Magic Spots

It's lame to post old essays from long ago. One reason to do so is that I am tying to get me in the swing of posting about gardening. Another reason is that it's an easy way to get the formatting of the text in a more easily transferable format. Right now all I have are the posts recovered from a Topica list which doesn't appear to be visible to the public, but somehow is still on the servers there. Try as I might I can't get the line breaks right. Posting them here allows me to get the text into a form I can work with. In addition it allows me to put in hyperlinks which I didn't know how to do at the time.

It's January and it's cold in Western Pennsylvania. Around six I carried a bit of firewood to my house and noticed the fading sunset. The days are getting longer, but as my grandmother would say: "The days get longer but the cold grows stronger."

The photo is a tree that came crashing down last winter. A few days before Christmas a Blue Spruce was blown down in strong winds. I thought of the picture because of the magic spots I remember most, they've on grand fallen trees. I distinctly remember as a small boy exploring I discovered a tall Tulip Poplar that had fallen down a small hill, such that as I walked out on it I was high above the ground below. I rather shudder about the idea of being unsupervised at such a young age. On the other hand that tree was one of my great discoveries of my life. It was not just the tree, but the decision to explore in it that was so revealing to me. Surely had I been supervised, I would have been told to stay out of it.

I can think of a couple of other occasions being on a fallen tree which were transcendent. Perhaps you too have memories of finding magic spots in nature?




MAGIC SPOTS

August 12, 2001

The Incompetent gardener was once an incompetent teacher, and I worked for a time at an environmental learning center. Groups of mostly third though fifth graders would come through for multi-day engagements. So they got to spend the night in a camp-like setting. One of the stock lessons that we did was called Magic Spots. The kids were led into the woods and told that they could have a minute or two to find a spot to sit alone to be still and quiet for a while.

Of all the activities, this was the one that caused the most controversy with parents. Some were convinced that the whole exercise was a “New Age” plot to proselytize young pagans. Most educators have little concern for proselytizing. Groups of education majors came to the center for practical experiences in teaching. In explaining the activity, never once did I hear a critique from a religious perspective. But the activity was generally met with skepticism following two types. First was about the objective. Education majors are primed to think in terms of measurable objectives. This is considered an “immersion” activity and the objective here is a skill: observation. This still didn’t satisfy many new teachers. They asked:

“What exactly are they observing? How will we know if they saw it?”

The second area of skepticism was about what is euphemistically known as “classroom management”.

“So the kids are going to sit quietly in the rain for twenty minutes - right?”

But I saw hundreds of kids trooped into the woods and they loved this activity more than all the others.

The treks into the woods were neatly choreographed so that the groups entered at various trailheads; it seemed to each group that they were the only ones in the woods—on a good day. The leaders would take the kids to a predestinated area, stop with them to read something short and inspiring then let them choose a spot nearby. Much of being a teacher is simply keeping track of kids, so the leader would have to find a spot where she could keep an eye out for the kids and then wait. Twenty minutes can seem like an interminable amount of time in a slushy drizzle. But, while the kids might be boisterous on their way into the woods, they were almost always silent on the walk out. In the cafeteria at lunch, the podium and mike was opened for some of the children to tell about their experiences. The kids clamored to tell their stories, and they gushed with enthusiasm. The magic of Magic Spots was still lost on many of the teachers, but it was obvious to everyone that the kids really gained from it.

As any teacher knows, children are first-rate observers; it’s just that their attentions are so varied. And trooping one’s charges through the woods it was often difficult to keep them from testing the projectile characteristics of different objects, from turning every stone, and from felling dead trees. Somehow these same kids could sit still and absorb the world around them better than I could with much practice. They saw skeletal leaves, birds, squirrels, and brightly colored fungi. They created poetry about the spot. Because I was located near them, I saw many of the same things that would so move them:

Goodness, there’s a pileated woodpecker. Here’s a hickory nut there must be a hickory near by. Ah! A fine patch of wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens.

