This post talks about plans for Pagan Spirit Gathering as well as things I'm gardening.
So I recruited a couple friends to go to Pagan Spirit Gathering with me, including my girlfriend (who first came last year) and one of my best friends (whose first year is this year). These are also the two people I took out on their first deer hunting trips, so we named our little camp... Deer Camp! Which it will remain unless my vegetarian friend comes in further years.
All our stuff is ordered for it other than food, which is all at least planned out. It should be a super cool setup including our tents, a canopy (which will be decorated with deer stuff and probably house a group shrine), a fire pit, and a grill. It'll be closer to glamping than I'm normally into while still being more primitive than, say, a camper or a setup with a generator.
I'm looking forward to taking advantage of pretty much everything queer and men's mysteries related because I'm starting to veer more masculine and am actively planning top surgery to masculinize my chest (my consultation is in two days). I have a lot of kind of dedication/self improvement stuff I want to do, too, but that's a little more personal (at least for now).
So... gardening. I planted all my seeds, with varying success ( like usual). My corn and beans are all coming up, the squash was quite variable and so I planted more of it later. It's unclear but I may have just planted it a bit early. I also planted more corn and beans to kind of fill things in, and used a fish-and-seaweed based fertilizer on it.
I've been putting off pulling the weeds from my garden because I couldn't tell the difference between them and my new plants for a while. Today I set down my phone playing music that is made for plants (I got this idea from a BBC documentary I watched called "How Plants Communicate and Think" which talks about the rudimentary yet fascinating "consciousness" of plants), then got on my knees and pulled all the weeds I couldn't use. I kept some useful weeds there that I don't have readily available elsewhere and didn't slash and burn the whole thing, but there's now a lot more room for the plants I'm cultivating.
A couple of plants got nibbled by the bunnies so I used a mix of blood and essential oil around the perimeter of the garden to keep them away.
Some plants that came back successfully... a lot of tomatoes. I have a nice self-sustaining tomato operation; the most successful tomatoes in this climate have been naturally reseeding themselves in a patch of dirt we have and growing into robust cherry tomatoes. I did seed some wild tomatoes but they don't seem to be growing well.
Last year I grew some walking/perennial/tree onions that are doing really well. They haven't gotten any topsets yet, but have started growing small satellite onions I've been eating.
I also have some plants I'm growing in containers, including sage, tobacco, and lettuce.
Anyway, that's all for now!
-- Setkheni
