) What are your tolerance levels for various fluctuations? Which fluctuations do you actually enjoy?
2) How do you enjoy interacting with your garden?
3) What types of work are you least willing to do?

This colorful mixture of volunteers starts the spring with Johnny-jump ups and Kaufmania tulips, then gets a flush of forget-me-not, columbine, and foxglove. Tall orange lilies come up in back, just as the pink yarrow sends up its stalks. Each year the composition is a little different, but there's always plenty to enjoy.

Let’s go through these questions one at a time. First of all, what fluctuations do I mean? Here are some examples:

Fluctuation in color: Do you like lots of changes in color and texture? Do you like stability and consistency, like an assembly of evergreen shrubs provides? Using slow-growing evergreen shrubs in a garden is a simple way to keep maintenance tasks to a minimum, but it can reduce the opportunity for more lively shifts in color palate throughout the seasons. On the contrary, using a wide palate of sturdy self-seeding plants like calendula, foxglove, columbine, forget-me-nots, poppies, and johnny-jump-ups gives you a lot of easy-care color. The main maintenance task associated with that strategy is editing and “keeping in check” the wild proliferation of seedlings.
Fluctuation in seasons: I take care of some gardens that are very flower focused, and others that rely more on things like seed heads and bark for interest. Planning to enjoy garden elements like seed heads means you don’t have to cut back perennials right away, and many double as bird food for the winter. Flowers can require deadheading to keep the duration of their bloom time long, but perhaps that deadheading can occur when you’re harvesting a bouquet?
Fluctuation in water needs: Does walking slowly around your garden with a hose in the summer sound more like a meditative blessing or a chore to you? Plan accordingly! Using plants that don’t require much water is an obvious way to cut down on the resources your garden needs. Don’t forget that everything needs water sometimes, especially newly planted garden-mates. Plan to deliver water in a way that works for you. If you don’t think you’ll be able to keep up on watering, scale down your garden plans to avoid the burdensome task of replacing dead things and keeping out the weeds that thrive in neglected areas.
Fluctuations in scale & composition: Every plant in your garden will grow at a different rate in relation to the others, so over time some will dominate and others will fade out. If this is not OK with you, plan to do consistent pruning and/or transplanting to make sure everybody’s got room. If it is OK with you, make sure you pick plants you love as the most-likely-to-dominate.

As you can see, learning what types of fluctuations you enjoy lets you identify which maintenance tasks aren’t urgent for you, and plan your garden with plants that will still satisfy your longings.

Second, let’s take a look at how you want to interact with your garden. When I hear people say “low maintenance” some people really mean they never want to think about their garden. Others mean they don’t want it to look dilapidated if they’re not out there every weekend, or that they don’t want to constantly be investing in solutions for areas that aren’t working.

Wandering perennials like violets and geranium cover the ground nicely and prevent weeds.

My goal as a gardener is to create gardens that are so engaging that people want to interact with them. For many people, pulling a handful of weeds as they wander through with a cup of tea in the other hand doesn’t feel like work. Trimming a holly hedge, on the other hand, will always feel like work because of its prickly nature and the need for precise lines. Here are a few examples of maintenance tasks that I’ve seen clients pick up without realizing they’re doing work:

Harvesting herbs like mint and oregano, especially ones that are in danger of falling into pathways. With large batches of herbs, you can make and freeze pesto, or simply dry them for using in tea and soups.
Harvesting flowers, especially continuously blooming flowers like columbine and calendula, or flowering branches from quince, lilac, and mock orange can serve as deadheading and pruning. Plants that do best when consistently deadheaded, like roses, do just as well when the blooms are cut for an arrangement as they begin to bloom. Being thoughtful about where to cut blooming branches helps to shape the plants you’re working with.
Weeding while harvesting veggies. I know, how could you weed without it feeling like work? When you pull weeds before they go to seed, you can leave them in place to wilt on the soil surface and function as mulch. It feels very natural when wandering through a veggie bed to harvest a salad to pluck a few weeds here and there.
Dividing perennials. How many times have you had a friend over for tea in the fall, and then wanted to go outside because there’s a brief sunbreak to take advantage of? Perhaps you end up on a wander through the garden, and cut them off a piece of a perennial that’s become dominant, or snip them a bouquet of seedheads to pass on? Strawberry runners in pathways, irises, cranesbill, coreopsis and phlox can all be quick to divide. Seedheads of poppies, nigella, coriander and parsley travel well.

Cutting flowers for bouquets doubles as deadheading. And how could you resist?

Third and finally, it’s important to identify the types of work that detract from your experience with your garden. Constant weeding? Pruning large shrubs? Mowing the lawn, or keeping the sidewalk edged? Put some energy into reducing or eliminating these tasks up front! Here are some quick tips:

Mulching using arborist chips and planting densely are the quickest ways to reducing weeding. Making sure weeds don’t go to seed is the easiest way to prevent future weeds, so timing any weeding you have to do well can save you many hours in the future.
Pruning large shrubs is easiest on a dry day in the winter, when the structure of the shrub is most visible, and you need help convincing yourself to get outside in the short hours of daylight. Just take out a few of the most wayward larger branches back to a junction point that’s easy for you to reach. Cut out smaller branches that are dead or excessively cluttered-feeling. You’ll be left with a shrub with a more balanced shape and a bit more air circulation inside. For most shrubs, taking a few cuts like this once a year is a reasonable maintenance approach. It gets more burdensome when you wait 10 years!
Unplanned plant replacement can be a drag. The best way to avoid it are picking the right plant for the conditions in the first place, using careful observation and reality checking (I know, you might not be as prone to optimism as me, but I think you are). Is it going to be soggy in the winter? Be baking hot in the summer? Are you really going to hand-water?

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Why does Waste Matter?

3/29/2019

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Last month, I reminded readers how important conserving nutrients in your garden is. What about parts of your life that you don't typically think of as gardens? This month, my newsletter co-founder Hannah Johnson and I sit down to talk about why waste matters, and how to think about such a big system.

Marisa: How did you find your way into waste reduction? What has surprised you about where there is demand?

Hannah: I tell people that I really tried to run away from the waste industry and do something more sexy like renewable energy or green building design but waste always had a way of bringing me back in. The biggest thing I've realized in my work around waste systems and education is that EVERYONE has something to say about it! I sort of did a social experiment one month of bringing the topic of recycling up at any social gathering I went to, just to see the response. Almost everyone had some thoughts on the topic and expressed similar frustrations. Saying things like, "it's confusing", "there's no uniformity", "I am not allowed to recycle certain things in some areas", "what do I do with...", and they all wanted to know why it was that way. Which has helped me to frame my work in aiming to help address the "why" question and in that process to attempt changing the system so that reusing, recycling and composting can be more intuitive and accessible.

Marisa: I love that experiment! And I love that you followed where the need was, rather than what felt most alluring. One of the things that I see a lot in my work is that people are drawn to new approaches to horticulture, like growing new varieties of foods that don’t normally grow well here or composting in novel ways, and sometimes I see that overshadowing the lessons we can learn from more basic ways of doing things. Taking it back to your work, I wonder if we wouldn’t need to focus so much on green building design if we had actually been tending to our waste and our energy footprint all along. We wouldn’t need so many new materials if we had been using fewer and more long-lasting materials in the first place. So I really appreciate you going back to basics and focusing on waste.

What surprises you about the day to day work of helping people reduce their waste output? What do you actually spend your time doing?

