Some luffa pics -

Sheets drying

Four gourds

Luffa growing on the fence - I had to add some extra support here, the weight of the gourds was pulling the fence down!

~aesthetic~

I recently harvested and processed my luffa! Four good gourds, plus a few smaller ones that'll just be compost. All but one were very green still, so I roasted them in the oven at 250F for an hour to make the skins workable, squeezed out the pulp and seeds, cut them into a flat sheet, and then soaked in a bleach solution overnight to kill any mold/bacteria before leaving them to dry. I'm excited to make some sponges!

I'll be definitely be planting more next year, the super long vines are very fun, especially the one that grew along the top of my garden fence this year.

Tacked together some scrap wood to un-squash my squash arch - turns out 12 gauge wire fencing is not rigid enough to support full grown butternut squashes! I like how it looks with the wood, though.

You can see my sunflowers too in the right of the image, just starting to form their flowers. I'm hoping they'll open in time for the visitors I have this weekend to see them.

The cucumbers are slowing down now but it's the tomatoes' turn to go absolutely wild. I bet I could start harvesting some of these squash and pumpkins soon as well.

My first cucumbers are almost ready to pick, and I've been pollenating squash flowers like every other day.

Another angle on my garden featuring the prolific pumpkin vine and the sunflower patch -

My AC is struggling a bit to keep up with the heatwave in New England as well, but the garden and I are surviving!

Low-Tech Magazine shows up on here occasionally, I've enjoyed their articles.

I'd also recommend Kris Harbour Natural Building on YouTube.

The pair of apple trees I ordered from Fedco arrived last Saturday, so I planted those out - the weather has been pretty mild and wet this week so hopefully they're settling in well. Just starting to break dormancy.

I'm also starting to plant out some of my seedlings in the new garden beds, it's super exciting to see some foliage in them!

One area of my yard that was overrun with invasive garlic mustard is now overrun with native violets, so I'm happy with that! I picked a bunch of flowers today to try making a tea out of them.

I'm building a new garden for the house I moved into last fall!

Hoping to get some raised beds built later this week using some wood from a deck that I'm tearing down (tested the wood, it's free of arsenic!). Onion seedlings seem to be doing well, they'll go in as soon as the bed is ready and I'll be starting a bunch of other seeds indoors this weekend. Next step is to find a local source of bulk compost and topsoil to fill the beds.

I ordered a couple of apple trees, Honey Crisp and Baldwin varieties, which will arrive in late April or May - later than I'd like but better late this year than waiting for next year!

Here's a critique of another anti-degrowth Jacobin article, and the stance Jacobin seems to take on degrowth in general - https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-03-04/a-response-to-daniel-driscoll-another-slice-of-degrowth-bashing/

The crux of the argument is

• Planetary boundaries are hard boundaries, so the economy can't go on growing no matter what. We can either plan this ourselves or be faced with climate disasters planning it for us.
• Degrowth is not "everyone gets less" - no one will disagree with the goal of lifting the global south out of poverty. It means diverting the unnecessary consumption (and carbon budget) of the most wealthy people in the global north to help those who actually need the economic growth.

Starting a new garden after moving from an apartment to a house last fall. Planning to do two 8'x4' raised beds with some scrap wood and put a squash tunnel between them. I've started 32 onion seedlings indoors and will be starting the brassicas this weekend!

Also thinking about getting apple trees - any suggestions for good varieties to grow in zone 6b (New England)? It's tempting to get a honey crisp but I hear they're pretty hard to grow.

Small scale, but I just got a compost bin! My muicipality was selling them for pretty cheap, I'd recommend everyone check if your town has any similar programs

Reaper is an excellent Digital Audio Workstation with full Linux support

I really like this statement I heard recently, which I think came from the YouTube Adventurous Way - "Dumb Control, Smart Monitoring". Make sure that any devices you install have failure models that make sense - you should still be able to control your appliances when the network is down.

That said, the option to remotely control lights, etc is fantastic. I also recommend setting up some temperature sensors in various places - I have quite a few ESP33 boards scattered around with sensors (and and one with an IR blaster) attached.