But in naming the world around me, I was never enchanted so much by the sights and sounds, colors and moods, textures and smells, as they were.

There was plenty of mumbo-jumbo in the curriculum and the purpose was theatrical more than anything. So perhaps it is not so surprising that these Magic Spots were controversial. It is not uncommon to think of places as having a life and history. We speak of holy ground, sacred space, and of hauntings. Asking the children to find a “special” place and telling them that they’ll know it when it feels right certainly contributes to their enchantment. But it also overlaps with our adult constructs of place and morality. It was our ancestor, Cain the gardener--apparently an incompetent one at that because the Lord didn’t look favorably on his offering--who slew his shepherd brother Abel. The Lord confronted Cain asking:

What have you done? Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood, crying out to me from the ground.

And from that story on comes a sense that it’s probably not good news when the ground is doing the talking. Dowsers are still often employed to find spots for a well, but this harmless occupation is suspect for other than merely scientific reasons; it all seems a little too witchy.

Still after a school term of sitting quietly in the woods daily with children, I resolved that I should continue to practice Magic Spots. I haven’t really applied myself. I suppose I have thought about special spots around the property and considered making certain spots commemorative and memorable too. The closest thing to magical spot on our property is a stone outcropping. The kids have always located it when they come to visit, even though they have to plod through a bit of bramble to claim it. I can look out my window sometimes to see our cat surveying the hunting prospects while sitting on it, and I’ve used it for sunbathing. The sense of enchantment that can come from a Magic Spot, though, has generally happened without a thought of where I sat and certainly without deliberately fashioning the place.

The other evening I was sitting on the lawn and happened to observe the silhouette of a tall Ash, Fraxinus americana, on the edge of the property. It is probably the tallest tree on the property; the first limb of the straight-as-an-arrow trunk is over twenty feet above the ground. Rather too close to it is a mature Boxelder, Acer negundo. The wood of the Boxelder, or as it is sometimes and more informatively known, Ash-leaved Maple, is soft and not particularly useful. Its shallow root system prevents anything from growing beneath it and the tree regularly sheds dead branches. But it is a huge tree whose mammoth trunk bifurcates only about five feet from the ground, so I've envisioned building a tree fort in it some day. On that evening it was the Ash that caught my attention. Before I could fully register the thought, a fearsome face appeared through the blank spaces of the black leaves. Then as quickly as it appeared the face in the tree soften and seemed rather cartoonish.

I gazed in amusement and wonder at the tree for time before the outline silhouette became visible to me again. It was beautiful. On subsequent evenings I’ve gone out to look for the face. The next night all I could see was the cartoon face. But on the evening after that I waited for the moon to rise and at first saw the cartoon face. And I thought that it was the upturned mouth that made it appear friendly. Suddenly again the monster face appeared and it was the mouth that looked so frightening, like the square mouth of a lion with sharp incisor teeth. It didn’t really startle me, after all the face is just a play of light between the leaves of the tree and my imagination. Soon the more friendly face returned. The tree still surprises me because I’m never quite sure what face I’ll see.

I’m glad that I look at the tree at night and see its face. It is the subtle confusion between it and me that’s so enchanting and magic. It’s fun and informative to learn the names of the plants in the garden, to study their habits, their uses, and their attractiveness to man and beast. But one can become a little too possessive in these activities. The world around us has things to say that we never dreamed of until hearing them. The kids in their magic spots watched and listened and the distinction between outside and inside was not so clearly made. They were enchanted by it.

Sources:

Magic Spots is an activity outlined with many others in: Van Matre, Steve, Sunship Earth: An Acclimatization Program for Outdoor Learning

One the best books on tree identification is also one of the least
expensive: Harlow, William M., Trees of the Eastern and Central United States and Canada. New York, Dover 1957. Searching on Amazon and not finding it made me suspect the book was out of print. Of course Dover had republished it as the original was first published in the early 1940's.