Hannah: I am surprised most often by the lack of holistic thinking people have around waste. It's very much an out of sight, out of mind mentality for all forms of disposal (recycling and composting included). The thought is always that "someone else will handle it". But the truth is that, most often, those "handling it" are completely inundated and reliant on failing systems that don't support our current rate of consumption. Thus these people and companies are not managing materials in their best and highest use like they should be.

I spend most of my time trying to understand the complex organizational structures of companies. In understanding how a company was built, how it currently operates and who all is involved, I work to identify where there is a lack of holistic thinking which inevitably causes inefficiencies, specifically related to waste. Often times, companies are overpaying for garbage service, getting their dumpsters picked up when they aren't full and mindlessly restocking single use items despite employee's desire to use reusable or more sustainable options. I help companies come up with the plan for waste avoidance and reduction and then through education, awareness and team building I begin to connect people to efficient waste management systems.

Marisa: Cool! I wonder if you could give us some quick questions to ask ourselves that would help us know where we are thinking holistically and not. Are there some indicator questions you use to suss out how people are approaching their decision-making? Do you ever come up against resistance when you approach an organization about “bad habits” like single-use items, or have you had mostly experiences of people being relieved that someone like you is finally addressing the inefficiencies they know exist?

Hannah: Thinking holistically means you are thinking about impact. Impact is understanding how your choices and actions are influence the entire system. An example would be, if you’re at a store and you’re going for a plastic produce bag for your zucchini, you’re not thinking about that plastic bag not being recyclable when you’re done with it. Whereas paper bags can also hold zucchini and be recycled and or composted after they are used. Most grocery stores have paper bags by the mushroom section, so head on over there and grab a paper bag instead of plastic, or, better yet, don’t use any bags at all and just wash your produce when you get home! (which you should do anyways)

When I am approaching companies about behavior, I use an approach of observation and listening before ever making suggestions. I want to understand the language that the company speaks and tailor my plan to meet their goals and objectives. For most companies, the environmental message is important and meets certain business objectives, but a focus on financial and efficiencies seems to speak more clearly to most businesses. The great thing about sustainability is that it achieves goals of a triple bottom line. Meaning it’s good for the planet, for people and for profit.

Marisa: If you had the attention of everyone in the US for a few hour workshop, what would the key points you would convey be? What are the actions you'd like to see everyone take?

Hannah: I would like to bring attention to the reality of how recycling and composting actually work. I would like to highlight the fragility in both systems and the importance for consumers and manufacturers to think more deeply about consumption and design. I'd like to see everyone holding up an item and asking themselves, "where is the best place for this to go?", "what is this actually made out of?", "did I really need this, or was there a better alternative that I could have used or bought that could be reused?", "Am I helping or hurting the system by my choice of disposing this item?". Thoughtfulness and connection help to guide the most accurate recycling and composting decisions.

Marisa: Your answer above reminds me that in our newsletter, we spend a lot of time focused on individual action. I think a lot of your work these days is looking at bigger systems of waste production (larger companies) than the household size. Has that changed how you think about waste in general? Has that changed how you look at household waste?

Hannah: I tend to work with organizations of different sizes and also individuals and what I've come to realize is that the individual is the most important part of this narrative. We, as individuals, have value systems which drive a majority of our actions, including actions which prioritize environmental awareness. By adhering to our value systems, we don't pick and choose when we decide we should and shouldn't live by them, they are a part of us. We live in our values in our home life and thus should in our work life. Some companies meet people where their values are and thus create a very cohesive relationship between work and home. Other companies don't do that and might even go against someone's values. However, it really only takes one dedicated and passionate person living fully in their values to make a whole systemic change. Sure-- it helps if that one person is already in a leadership position, but if not, there are ways to bring awareness to the leadership that can be done thoughtfully and economically. There is information sharing and coalition building around the uniformity of like minds that can bring about a norm shift. It starts with the individual but can have the reach of the whole world. We're all connected.

Marisa: What a good reminder. Every organism is built of cells, essentially, and the health of each cell affects the health of those around it. I also appreciate the reminder that our own responses to our environment, such as the tension we feel when our workplace isn’t in alignment with our values, are great starting points to notice what problems need to be solved. We have such intricate sensory and emotional cues.

One place I feel that tension is hearing all of the competing messages about waste these days. Is recycling worthwhile or not, are the biodegradable straws actually biodegradable, etc. How do you recommend people keep it all straight?

Hannah: Again, I think it goes back to truly understanding how the systems of recycling and composting actually work. When you understand that a composting facility is really just heat and oxygen which facilitate the natural growth of microbial organisms which break down organic materials into fertilizer, then you will stop and really think about your contribution when at a waste station. For example, if you're holding an aluminum bottle with a plastic lid that says "recycled content", "ECO can" and you're thinking about putting it in the compost bin then you've bought into the green washing tactics that make you think you can throw synthetically made products into a natural decomposition cycle. Synthetically made products such as aluminum, plastic, and most textiles cannot be broken down in natural processes. Instead they have to be remanufactured (melted, mixed with other chemicals, molded and formed) to become something else. They won't just decompose. So understanding the systems and the products you're purchasing will help you make informed decisions.

A great video that really captures these processes and highlights where we as consumers have been sucked in is The Story of Stuff by Anne Leonard

Marisa: Yeah, there are so many types of materials we have to keep track of in modern life, it’s totally overwhelming! I like the idea of narrowing the things we each consume so that we can really understand them well, rather than having to keep up with the plethora of new materials and packages and products that come our way.

I love hearing you talk so clearly about where you see opportunities for change. What are you most looking forward to this year? What is the most exciting learning curve you're on right now?

Hannah: I am looking forward to the opportunity to compete for managing waste and recycling for the U.S Forest Service Incident Response Camps. I will basically go live in the woods for periods of time with forest fire fighters and manage the waste and recycling efforts with a focus on education. I will hopefully influence purchasing patterns for these camps and the Forest Service at large and work to institute composting processes for leftover food. I think the pace and scale of that environment will be a huge learning curve! Also, I can't say I've had to educate about waste to a group of firefighters who risk their lives every day protecting forests and towns.

Marisa: Wow, cool! I want to see so much more of this in the world! I'm imagining it's tricky for you to scale your business because it relies so much on your expertise and adaptability, but part of me wants to see it be so much larger so more and more organizations can have access to your work! How can I (or any of our readers) support waste reduction specialists, including you?

Hannah: Thanks for asking this! Support is always needed and encouraged! I would say being the waste advocate at your work, in your friend group, in your family, is an area of activism you can engage with. Educate yourself via Resource Recycling magazine, Waste Dive, Food Dive, YouTube videos, and local government sustainability webpages, there are so many resources out there. You could put together a “lunch and learn” style event for your work to share what you've learned with your colleagues. Also, if you ever want to come and volunteer with me for events, I am always looking for folks to help out managing the zero waste efforts!

Marisa: Awesome, thanks for sharing all those resources! Before we finish up, is there anything else you want to share?

Hannah: If you are a human, which if you're reading this then you probably are, you inevitably produce waste. When you chose to throw something "away," there really is no "away". There's always someone or some piece of land that is being affected by your consumption. We all have it in us to seek out more mindful alternatives. Alternatives that are not only less wasteful, but that are less toxic. Alternatives that are made supporting health and well-being, equitable wages, stewardship for community and land. There are alternatives such as these out there, they just need more support and more demand to become more accessible. My biggest complaint about the "zero waste" movement is affluence. I am just as much a part of this, being a middle class white person living in one of the most expensive cities in the country. But it doesn't have to be something that only people with money and time can think about and take action towards. It can be a lifestyle that starts with something like going through your grandmother’s linens and asking if you can use them in your dinner set for your family, replacing the paper towels you would have otherwise used. It can be a trip to Goodwill to buy clothing instead of shopping new at Forever 21. It can be going to garage sales with your family on the weekend and looking for containers to store your lunches in. The whole culture of reuse and repurpose is out there, all you have to do is start to see the world with that mission in mind and you'll be surprised the treasures you find!

