So you did plant Kevin in the wild... hopefully not on the golf turf... although I would like to see the minty Fremen invading those unsuspecting golfers...
I had to laugh at the very beginning of this, because that is exactly what I have been doing, reading all of this starting in 2021. I am up to fall of 2022, but of course read new posts as they come. I live in coastal Los Angeles, next to the major airport. There are no wild places nearby that are not fenced (the Blue Butterfly Preserve), except the beach. I drive by it whenever it is convenient. I love thinking of the great Pacific ocean stretching for so many thousands of miles west, ending where I am right here. If the earth weren’t round, it’d be a helluva sight.
You are the nicest, Betsy. (The first season was....a bit rough and ready, so thank you for gritting your teeth through that one!)
I like that sea-connecting perspective too. It's also a prehistorically important one: back in the days before humans made their clever load-bearing machines, the seas were the quickest and safest way of getting around. I studied a bit of this when I did Archaeology at Uni, in relation to the Mediterranean, where for a time the countries around its rim usually had a lot more in common with each other than with their neighbours further inland. Fascinating to think of the human world that way...
I’m ashamed I clicked this because I was curious what your advice on making a gob of money would be, and as always you delighted me. I learned and laughed discovered the mint you meant. Good luck, Kevin! And thanks, Mike.
My SHAMELESS CLICKBAITING pays off at last! :D So glad you weren't disappointed even as you realised this post was absolutely useless at making you rich and famous, Melanie.
GO KEVIN GO although yeah BikeWalkBarb's comment about native plants is definitely a thing to consider. Hmm, I might need to poke around Alamosa & see what sorts of plants could be tucked where ...
Love the concept, just wish you'd do it with native plants. Mint takes no prisoners. And Kevin would miss you! He belongs in a nice pot by your front door to perfume your comings, goings, and teas.
There's a "Pirate Garden" not far from my neighborhood that matches the guerrilla gardening description, although it has a gate so it feels semi-sanctioned by someone. It's awesome: a riotous mix of berries, vegetables, herbs and flowers backed up by trees. I'm lucky to live in a town that has a lot of dedicated green spaces that serve in part to capture some of the rain and runoff before it reaches the tail end of Puget Sound. Some of these are unbuildable ravines, others a small corner of a block. They're not labeled as parks (we have lots of those too). They sometimes have fences, sometimes have an official path that serves as a shortcut between blocks for pedestrians. I'm off to look at the new public sites typology and figure out what to call them.
That's an excellent point! I'm clueless enough to not know which are the native plants in this area - I will do some investigating on this. But I did see there are also local gardening Facebook groups to investigate that offer plant and seed giveaways...
Where you live sounds very receptive to green-fingered guerrilla work! I'm envious. But also, maybe I'm just not observant enough yet to see the ones here. (I challenge you to find out the details of that Pirate Garden! If you do, please report back.)
Foraging is another lovable thing in this category. In York, my former home in the north of England, there were community fruit & veg & herb gardens that had signs saying "take what you want!", and I used to pick stuff while walking to & from work - and also fruit swaps, where anyone with too much fruit for their own consumption listed it for collection, and you could go get a massive bag of ripe plums, and the like. And this area of Scotland, like so many places in the UK, is gently overrun by blackberries / brambles, so it's common to see people out on the local common ground, harvesting thousands of the things at a time...
Glad you're following up on the native plants--so important for pollinators. And Kevin will still love you.
We're also overrun with non-native blackberries, "Himalayan" although that's not where they came from, thanks to Luther Burbank, and not even close to thornless though he was supposed to be trying for that (source: https://www.kuow.org/stories/strange-twisted-story-behind-seattles-blackberries/. The blackberries are everywhere in western Washington, not just Seattle, and who'd expect eugenics in a story about blackberries?).