Dover Publications is a treasure. The Wikipedia entry tells the story of Hayward and Blanche Cirkers and their Dover Publications. I'm delighted that the Courier Corporation is continues the brand. Nonetheless my first instinct thinking the book was out of print was to go to ABE (Advanced Book Exchange) and plug in William H. Harlow into the database. Sometimes I'm amazed by the high prices out-of-print books command. But most of the time they are very cheap, and that's the case with Harlow's books. If you are interested in knowing more about trees, an old textbook by the distinguished dendrologist Harlow might become one of your prized possessions.

Seed Catalogs

Early New Years day 22 year-old Oscar Grant was shot to death by a BART police officer while restrained in their custody. Video of the event was taken by a passenger on a BART train at the station stop and uploaded to YouTube among other places. In response there were protests in Oakland later that week. When I signed into Flickr photos from the protest were featured. Among those who uploaded pictures was The Inadvertent Gardener. I think that's a swell name and probably gets to the serendipity aspect of gardening that I was going for with The Incompetent Gardener. Today via Beth's Blog I discovered that The Inadvertent Gardener blogs! She's way more together than I am, so I can't begrudge her the name. In fact, the smart reader will hurry over there to that place now. That is unless of course for some reason you haven't received any seed catalogs in the mail and want to read a warmed over piece I wrote about them in 2001.




SEED CATALOGS

November 6, 2001

In autumn the realization that winter is coming always creeps up on me. One would think that having years of experience the fact of winter would be easily remembered, but a part of me holds out for the hope that perhaps it may not come this year. Still by the end of October the early sunsets and chilly evenings remind me that this will be another year with four seasons. Every sunny autumn day is like stealing a little summer and becomes all the more precious. As I'm going through this old post right now it's about two degrees F outside with a bitter wind.

Just before Halloween my copy of the Thompson & Morgan seed catalog arrived in the mail. Every year I spend many hours pouring over seed offerings and have many favorite catalogs. One of my favorites is Thompson & Morgan; one of the best things about the catalog is that it arrives early. They have a very wide selection and provide beautiful color photographs of most of the flowers. I order seeds from many different companies and have a fondness for them all. So I’m reluctant to single out Thompson & Morgan as my favorite company. Nevertheless, if your mailbox isn’t stuffed with seed catalogs and you plan to send for one, Thompson & Morgan is a good choice because it is such a good plant reference and has so many offerings.

Park Seed is another very good catalog and for many of the same reasons: wide selection, good cultural information, and photographs. Parks has a very inexpensive shipping charge too, which makes it easy to order just a packet or two of seeds.

Seeds are relatively inexpensive in comparison to plants, but it is still possible to spend quite a lot on seeds. I do indeed compare prices by looking at the price and also the quantity. Generally a packet of seeds will provide plenty of plants for the home gardener, but packets for some hybrids and special seeds hold very small quantities. Sometimes seeds are sold by weight and other times by the number of
seeds.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds provides information of the number of seeds per a given quantities for many of the plants they sell, but figuring it out for packets is usually an academic question for flowers. Nichols Garden Nursery sells many of their seeds by weight and their packets are generous. Many of the same varieties will be found in the different catalogs, but the all the catalogs have developed a niche for themselves. Cooks Garden Seeds developed a devoted following by offering a huge selection of lettuce varieties. Renee's Garden have made their name by selling vegetable and flowers particularly well suited to backyard gardeners.

There’s faith and then there’s confidence. Seed catalogs are only exciting if one is anticipating planting seeds, and for many that seems a daunting prospect. I’ve planted many a seed packet without actually growing the plants to maturity, sometimes not even getting the seeds to germinate. Nevertheless I’ve grown so many plants from seed that I have a degree of confidence about growing plants this way. But seeds are
such a miracle that that faith is remembered in planting them.

My mother has a hard time with plant names and once remarked, “I can’t seem to remember their names unless I’ve raised them as babies.” She’s right that growing seedlings usually does mean that one is more familiar and connected to the plants. There’s nothing wrong with planting a garden from plants purchased in pots. Still there’s much to be gained in starting some of your own, and it’s not so hard.