Marisa: Ooh, I know we’re supposed to be finishing up, but that last answer reminded me of so many of the things I learn through gardening, that I have to follow up.

The first thing I wanted to highlight is just how much more complex the layers of interaction get in all the examples you gave of using less waste. Interacting with family members, neighbors, or anonymous people who donated clothes. All of those experiences of accessing a resource you need are so much less predictable than what’s “mainstream” in our culture right now, and they all involve other people who are much closer to us than, for example, the sweatshop workers making Forever 21 clothing in Vietnam or Bangladesh.

That principle, of relying on complex interweaving or different lifeforms, is one of the main things I like to promote in gardens I steward. When I know a garden needs more nitrogen, what are my options? Is there a legume that would be appropriate to grow to fix nitrogen from the air, or a local manure source, or a possibility of making more high-nutrient compost with a worm bin? Why is there low nitrogen, and is there nitrogen leaving the garden somehow? Perhaps as lawn clippings?

The other thing I noticed when I heard that answer was how disconnected we often are from the cyclical nature of everything. So even the concept of “waste” is actually pretty new. In my vision of the world, we look for “where’s the next step” for a particular item or material, not “where is away.” Another way of looking at that is asking “Who will eat this?” Or, “Who could benefit from this?” In our current way of doing things, there are a lot of materials and items that the answer is nonexistent. Materials we use are toxic to nearly all life forms, and aren’t very easy to form into a new type of tool or supply. I think as we start seeing things more holistically, we’ll start getting a lot of pleasure from using other people’s “waste” and passing on our “waste” as useful goods for other people. I could imagine more people specializing in certain types of repurposing, like composting, refurbishing and retrofitting tools or instruments or vehicles, processing food scraps into usable food like vinegars or juices, and so on. Who knows! But for now, it makes sense to look at where that cycle is breaking down - the fact that there are so many items that aren’t an option to pass on in a way that promotes someone else’s health and wellbeing.

Thanks for letting me respond there, and sorry I took your last words! For real this time, any final words?

Hannah: No final words from me, just that we're all in this together, we are all connected, and I continue to have hope that our collective consciousness is expanding.

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Plan your veggie garden for excitement all summer!

2/27/2019

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We've nearly made it through seed catalog season. For me, the slough of brightly colored catalogs that show up in my mailbox invite a vigorous exercise in self-restraint. For others, I can imagine it's overwhelming in other ways - trying to suss out what will grow well in your space available, trying to remember which cucumber it was that you liked so well last year and wondering if the seeds you have left can be used again. It's easy to get a little caught up in this moment of the gardening season, and forget what's down the road in July and August. I thought I'd share some of my tips to help you have a garden season that feels good the whole way through.

1. Plant only things you're truly motivated to eat.
It's hard to dial in your planting to get exactly the quantity you want, and some things come in quickly and abundantly all of a sudden. Beans, peas, zucchini, and cucumbers need to be harvested at least every other day while they are fruiting, and depending on how much you plant that could be a lot of work. It might happen at the same time that the raspberries are ripe, and also need to be harvested every day.

Make sure your planting plan leans heavily towards foods you're willing to follow through on, otherwise you'll end up with more of your garden space devoted to sad semi-failures than great successes. The biggest places where I see people stumble mid-season are watering, harvesting, and keeping up on succession planting (more on that below). There's no way around the endurance challenge of raising veggies amidst your already busy life, but making sure you're in love with everything you plant is one way to build in motivation.

2. Keep "days till harvest" in mind when you plant.
One of the most helpful pieces of information on a seed packet is the "days till harvest." Aside from telling you (obviously) how long you're going to have to wait to see your harvest, it gives you a sense of whether that space in your garden will be freed up during the season or not.

I like to have a few spaces come available for summer cover crops (I like buckwheat, for the beauty, fragrance, and nectar source), usually following the first round of radishes and greens out, and planted under the peas as they finish fruiting. I find I'm more engaged with a garden when there are moving parts, so long "days till harvest" crops are trickier for me to pay attention to. Some long "days to harvest" crops are quite rewarding (tomatoes seem to be popular), and others (onions, potatoes) I leave to farmers who have more space. You may be the opposite type of gardener - in it for a big harvest at the end, and not so concerned with building a palate for your daily salad. Either way, being aware of how long each item in your garden will take to bear fruit is a good place to start when thinking through your desired rhythm.

3. Plan a simple rotation.
Rotating crops, even in a small space, helps ensure that nutrients are getting used evenly throughout your garden and pests have to move around even a little to search for their favorite foods. The simplest way to think about rotation is to break crops into 3 categories - roots (anything underground), fruits (anything that is the result of pollination), and leaves (photosynthetic parts of a plant). Plan not to grow two of the same category in the same space sequentially. Ideally, you could grow one round from two different categories and then grow a cover crop. Keep track of what's been grown where, so even if you don't have a formal rotation plan, you can make sure to mix it up.

4. Work on your soil as much as your plants.
It can be easier to see and understand what's going on with plants - "oh, the leaves are wilting," or "oh, the slugs are eating the lettuce," - than it is to know what's going on with the soil. So it's tempting to just respond with pest management or fertilizer when you see something going on with a plant. A successful garden relies on preemptively caring for the soil, as an ongoing process that takes about as much attention as the plants themselves.

One way to think about soil is as a digestive system. It needs macronutrients (carbs and proteins from decomposing) as well as micronutrients (minerals) and building blocks of fiber (tougher-to-digest organic matter). Feeding it only fertilizer would be like trying to sustain yourself on multi-vitamins. Not likely to help your long term health, or your willingness to be cooperative and supportive to those around you.

To put this into action:
- Leave as many greens as you can as a mulch layer on top of the soil. Pick a carrot and not planning to eat the greens? Leave them in the garden.
- Grow some plants specifically as green mulches. This could be traditional cover crops like crimson clover and buckwheat, or it could be something else prolific like sunflowers or borage. Search for plants known as bioaccumulators to find out what might work for you.
- Keep the soil covered. If there isn't much extra green waste coming from your garden, figure out some other way to cover the soil. This could be compost, straw, or even cardboard.
- Compost: For mulching, I like to prioritize things that don't attract rats. That means that too-big-zucchinis and other more luscious waste needs a different place to decompose. I'm in favor of worm bins, but you can experiment with many available composting systems.
- Take advantage of King Conservation District's free soil testing program before you decide to add fertilizers or lime. Use only what you really need!

5. Use succession planting to keep your harvest coming.

Instead of planting the whole packet of carrot seeds all at once, plant a few each week throughout the summer so you'll always have some that are ready to harvest. Again, I find that harvesting and planting are good excuses to get me to slow down and see what's going on in the rest of the garden, so I try to keep as many simple planting tasks on my list as possible. They give me that "oh, it will just take 30 seconds to plant the next row of carrots" type motivation that always ends up sucking me in to a 20-30 minute weeding and grooming session.

