I am so sorry that this is late.

How to Get Started in the Garden

One of the best things that you can do for yourself, your health, your sustainability, and your resiliency, is to raise your own food. If you have never gardened before, don’t try to raise all of your own vegetables the first year. Instead, plan your full dream garden on paper and implement one small part of it when spring comes around. As someone studying permaculture, I’m going to walk you through the first steps to get you started in your first year. If you have never analyzed your property, a full assessment takes a year, but this abbreviated process will give you a good start.

Cost: Free if you have a space available.

Time: One to Two weeks.

PROCESS

1) Assess your space.

Get into your space and take a good look at it. Make a rough sketch and note what is there to the best of your ability. Get some rough measurements of where everything is and note it all on your sketch.

2) Draw out the space to scale.

Put everything on the space map that you can not move or don’t want to move. Note the sunlight zones, air flow, water flow, and anything else important.

3) Dream a bit.

What do you want in your space? What are the must haves? What is important? What would be nice?

4) Create cut outs of what is important at the same scale as your map. Store the cut outs in an envelope or zip lock bag.

5) Play garden chess.

Move the pieces around your map until you have a design you like. Take a picture. Repeat until you have 3 designs.

Choose the design that you like.

6) Create a 3 to 5 year implementation plan

Choose one small project for your year 1 learning project.

7) Document your plans and focus on your year 1 learning project.

Work with annual plants for the first year learning project no matter what the long term plans are.

8 ) Choose no more than 5 annual plants that you love.

These are the plants you will work with for the first year.

9) Study

Learn every thing you can about your 5 plants so that in February you can order what you need.

Check out the full article on Buy Me a Coffee

Here is an article covering my favorite gardening technique. It is on Buy Me a Coffee

Building in Sustainability and Resiliency for 2025 and Beyond

By all appearances, we are heading into a time of disrupted supply chains, high risk of crop failures, recalls in the food distribution system, and more. I would say that we are already there, and it’s going to be a while before we get out of it. I believe that we will eventually build systems that nourish and sustain both the Earth and ourselves, but we have a long way to go to get there. Until then, in my opinion, it is becoming even more important to create systems of resiliency where you are. It is critical to learn the skills create what you need in your back yard.

One of the best skills and practices that you can learn for your health, sustainability, and resiliency, is gardening. To be perfectly clear, I don’t think that you should try to grow all of your food in 2025. This is especially true if you have never gardened before. I do believe that you should start a small learning project. There are two easy ways to start this. The first is to create a mini garden in a large pot or a set of pots. The second is to start one small in ground garden bed. Either way you are going to want to plan ahead a bit and have everything in place to hit the ground running when the weather warms up where you are.

One of the resources to get you started is The Phoenix’s Nest. Subscribing to this newsletter will give you access to my Year Builder Framework, planner pages, and journal prompts in PDF form. I will also be adding plant profiles and sustainability project sheets. So sign up for your first PDF set.

Here are some other resources that I have found to be helpful:

Johnny’s Select Seeds

Baker Creek Seeds

Native Seed Search

Seed Saver’s Exchange

AM Leonard

Your Local Farm Supply Store

Your Local Extension Office

An Invitation

First I need to apologize to all of my subscribers. When I tried to put together this newsletter and get the sister newsletter put together, I made a royal mess of it and had to go back and clean it up. The good news is that it didn’t take as long as I expected.

So, I invite you to subscribe to The Phoenix’s Nest. It will primarily be a vehicle to deliver plant profile and project PDF files to your email as I get them ready for you to download. This will start off as a free subscription, but in a few months after a bit of fine tuning I plan on charging a small subscription fee for the service. So, here is your invitation to get in on the ground floor and help shape the information that would be helpful to you.

And for a little bit more

Events

January 1 - New Year’s Day

January 13 - Full Moon

January 20 - Martin Luther King, Jr Day

January 29 - Chinese New Year

January 29 - New Moon, Next Newsletter

Lavender

I love lavender! By itself or in a blend. As a tea or in a potpourri. In my pillow or in a liniment. I love lavender! This beautiful shrubby perennial with its signature purple-blue flower spikes has been used medicinally by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Its first documented use dates back 2500 years, but traces of lavender have been found in ceremonial urns in Egypt.

Lavender was traditionally used as a washing and cleansing agent, a perfume, and for skin care, It has been shown to have antibacterial, antiviral, and antiseptic properties that make it a good choice or as a wash or a cleanser. It is a favorite additive for washing linens as it tends to absorb undesirable odors and repel insects. It is a soothing bath at the end of the day and may help soothe acne prone skin.

It is a favorite ingredient in potpourri and sachets. Placed in a linen closet or drawer, it helps repel pests. In the pillow or beside the bed, it can help promote good sleep. As a dry potpourri or a simmer, it can help freshen the house.

Lavender has been shown to have some relaxant and anti-inflammatory properties that make it useful pain relief. As aroma therapy, most people find lavender to be calming and to help ease the pain of headaches.

And this is only scratching the surface.

I like to throw a few springs into my summer time shrub or into some straming hot water for a relaxing tea. It is an important ingredient in one of my tea blends and a key part in Manitu’s answer to a Life of Physical Labor.

Here are the links:

Lavender is a wonderful plant to include in your plans for a garden of almost any size. Of more than 28 species of lavender, three are most often for medicinal and aromatherapy uses, Lavendula angustifolia, Lavendula stochas, and Lavendula latifolia. Lavendula angustifolia is sometimes categorized as Lavendula officinalis. These are all native to the mountains around the Mediterranean.

They can be propagated from seed, and I have grown lavender from seed. However, the easiest way to propagate lavender is from late summer cuttings. When I take cuttings, I use the propagation tray system that I showed in a previous newsletter. (Follow the link to find the instructions.)

Once you get a plant growing, lavender grows best in well drained or rocky soil that is slightly alkaline. Lavender likes full sun and prefers a place with a southern exposure in the Northern Hemisphere. The ideal place to grow lavender in my area at the snowy northern edge of its growing area is in a raised bed next to a south facing wall.

Here is the longer article that includes the metaphysical properties of lavender.

The Spiral

Whether you celebrate the solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or the New Year, this time of year is when the old closes and the new begins. this makes this a perfect time for a brief article on the symbol of the spiral and why you might want to incorporate it into your life.

The spiral is one of the most common shapes found in nature and is often found in a nearly perfect form. It turns out that the spiral is efficient, stable, and strong. It is found at every level of the world from DNA , to the seed heads of the sunflower. It is found in pine cones and pineapple. The awesome power of the spiral is found in the cyclone and the galaxy. So whether you see the spiral as a scientific clue or as sacred geometry, it is a shape of great significance.

I love the symbolism of the spiral and I use it often in my art, from the jewelry, to the dream catchers, to my pen and ink. To me, it reflects the sacred connection that binds life, the Earth, and the cosmos together into a beautiful dance that coils in and out of our perception.

This symbolism and its practical use of resources make the spiral a good addition to your garden plans. This shape creates a meditative path that is also efficient in design. When used as a path, it creates aesthetics and access with efficient use of resources. It is also a design that works well to give your garden dimension and encourages the creation of micro-climates and dimension. If you raise the center of the spiral above the outer circles to create a tiered garden, it can improve light access, air flow, and drainage in the center of the spiral. This is a good way to have both plants that like quick drainage and hungry plants in a small space.

The spiral design, if it resonates with you, minimizes the use of construction materials, water, and other resources in your garden. With a bit of planning, a joyous garden is just a season away.

For a longer article on the symbolism of the spiral, check out this article at Manitu Okahas Studio.