Seed catalogs generally offer quite a bit of cultural information about the seeds and the plants they’ll become. Gleaning this information sometimes requires interpreting the code that the company provides. It is worth delving into these codes as the information improves the odds for success. Thompson & Morgan’s system for providing cultural information is well presented with a symbols and abbreviations. These
are presented in a fold out page on the back cover for easy reference. With a little practice the symbols are committed to memory making little need to refer to it.

They classify plants according to type, e.g. annual, perennial, biennial, etc.; provide the number of days from sowing to germination and the temperature range for best results; the amount of sun the plant prefers; and give a guide to both the ease of germination and the ease of after care. This is their “Green Fingers Guide” and it is helpful as they offer some demanding plants. Also they have symbols denoting special notes, e.g. that a plant is poisonous, or has edible flowers; makes a good pot or is well suited for baskets. One of my favorite symbols is for perennials that flower the first year from seed. Generally perennials take at least a year from sowing to flower, but there are happy exceptions and it’s nice to know about them.

Variety, and quality are good reasons for buying seeds by mail; you’ll simply not be able purchase some any other way. Most of the mail order seed companies do extensive trailing of the seeds they sell as well as plant development. Thompson & Morgan is a British company, but have had North American offices for a long time. Their cultural information is well documented for American gardeners. Parks trials are done in the U.S., as are most of the other catalogs listed, so their offerings have proven themselves for American gardens. Most of the companies also do lab testing to assure that their seeds have good germination rates and provide extra seed when they fall below the norm. Seed companies generally offer good service, fair prices, and superior seeds.

The seed catalogs that arrive mostly before Christmas provide me with pleasant interludes of “arm chair” gardening. The seeds themselves provide many hours of enjoyment. As a freshman in college I responded to an ad from Parks for a packet of cactus seeds. I was anticipating getting on their mailing list, but a catalog never came. The seeds did, however, and it was fascinating to have respectable looking cactuses by the end of the term. I mention this to suggest that even if one isn’t ready to commit to planting a garden’s worth of seedlings, growing a packet or two on a windowsill is easy and enjoyable. Even grass seed will provide an interesting indoor plant and nothing could be easier! Certainly too there are many seeds that will thrive by direct sowing. Requesting a seed catalog and ordering a few packets is an enriching gardening experience. Do so if your not already an avid fan of seed
catalogs.

The post on seed catalogs I'd write today, if I weren't so lazy, wouldn't quite be the same. The picture shows six of my favorite catalogs as of now. The choice to concentrate on Thompson & Morgan is a bit odd, but there is a certain logic to it. The catalog remains an excellent guide for people just beginning to try to start from seeds. Seeds are quite a lot more expensive than they were in 2001, and I'm more reluctant now than I was to put up the money. Pinetree Garden Seeds offers some of the best values on seeds for the home gardener. I absolutely love J. L. Hudson Seedsman and if I could only have one catalog that would be the one I'd want. Jung Seeds and Plants is very good. While the post concentrates on seeds, one of the recommendations I'll make about Jung is they have always (almost) sent plants correctly marked. As far as seeds got they are the place to get the latest introductions. Seeds of Change is an especially good catalog if you're interested in organic seed.

Hard Times

The great thing about starting a new blog is chances are nobody's reading, so I can pretty much say whatever I want. Most everything I write is a disconnected ramble anyhow. It's been a few days since I posted anything here and I wanted to visit if nothing else to remind me that this blog is here as I try to figure out what I'm trying to do.

I get most of my news online these days. I seek out news, but there is so much truth in what psychologist Karl Jung observed: "people cannot stand too much reality" sometimes creeps up and that not being able to handle it creeps up at times.

Underlying the reasoning for this blog is that people alive today face two dire challenges to our ways of living: First is the down slope of peek oil and second anthropomorphic climate change. Obviously both are really big problems, but both are problems that our individual lives cannot but be affected by. I'm not ready. And it's not particularly a comfort to look around to see hardly anyone else is either.