The best crops to plant in succession, in my experience, are carrots, beets, radishes, and greens or any sort. Things like peas and beans tend to catch up to each other, and hot season crops like squash, tomatoes, and peppers really only have one window in our Pacific Northwest climate.

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An Ecology-Based look at your New Year's Resolutions with Amanda Blaine

1/22/2019

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Hugelkultur is a method of amending soil using excess wood that decomposes slowly to build carbon-rich soil.

Marisa: I want to introduce Amanda Blaine, who I’ve asked to have this conversation with me. I invited her in particular because I really value the way she approaches her work. I'll let you learn from her more about what her work is but what I see is that she really senses into purpose and senses into what would help her clients and what would benefit the world rather than focusing on implementing a particular methodology. I see her having a really broad, adaptive tool set that follows her sense of the truth, and I really appreciate that. Especially since it's January, a lot of people are considering purpose and commitment. It's this quiet, winter-ey still time, and many people are using it to dream into their next year. I wonder how you approach that process yourself.

Amanda: Thank you. I love hearing how you introduce me!

Hmm, how I approach this time of year. I totally love the solstice time of year for reflecting on what's been the last year and I have things that I wrote last year at this time and I look over them. I like having a lot of stillness. Actually this year have had less because I’m coming out of a long stage of dormancy and I’m just like - I just want to play and jump around! I don’t want to sit down and read my stuff. So it’s a little different this year. What was coming up for me as you were talking about the idea of purpose is the definition of purpose I really enjoy and have been using for myself. It comes from the book Holacracy, and asks “what does this organization want to be in the world, and what does the world need this organization to be?” And so I just apply it to myself. What do I need to be in the world, and what does the world need me to be?

It's the idea that it's more like detective work than creative work. Finding purpose is more of a discovery process, the sense that there actually is an organism. I use an ecological metaphor. That there's some being that has its own life and I'm trying to learn about it. What is it? Whether I’m talking about my own work, as just one person. Like, what is the life that's trying to come alive through me? Or if it's a group of people working together, what is the thing that wants to come alive through the collaboration?

So I think that set of questions invites a surrendering. Like, if I'm really taking that seriously I have to really honor all of the resources of gifts that I have. Even if it might feel edgy or scary to say, I’m good at “this” or something. I face that feeling while thinking, “what is this in service to?”

Marisa: Yeah, so if you're attuned to this higher goal than you can step out a little bit more in certain areas or not force yourself in other certain areas.

Amanda: Yeah, so actually it was this time last year that I did a half-day purpose setting session with myself, and I found that I have two purposes. One is to be helping people embody their fullest expression in the world and the second is supporting people in groups to energize their shared purpose.

Marisa: Yea, good thing I asked you to talk about purpose!

I haven't read it yet but I saw Sarah Peyton’s newsletter come out, and the title points out that if you're failing at your New Year's resolutions it’s not because you don’t have the willpower. Instead, it's because there are other blocks in your way. That seems really related to what you’re saying right now. That there may not need to be a huge amount of willpower in finding devotion to a purpose.

Amanda: Yeah, I read that piece and she was talking about the idea that our bodies make contracts when we're young that keep us safe. When we try to do something that stretches us into our fullness later on, that survival contract is more primary and will keep us from doing thing. So we have to name what that is, acknowledge what happened that caused us to restrict our life expression to survive. So I guess, what I’m trying to say, is that I see it as a little bit different. Connecting to my purpose, I might need to connect to and dissolve those contracts. I don't want to give people the idea that once you’re clear about your purpose it's just a day at the beach.

Marisa: Yeah, it doesn't come without obstacles or challenges.

Amanda: it's almost like bringing that purpose to life, you encounter an “Oh shit, now I have to really step up. So what are the things I need to do to allow my bigness to really come through in that?” If I’m really like “okay that's my purpose like I signed up for it” I have to...

Marisa: Yeah, to find out where your range of motion is restricted and where you need to develop different muscles to be able to follow your purpose.

Amanda: And so that can bring us into scary new territory, scary places. I think that’s all part of it.

Marisa: I kind of want to bring in some of my gardening work here. One of the things I feel really clear about is that there is a way of gardening in urban areas that is a potent way of connecting people to the landscape and creating a landscape that's woven into itself and has a lot more ecological functions than we currently have.

Amanda: Ecological what?

Marisa: Ecological functions. So, for example, most butterflies are not willing to lay eggs in urban areas or in areas that have been disturbed in the last 30 years, so most of the suburbs of most of urban areas. That doesn’t leave much habitat for butterflies. Adult butterflies can live in these areas, but they’re not willing to lay their eggs because they sense that it’s not okay to lay their eggs there. There are all these ecosystem services and ecosystem functions that are disappearing. Some of them are more obvious, like the absence of insects that prey on common garden pests, and a lot of them are really subtle like the butterfly eggs. They can be hard to notice, especially in the span of a human lifetime.

So I have this vision of some way of gardening that really honors those functions and systems. There are a lot of visionary tools, like permaculture, that can still be implemented in ways that don’t look at the bigger picture. The framework of principles that permaculture orients around is incredibly useful, but we can still operate without noticing our own blind spots. I notice it’s scary for me sometimes to propose the actual design solutions I want to propose, because I’m basing them on observations over time and ecological principles rather than a particular procedure.

One example right now is that I’m working with dense clay soil on one client’s property. I want to amend it so that they can grow a wider diversity of plants, but I also don’t want to disturb it more than necessary, especially since it’s wet this time of year. So I’m trying to figure out what to propose, like not digging in compost but using it only as topdressing, and planning for it to take years to really shift the texture of the soil. I’m nervous the client will perceive it as being a lazy decision rather than a wise one. It feels like it’s going against the current.

Amanda: You want to hear what I’m hearing? That you staying connected to your purpose of this larger systems view, of looking at this whole ecosystem and looking across time, means you stepping out and risking your belonging in some ways. It means speaking powerfully about what you want in a way that feels kind of edgy because people might not understand.

Marisa: Yeah, there’s so much safety in having a defined toolset. It would feel safer to me if I could just point to a book and say “I’m implementing this.” But when I’m really in touch with my purpose I have to sense into each individual situation I come up against and see what matches. What feels right in that situation, backed by a lot of knowledge.

Amanda: Right, you can’t point to an outside authority. You’re evolving something new through your experience.

Marisa: Yeah, I’m really asking my clients to trust me to let me use their property as part of that evolution and exploration. Which I don’t really know how to get full consent for, because I don’t really know what I’m asking them for when we start a project. This feels vulnerable to share!

Amanda: I think it’s really exciting because that’s the paradigm I want to live in. The sense of “We don’t actually know!” We’re standing here, saying “I want to have this vision of wholeness and I want that for your property, your neighborhood.” And asking “Do you want to explore that with me, not knowing what’s going to emerge?” Which is how life actually works - you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Marisa: Yeah, and we do know that some of the systems we’ve designed so far aren’t working, so in some ways that makes it safer to take risks with new systems and new practices. I’ve heard a lot of stories of people coming up against a wall of exhaustion, disease, or disaster when they’re not in alignment of their purpose. I think a lot of people have a really deep, embodied awareness of when something’s not working. There maybe aren’t as many visible solutions to what is working.

Amanda: That’s the whole sense and respond paradigm. There’s not a beaten path. We make the road by walking. We have to stand there, and listen into it.

Marisa: Can you clarify what you mean by “sense and respond” paradigm?

