Cutting back and getting organized

This past week has been productive and fulfilling for the most part. Seth and I have cut off the water heater, the AC and we're getting ready to cut off the refrigerator. I borrowed a book from a friend, Bill Mollison's Introduction to Permaculture.
I was very familiar with the ideas and concepts of permaculture but had yet to actually study it in a book. This is a good book to start with, especially if you're comfortable with the school textbook sort of layout. It's set up in that way, but also very pleasant and easy to read.

We've been thinking, researching and planning. When we get home from our trip (we are visiting my family for a week) we are really going to get to work on the garden and landscape. I am excited. I've really been looking forward to fall and winter planting and the time is upon us!

We'll see if we can cut our electric bill in half or less and maintain it there. I've been using hot water from the hose instead of installing a legitimate solar water heater. It works well but I only get about a gallon of hot water at a time and I have to make that stretch for dishes and some clothes.
I've adapted to washing up with cold water. It doesn't bother me much.

We also have a great compost bin going. Everything goes into it. I've even been digging through the trash to salvage things that I think would be better suited to compost or something other than trash. As a result, this past week we haven't produced a single full bag of trash.

In a few months I plan to make a graph of how we are using certain resources. I've got about 6 months worth of monetary expenses and about 4 months of electricity, so I need to start looking at the quantity of trash we are disposing of.
In 6 months I'd like to cut our output to about half of what it is. Spending half the money, using half the electricity and disposing of half of the waste-- all while *increasing* production of other projects. Let's see how this goes....

Philosophy of grasses.

How GREEN!

As I walk through the fields I find myself grabbing the stalks of these plants, tugging at the inflorescence (the flowering part-- I have recently learned courtesy of the University of Florida), and feeling a subconscious satisfaction when my hand is quickly filled with little grass seeds. Then what do I do with these seeds? I toss them aside-- for what do I need this strange plant material?

I had never considered it before, but my subconscious habit to grab the seeds and spread them around is a perfect example of the brilliance of nature's system. Things are meant to work together in this way. As we become more aware of our surroundings, we also become more aware of the impact even our smallest, most insignificant habits have on those surroundings.

As much as we unconsciously aide the spread of certain species, we also unconsciously destroy others (or even the same). It takes much awareness and an extremely open mind to develop an understanding of our true impact on the Earth's systems. Even then, can we really change ourselves all that much? Do our changes truly make a difference, or do they just shift the impact to another area?
This question reminds me of Newton's simple observation: "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Can we really do "good" without then enabling, somehow and somewhere, something "bad"? Is there really any way that we can assign these values-- "good" and "bad" at all if they both exist simultaneously within the same action?

Okay, I'm not here to delve into moral rhetoric, but I just want to expose a bit of my own belief that there isn't and never will be a "good" way to do things versus a "bad" way. Our actions are all just experiments; conscious experiments; unconscious experiments; observations and explorations. We are just tinkering with our world in the ways in which we were designed. Our world is also tinkering with us.

This thinking isn't an attempt to absolve myself from making choices which I perceive to be the right choices, the compassionate and considerate and generous choices that I really do hope to make. This thinking is only a way to comfort myself when I feel that I havent done enough-- that I haven't made a difference and that what I am doing is worthless or trivial. Nothing is worthless or trivial. Nothing at all.

Enough of that... let's talk about grasses.

I am in the process of learning about grasses and meadow plants. Funny, cuz I never would have imagined myself interested in grasses. Who cares about grass? It's everywhere! Big deal...

I remember in the early days of my plant scholarship (I say that as if I am an advanced botanist, because it makes me feel good) I would browse through the college catalog looking for horticulture courses and I would find all these courses about "turfgrass." The only turf I knew existed on golf courses and I found that stuff repulsive and absurd. I'm somewhat sorry to say that I've changed my opinion. Okay, I still think golf courses are repulsive and absurd, but the little plants that inhabit them are only doing what they have been manipulated into doing-- and they sure do seem to be doing well!

So this entry is my tribute to the grasses short and tall, the creepers and the taprooters and everything in between. Oh I just love grasses!

What got me started on this? Right next to our trailer we have a huge circle of mud from where the septic tank was dropped into the ground. Under the trailer we have pure red clay. When it rains this place is terrible-- mud on everything. It's a little better now that we have built steps off the other side of the porch, but not too pleasant either way.

So I look out into the field with envy. Delicate easter basket grasses, thick weedy grasses, strange plants of all sorts and, of course, the ever-present tallow shoots. I don't care, I just want something to cover up this mud!

I walk down the road and look at my neighbors extensive, manicured lawns. When I say extensive I mean it! These people have taken perhaps 100 acres (together) or more and they have set free these tough, durable little plants which have probably been created in some research lab at a university somewhere (LSU perhaps?). I am shocked, repulsed, and impressed by this! Of course, it's not only my neighbors lawns, but lawns all over the parish, the state, the country. It seems grasses are creeping and crawling slowly to consume to all four corners of the Earth. Some do it with the assistance of chemicals and fertilizers (also created in some lab somewhere), and some do it with the assistance of ignorant homonids.
Either way, it is a full blown invasion.

And I love it. Why do I love it? I love it because it is a perfect example of nature at its finest. Sure, some may say that turf grasses are not natural, especially those that are fully dependent on our obsessive-compulsive nature, but the funny thing is that they are natural. Nature has provided for these dear little plants a species so deeply concerned with their survival that they will do just about anything to promote it. That and a little sunshine is all anyone needs, right?

Let's hear it for the grasses!

Quiet times.

Today has been a slow day. Our neighbor was supposed to come by today to help bushhog but he hasn't gotten around to it. As it is, the grasses and tallow trees are growing up all over the place. Most of the vasey grass has had time to make seed and the seeds are ripe now. I'm not familiar with how that stuff grows out here but the pasture was always short before, because of the cows, so there's a possibility that things will really get crazy now that it has time to grow up and propagate. We will see.
I mentioned to Seth how nice it would be to be able to maintain data with GIS technology and then we could *really* get an idea of just how agressive some of these invasive species are. The blackberries are nice for fruit (the fact that they are growing wild means we don't have to tend to them!) but in open patches that haven't been mowed, fresh green growth is shooting up all over the place.
I have a few plants around the place that I still haven't identified. There's something Ronnie calls "tea weed" that I haven't been able to find out about. That grows just as wildly as the thistle and the tallows. Maybe I will take a picture sometime and someone will be able to help me identify it.

Ah yes, and the hens made it through the night. I hope we can set something up for them this weekend.