Garden Updates, News and This Enchanted World

So busy in the Spring, I've been neglecting Substack

My apologies to my readers, as I have not been very productive lately on substack. Spring is the busiest time for me, with the garden, the orchard, we recently planted 500+ trees at our family 80acres, and my general contracting business is always most busy, not just the work, but 80% of potential clients contact me in April-May, so there is a lot of sales work. I’ve been working 7 days a week for the last two months, so there has not been a lot of time for reading or writing.

There has been some encouragement too…Also a friend of theirs saw the deck and said “you have to give me his number.” She and her family own three houses in a row, on a local lake.

There really is not a higher compliment a client can give me. True artists and craftsman are rare these days. I was honored, and that Note was appreciated by about 55xs more people than my average.

It is true, I have treated life like art and craft, as long as I can remember thinking about such things. It has never really occurred to me to treat life otherwise. (Though I do have to say, I have somewhat neglected my intellectual ability, tough I am much dedicated to working on that for the rest of my days.)

The pond I built in the garden is naturalizing well. All the plants I gathered from waters nearby are thriving, over-wintering well. I see frogs in the pond and on the lily pads regularly, there was a garter snake in the pond today, probably hunting those frogs.

The sheep arrived a week ago. The owner of the sheep is the property owner’s son, who brings the ewes here after they wean the lambs. They are quite happy when they arrive, racing into those green pastures. The fence guys were supposed to put up a new fence but didn’t, so the son was kind enough to bring some cattle fencing to shore up this rickety fence. One sheep in one afternoon would devastate this garden.

Salad greens, a potato bed, and the storage cabbage bed that needs a bit of weeding.

Here is one summer cabbage hemmed in by milkweed and half a dozen sunflowers. Flowers can exist in the pathways and on some edges of the beds, but not in the bed proper. I might save that clump of milkweed, but not that stray one, or any of those sunflowers. The sunflowers I can remove and plant elsewhere if I care to, the milkweed grows from a rhizome 8-10in deep, so they cannot be transplanted.

Here milkweed are in abundance next to a bed of salad greens and garlic.

A radish bed, with a bed of young salad greens beyond that. I always plant more radishes than we can eat, because depending on conditions you never know how well the crop will turn out. When it gets too hot they bolt to seed. I will plant some onions and maybe some kohl rabi after the radishes are done.

A bed of baby Brussels, next to a bed of tomatoes, with a row of onions and two rows of carrots that have not germinated yet.

I also planted some Paw Paws, in the shade of this junk ash. I can trim it as I please to let in more sunlight. Paw Paws are a woodland edge plant, the young ones especially do not like full sunlight. It would not have occurred to me to plant paw paws, but

Gavin Mounsey

grows them in Ontario, so I thought I would try. I am planting them here, rather than the orchard, because the soil is so much better, it is 30min south of the orchard, and every xx.xx degree of latitude matters.

After several days, they seem quite comfortable in their little sanctuary. The wood chips came from that wood chip pile just outside that cattle fence, where I used to grow watermelons.

My new watermelon patch, with two ring cages protecting young peach trees. I planted those too. It is not my land, but the farm will stay in the owner’s family after she passes, and likely I will at least be able to pick some of the fruit, even if I am no longer allowed to garden here. So the owner says. She is 81, the matriarch of the family. Really, one of the only things I miss about my life in Minneapolis, other than my family there, is my peach trees. I just want to pick a peach off a tree I planted, again.

There is more sun here for the watermelon. I will have to keep them from climbing the fence, as they would actually tear it down once the fruit formed. I maybe planted too many watermelon, but I can always cull a few.

Peach trees love the summer here. Whether they can handle the winter this far north is the question. Of they original 13 peaches I planted in the orchard, two are barely hanging on.

I planted an asparagus patch, bottom of the picture. Wild asparagus used to grow in abundance, in the ditches near here, but they spray so many chemicals on the corn and soybeans in these sand-hill fields, it seems they killed all the wild asparagus. Next to that is a mound I built by digging an oval trench and turning over all the sod onto the middle of the oval. I have pie pumpkins, cucumbers and zucchini planted in the mound. The row on the right is squash under a trellis.