James Howard Kunstler is well known for his book The Long Emergency which was influential in widening the awareness of the general public about the convergence of these twin challenges. This Rolling Stone article provides a synopsis of the book. I also read Kunstler's weekly posts at his blog.

Kunstler's writing can be quite acerbic and he adept at using the time-honored Internet tradition of ridicule. I like that in moderation, but too much is enervating. Something I've noticed is that as oil prices have skyrocketed and plunged over the past year Kunstler's tone seems to have mellowed a bit. His most recent post contrast two realities out in the public discourse: The dominant reality,The Status Quo view, where after this economic rough patch things will get back on track like they were. And the minority reality, which he handily calls, "The Long Emergency" where we've got to make radical adjustments in the way we do things and soon. I'm of the opinion that the minority reality is closer to the truth.

Kunstler writes of the minority view:

Since the change it proposes is so severe, it naturally generates exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance that paradoxically reinforces the Status Quo view, especially the deep wishes associated with saving all the familiar, comfortable trappings of life as we have known it. The dialectic between the two realities can't be sorted out between the stupid and the bright, or even the altruistic and the selfish.

Kunstler goes on to make predictions for 2009. It seems a an ordinary thing to do this time of year. So even in exchanging New Years greetings it's hard not to bring up the atrocities in the news as we do. I might think it's just me being a whiner, but I'm noticing that my friends can't seem to help themselves either. We all know we might be wrong in our predictions, but as never before I get the sense most of us really hope we're wrong.

Here's a prediction I'm make: President Obama won't get much of a "honeymoon." Political leaders are important, but it seems too much to try ot lay salvation in their hands. It seems the best we can do is to try to develop reasonable views of the situation as we see it and pull others towards what constructive things we can do. I believe gardening is one of those constructive things. Perhaps this blog can serve some good purpose in that arena.

When thinking about Kunstler's point about cognitive dissonance reinforcing the Status Quo view, I thought of the song Baltimore composed by Randy Newman on his 1977 album Little Criminals. It's such a great song that many performers have covered it. There's a verse that stuck in my head:

And they hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
'Cause the city's dyin'
And they don't know why

I love YouTube for music. But I'm often a bit shocked how videos there sometimes make me feel old. There are many renditions of the song I love. Nina Simone's is there, and there's a nice video of Newman performing the song at a 2006 concert in Stuttgart. One of may favorite versions was done by the reggae band Third World. There version hasn't been posted, but there is a great version by the Tamlins. In the wonderful YouTube tradition there's a response video which is Scientist--Taxi to Baltimore Dub recorded contemporaneously to the Tamlin's record at King Tubby's Studios. Listening to that it hit me that these records are almost thirty years old. Yikes! One consolation was then to watch a video of Sly and Robbie & TAXI Gang at a fairly recent concert in Seattle. The young people in that audience seemed to be able to Chant Down Babylon.

Ah, well the Scientist Dub video provided the picture of the taxi for this post. If you're a fan of Dub, be sure to check out Scientist Club at YouTube because they uploaded lots of great videos.

The picture is appropriate in an incompetent gardener sort of way. The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions
has produced an important documentary How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. Well, the Cuban Taxi is somehow related. The video is available for purchase or can be viewed online. It's very important, and speaks to the fact that it takes some time to develop gardening skills as well as to get garden soils healthy enough for productive yields. The Community Solutions Web site is very worthwhile perusing as there's lots of great information there.

I know I can't take too much reality. Sometimes the news leaves me overwhelmingly sad. Music always seems to make me feel better, even sad songs like Baltimore. Efforts like Community Solutions make me feel better too. There is much we cannot change, but somethings we can. Much of what we can do, like gardens, music, parties, community building, are real and can make us feel good.

I predict hard times ahead in 2009. And I predict we can make some happy times and take joy too. I am an incompetent gardener, but there's much joy to be had not just in feeding hungry stomachs, but our hungry souls as well.

The Numenous Garden

I was searching for a word for one of my motivations for gardening and thought of a word that impressed me, numina.

