January 2024 Pine Press

Beal wins the snowman contest!

Winter Sowing Restoring an ecosystem one discarded milk jug at a time Learning how your local ecosystem functions is one of the most emotionally devastating tasks a person can undertake. For me, it usually starts with the land. In my head I imagine the wetlands that historically covered this region. Then I open my eyes and it’s mostly parking lots. But the more you learn, the worse it gets. You stop seeing cars and start seeing air and water pollution (not to mention noise pollution, carbon dioxide, urban sprawl, etc). The streetlights turn into beacons of death for countless insects and birds. Every grass lawn becomes a wasteland. Every parking lot is a scar. The sound of traffic is a scream.

The hardest part of ecosystem restoration isn’t picking up the information, daunting as that task may be. It isn’t learning the anatomy of grass, or the names of birds, or the composition of soil. The hardest part isn’t even the work. And I say that knowing I may spend the rest of my life ripping up English ivy while my neighbors just go and plant more. No, the hardest part is the first part: when you decide to care.

I think this is where most people struggle.

Sometimes I want to go back. Sometimes I think it would be easier not to see it.

There’s this neat little world that colonization built for us, where there is only humanity and its machines, and nothing else really matters. In this world, only a madman would grieve for a wetland. When you live within the belly of the beast, you don’t have to see it. You don’t have to watch it kill.

But then I wake up, and I go to work. And on my way home, I cart my little wagon filled with coffee grounds and cardboard boxes and empty milk jugs. When I get home, I take the coffee grounds into the backyard, where I’ve gathered several bags of leaves from the neighbors over the fall. I add more leaves and coffee grounds to the compost and give it a turn. Sometimes I’ll stand and warm my hands over the steam. The cardboard gets cleaned of tape and stickers so it can be used for sheet mulch. I dream of a world where plastic tape has gone out of style and this step is no longer necessary.

And the milk jugs? They’re all lined up in the main garden, now sleeping for the winter. This is my first year trying out winter sowing. I’ve seen it all over r/NativePlantGardening. Now I have to admit, I was worried this year we wouldn’t have a winter to sow by. If it doesn’t snow, how will our seeds know when to hatch?

Most of the plants native to our region are programmed not to sprout until they’ve felt winter come and go. When you simulate this process (typically in the fridge), this is called stratification. I do this for the tobacco we were gifted by a local elder. But there’s only so much room on my shelf, and some seeds need cold and moisture (this

is called wet stratification). Winter sowing lets you get around both of those concerns, and the plants are able to harden off naturally come spring.

It’s fairly simple. First, you punch a couple holes in the bottom of the jug so water can drain. Then you cut a line around the jug, just below the handle. I leave a little bit of plastic intact as a hinge. The bottom half acts as a seed tray, and the top half is a dome. You then simply add soil to the bottom half (all I had was compost I had sanitized in the oven, so we’ll see how that goes). Add your seeds, water it, tape the top half back on, and don’t forget to label. After that, you simply set the milk jug full of seeds outside and let nature do the work. You may have to periodically go out and water them, but I haven’t had to add any more moisture to mine yet. It’s been quite rainy.

Most of the seeds were gathered from specimens I found in the yard. The common milkweed in our garden grows back every year, but it never hurts to grow more. Don’t believe all the hype about butterflyweed. Common milkweed and swamp milkweed will suit the monarchs just fine. The northern sea oats was the first native grass I learned to identify, thanks to its distinctive little seed heads. If you didn’t spend your fall gathering seeds, that’s okay. Prairie moon has a wide variety of native seeds to select from. There’s also the Native Seed Exchange, Alliance of Native Seedkeepers, and others I don’t know about yet.

I look at my row of milk jugs, resting in their blanket of snow. I can’t know for sure that my efforts will pay off. But right now, that’s not the most important thing. And I don’t just say that because I also planted extra in the fall in some beds. No, the milk jugs give me hope. I see them and I see possibilities. A chance. Even in this concrete wasteland, there can be a shelter for monarchs. The view outside the belly of the beast can be terrible. But it can be beautiful too.

Loneliness Is An Ocean I’ve been dreaming about the day when the Sun meets the horizon and you and I are rising from the same bed again.

And it all seems like a haze, we were destined for an ending, but who knew that we’d be heading for the ledge again.

Another tear I have to cry for the life that wasn’t mine. I’ll just poor a glass of wine and toast to ‘who’ and me.

As I lie in bed at night, I can see us still in motion, your tide just like the ocean and it’s sweeping over me.

You look me in the eyes and tell me that you love me, then you turn around and say you’ve never heard of me.