I don't know if Buy Nothing is present in your area--another lovable source of many free things (https://buynothingproject.org/). My neighborhood group is fantastic and we do lots of exchanges of what we grow in every form from seed to plant to produce. I have rhubarb and strawberry plants from members growing in my yard, zucchini pickles and plum fruit leather I made thanks to people sharing their bounty. We also have a guy who does Soup Sundays: Makes big batches of soup and invites people to stop by and have some. Love the generous spirit there.
Also in the US PNW here and yes, wild planting edibles is lovely if they are things that belong around here anyway. Mint and its friends (in my case lemon balm) are trying to take over my back yard and I'm having to scramble to keep up after I accidentally let my patch go to seed last year. At any case, waving to you up there from down here!
Maybe your Summer visitors will be one of the 9000 people ahead of the reporter on our news this morning trying to get a ticket to Balmoral! We live in a similar tourist spot on Australia's East Coast. Not even 2 fatal shark attacks in the past year or so keep them away.
Oh wow. Those must be the best-looking beaches in the world. (Which I gather many of them are, so - yeah.)
I so find it crazy how popular Balmoral is, considering there are literally thousands more in Scotland that get nowhere near a fraction of the love (and money!). I gather Balmoral is only open to visitors for 4 months of the year - so that's around 4,300 people a week, which should be upwards of £60,000 a month?
Speaking personally, I'm not a fan of Balmoral from the outside. FAR too pointy. They went absolutely mad with the pointy bits. Dial it back, people. Too much pointy.
Sorry but I won't be able to show this article to my wife or her friends. Since she finally retired our yard is completely full of plants and she takes long walks around town with her friends 3 or 4 times a week. I could easily see her packing a trowel and seedlings into a backpack and trespassing on every empty spot in town.
As to the golfer invasion, you have my sympathy, but at least it's not every year. So far ...
fondly remember a walk I took years ago in a somewhat rundown area of Toronto. The old 3-storey houses had all been subdivided into mini-apartments and the owners weren't inclined to spend money on anything but the most basic maintenance. As I walked past a crumbling brick wall, I noticed some tiny flowers that had escaped from who knows where and taken refuge in the cracks on the broken sidewalk. Of course I stopped to talk to them. My companion thought I was crazy, but when something delights you with its tenacity and beauty, you have to acknowledge it. I love the idea of guerilla gardening.
I wish Kevin well! He’s a thug though so actually I’m sure he’ll be fine. I occasionally‘encourage’ three cornered leek to grow locally because it makes great pesto. I used to live in St Andrews and have happy memories of working in the castle during The Open. Madly busy but great fun celebrity spotting. Friends did once have their house trashed by journalists who’d rented it so make sure to have good insurance.
A fun read … as usual … and long and rambling … as usual. I sort of felt I should be doing something else, like editing a book chapter or finishing the draft of the intro to a volume I’m coediting. But what the heck, as my wife says, you are supposed to be retired. Hmmm, academics don’t retire unless they are senile or dead, or finally recognize they don’t have more to add (fat chance of that in most instances). You again remind me I need to start regularly scribbling my rants about all sorts of things to do with China and Asia, present, past, and very distant past. Been down some wonderful rabbit holes recently chasing interesting stuff that I’m sure a few others will find interesting … and may won’t.
Oh you subversive and delightful man. I'm going to start scouting around for a rewilding place other that my back yard. We're been working on that bit for years. The previous homeowner loved mowing grass (god knows why) and planted lovely lawns on more of our acre, but turning off the water and allowing the wild seeds to blow in on the wind as well as planting our own additions has been a fun though difficult at times goal.
Loved the description of your town invaded by golfing tourists too stressed to enjoy it.
I also thought if Kevin is suitable for planting in the wild since mint is an invasive species much as the golfers in July in your town.
I love this metaphor!
Now I feel like a Paul Atreides of the gardening world, unleashing my minty Fremen upon an unsuspecting universe.
So you did plant Kevin in the wild... hopefully not on the golf turf... although I would like to see the minty Fremen invading those unsuspecting golfers...
