Last summer’s retaining wall project turned out pretty good, especially now that the grass has grown in all around it. Having learned a lot about the process last year, we’re repeating this for the front yard on a smaller scale. Ideally the tires on the front wall will be just as effective in retaining/terracing the front, but won’t show at all. We’ll plant a bunch of native grasses and plants on and around it, nothing edible of course.

We’ve been playing in the dirt for a couple of days now: moving dirt, separating rocks, filling, stacking, pounding, shoveling, excavating and pick-axing. Having spent the last month teaching in NAU’s STAR Program, it was actually pretty nice to do some work of this nature. As I shovel, I like to think of how long humans have been doing work like this. Moving dirt, the sound of the shovel working it’s way through sand and rock, is a very old sound. I think that’s why it’s so calming to sit next to a river or listen to the wind blow through the trees. These are very old sounds.

It’s a little bothersome to bury industrial waste in your yard, but it’s nice to make use out of garbage. We got the idea from Earthship. Check it out; I think this stuff is amazing. To me, this is what “green building” is really about. I don’t think I’d live in a tire house, but there are a lot of other options and combinations of options to build a house that is the closest thing to “no impact” that there is.

I’ve also been spending time with this year’s garden. It’s as ready for the monsoons as I am. This year: strawberries, assorted tomatoes, jalapeños, green chilies, red chilies, peppers, and a few herbs. We’re going to experiment with cloning too. Not in a creepy mad scientist way, but in the traditional manner of slicing a budding branch in the right way, planting it, and watching it sprout roots of it’s own.

I love watching the monsoons build. It hasn’t stormed yet, but every day for the last week or so, ominous clouds build, the humidity raises, lightening strikes, thunder rumbles, it sprinkles, then….it all goes away. Any bets on when the sky will explode?