Amanda: Yeah, so it’s coming out of this time where we’ve been in a “predict and control” paradigm. The world we see around us most of the time is shaped by this paradigm. Predict what’s going to happen in the future and then control it. Make the plan of what’s going to happen in the next 5 years, make a plan of what the garden is going to be next fall, and put everything in those places, and then we’re going to predict and control that. That’s how most of our culture works. It comes from a mechanical, industrial, factory model.

So some of these ideas are in the book Reinventing Organizations, among other places, but in the paradigm that I’m excited about is an ecological paradigm rather than a factory paradigm. It’s looking at ourselves as living beings. The way a living organism works is where there are autonomous cells, or autonomous individual trees in a forest. And they’re not planning what’s going to happen in the future - they’re just responding to what’s happening in their environment. Like, the sun is shining right now and I’m going to start photosynthesizing. They don’t decide “tomorrow at this certain time I’m going to start photosynthesizing, regardless of the weather.” Sensing what’s actually happening, asking how do I meet that in a way that’s the most whole or healthy?

I’m guessing that what you’re feeling is that people are habituated to the predict and control paradigm, which is not how you operate. So if you’re seeing the world from predict and control, someone who is sensing and responding might look lazy. But actually it’s a different paradigm, that actually matches how life works better, rather than matches how a factory works.

Marisa: Yeah, and there are sometimes cool things! I’m thinking of one garden in particular and I started digging. There were so many rocks in the soil that I was able to build a lot of features out of the rocks I found there. So sometimes I get “freebees” that I wasn’t anticipating because I didn’t plan the whole project from the inception of it.

Marisa: When you were talking, it reminded me about something I’ve noticed this year in particular. I’ve noticed a lot of people responding to the constant stream of horrific news by feeling really stuck. I’ve been hearing a lot of people, including me, feeling like they don’t know what to do in these circumstances. I feel this care for, say, immigrants facing our border security, or any number of examples. How do I respond to that? I’m wondering if you have any tips on developing that muscle, from the sense and respond paradigm. Do you have a practice for figuring out when to do something, or not do something?

Amanda: I’m getting chills in my legs hearing this.

The first thing that’s coming up for me is mourning. Grieving. We have so much grieving to do. Tears are coming up for me. Letting ourselves feel our broken hearts around it.

In the Seattle area there’s a lot of grief work happening in groups. Our bodies aren’t designed to hold that level of trauma alone. I guess in my experience, that’s the only way through. Is to actually feel all of it. And see what happens when I really give myself space to feel this. Really take it in.

Marisa: So I think the question I asked was how do I develop the “response” muscle, but what you’re really saying is we need to develop the “sense” muscle, and if we don’t develop the sense muscle, we’re still not able to truly live in sense and respond.

Amanda: Yeah. What’s coming up for me is the power of sensing - feeling the mourning and the grieving - in community. Being in interdependence. I don’t have the level of connection in my life that I want in order to be able to fully meet the moment, and I have a lot more than most people. There are a lot of people tracking me, and I have a lot of resources to reach out to and I still feel like I need a lot more. Not to overwhelm people, but just to talk about it. Making space to talk about how we’re feeling, and see what emerges.

I don’t want to tell people, especially as white people ourselves, that “all you have to do is feel it.” I want there to be action too. But I just haven’t found any shortcut around just taking the time to feel the heartbreak, and then what comes out of that is “Yes, we’re not going to be able to respond to every single thing here, so what’s the most impactful response?” What’s the one small step we’re going to take from this moment? Then we’ll sense and respond from the next moment.

Marisa: Yeah, sense and respond does really give you the freedom to really stay in touch with what’s working and what isn’t.

Amanda: Yeah, so I want to share the principles of dynamic collaboration, which is what I do in my work. One of them is “use short, incremental cycles” and another one is “experiment and adapt.” So we ask “what does it look like today to respond to the overwhelming feeling of hearing the news?” Maybe today it’s, inviting a bunch of friends over for a potluck and checking in about how everyone is doing. Giving yourselves space to talk about it. And at the end of that, seeing “now what’s next?”

Marisa: Yeah! This is making me think back to where we started, with resolutions. I was just checking in about my resolutions from last year. I had predicted a certain amount of massage that I needed and a certain amount of exercise that I needed in order to care better for my body. I haven’t been getting that much massage or that much exercise, but I’ve been doing yoga and walking, and that’s been meeting all the needs that I had predicted would be met by that particular strategy. So I feel glad I let myself off the hook to do exactly what I had prescribed myself. I don’t feel like I lost touch with what I was wanting.

Amanda: From an NVC (nonviolent communication) lens, I hear that as holding the needs and letting the strategies evolve.

Marisa: Yeah, definitely. People who are reading this might not know what we mean by NVC.

I’ll just throw out a brief description here, in my own words. The essence of it is using our feelings to help us connect with what needs we’re having. Needs being fundamental human longings. And then being able to strategize creatively about how we can get those needs met rather than sticking to a particular strategy. One of the reasons it’s called nonviolent is because often in relationship situations, we have a strategy in mind for how we want to get our need met through another person. It ends up being dehumanizing for the person who is being obligated to do a particular thing in order to help us meet our needs. So using this framework gives us some freedom to explore how we can meet our needs and enjoy interdependence with other people without constricting anyone else’s agency. Anything to add, Amanda?

Amanda: Since we’re just talking about sense and respond, I’ll add that to me NVC is a beautiful practice for how to sense and respond. It’s an embodiment practice. The very first thing I need to be able to do is to sense - that’s the feeling part. That’s how I’m getting information about what life wants. If I can’t feel, there’s no other way as a human being for me to get information from the world. This one body is the only way of interfacing with it. Sensing what’s happening in me and what’s being wanted, and then the responding part is how do I want to use these messages - the information I’m getting - about what the needs are, what’s arising through me.

Marisa: I’m not exactly sure how this is related. When you were talking, I was connecting with how much fun it is to be surprised. Like when I’m having a feeling in a situation and I’m wondering what it is, and I suddenly realize it isn’t a feeling I would have expected to have in that situation. So there’s room for me being surprised by my own experience of the world.

That’s one of the delights I’m wanting to bring into my gardening practice more and more. Not having a huge expectation about what’s going to happen, and being willing to be surprised by whatever unfolds. In some ways it’s really vulnerable to wait for it to unfold because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m experimenting a lot more in vegetable gardens. I’ve been playing a lot more with letting plants seed themselves, and choose where they want to grow.

I can think of at least one garden right now that has a huge patch of cilantro. I’m really not sure if that person loves cilantro as much as I do. I’ve been leaving the cilantro, which I find totally delightful, and it might not be what she would have planned for how she would allocate her space. I have other gardens where cilantro just isn’t as vigorous. They’re more parsley dominant, or arugula dominant. It’s fun to give plants some choice about how to reproduce - when and where.

Amanda: It’s such a beautiful honoring of life. I think this Nonviolent Communication practice is often framed as very human centric. Like, we’re holding all the needs - everyone matters, but we’re usually talking about humans. What I hear you saying is that everyone matters - the plant people, the human people.

In my own practice, I was just telling someone recently, how the reason I’m caring about this other person isn’t because it’s a moral value I have. Its because if I don’t, I hurt right away. I don’t put my hand on a hot stove because it hurts right away. What I’m hearing you say is it’s the same thing about plants. The reason you want them to have their own choice about where to emerge is because that’s really what’s needed for everyone’s greater health. For these organisms to be able to flourish in the way that they know how - and that you don’t know how.

Marisa: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. I don’t know how to bring all the gifts that cilantro brings to the world. I do have a big internal list of where I know cilantro grows well, and the qualities I associate with those places. But there’s still a big mystery to it.