I had to laugh at the very beginning of this, because that is exactly what I have been doing, reading all of this starting in 2021. I am up to fall of 2022, but of course read new posts as they come. I live in coastal Los Angeles, next to the major airport. There are no wild places nearby that are not fenced (the Blue Butterfly Preserve), except the beach. I drive by it whenever it is convenient. I love thinking of the great Pacific ocean stretching for so many thousands of miles west, ending where I am right here. If the earth weren’t round, it’d be a helluva sight.
You are the nicest, Betsy. (The first season was....a bit rough and ready, so thank you for gritting your teeth through that one!)
I like that sea-connecting perspective too. It's also a prehistorically important one: back in the days before humans made their clever load-bearing machines, the seas were the quickest and safest way of getting around. I studied a bit of this when I did Archaeology at Uni, in relation to the Mediterranean, where for a time the countries around its rim usually had a lot more in common with each other than with their neighbours further inland. Fascinating to think of the human world that way...
I’m ashamed I clicked this because I was curious what your advice on making a gob of money would be, and as always you delighted me. I learned and laughed discovered the mint you meant. Good luck, Kevin! And thanks, Mike.
My SHAMELESS CLICKBAITING pays off at last! :D So glad you weren't disappointed even as you realised this post was absolutely useless at making you rich and famous, Melanie.
GO KEVIN GO although yeah BikeWalkBarb's comment about native plants is definitely a thing to consider. Hmm, I might need to poke around Alamosa & see what sorts of plants could be tucked where ...
I dare you to have a go at this thing yourself! Please let me know if you do.
Love the concept, just wish you'd do it with native plants. Mint takes no prisoners. And Kevin would miss you! He belongs in a nice pot by your front door to perfume your comings, goings, and teas.
There's a "Pirate Garden" not far from my neighborhood that matches the guerrilla gardening description, although it has a gate so it feels semi-sanctioned by someone. It's awesome: a riotous mix of berries, vegetables, herbs and flowers backed up by trees. I'm lucky to live in a town that has a lot of dedicated green spaces that serve in part to capture some of the rain and runoff before it reaches the tail end of Puget Sound. Some of these are unbuildable ravines, others a small corner of a block. They're not labeled as parks (we have lots of those too). They sometimes have fences, sometimes have an official path that serves as a shortcut between blocks for pedestrians. I'm off to look at the new public sites typology and figure out what to call them.
That's an excellent point! I'm clueless enough to not know which are the native plants in this area - I will do some investigating on this. But I did see there are also local gardening Facebook groups to investigate that offer plant and seed giveaways...
Where you live sounds very receptive to green-fingered guerrilla work! I'm envious. But also, maybe I'm just not observant enough yet to see the ones here. (I challenge you to find out the details of that Pirate Garden! If you do, please report back.)
Foraging is another lovable thing in this category. In York, my former home in the north of England, there were community fruit & veg & herb gardens that had signs saying "take what you want!", and I used to pick stuff while walking to & from work - and also fruit swaps, where anyone with too much fruit for their own consumption listed it for collection, and you could go get a massive bag of ripe plums, and the like. And this area of Scotland, like so many places in the UK, is gently overrun by blackberries / brambles, so it's common to see people out on the local common ground, harvesting thousands of the things at a time...
Glad you're following up on the native plants--so important for pollinators. And Kevin will still love you.
We're also overrun with non-native blackberries, "Himalayan" although that's not where they came from, thanks to Luther Burbank, and not even close to thornless though he was supposed to be trying for that (source: https://www.kuow.org/stories/strange-twisted-story-behind-seattles-blackberries/. The blackberries are everywhere in western Washington, not just Seattle, and who'd expect eugenics in a story about blackberries?).
I don't know if Buy Nothing is present in your area--another lovable source of many free things (https://buynothingproject.org/). My neighborhood group is fantastic and we do lots of exchanges of what we grow in every form from seed to plant to produce. I have rhubarb and strawberry plants from members growing in my yard, zucchini pickles and plum fruit leather I made thanks to people sharing their bounty. We also have a guy who does Soup Sundays: Makes big batches of soup and invites people to stop by and have some. Love the generous spirit there.