Numina gets underlined with a squiggly line by my spellchecker. That's a good sign of obscurity. The first definition in the American Heritage Dictionary of the singular numen is: The presiding divinity or spirit (of a place). I recall enthusiasm for garden devas in certain circles and liked the sound of the plural form numina.

I only came on it from the word numinous, an adjective I understood to mean “sensing holiness;” “The American Heritage Dictionary” provides the definition: “Spiritually elevated.” I wanted a noun and searched the dictionary. The word I want is numinousness, but it isn't listed. I'm convinced that its a perfectly good word. Anyway, I'm glad to have found the word numina; I like it.

I was having a beer with a friend whose mechanical competency I admire. I was marveling at his clever solution to the problem of removing and reinstalling the engine to his backhoe. He had removed the bucket and propped the arms with angle iron. Then with a heavy steel bar between the arms he had attached a winch to hoist the engine. And reveling in his telling of the trials and tribulations of rebuilding the engine, although I had only the vaguest notion of what he was talking about
He said:

“Sometimes I put out little pieces of bread or cake out
and it seems like it helps to keep the fairies and pixies off my case.
You know, stuff like loosing my tools in plain sight.”

My face remained grave and my mouth shut suiting the masculine tenor of the conversation. But my friend's fiancee and gardening buddy cast her eyes towards me and gave me a wink; they know I believe in fairies and pixies too.

My favorite storybook as a young boy was Rupert. The stories follow a familiar pattern of children's literature: a child wanders from the safety of home to explore the wider world and returns safely. Rupert is a venerable comic strip in the British Paper, Daily Express. During World War II space was limited by rationing, but space was made for Rupert the Bear to contribute to morale.

My affinity for fanciful creatures inhabiting the natural world can be traced to my childhood delights in the adventures of Rupert, a bear in a comic strip and his encounters with fairy beings. As time has passed since its beginning in 1920, Rupert has had three illustrators. My storybook was from the long
middle period when Alfred Bestall wrote and illustrated the strip. Bestall's story lines followed the fairy tale tradition including underworld beings such as Brownies.

I understand that in today's Rupert such encounters have been ditched in favor of the more pragmatic sensibilities of today's youth. But the popularity of the Harry Potter books suggests that kids haven't lost their taste for fantasy. I haven't read the new comic and I'm curious to. But from looking at the new illustrations on the Web, I can see that the numinous rendering of the natural world that Bestall masterfully captured is retained,; oh well, I really don't know about that. Of course Rupert of my childhood was experienced through books aided by my active imagination.

What does capture the some of the numinousness of Rupert from my childhood is a 1985 film, the brain child of Paul McCartney, Rupert And the Frog Song. Apparently it was re-released on DVD in 2004, but I can find no trace of that at Amazon. There are copies of it for sale on VHS tape, and pricey at that. I noticed a short piece today about this being the last Christmas that a distributer of VHS tapes will be shipping them out. Ah, but there are several clips of the film at YouTube. Here's a link to the climactic scene. The whole film is lovely and I found myself looking at some of the other clips too.

I grow Inula helenium, Elecampane because I read somewhere--probably some cleaver ad copy-- “Fairies live beneath it.” It's probably long past time that I gave up such childishness. And it curious why I'd want to invite fairies into the garden as folklore makes plain they are hardly always beneficent. If I were to encounter a garden deva, gnome, brownie, pixies, fairy, or Pan himself, I'd surly leap right out of my skin! It's not as if I expect to see them.

The numen, the presiding spirit of a place, suggest a being of some dimension. The American spirit conjures up a different notion; a psychological outlook and shared values.

The quintessential American poet begins his epic poem about the Civil
War, John Brown's Body:

“American muse, whose strong and diverse heart
So many men have tried to understand
But only made it smaller with their art,
Because you are as various as your land...”

The plan for American global hegemony and domination is a grand
ambition. In this time of war, the call rings out: “Either your with us or against us.” The sound is clear and shrill; still it's too small an ambition. It diminishes the big and diverse heart of our American spirit.

