MAKE THE GARDEN DARKER

In December 2022 I clipped this article: We need to make the world a Darker Place by Johan Eklöf, author of  The Darkness Manifesto. In it he argues for darkness, against light pollution. I worte on it, in shaky capital letters: MAKE THE GARDEN DARKER

The darker garden

At the house I lived in in the 00s, I bought a ten pack of solar lights and stabbed them into the lawn to mark out an otherwise undefined and easily losable path. They gave out a soft, white light. As the night wore on (there were many nights at this house where we would be awake at all hours) the lights would start to pulse gently, eventually winking out, one by one.  

I've had other lights over the years, but none recaptured the simple joy of that first set. In recent years, the lights have become smaller and feebler, the solar panels weaker and less efficient and they have seemed more obviously useless chunks of mixed metal and plastic waste, on the way to the bin. 

But I've also valued the darkness more. I have a back garden shaded by trees, but between the trees from the dark well of my garden, sat in a deckchair curled under a blanket, I can look up and see stars, bats, the faint lights of satellites and planes far overhead. 

So maybe I was talking about that

The overbright garden

But there was something else going on for me, and it's still there, to an extent. In common with many stroke survivors, I suffered from photophobia (fear of light) and visual field interruptions, hallucinations and absences, and I struggled in my overbright garden to manage the overwhelm of so much to process, to enjoy the pleasure of looking at my wild colourful outdoor space, and often found myself, shading my eyes (already shuttered behind sunglasses) thinking: please, make the garden simpler, less intense, easier, less overwhelm, darker.

Easier to process.

sonification experiments

 This was another post I "wrote" while ill. Assembled in May 2023 and backdated.

Sonification, it says. Just that one word. On a page ripped out of a Saturday supplement with Skunk Anansi answering some questions and half an article about people translating bio-emissions of plants into sound. 

So yes -- the article includes some bits from Mileece and her plant sounds and mushroom collaborations.

That one's a bit experimental, so worth showing you the hypnotic and accessible output of Plantwave too. Hold on till later in the collaborative composition for some lovely tonal variations.

Finally we come to MycoLyco, who collaborates with Cordyceps.

Listening to the deeper world of your garden, I was thinking. Could I do that? 

Then my partner asked for a Soma Labs Ether for his birthday, and we ended up going for walks, listening to all kinds of things. Dams, substations, weirs, cable boxes. Pavements were surprisingly rich soundscapes. Drains sounded amazing!

We called the device Lady Ether and got her to introduce the band.

getting ready for spring

I bought tomato seeds. I wasn't going to but ended up doing so anyway.

Peche Vilmorin Andrieux Vine Stuffing Tomato, Belarusian Heart Vine Tomato, Red Zebra Vine Tomato, Moskvich Vigorous Vine Tomato, Galina Early Cherry Tomato, Blue Fire Vine Tomato, Millefleur Yellow Vine Tomato (Centiflor Type), Imur Semi Bush .... and then I wasn't going to buy any chilli seeds but then I saw Albertos Locoto Rotoco Pepper and Palivec Long Red Chilli Pepper and eh I guess I did.

A difficult problem though; my propagator shelf is currently covered with interesting pot plants. And it's months before anything can really go outside.

Another problem; there is a tree shading the whole garden.

Peche Vilmorin though. How could I resist?

everything I wanted and didn't get

This is an inter-fill entry, written in 2023 from notes taken at this time. 

Everything I loved and wanted but was too tired and ill to get.

• Isotoma Avant-Garde Pink Laurentia. Same thing.
• Marigold Boy o'Boy Yellow I have the normal type self-seeding through my patio, but you always need more marigolds.
• Dianthus Zebra Crossing It's been a few years since I've had Dianthus, and I do love them
• Cephalophora Aromatica Lovely but I'd have to put it our front
• Agastache Apricot Sprite Very orange beautiful
• Sunflower Ms Mars if I can get it past the slugs!
• Sunflower Early Bird I want a perennial sunflower...
• Grass Setaria Caramel So! Fluffy!
• Californian Poppy Lady Marmalade Reckon I might be able to put them in the driveway?
• Dahlia Bee Party Who doesn't love a bee party?
• Sedum Busy Nights Never wanted Sedum before, do now
• Coreopsis Incredible! Sea Shells and yes the ! is part of their name 
• Daffodil Golden Bells aka Hoop Petticoat
• Crocus Orange Monarch because everyone wants a giant orange crocus

In the event I did not buy (or plant) almost anything all this year, and of these things? Bar Hoop Petticoat daffodils I got none.

feeling my way forward into 2022

The very strange year of 2021 has now given way to the startlingly mild beginnings of 2022. There is, I discover, emerging exhausted from pandemic crisis and health crisis, a bit of a crisis going on in the garden. Flowers and plants I bought from shows and shops still languishing in their pots. Pointing fallen from walls and mortar popped from paving. I tend to favour a slightly post-apocalypic look, but these last two years, the apocalypse has staged something of a take-over.

As always, the apocalypse has smudged my motivation. It always comes with the temptation to lay down, to let it wash over. But just in the darkest week of the year, gardening catalogues start to land on the doormat. The garden is muck and murk, true. But where there's dirt, there's seeds.

Easy seeds, like Nicotiana. Curiosities like Sisyrinchium. Interesting new bedding I've never tried before, like Laurentia. Blousy colour-pops like Begonia and Petunia. Garish scramblers like coleus and ipomoea. 

There's no space for anything. I've put interesting houseplants over my propagator shelf. Which are of course bringing their own catalogue-fall onto the doormat. Ooh Impatiens Parasitica. Begonia Black Fang. No. time to get everything into propogation mode, already.

Begonia Spinning Gem, though.