Now there’s lightning in my eyes and it’s seeking my destruction and my heart just like the thunder rumbles inside of me.

It’s heavy in my chest and it tried to pull me under to the place that I know well- this dark oblivion.

The pain it magnifies as I’m begging for my life and I try to catch my breath with great resilience.

How long will I just fall without the net below me as I try to steal some meaning from my fair weather friends, but as soon as I turn gray, they seek the light of day and I’m stuck here with the monsters in my head again.

They tell me twisted lies that are easily believable because dreams don’t feel achievable to the one who is alone.

So I wander through the desert without any true direction searching for resting place to call my home.

Tor

Separate You kept me separate I don’t know why you made me feel like you loved me, like you thought I had beauty, like you wanted to know me You kept me separate From your heart Yearning, crying, drunk in the dark and begging for your truth and you abandoned me. Both in the night and then hid my eyes from the light to oblige your ego, were you scared of feeling insufficient or scared of me though?

Who could ever know? Because you’re not even honest with yourself so how could I expect you to leave your heart out on a shelf?

You never showed me your true self accept in temperament.

Your eyes and lungs were an instrument blowing loud the things I did that never made you proud.

But were you ever proud?

Your friends and family too afraid to speak my name out loud like I was a crime, but if I am the crime, why am I the one paying the fine for your indiscretions?

Because you treat me like a lesson you had to learn, but I just drift and burn into the night like an ash that’s taken flight and tho I try with all my might to love you, to let you see me, you don’t know how to feel me as I lay in your shallow pool, my passion pouring over the edges as your suffered silence wedges it’s way in between our ripping seams and cuts the threads that held me to the corpse I laid beside at night where sleeping habits hide the truth that you denied You kept me separate Like a distant shadow of the life you thought you wanted, just a void I filled in the moment, just a song you heard and felt haunted, just a flower to pin to your jacket, just a box to check off to say that you had it, just circumstantial collateral damage You kept me separate From your feelings, from your healing Separate Tor

Hey, What drives you?

Is it survival?

Grinding through the days trying to break even, feeling little respite in the times between? Every day feels like a battle not to cost more than you make. Bills come through that you forgot about causing an overdraft fee from the credit card you had loved for so long.

Everyone thinks you are a hoot but inside you are tired and restless for the potential of a better tomorrow. You enjoy the buzz you get from the drinks after work but every morning is an absolute drag. Of course, the good times outweigh the bad, don’t they?

Is it frugality?

Having surpassed living and now withholding enjoyment for the sake of security is your life scheduled to a tee? Friends call you neurotic and your drawers are overflowing with receipts. You don’t care though because they are simply looking too close to today versus the potential of tomorrow. Your savings are rising while your critics are struggling to make rent.

Upon a stack of stability you look down on all those that think of you as nothing but a square.

Sure, you may have everything in boxes but that means little when you know that tomorrow holds less worry than the rest. You don’t feel you are missing out, do you?

Is it Character?

Working hard every day, life isn’t so bad knowing you are creating a person with the responsibility and grit that will gain the respect you deserve, is it? After all, the debauchery and drug-addled drivel done by your peers is below you. Having spent day after day slaving away around idiots and schmucks you have realized that doing the right thing has proven you are better. No one can tell you that you are the bad guy and have you believe it because you know you are trying your best to be better than yesterday. No one’s opinion can bring you down from the high you experience off your own self-righteousness. You sleep well at night, don’t you?

Is it a community?

Naysayers, freaks, self-entitled narcissists and idealistic white knights can be choked down and even enjoyed in close company when you think of them as an extension of family, wouldn’t you agree? Life is hard yet, having a family whether by blood or choice helps you make it through that 9-5, 10-6, 9-3 plus 4-10 or any variety of work hours. No person is isolated unless they live on 40 acres that no member of the SHC could likely afford thus making them irrelevant to the conversation. Times are tough, you make mistakes and try not to tighten up so much you can’t stomach yourself. Every day is a roller coaster of emotions and yet all the familiar faces around you make it okay. Everything is okay, isn’t it?

Or is it something Bigger?

Some of us have a strong commitment to Stoney the Bear and his success in our local area. Certain recent publications have made his life outside the spotlight more difficult than before. Luckily for you a certain investigative journalist of high regard in our community has made it their utmost priority to have the truth of Stoney unearthed and brought forward for the world to see. Stay tuned to the next Pine Press publication for a burning take on a topic hot on everyone’s minds.

SHc is looking for t-shirt designs for the all-member meeting!

submission deadline is the end of february!

link in @spartan.coop (IG) bio