How to Plant a Planet

Keep celestial bodies cool before planting. Ideally, planetlings should be kept refrigerated or packed in ice or snow.

Where to Plant

Before planting has begun, be sure to Inspect the area with a compound lenticular tool to assess spectral suitability. Competition from weeds, grass, brush or other planetesimals is very detrimental to survival and growth of planetlings. Choose areas free from this competition or clear at least a three-foot square spot before planting.

Handling Planetlings

Planetlings are living things and must be handled carefully. For the highest survival rate, handle planetesimals tenderly and plant them immediately. If planting must be delayed a few days, keep the plantetlings in a cold, protected place with air circulation between them, out of the rain and wind.

When to Plant

Ideal planting days are calm and shady with little wind. If possible, avoid planting on gusty days. The soil should be moist. Care in planting is more important than speed. Make sure the craters are never allowed to become dry. Planetlings should be carried in a glass container with plenty of moist material packed around them to keep them damp. This is a collaborative effort. Your planetesimal knows what to do.

How to Plant

Open up the hole, making sure the space is deep enough for the craters to be fully extended. If craters dry out, they will not be able to take up water correctly, will often weaken and die due to poor crater structure.

Be sure to situate the mother bulb near the planetlings. Leave the mother bulb 70% above soil, while planetlings should be almost nearly covered.

Plant with bulges facing downward. Hold the planetling in place in the hole, making sure the craters are straight, fully extended and that the planetesimal is neither too shallow nor too deep in the hole.

Adapted from: https://dof.virginia.gov/urban-community-forestry/urban-forestry-homeowner-assistance/planting-trees/

Water Regularly

Avoid these planet planting errors:

• Tangled craters

• Planting too shallow

Fill the hole, allowing soil to fall in around the craters. Tamp with hands or with your heel. Fill with more soil, if necessary, and tamp. Tamping is important. If soil is not firmly packed around the craters, there will be air pockets that can dry out the craters, and the planetlings may be weakly anchored. While the addition of fertilizer and plant vitamins at the time of planting is not generally necessary, proper amounts of sun and moon light is essential. Be sure to position moons accordingly.

• Planting too deep

• Air pockets

• Turned up craters

• Planting over rocks

by Johnny Plastini

About hops and their medicinal qualities: Most known for their bittering, flavor, and aroma contributions to countless beer recipes, hops are a member of the Cannabacea family of flowering plants, which includes marijuana as a sibling. Hops are a vigorous and pernicious weed that grow around the world in long entwining bines that produce beautiful conelike structures when flowering. They come in a multitude of species and just like varieties of apples, each variety of hops have their own unique aroma, flavor and aesthetic characteristics. In addition to strong antimicrobial and organic preservative properties, the lupulone, humulone, and other naturally present oleoresins in hop cones can act as calming agents to help with insomnia, anxiety, tension, and cramping. Hops are also recognized medicinally for their mild estrogenic effects in assisting the start of breast milk flow and improved urinary flow for post-partum women, and for reducing the severity of “hot flashes” in menopausal women who regularly supplement their diet with hops.

This hop salt recipe below is a fantastic way to extract the health benefits of hops and supplement your diet regularly with small amounts of hop oleoresins. It is a very simple process that essentially involves making a hop tea in salted water to extract the essential oils, and then either allowing the water to evaporate naturally or dehydrating the mixture in your oven to produce a hop infused salt. Before getting started, it’s important to choose a variety of hops that sound most appealing to you. I personally grow whole cone organic cascade hops in my home garden, but there are myriad options to choose from if you decide to go the route of purchasing pulverized hop pellets from a local homebrew store or online retailer.

A handful of my favorite varieties of hops for salt are:

Cascade [grapefruit zest aroma and flavor, mild fresh spruce, and citrusy orange marmalade]

Citra [lime zest aroma and flavor with strong tropical mango, pineapple, and apricot notes]

Willamette [very earthy and spicey characteristics with notes of alfalfa and black pepper]

Perle [mild fruity pear flavor and aroma mixed with herbaceous mint and thyme characteristics]

Sorachi Ace [lemongrass herbaceous flavor and aroma with undertones of earthy mushroom]

Chinook [very spicey with heavy clove, pine, juniper, and lush sage characteristics]

Nelson Sauvin [fruity and earthy with crushed white grape, gooseberry and hints of allspice]

INSTRUCTIONS AND INGREDIENTS FOR HOP SALT

1OZ HOP PELLETS OR 2OZ WHOLE CONE HOPS

8OZ FRESH WATER

2 CHEESECLOTHS

DRIED PELLETIZED HOPS METHOD

1) Using a mortar and pestle, grind 1oz hop pellets and 3oz sea salt together to a fine powder [almost a flour consistency].

2) Add this 4oz hop/salt mixture to 8oz fresh water, mix until thoroughly dissolved and boil for 5 minutes.

Transfer to a glass bowl and let sit in a cool, dry, dark place lightly covered with a dry cheesecloth until all the water has evaporated and you are left with nothing but a green tinged salt at the bottom of the bowl [about 3 days]. Alternatively, a dehydrator or low heat on a conventional oven [about 150 degrees Fahrenheit] will work well to expedite the evaporation process.

3) Once completely dry, scrape salt from the bottom of the bowl with a spoon, then crush in a mortar and pestle to your desired coarseness and store in a wooden or stone salt cellar.