We’re coming to this concept of reciprocity that I’ve been developing also. There are all these plants that have nourished our species for millennia, and have cooperated with our breeding efforts and lived through these mail order seed packets. Imagine being a seed and coming from North Carolina to here and then popping up! So how do I really honor what we’re putting plants through, and trust that that’s a relationship we’re actually in and not just a demand I’m making of a plant. Now make me some broccoli!

Amanda: Yeah, the idea of nonviolence. I don’t want to meet my needs at your cost, at the expense of you, and I don’t want you to meet your needs at my expense. Ultimately, I don’t want to eat broccoli that’s been coerced.

I feel really inspired about the work you’re doing, in gardens. It’s such an embodied and practical and needed way of bringing these ideas into people’s lives. Not everyone’s like “I want to go to a nonviolent communication training!” but most people want their yard to look nice. It’s so radical what you’re doing!

Marisa: Thanks! I’m learning from this conversation that I want to highlight “sense and respond” more. I think people walk into a garden space and they get a certain feeling. Sometimes it’s claustrophobic, or dingy, that they don’t really want to pause there. Sometimes it’s really expansive. We know there are these certain feelings we like to have, expansive or curious or excited or awe-struck by beauty. So I’m wondering how can we navigate towards those feelings in ways that honor the natural pace of the world.

Amanda: Yeah, it’s a biological process of cells growing that you can’t just manufacture right away.

There is part of this Great Turning, which is coming back to trusting our bodies - trusting what we love. There’s that line from the Mary Oliver poem, let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. So just trusting if that looks beautiful to me and I’m wanting to amplify it and wanting to support it. Rather than our bodies are dangerous and the things I’m drawn to must be evil or wrong.

Marisa: Isn’t it funny that our classic new year’s resolutions are “our bodies are dangerous” - lose weight, stop drinking, somehow moderate impulses that we have for some reason.

Amanda: Yeah, I’m feeling sad. I want to hear more new year’s resolutions that are like “I want to have more pleasure in my life! Or I’m going to laugh more! Or I’m going to do what feels good more often.”

I remember going through this time when I had this relationship with exercise. I had an inner rebellion where I was like, I don’t ever want to force myself to do anything ever again. And then another voice was like “you’re going to get fat and old!” And I was like, “So be it. I’m trusting that there’s some integrity around what my body wants and what my body needs.” But it felt like walking through fire to say “I’m not going to force myself to do anything. It might mean I’m going to lie on this patch of sun on the floor here for the rest of my life.” I was trusting that something would happen - that I didn’t have to force myself to do anything.

Marisa: I just had this beautiful image, when you said lying on the floor in a patch of sun forever. I saw these mullein plants yesterday. Their leaves were totally decayed but you could still kind of see the outline of the rosette that they made on the ground. They have this fuzz that they leave when they decay, but the leaf itself wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me that it’s such a radical act to let go of all of your leaves! And just trust that you left them on the ground, and they’re going to sink down and be in your root zone where you need them in the spring. It’s totally an act of faith.

I’m wondering if people are wanting to re-frame their New Years resolutions right now, do you have any guiding questions for them?

Amanda: We’ve been talking a lot about mourning, I would say start there. Before you add something new, what leaves do you want to drop from last year? In nonviolent communication there’s a simple practice of mournings and celebrations. What’s something that didn’t go the way you planned, or a dream you had last year that didn’t manifest? Just allowing yourself to feel that, and say that that matters, instead of trying to brush over it. Let yourself feel the sadness of what was hard about 2018. The same way you would talk to a child. Like, “yeah, of course you’re sad you didn’t get to move to the place you wanted, or didn’t find the job you wanted, or the relationship you were in didn’t pan out the way you wanted, like - yeah, that makes so much sense you’re sad.”

And then, ask “what would you really love for yourself this year?” I start with this prompt: “If you could wave a magic wand and have whatever you want without there being any consequences, nobody else would be harmed by it, and you don’t have to think about what would be plausible for you. What would your big dream be?” Just let yourself have a luxurious imagining, an extravagant imagining. So that’s a very different framing of what’s your new year’s resolution. It’s setting the frame - without having to temper it with what’s OK.

Marisa: In some ways, when I try to do that, I end up creating a blueprint for myself. Instead of creating next steps, I create a sensory imprint. If I think of this big dream, I feel this way. So then I can notice if there are places in my life where I feel similar ways.

Amanda: Yeah, so you have this beautiful image. And maybe it’s too vulnerable to share, but OK. So now what is one micro step you can take? Like, maybe putting on your calendar for 15 minutes Monday at 11am, to brainstorm about what’s the next step I can take? That’s all you need to figure out right now. We’re not actually going to plan backwards, because we don’t know. Does that answer your question?

Marisa: Yeah, I love those two questions. I love connecting back to mourning and celebration. And knowing that there are going to be future mournings and celebrations. Those questions help us orient in the present.

Amanda: Yeah, I also like to ask the question “What’s the most loving thing I can offer myself right now?” “What would self-love look like in this moment?” Sometimes it’s hard to act that way towards ourselves. It can be really obvious when you think about your best friend - “What’s the most loving thing for me to offer them?” And now turn that towards yourself. Giving myself permission to exercise for an hour every day is so different from making myself lose 20 lbs.

Marisa: Thank you! I love ending with these questions, like leaving little tendrils out in the world for people to play with. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective today, Amanda!

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Braiding Sweetgrass Book Discussion: Join Me!

1/22/2019

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Join me February 21st, from 7-9pm in Greenwood to set the tone for the birth of spring 2019! I invite you to come share in the pleasure and learning spreading in voluptuous tendrils from Robin Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass.

RSVP Now!

About the group:

Let's weave together community and knowledge to bring forth a world that works for all of the tender life forms that live here.

I'll host a few book-based discussions throughout the year to support us in deepening our community-based, embodied. understanding of the work we're here to do and the vision for the world we are tending together.

Books will be sharply but creatively focused on ecology, grassroots organizing, decolonization/indigenous leadership, and other emergent, land-based topics. I'll host 3-4 discussions throughout the year, and welcome others to select books and host in off months.

Discussions are open to all ages, but please, willing participants only! If you need help finding childcare, let me know and we'll see if we can find a creative solution. You're welcome to come if you've only read part of the book. See below for other accessibility information.

About Braiding Sweetgrass:

From Milkweed Editions Publisher:
“As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer as been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.”

About the space:

The Workshop Space has been brought to life by the Center for Restorative Solutions founder Pam Orbach. I'll share the address with those who RSVP.

The space is located in a former garage. The main entrance is accessible by a few brief flights of stairs, but stair-free entry is possible. Just let me know ahead of time! The bathroom door is not wheelchair accessible. The space is fragrance free, and there will be both cushioned floor and folding chair seating.

Tea and water will be available throughout our meeting. Feel free to bring snacks to share.

RSVP Now!

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Wild Spring Herbs for Rejuvination

3/20/2018

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Wow, this year I’m really noticing the effect of daylight savings time. The longer evening light makes me feel calm and satisfied at the end of the day, but I keep waking up at my pre-daylight-savings time which, two weeks later, feels a little awkward. The fact that something as small as one hour time change is so prominent for me reminds me to be grateful for the rhythms my body is in, and how attuned it is to the natural world. In a world where traveling between time zones and relying on artificial light so that the economy can run at all hours are normalized, I’ve come to find a deeply calming sense of belonging to the world in my awareness of my body as it passes through the various cycles and seasons.

