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Exciting news at the tiny tiny dune wildflower gardenette that is both the smallest and yet the most high-profile landscape on my route.

Last night’s transplant of several blanket-flower babies (Gaillardia pulchella) that sprouted up from cracks in the sidewalk in front of my house has been successful! There’s a certain watering technique for nurturing these gorgeous hardy wildflowers through the transplant stage (thanks Amy for teaching me!) and it has been helped by some additional rain!

One of the blanket-flower plants was in bloom when I carefully eased it up from the sidewalk crack and brought it to this micro-site down the block, and When I stopped by this morning for follow up, I see the beauty has remained in bloom this morning!

The other, smaller babies look healthy too and will probably be producing buds and blooms in a matter of weeks.

#BeachsidePride #PuffyLandscaping #DuneVegetation #SpongeCity #OceanFriendlyRiverFriendlyYards #MakeBeachsidePuffyAgain

PS. Social media technique note: The final image is a montage that I made by screenshotting these shots in my iPhone app. There was one image I didn’t want to include in there so I put the green heart over it. See the post with photos on my deep green Facebook page here.

YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!! Woooooottttt!!!
Mega score today at JoAnne’s little unofficial “members club” produce market!
Yes it is that ever so rare (nowadays) of delicacies, the venerable and delectable seeded watermelon!

Later I will scatter the seeds in the yard so they can stay out in the wild and maybe make baby watermelons! 🤣🤣🤣

And yes Even in the very unlikely event that I manage to grow an actual watermelon in my own yard, which I have never managed to do, I will still always keep buying seeded watermelons from watermelon truck guys, farm market vendors, and other local people who sell them, because we need all the watermelons we can get!

Not only do we need delicious juicy watermelon to sustain us all summer long, but then (if we have extra) dried to enjoy as a fluffy melt-in-mouth candy in the winter!

And — in my humble opinion, and in the opinions of many other people I’ve heard — seedless watermelons just do NOT taste the same. Plus if we get to a point where all the watermelons are seedless, how will we grow any more watermelons? 🤣🤣🤣😯😲

In the event of a military siege by our own rogue government, watermelon has many strategic uses 😀
Just being silly w that last sentence there, but OTOH maybe it does! 🤔💚🍉🍉🍉

Sometimes Murphy’s Law works backwards in a good way! As a last-ditch effort to promote rain, I put some fish and potatoes and veggies out to cook in the solar oven before I set out for my noontime cold delicious beverage break at my neighborhood pub.

When I walked out of the pub it was raining! Woooootttt!! It has continued to rain! The air feels so yummy right now.

And Contrary to usual Murphy’s Law operation, when I got home from the pub, my fish and potatoes and vegetables were fully and deliciously cooked! This is what I mean by Murphy’s Law reversed ha ha

Snapshot from a few days ago, cooked a big stack of waffles in my little outdoor micro kitchen.

Never thought of getting a waffle maker, this just got dropped off on top of my little free library a while back (not something I encourage — and actually i have had signs up asking ppl to please only drop off books please, and ONLY on the shelves — but inevitably items other than books get dropped off there), in a boxed set with a book on how to make waffles! I’ve been having a lot of fun.

I wasn’t going to keep the fancy boxed set at first, I was going to take it to the church as a donation — but then I realized it could help me gain some additional cooking skills that I could share w the community. I’ve learned and practiced and improvised all sorts of fun variations on waffle mix.

And sure enough, the other morning I got to cook a stack of waffles for a hungry passer-by!

Now that I’ve ramped up my skills, I may purchase a larger waffle maker in order to serve the community better, and pass the cute little single waffle maker on to someone who needs it. And will add the book to the little free library shelves. It was a great book for getting started!

PS. I have been unintentionally receiving a lot of lentils and other beans from the food donation industrial complex waste stream (way more than i and my household can ever eat), so those fabulous protein units will be going to make more high protein waffles to nourish the community. 🥰🥰🥰🥰

Today I got to combine 2 domestic tasks related to water: 1) topping off the water in the hand-wash station and foot-wash station just outside the front door; and 2) refreshing the emergency drinking-water supplies as we move into hurricane season.

In rainy season, the little outdoor hand-wash and foot-wash stations get refilled from the rainwater tubs. So much fresh clean rainwater constantly flowing in the typical Florida summer rainy season! Rainwater is delightful and great for the skin. You can feel the smoothness on your skin and it’s lovely.

But sometimes, like now, summer is in full gear and yet the rains are not arriving.

So, today I hit upon the idea of refilling the hand-wash / foot-wash stations from the emergency drinking-water jugs that we keep in the house. And then I refilled those emergency drinking-water jugs from the kitchen tap.

Today I was only refreshing the 1-gallon emergency drinking-water jugs; haven’t tackled the big 6-gallon jugs yet. If we go for more than a few more days without rain, the water from the big 6-gallon jugs will be emptied around the fruit trees etc., then we will refill those big jugs from the bathtub faucet.

You can see the photos here on my deep green Facebook page.

The other day I shared this post by Sustainable Human on Facebook. It popped up on my feed and it’s great so I’m following the page now.