4) Enjoy! I prefer to make a very fine hop salt and use it as a finishing salt for grilled vegetables or on my air-popped popcorn, but a coarser salt for focaccia can be lovely as well.

FRESH WHOLE-CONE METHOD

1) Add 2oz whole cone hops to 16oz fresh water. Boil for 10 minutes.

2) Pour mixture into a glass bowl ensuring to strain off the whole cone hops with a cheese cloth and squeeze remaining liquid from the hops into the bowl.

3) Let the glass bowl with your mixture sit in a cool, dry, dark place lightly covered with a dry cheesecloth until all the water has evaporated and you are left with nothing but a green tinged salt at the bottom of the bowl [about 3 days]. Alternatively, a dehydrator or low heat on a conventional oven [about 150 degrees Fahrenheit] will work well to expedite the evaporation process.

4) Follow steps 3-4 from ‘Dried Pelletized Hop Method’.

Instructions for compost:

Circle around the pile, barefoot, three times. Stop at the west end and stare deeply into the chaos of silent transformation.

Look around you. Look at what makes you. Look at what you make.

Feel your body braided into permanent impermanence entangled with those billions of beings within.

Slide your hands inside the hot body. Notice how the end of you and the beginning of them has no distinction. Accept it.

Feed on grief like you feed on joy, a symphony of sameness embedded into alluvial veins, into beating blood, into sediments made of bones.

Exchanging lifedeathlifedeath for fragile atmosphere, we rest without shame.

Becoming Glacier

Eco-Housekeeping in the Muckro-cosm

By Linda Weintraub

l. On a warm day in spring. Remove your shoes. Step into a creek or stream that runs through woods. Feel the sensory receptors, that stagnated all winter within the confines of steady-state-climatecontrolled interior spaces, awaken. Linger. This immersion prepares you for delight, devotion, and discovery.

2. Standing ankle deep in creek water allows you to access the logic in eco-logic-al actions. This activity is remote from statistical studies, modeling strategies, regression analyses, and simulations, although these are the trusted tools of many environmentalists. Wading into the creek provides sure footing for choosing a judicious environmental course for launching your journey into the muckrocosm.

3. With your hands and fingers, dredge up the fertile muck that accumulated all fall and winter. Bend low. Reach out. Scoop up the accretions of stones and silt. While backhoes are designed to relieve such labor, using fingers to rake away the gravel is your pathway to the multiplicity of colors, temperatures, densities, weights, sounds, directions, tastes, and smells. Each sensation is enriched because it is traceable to a perceivable source, unlike water that flows predictably and anonymously from faucets.

4. Bending low also provides the ideal vantage point for observing the creek’s virtuoso performance. Placid waters oscillate with splashes, splatters, sprays, and bubbles. Surges, sedimentation, erosion, and accretion reshape the stream’s banks and reroute its course. As you clear away the surface drift, the newly released water tumbles, offering a profusion of topographical features that are as enduring as outcroppings of bedrock and massive tree roots, and as fickle as accumulations of leaf litter and fish nests. Enhance these qualities. Unclog the waterway. Watch clear water flow freely. Create space. Open time. Create a symphony of tumbling water. Restore your drainage to its post-glacial prime – refreshed and unobstructed. Act as a glacier.

5. Even such gentle interventions carry significant consequence. Once you remove the surface deposits from the streambed, you must decide where to place them. That is when watershed house-keeping merges with watershed horticulture. Offer the fertile muck to the young life sprouting along the banks.

5. Options abound. Your decision regarding where to relocate each handful of sediment will determine the fate of crawfish, toads, turtles, moss, and mushrooms. Which species receive new luxury habitats? Which are issued eviction notices?

6. Welcome the wildlife. Unbeckoned, it will conduct the ultimate act of sorting, distributing, claiming, and occupying the aquatic conditions you refurbished, and the terrestrial habitats you refurbished. As partners, you reinvigorate the seasonal and geologic cycles.

Signs Of Death

20% OF CARBON ENTERING THE ATMOSPHERE TODAY WILL STILL BE IN THE AIR 1,000 YEARS FROM NOW

Signs Of Life

THERE ARE 50 BILLION MICROORGANISMS IN ONE TEASPOON OF SOIL

Topo-graph: draw a walk September 2022

Decide where you want to walk, and why. Download a tracking app—I use GPS Tracks. Start your walk, and the app’s tracking feature.

Walk. Seek special places or paths. Find desire lines. Linger when you find points of inspiration. Be aware, and thankful. Observe and detour around interruptions, like roads, fences, waterbodies, buildings. Listen to your body and to your spirit. Follow your feet.

Complete the walk and stop the track. Save it and export it to yourself.

Import your track into a drawing or mapping program, preferably with topography. I use GIS. Print it on paper or another support of your choice. Complete the drawing with your fingers. Seek an exchange between the line made by your feet, those made by your fingers, and the terrain revealed through the map data.

You have made a topo-graph, revealing the interplay between the planet’s flows—gravity, water, sunshine, shade—and your own flows—your feet, your hand, your head, and your heart.

What have you learned? Was your walk beautiful? Was it truncated or edited by regrettable intrusions, human-made or natural? Can you advocate for a more beautiful world, conducive to more beautiful walks?