I have been working through

John Carter

’s recent banger of the year so far, The Imago DEI. I am not entirely sure how that is being received on the right, as it is a kind of heresy. Among other things, he is effectively arguing that all Creation is in the image of God, that in fact some, if perhaps the bulk of Creation is more in the image of God than some humans. The swallow that nest in and on these old buildings, and sit sometimes on the power lines and chatter to each other like they truly enjoy each other’s company and love this garden, are more in the image of God, John argues, than some welfare-all-his-life moribund addicted to any number of things never providing any benefit to anyone let alone society.¹

That is the occult view, with some caveats. All life is like a mirror of the creator - as above, so below - all creation is, not just life, but also a stone, or the sun and the planets. All things are sentient, in a sense. The chief sentience in this solar system is the sun, followed by the planets. All humans are on an eternal path, but currently are subject to the sun, earth, moon and the other planets. Some humans are much further along that path than others, some are at risk of losing their soul, they have chosen such a degraded existence. Some are incapable of even feeling another’s pain, they inflict pain without any remorse, without empathy, and so are hardly even human. We have a surfeit, just now, of those at risk of never returning, of their soul being subsumed in the solar system.

John has written too about the need to restore a sense of the enchantment of the world. A few on the right have realized that, just lately. It is a thing that has been discussed in occult circles for a very long time, that is very much a major point of the study of the Western magical tradition, feeling and knowing the enchantment of the world.

The world is ever enchanted, it is only humans, particularly modern humans, who have lost that sense, who have buried it in logic, reason, the analytic, the clinical, bureaucratese or just plain, rank acquisitiveness and consumerism. Nowhere locally do I feel the enchantment of the world more than in this garden. Or, in some deep wilderness like the Boundary Waters. I’ve had a sense of the enchantment of the world since I was a child, I lost it for awhile, but I opened up to it and that has only strengthened as I age, and now I feel it most of the time, everywhere I am.

I have a friend who is a few years younger, also a general contractor, who just retired and winters in Florida, lives here in the summer. He manages his money now. I asked him what his days are like. “Oh, I wake up, make some coffee, read and watch the news, maybe mow some of the lawn [seven acres], go get lunch somewhere.” He seemed at a loss, what else to say about it, so I didn’t press, just said cheerfully, “so, living the life then?” He smiled and nodded. He is rather humble actually, considering how much he is worth. He has made many millions of dollars, doing essentially the same work I do, if more on the commercial side. I do not begrudge him at all, I admire him, knowing what that would take. He has been only good and friendly to me. I genuinely like him.

By contrast, I have no expectation of anything like retirement, any time in the foreseeable future. All of my possessions and savings would not add up to the cost of his Corvette. His sail boat is probably worth more than all the money I have made in my entire life.

But he cannot call himself an artist or a craftsman. Had I pursued the same path as he did, I would be a millionaire and retired, but I would not be an artist or a craftsman. That means more to my soul, than any amount of money. My soul means more to me than money.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another of the reasons I have been so busy, I have been invited by

Alexandru Constantin

and

Phisto Sobanii

to join them for a discussion on the

Black Ibis Social Club

. Alexandru and Phisto are both more well-read and knowledgeable about history than I am, Alexandru has traveled a great deal more than I have. I want to be prepared, to make a good impression. Alexandru is an Orthodox Christian, he is very dubious about the pagan bros on the right, about “paganism” generally. As an actual, practicing pagan of the Western magical tradition, and the Chief Guardian of the Octagon Society, Order of Spiritual Alchemy, I want to sound like I actually know what I am talking about. About this invitation, I am deeply honored, as I admire both of them. That is Wednesday, June 04, at 4pm Eastern, though I think it is only live for paid subs. I’m not sure when Alexandru will release it for the broader public - provided it is worthy of course.

Thank you for reading.

1. Case in point, a German man who is not just a drag on society, but a real parasite, acting in a way ruinous to society and the soul. And much of the German judiciary seems so inclined too. Contrary to the biblical account, it may be harder for a Camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, but it is easier for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, than such as this.

How an unemployed middle-aged transsexual man calling himself "Alina" has used lawfare to extort employers in NRW out of at least 250,000 Euros