Donald Rumsfeld strikes out against critics of American warring as aiding terrorists. He complains about “hits” the administration is taking and said, “It is hard to function in the world without there being losses.” I read recently that nearly 40,000 of the troops wearing American uniforms in Iraq are “green card soldiers,” aliens seeking a fast track to American citizenship.

Today many of our social institutions are riven by polarized opinions. Regardless of which end of the political spectrum Americans find themselves, perhaps we might all agree that Americans are big hearted. How strange then to cast an accusing finger towards those of us who ask, “What are we loosing? Who lies wounded? Who has died?

While garden devas, fairies and a tendency to attribute human characteristics to plants and animals begs the label flaky, “numinousness” isn't so easily dismissed. Gardening is in part a spiritual journey.

Sometimes in the garden the awareness of the sacred is present. It's not something I've made rather something I'm responding too. It's a feeling of awe, wonder, and being a part of creation. It's not the garden alone I experience numinousness. The experience is something we've all had. Perhaps we experience it in a beautiful landscape, or perhaps in the light at sunset; sometimes, somehow some moments in time
are special.

More competent gardeners than I know that gardening often demands a ruthlessness. Seedlings need thinning so plants will thrive, and pruning to insure fruit. It's often observed that spiritual growth begins when a person critically examines closely held notions and casts off ideas that serve poorly or do not map accurately the way things are. So our gardens in sometimes mirror our spiritual journeys.

Sometimes in our gardens, in certain magic moments a numinous present is experienced. Living is sacred. War means dying.

~~
This post was written September 7, 2003. I updated it with links and made a few other changes.

Welcome

Hello I'm John Powers and I'm an incompetent gardener. Almost ten years ago when I first got online. I discovered email lists and wrote a couple of dozen posts under the guise of The Incompetent Gardener. I'm not sure these essays are very good, in fact I'm fairly sure they're not. But I loved writing them and discovering the pleasure to be had in putting content on the Web. I'd like to update them with links to make them as current as possible.

The word "incompetent" has quite negative connotations. One might expect, for example that I might be utterly bonkers, out of my gourd. Surely I do have a few screws loose, but I'm not legally incompetent. Rather it's more that I'm unskilled, and probably don't have a keen awareness of that fact. So what I mean by saying I'm an incompetent gardener is that I tend to treat my gardening adventures as experiments that have a good chance of not working out, but still hoe along not unduly concerned about failing. Part of the process is learning, yet because my approach is haphazard to begin with what I learn almost always comes as a surprise.

I'm a rather incompetent blogger as well. I most frequently update, but not frequently enough, my blog Bazungu Bucks. Bazungu Bucks is a blog that seeks to explore how communities outside the African continent can engage productively with communities in Africa. More specifically how I might be of service to a few friends in Uganda. I often just write about what's on my mind at that blog. Another blog I sometimes maintain is Hats for Health. The premise of that blog is that what the people of the world really need are clean water and more parties. I've tried to join the two in encouraging paper hat fashions that might be a way to fund raise for clean water projects, and at least promote gleeful parties.

I'm awful at raising money for anything. Still money is useful and over and over again I've found that money in support of worthwhile community projects can go along way to assuring better lives in Uganda. With that in mind, I've got some half baked ideas. Among them is to put together some books or e-books about gardening and paper hat making with the proceeds going to various projects I care about in Uganda. The nice thing about blogging is that it's a way to collect writing, and writing with nice hyperlinks.

The economy is tanking, and the situation looks dire. Growing more of our own food locally, even in our back yards, can go along way to stretching our budgets and staving off hunger. I've been at this incompetent gardening thing for a while, so I know that growing things is sometimes harder than we think. Sometimes a bit of encouragement can go along way towards keeping on. So perhaps this blog can be of some little service to fellow gardeners.

None of this is all to sensible. In general outlines what I have in mind is a blog about growing things without knowing too much, but with a steady expectation that gardening is full of pleasant surprises.