(For those unable to access the post/Facebook: It’s some surprisingly deep musings on clothespins, and how the quality of the new ones is so much inferior to the old ones that were built to last. It is obviously widely applicable to many things you and I can think of. The post shows a photo of two wooden clothespins. One old and built to last, one new. As a person who uses clothespins every day, I constantly experience how flimsy and breakable the newer ones are.)

My thoughts: On a related note, in a real community that’s divested of capitalist/consumerism sickness, people are ALL needed & valued. Everyone’s skills are needed.

In such a community, there will be one person who is good at making clothes pins. It might need to be one person on every block! If people start hanging out their laundry again instead of relying on expensive and high maintenance clothes dryers.

I mean maybe there’ll be more than one person, but my point is that in real community, every single person and all sorts of little skills we don’t usually think of are 100% needed, and I think that’s one of our huge anxieties in capitalist colonizer culture, we define certain people as not being needed, and being superfluous.

This includes very young children and the elderly and people who would be classified as having supposedly unworkable disabilities etc. etc. etc. They can also include people who would in mainstream consumer-capitalist society be written off as mentally ill or deranged and impossible to deal with. If we all need each other, we all have to find ways of talking with each other!

Wait and see what happens when the only person in your community who knows how to repair machinery or catch fish or make clothespins or whatever is the person you thought was useless. By the way, it’s not only skills; it’s also patience or stamina or whatever you would call it. Not everybody has the patience, mix of inclinations, etc. for every task.

(Note, Even though the post I shared points out that the good old chopstick is made of hardwood, I doubt they are saying we need to be chopping down distant hardwood forests just to make clothes pins. We can all be growing enough local wood in our communities/bioregions so that we can sustainably fell some trees for our clothespins and chopsticks and other things we need.)

Coffee-jar cover that I hand-sewed from someone’s discarded koozie that was still new. (Hey, it’s a beach town and a tourist town so it’s also a thrift upcycle scavenger’s town lol.)

The custom cover on my enamelled metal cup is similarly hand-sewn and has a crocheted bottom.

I’m making this post not to brag about my very modest accomplishments but rather, as a demonstration of how sewing is constantly in demand if we step out of relentless consumerism. Same with carpentry and a bunch of other basic skills.

(Very important! Note, my posts are never meant to shame anybody who needs to buy stuff and doesn’t have time to make stuff. We live in a rushed treadmill world. And those of us who are capable of stepping back or walking out of it even partially are responsible for helping those who are more stuck. We need to share our time, talents, money, encouragement etc.)

A big thing I’m trying to say here is that sewing and needlework have become “crafty recreation hobbies.” Granted, they are very fun crafty hobbies. But a lot of ladies of a certain age who just love to crochet and knit and sew, run out of recipients for the items that they lovingly make.

Whereas in a less consumer – centered time, Sewing etc. was mandatory and constantly there were things that needed to be sewed and mended. I always have a bit of a mending pile of dish towels that need hemming, old towels that needs cutting up, Clothing and household items that need to be patched etc. In addition I always have a mental pile of a wish list of things I plan to get around to making.

In this mode, I rarely run out of recipients for my handiwork, because I’m busy making stuff that my household needs! Of course this does not preclude sharing with one’s friends and neighbors as well. I sometimes do give away my handstitched bags and other creations. I gave one to a tourist in need a few weeks ago, and one to an unhoused neighbor awhile back. And one to the lady I buy my organic produce from. To serve as a prop to encourage their customers to get in the habit of reusable bags.

Interestingly, the mending pile doesn’t have to be a treadmill. If the “sewing head of household” Has some autonomy, as many of us have these days, we get to decide how to chip away at the pile and only our inner stern critic is our enemy.

Why is all of the above, why does it matter? Well, making and bending things by hand is intrinsically fulfilling those of us who are inclined in that direction. Same as carpentry is fulfilling for people who are drawn to build things. And mechanics is fulfilling for people who love to repair equipment and machinery. These are all wonderful fulfilling activities, and in a society where more of us refuse to be only consumers, and insist on stepping up to our natural human state of being makers and producers, these activities become daily vital Lifesprings of the household.

Hope this makes sense, I have had a lot of thoughts lately so I’ve gotten a little bit less picky and less edity in my communication.

I don’t want to be a little old lady who needs to make things so badly that the stuff I make ends up being a huge volume piled up in someone’s closet. For somebody else to have to declutter, and then it goes to landfill. Actually it’s been some years since I had that worry, but I did used to worry that my innate drive to make things would just end up producing piles of junk and trash. Now everything I make is essential because it’s driven by my actual personal needs and household needs!

And honestly not all of us need intricate work to keep us entertained. Some of us are content to spend hours just plain old thread and needle making plain old seams. The mental benefits are the same! And even better if you have a little crafting circle who sit and chat. It’s been a while since I’ve had that — and may never again unless people are willing to meet outdoors a bit more — but I still immensely enjoy sitting and stitching and tuning into the quiet and calm channel of the universe.

Pix here on my Deep Green Facebook page!