There’s a lot of chaos this weekend, It’s countrywide, but today it hit my ordinarily quiet corner of Chicago. Racial unrest isn’t a regular topic for this blog, but I feel a need to express sympathy for everyone suffering both from historical mistreatment and recent events. The sirens tonight are a minor inconvenience for me, but I know they carry much more significance to many others.
Returning to our regularly scheduled coverage
In the gardens, there’s not much to report this week. There’s been much weeding, and I’ve potted on the dahlias and balsam. I’ve also started adding the excess flowers to the prairie bed. They aren’t winter-hardy but should help to shade out some weeds and look pretty in the process. I’ll need to do another round of infill planting on that bed next year. First, to add diversity and second to add more density. I’m pretty aggressively fighting the persistent shrubs. I think I’ll need to start a midweek prune to control them as well for the time being.
In the house, I’m making more progress. I wrote a phased business plan for Pumpkinseed. It’s not a detailed plan with numbers, but it does demonstrate a baby-stepped approach to intelligently developing sustainable operations and learning transferable skills. Along with the fish, I’ve invested in a worm farm for the basement. I can use the worms to recycle cardboard and kitchen waste into compost and should help with my increasing surplus of cardboard. I’ve not seen the floor of my sunporch in a year thanks to the recycling pile, and that needs to change.
Aquaponics Update
I’m increasingly interested in the potential for aquaponic ornamental plants in addition to edible produce. Particularly, the practicality of growing plants with always wet feet in a film of aquarium water. This is working really well for African Violets and I’m going to investigate other alternatives. I might also leverage this for WabiKusa cultivation of aquarium plants.