Location: Colorado

I feel so much dread.

I hike a lot around the Front Range, and the woods are so silent compared to when I moved here in 2002. I used to always see chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, magpies, juncos…it was gorgeous. Now I’m lucky to see a couple of birds within a two-hour hike.

It’s a weird, different, quiet world. I miss the birds.

Location: Lost in space and time

Gotta keep the spirit alive, right?

I have a few cultivars of corn. My very commercial popcorn rocketed out of the ground and was ready for harvest around the time I would expect, despite temperamental weather. My very not-commercial Chiapas corn was still only knee-high by that point. Of course, I am not in Chiapas. However this heirloom seems to be developing much later than I would have expected, and I can very much confirm that it is much later than my commercial cultivars. Nonetheless it is doing well. The first silks have just sprouted within the past week, the tassels maybe a week sooner. My tallest plant is one-and-a-half stories tall. I’m going to need a ladder to hand pollinate these.

I’ve had some luck with tomatoes, but mostly because I planted so many. Half of the plants haven’t born any fruit and I doubt they will at this point. My wild sorghum, on the other hand, has had multiple harvests and are preparing another. Amaranth has also had a multiple-harvest season. Sunflowers were a single but bountiful harvest. Ginger is surprisingly viable. Grapes are doing okay, they seem to have some nutrient deficiency and I doubt how deep their roots can are getting, but they continue branching. I don’t understand potatoes yet but store-bought potatoes sprouted at least. The bigger squash are managing well, the ones that struggled early will probably not fruit. My brassicas did well and some might have given multiple harvests, but the pests have been incredible.

Pollinator weeds are doing fairly well, much better in my supplemented soil than the compact native soil, but well regardless.

I might rent a tiller next year to maximize how much I can extend my garden beds into the compact, native soil. Once the soil is loose, everything wants to sprout, even though the nutrients are poor. So I will need to plant prolifically to minimize the need for weeding. Weeding seems to be pretty essential for keeping pests and disease away. Especially for annuals.

The wildlife has eaten 90% of my tomatoes. Oh well. I hope they poop the seeds out everywhere. The squirrels dig entire plants out of pots looking for their nuts. Something has a habit of decapitating anything that doesn’t taste good - I had to reroot a few dracaenas due to it. It also beheaded my magic berry plant but I managed to care for it until new leaves sprouted. I haven’t seen many varieties of game come through, though. Mostly just small mammals.

Mods are busy. Not that we have much traffic anyway.

It’s incredibly hot in my region for this time of year; basically summer temperatures in October. It’s a bit trippy when the leaves are all changing or fallen and I can’t split wood without pouring sweat and overheating after ten minutes.