So I thought I’d take a moment to appreciate what this moment on our calendar is full with, a step beyond “spring is here!” symbols of fertility and rebirth. For people living away from the equator, like us in Seattle, spring is a time for cleansing and movement. Cultures in northern climates have traditionally survived winter on storable vegetables (starches), cured meats, and fermented vegetables and fish. These foods move slowly through our bodies, in contrast with the bright fresh foods of summer. To help our bodies transition, many cultures have cleansing and energizing spring foods.

It’s no surprise then, that the earliest emerging herbs stimulate our liver and kidneys, which filter our body fluids and help to digest fatty foods. Three of my favorite spring stars are chickweed (Stellaria media), miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), and dandelions (Taxicum officianale). All three are known as garden weeds, which is fitting for a season that celebrates the spontaneous nature of growth and reproduction.

Chickweed and Miner's Letttuce growing together. Photos thanks to Brian and Tracey for letting me garden wildly!

Miner's lettuce growing abundantly in early March

Chickweed is highly nutritious and gently anti-inflammatory. When eaten or made into tea, it cleanses the blood and is a mild diuretic and laxative. When applied to the skin, it calms rashes and cools minor burns and infections. It can also be used as an expectorant, soothing bronchial tubes and stimulating the elimination of mucus. It’s flavor and texture are mild and it can be eaten raw in salads or smoothies. It’s gentle multi-purposeness is, to me, it’s most striking feature. It’s exactly the way I want to be woken up for spring. Not too suddenly, but like a breeze cleaning out stale air and bringing in new. You can make chickweed into salad, blend it into a salad dressing , or add it to a sandwich.

Miner’s Lettuce is packed with vigor-promoting nutrients and purifies the blood and lymph fluids in the body. It’s mild enough to be eaten in salads, and replenishes vitamins that run low in winter. It earned its name as a protective food for miners in the California gold rush who didn’t have access to many fresh vegetables, and remains abundant in moist areas of urban and suburban landscapes.

Of the three herbs here, Dandelions are the most intense. Both the greens and the roots contain bitter compounds that stimulate the release of digestive enzymes, as well as stimulating the liver. Most noticeably, this means that dandelion helps smooth out digestive issues in any part of the digestive system. Beyond that, dandelion is known to strengthen bones, clear acne from the inside out, and stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin, helping moderate blood sugar. The nutrient dense leaves can be eaten raw or cooked, and the roots are best roasted (they take on a nutty/earthy flavor rather than the extreme bitter flavor you might be thinking of) and brewed as tea. Here are recipes for dandelion root tea, smoothies, and more.

Enjoy the abundance of spring! Happy foraging!

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Worm bins: Urban composting with ease

3/6/2018

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Some things that end up in your trash are easy to re-use such as ziploc bags and containers with lids. Others, less so. Some just take a bit of work up-front to make useful again. Enter the worm bin.

Many gardeners know that it’s important to keep nutrients and organic matter in place as long as possible. So naturally, many reach the conclusion that sending scraps and yard waste off to be composted and then buying it back in plastic bags is not ideal. Still, urban composting can be tricky because we want to minimize odor, rat buffets, and the amount of space a composting system takes up.

After years of experimentation with various systems, my favorite is still the classic worm bin. Essentially, you provide a home and food for a population of worms, and they tend your compost for you. You’re left with rich organic material to add to your garden (or a friend’s, if you don’t have space yourself).

There are many designs for great worm bins available around the internet. Here are some tips for picking one that’s right for you, and keeping it running smoothly.

Design Tips

Size: I’ve found the larger the better (up to maybe 2’x4’x2’). This gives you the flexibility to keep adding food until you feel like harvesting, rather than being limited by a full bin. It also helps with climate control - worms don’t like to freeze, and normally would go deep into the earth to keep themselves warm. A bigger bin provides more insulation from both heat and cold.

Location: Put your bin anywhere that’s convenient for you, but for climate control reasons it will probably be easier to maintain in a shaded area that’s a bit sheltered from extreme weather.

Material & features: The easiest-to-maintain worm bins I’ve seen are made of wood. There are many designs available that use plastic bins with holes drilled in them, but I’ve found that wood helps regulate moisture and temperature much better. That means you have to worry less about mold or bad smells. In theory, the plastic models allow you to harvest “worm tea,” or the juice that settles out of worm compost, but I haven’t seen this happen in a significant amount.

The other primary design feature to consider is how to protect against rats. Installing hardware cloth on the bottom of the bin and having a sturdy lid that fits well are the best ways to ensure that nobody unwanted has access. Some insect eggs will inevitably be present on your food scraps and may hatch in the bin, so a good lid will also prevent occasional recently hatched flies from traveling freely into your kitchen or around your patio.

Starting off: Once you’ve got your bin put together, it’s time to add bedding. You’ll need some sort of most carbon-rich material. This could be fallen leaves, shredded newspaper or phone books, or anything else on this list. Moisten until it feels like a squeezed out sponge (imagine the natural moisture content of a worm’s body and replicate!). This material will decompose, dry out, and pack down quickly, so add lots! The carbon-based bedding will also help regulate moisture and odor. The most common way to have an icky worm bin is to have insufficient bedding. Once you’ve got plenty of moist bedding, add worms and food scraps!

Maintenance & Troubleshooting Tips:

Once you’ve got your bin put together, it’s time to add worms. You can ask for a donation from a friend or neighbor, or purchase red wriggler worms from a farm supply company. The type of worms you’ll house in your bin, red wrigglers, are not the standard earthworms you dig up in your garden.

Feeding: You’ll likely end up with just a handful of worms to start, so for the first month or two feed them slowly. The worms can eat about half their weight in food each day, so use that benchmark to get started. Feeding them too much isn’t a risk to the worms, but to the pleasantness of your bin, so use your nose to learn if you’re overfeeding. Over time, the worm population will build up to match the amount your household feeds them.

Worms will eat nearly all your food scraps, minus citrus scraps and grease (light amounts of salad dressing aren’t a problem, but keep fats out in general). Some things, like avocado pits, are just too big to get their little mouths on, so you can leave those out too. Egg shells are great for your garden, so add them to your bin even though they won’t get fully eaten.

Moisture: The most frequent issues that arise with worm bins all stem from moisture imbalance. If you’re noticing mold or bad odor (rot, rather than soil-ey dirt odor), chances are it’s too wet in your bin. Add some more bedding material where you notice it’s getting soggy, or all over, and temporarily reduce feeding if it seems like recognizable food is piling up.

Insects: Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste, so where you’re storing food for critters, critters will arrive. Your worm bin will likely have some resident slugs, spiders, and plenty of sow bugs. That’s totally fine - they’re also decomposers, and they won’t harm your worms. Some other insects, like flies, are more pesky. The best strategy to keep them out is to create a cover of some sort, either by keeping a thick layer of bedding or cardboard above the layer of food and bedding where the worms live, or by fitting a fine wire mesh net inside the open bin to block access.
Harvesting:

After a few months, you will have some finished vermicompost. It will be very dark and fine, similar to espresso grounds but not gritty. You can remove these from the bin and use them in your garden as needed, or harvest all at once when there’s a sufficient supply. To harvest all at once, you can spread all the worm bin material on a tarp. Sort through by hand and return the worms and recognizable food scraps and bedding to the bin. What’s left is your vermicompost (and probably a pesky fruit sticker or two). Make sure to replenish food supplies and bedding so your worms have plenty of habitat left! To harvest “as needed,” you can just sift through with your hands and find areas of completed vermicompost. Pull it out and use it to fertilize food crops including vegetables and berries.

