Long-term project

I can't believe that I've been thinking about this project for over 2 years and still have nothing to show for it. Actually I have a lot to show for it, but perhaps nothing recognizable to anyone but me.

First, an update on Dale. Dale turned out to be very helpful. He had lots of great ideas for getting started and getting past the design block. I got stuck again, though, and failed to follow through. Why? I don't know. I just couldn't seem to get in touch with the heart of the project. I am grateful to Dale for his contributions to this epic.

Over the last couple of weeks I've had a flurry of renewed interest and been back to researching. I feel like a plan has settled in my brain and is ready to move.
I have the outline of a plan. Now I just need the money to carry it out.

Here's what's changed:
I realized that I have been trying to do this the way that other people have said I should do it. I've been trying to follow their models, and it hasn't worked for me. I'm not a farmer, a gardener, or an activist and so haven't been inspired or propelled by stories from those kinds of folks.
About a year ago, I was describing my inertia on this project to a young guy in his 20s who had a self-professed interest in permaculture. Right away, he was able to diagnose my block: "see yourself as part of the project." He was right, but it's taken me a year to figure out what that meant.
I don't like to do a lot of maintenance, nor do I have the time or energy to carry it out. I barely have time to cook my own food, let alone grow it. So, here's a thought -- maybe I don't need to grow my own food. Maybe I can give back to nature instead, while building into the design a possible succession plan for a day when I might want to and have time to grow some of the food for myself. During a conversation with a friend where I was describing my disinterest in the permaculture project, she suggested, "maybe you should do permaculture for animals."
I started thinking about designing for all the wild creatures that I get on my land, and it got me interested. How do I create a douglas squirrel garden? How do I create a pileated woodpecker garden? A varied thrush or a bee garden? Why not?
Then it all became easy. There are lots of books with wildlife garden plans for birds and butterflies. All I had to do was take those plans and create plant lists optimized for my growing conditions, for perennials, and for possible human consumption at a later date. So the current thinking is to divide the property into 5 sections and do the planting in 5 phases: 1) Hummingbird and butterfly garden, 2)Stream-side passerine and amphibian garden (I really want to see a salmander), 3) Stream-side squirrel and woodpecker garden, 4) varied thrush/towhee garden and fruit orchard, and 5) Greenhouse human-food garden that is safe from dog participation.

We'll see where it goes.

The strange thing to me is that a wildlife garden is what I wanted when I started this whole thing, but I let other people's interests and agendas pull me off track. How did that happen?

Maybe it's all timing

I keep trying to quit this project and I can't understand why it isn't working. What's it been? 2, 3 years?

A new chapter is starting in this project. Maybe. It feels right. And now I'm starting to develop a deep appreciation of right timing in the long-term evolution of things.

I tried to find a consultant to help with my project, but no matter which way I turned, everything felt so linear and transactional -- not even a little in line with the spirit of complex emergent systems. I don't want to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to come in, lay down a templatized companion planting system and then disappear. It doesn't work for me. So I gave up. Again.

And then along comes Dale, the partner of a friend of mine. I've watched their landscape take shape over the past 6 month, though it's been in progress for much longer, and recognized in its development a quality of design the carries in it the most gracious and patient attention to detail in the most holistic sense. All factors of the environment are considered, natural, person-made, social, political, geographic, among many others. It's beautiful not only in it emergent aesthetic sophistication, but in the quality of love that goes in to its design. Dale, it turns out, is considering a professional business in landscape and is interested in a pilot project with us as clients. And because my friend and I share a certain self-reliant and opinionated nature, I have a fair degree of comfort that Dale knows how to work with strong women and not in spite of them, which makes him a very appealing partner in design.
We're going to get together soon to talk about the possibilities. Spot and I are hopeful and excited.

Outwit, Outlast, Outplay

BTW -- here are the results from our backyard plants' own little game of survivor:

Survivors: wood sorrel, sword fern, huckleberry, wintergreen, woodland strawberry, gooseberry, wild ginger. (Interesting to note that all of these are natives).

Don't know yet: trillium, serviceberry, vine maple, red-twig dogwood, fennel, yarrow, bleeding heart. (Most of these natives, too).

Didn't make it: red flowering currant, shamrock, foamflower, eggplant, clover, mint, penstamon, green beans, salmonberry, mountain hemlock, wax myrtle, persimmon, runner beans, corn, squash, salal (because the neighbor destroyed it).

Re-energizing

Ok, I'm over my meltdown/tantrum.
I still don't know what I'm doing, but a few things have made me feel better lately:

1. I figured out why my plan to replace the weeds with clover failed. (Yes, it failed. All the clover died and the weeds replaced it, undoing pretty much everything we did in the last two years -- this succession causing my aforementioned sustainable tantrum). We used an anual clover (crimson) instead of a perennial (dutch white). Also while learning this, I learned it's not good to monocrop your clover anyway -- best to add some grasses (oat grass seems to work for us) and some yarrow to balance out the minerals in the system. Now I just have to find someone who is willing to replace a 35x35 weed garden with a ground cover as described above. Know anyone? I'm willing to pay and I make really good iced tea.
2. Don't believe everything your permaculture teacher tells you. Here are a couple of permaculture myths (in my opinion) to be disregard in favor of your sanity and blood pressure:
• Myth: Permaculture gardens don't require much work. They take care of themselves. Reality: Maybe if you are a superhero gardener with nothing but time on your hands, you can set up a permaculture garden with minimal effort. My experience and that of everyone I know personally is that it takes a lot of work to plan the system and to get it set up. My major failure last year was water, despite my copious water-saving, nitrogen-fixing ground cover. I just didn't have time to water as much as needed. Plus we had 107 degrees for a week -- not exactly weather characteristic of our zone.
• Myth: You can create a self-sustaining system that eliminates your need to get food from other resources. Reality: I banged my figurative head against the figurative wall for months trying to figure out how I could possibly design for this in my yard. Earlier in the blog, you'll see the quantities we get from our fruit trees and how long they last. I thought I must be stupid because I couldn't figure out how it was possible to create enough food in our yard for us to subsist on year-long, let alone thrive on. And we have a sizable yard.
  
  Then I found a blog article on Toby Hemenway's site on this topic where he basically says the same thing -- that utter self-sustainability is an absurd goal (I'm editorially paraphrasing). First I felt tremendous relief, and then I felt deeply annoyed that I had spent so much time trying to make this work. So if you're not a superhero, die-hard gardener, save yourself some time and aggravation by not worrying so much about this.
  
  The approach we've decided to take is to plant a more of the kinds of things that we know we can grow (not monocropped, just more), that we like, and that we know that others like too. That way we can trade blueberries for squash or tomatoes.

So my next task, not un-daunting, is to find that dutch white clover/oat grass/yarrow ground cover mix, and find someone to plant it. I'll let you know how it goes. If it doesn't go, there might not be much more for me to say here...