Also in the US PNW here and yes, wild planting edibles is lovely if they are things that belong around here anyway. Mint and its friends (in my case lemon balm) are trying to take over my back yard and I'm having to scramble to keep up after I accidentally let my patch go to seed last year. At any case, waving to you up there from down here!
I've got more mint than I can handle and the same can be said for sage, so I'm going to be on the lookout for a good place for a wild herb garden.
Fantastic. Please report back, Graham - I love seeing stuff like this. :)
Maybe your Summer visitors will be one of the 9000 people ahead of the reporter on our news this morning trying to get a ticket to Balmoral! We live in a similar tourist spot on Australia's East Coast. Not even 2 fatal shark attacks in the past year or so keep them away.
Oh wow. Those must be the best-looking beaches in the world. (Which I gather many of them are, so - yeah.)
I so find it crazy how popular Balmoral is, considering there are literally thousands more in Scotland that get nowhere near a fraction of the love (and money!). I gather Balmoral is only open to visitors for 4 months of the year - so that's around 4,300 people a week, which should be upwards of £60,000 a month?
Speaking personally, I'm not a fan of Balmoral from the outside. FAR too pointy. They went absolutely mad with the pointy bits. Dial it back, people. Too much pointy.
Great post, Mike! Thank you.
Thank YOU, Alex. *tips hat*
Wishing Kevin all the best in his new home. 🏡
I'll pass along your regards, Martin, :)
Thanks man.
Sorry but I won't be able to show this article to my wife or her friends. Since she finally retired our yard is completely full of plants and she takes long walks around town with her friends 3 or 4 times a week. I could easily see her packing a trowel and seedlings into a backpack and trespassing on every empty spot in town.
As to the golfer invasion, you have my sympathy, but at least it's not every year. So far ...
fondly remember a walk I took years ago in a somewhat rundown area of Toronto. The old 3-storey houses had all been subdivided into mini-apartments and the owners weren't inclined to spend money on anything but the most basic maintenance. As I walked past a crumbling brick wall, I noticed some tiny flowers that had escaped from who knows where and taken refuge in the cracks on the broken sidewalk. Of course I stopped to talk to them. My companion thought I was crazy, but when something delights you with its tenacity and beauty, you have to acknowledge it. I love the idea of guerilla gardening.
Ah, this comment reminded me of this story: https://streetartutopia.com/2023/04/15/kindergarten-children-dropped-seeds-in-the-crack-of-the-sidewalk-to-see-what-would-happen/
And that is how Kevin took over the world...
I wish Kevin well! He’s a thug though so actually I’m sure he’ll be fine. I occasionally‘encourage’ three cornered leek to grow locally because it makes great pesto. I used to live in St Andrews and have happy memories of working in the castle during The Open. Madly busy but great fun celebrity spotting. Friends did once have their house trashed by journalists who’d rented it so make sure to have good insurance.
A fun read … as usual … and long and rambling … as usual. I sort of felt I should be doing something else, like editing a book chapter or finishing the draft of the intro to a volume I’m coediting. But what the heck, as my wife says, you are supposed to be retired. Hmmm, academics don’t retire unless they are senile or dead, or finally recognize they don’t have more to add (fat chance of that in most instances). You again remind me I need to start regularly scribbling my rants about all sorts of things to do with China and Asia, present, past, and very distant past. Been down some wonderful rabbit holes recently chasing interesting stuff that I’m sure a few others will find interesting … and may won’t.
Go Kevin! May he flourish through the year. I love that idea connected to the boring urban landscapes...off to investigate Graham some more. Thank you
Oh you subversive and delightful man. I'm going to start scouting around for a rewilding place other that my back yard. We're been working on that bit for years. The previous homeowner loved mowing grass (god knows why) and planted lovely lawns on more of our acre, but turning off the water and allowing the wild seeds to blow in on the wind as well as planting our own additions has been a fun though difficult at times goal.