Have fun!

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The Season of Anticipation

2/7/2015

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I tend to spend January dreaming of what might happen in my garden (and my clients’ gardens!) during the next growing season. I take my time cleaning up my own garden and preparing it for the year so that I can really see what’s going on in each area. Is it soggy? Soggier than I would expect? Does soil move around during heavy rains? Which areas thaw first in the cold mornings, and which areas stay frozen through the entire day? This kind of information can be captured best from a hands-and-knees perspective, particularly at a very slow pace. Sometimes I act quickly - moving around mulches and plants that may be suffering. Sometimes I just take note, and wonder what to do with that frosty pocket that might not warm up till May.

Blauhilde Bean. Photo and seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, rareseeds.com

I also spend a lot of time wandering around, looking at the shapes and structures in the garden. Do the trees seem balanced? Are shrubs and trees in proportion with one another, and within the bed that they live in? Are there areas that seem bland and flat? Since structural elements tend to be more permanent, I take my time making decisions about how to create more harmony. I have a plum tree and an apricot tree that were violently pruned prior to when I moved in, and as I look at there distorted shapes all winter I remember to have compassion for all the wounded beings in the world. Although I would love to remove them and start over, I think of all the times people in my life have had compassion for me at my less-than-perfect, and wish them well in their next year of growth. My vigorous vine maple, on the other hand, gets a gentle reminder from my loppers to share the space and let some light through to the ground. In some places where I suspect I’m needing more structure and height, I am preparing the soil to grow annual vines such as trellised runner beans, just to see what it might be like to have a taller element.

Usually, the dreary January weather keeps me in the contemplative planning mode rather than zealous preparation for the new year. But you might have noticed this January has been distinctly brighter and drier, which has carried me into planning the vegetable garden already. In reflection on last year’s garden, my partner and I decided to focus on greens and herbs this year. We’ll leave most of the root veggies and fruits to the farmers. Here are some highlights of what’s to come:

Herbs: Cilantro, parsley, shiso, dill and basil will all get more space this year, in addition to our perennial herb garden.

Greens: Ruby Orach is the returning champion, and will be joined by several lettuces, mustards, Gailan, and Premium Late Flat Dutch cabbage which is an heirloom variety producing HUGE heads! And of course, plenty of kale.

Ruby Orach. Photo from wildernessarena.com

Legumes: Two new bean varieties! Cantare is a small and delicious French bean, and Blauhilde will hopefully produce 10-inch purple pods. Fava beans are snap peas are returning staples.

Roots: I’m excited about growing Spanish black radishes and daikon radishes, both new additions to the garden this year.

Fruits: Last summer, I walked through the local pea patch envious of the beautiful tomatillo plants decorated with delicate fruits late in the season. This year, I’ll be planting a Polish variety named Amarylla which has gorgeous and tasty yellow fruits.

I’ll return with some updates on successes and inevitable disappointments throughout the season!

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Pesticides and Our Environment

1/26/2015

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I sometimes have questions come up about pesticide use, specifically in places like sidewalk cracks or lawns. First, I’d like to offer some non-chemical options for us to adopt. Then I’ll offer a brief peek into the ongoing research on various pesticides. This is not meant to terrify you, but rather to provide some insight on how broadly effects of pesticides can show up and why I feel so strongly about avoiding even “safer” options such as glyphosate (Roundup).

So here goes the solutions part:

Sidewalk cracks:

Those of you with weedy sidewalk cracks can verify that hand weeding is difficult, unlikely to be a permanent solution, and never the funnest landscape care task at hand. I’d recommend using vinegar spray or burning them with a propane torch. Both options may not kill taprooted weeds permanently, but are easy and quick, and much safer for our bodies and groundwater than chemical options.

Lawns:

I understand the high value of an open play space for children, pets, and adults. It’s also important from a design perspective to have a place to rest your eyes and invite calm. Often, these same features can be achieved with lawn replacements such as Dutch white clover or any number of “stepable” groundcovers. Contact me for a list, or check out Evelyn Hadden’s book Beautiful No Mow Lawns . If you’re looking for some additional inspiration, she’ll be speaking both Saturday February 14th and Sunday February 15th at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. There’s also the option of hand-weeding species that specifically bother you, or spot spraying them with vinegar.

Finally, I’d like to note that poorly performing lawns are often the result of poor conditions. Lawns enjoy well-aerated soil, full sun, gentle slopes, and regular compost applications. In the urban northwest, a lot of our soils are heavy, compacted, and sometimes waterlogged. Creating a beautiful landscape under these conditions is quite possible with mulch and good management practices, but it’s difficult to create good lawn habitat. A well-sited lawn that receives annual compost, occasional re-seeding, and gets cut regularly will choke out most weeds and be lush enough to disguise a few weeds. The Garden Hotline has lots of information about organic lawn care, which you can find here.

Pesticide Facts

Although many pesticides including weed-killers, insect, and rodent control are marketed as safe to use around pets and family, research indicates otherwise. Many chemicals are known to degrade quickly, but in a CDC study of 9,282 people nationwide found 13 of 23 pesticides they were testing for in the average person’s blood and urine.

Further, research led by Dr. Michael Skinner at Washington State University shows that the influence of pesticides may be passed down through generations. His findings indicated that the rats exposed to DDT passed on higher risk of obesity, kidney disease, prostate and ovarian cancer to their great grandchildren. Since most pesticides and pesticide ingredients have not been tested on this time scale, it’s important to use extreme caution when choosing garden care products.

Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 19 are linked with cancer or carcinogenicity, 13 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 26 with liver or kidney damage, 15 with neurotoxicity, and 11 with disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system. Beyond the risks to our human companions, there are risks to animals and insects as well. Dogs have been shown to have increased risk of lymphoma and bladder cancer due to exposure to treated lawns. Birds and honeybees are in peril because of ongoing exposure to systemic pesticides. These pesticides, including neonicotinoids, are often applied as seed coatings and expressed in the plant’s tissues throughout it’s life, including pollen and seeds which serve as food for other critters. Many plants sold at big-box retailers have been treated systemically already, so even homeowners who don’t apply pesticides themselves may be exposing the surrounding wildlife.

Finally, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has found that homeowners often exceed recommended application rates, and as a whole use up to 10 times more pesticides per acre than conventional farmers. Perhaps this is because our desire for ease and convenience tempts us into using stronger doses, or because we imagine that our small gardens are somehow separate from the larger ecological systems that include groundwater and wildlife. Whatever the reason, I believe it’s not worth the risk to our families and neighbors of all species. I want to care for the water here, which is becoming increasingly precious as larger and larger swaths of our world experience severe drought. I want to care for future generations experiencing the lingering effects of pesticides used in the past and present. And I want to show that we can have beauty, peace, fun and productivity in our landscapes without relying on mysterious and powerful concoctions that have been poorly tested.

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Question. Wonder. Listen. Play.

Low Maintenance Gardening Part 1: What Do you Want?

Why does Waste Matter?

Plan your veggie garden for excitement all summer!

An Ecology-Based look at your New Year's Resolutions with Amanda Blaine

Braiding Sweetgrass Book Discussion: Join Me!

Wild Spring Herbs for Rejuvination

Worm bins: Urban composting with ease

The Season of Anticipation

Pesticides and Our Environment

Here are some resources to help you make the most of your garden.

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