I carry around ideas with me everywhere.

In my head, in the car, in my hands, on my back. Plates, blueprints, plant specimens. Books and articles on permagardening, renovating, fermenting, composting, glazing pots, building new spaces out of repurposed wood and metal, on veganism and preparing a carrè of lamb correctly. It’s constantly shifting, moving, never landing very long before new knowledge comes in and causes a seismic shift and everything reorganizes and I’m left with not really having much of a plan at all.

I’ve lived this way for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I must admit, it’s exhausting. Well, all the time. But I do chug along, getting myself involved in fun projects, like an old steam train exploring new territory.

But 2020 threw the locomotive and the caboose off the tracks.

I don’t know any part of our belief systems that hasn’t been altered by the last year. We’ve been shattered and rebuilt again, and again. It’s been a paradigm buster, 2020, and it’s not even over yet. In fact, the wildest part of the ride might be yet to come. Excuse me while I cover my entire house with a mask.

If you’ve ever been in a strong earthquake, you know the feeling of how the room slants for a split second in a way that makes you feel like nothing in the entire world will ever make sense again. It’s so fast you can almost forget it afterwards. But that level of reality disconnect, when your brain can’t fathom what your body is actually experiencing - that’s 2020. It’s a global spasm. Like an earthquake, the pressure of social inequity and human suffering built up against the ubiquitous arrogance of stratospheric wealth, and exploded into a virus-soaked global scream that we can’t seem to unhear.

The aftermath? There are cracks. Everywhere.

We in the white bread middle knew it was possible, this 2020, but we didn’t want to face the consequences of knowing it. We sensed the deep doo-doo we were in, but we weren’t really sure what that meant. What does it mean to have the luxury of facing consequences that only impact our lives when the shit truly hits the fan for everyone else first? We didn’t even understand that that was a thing.

But we learned. That thing is called privilege. We can name it now.

We knew there were problems for a really long time at just about every level of society on just about every front. Far longer than the last few years of this avalanche catapulting down the hill directly at us.

We knew about the climate, and to our credit we did stop using plastic Q-tips. Sushi take out trays, not so much wanting to stop those.

But how much sacrifice is it really going to take to turn this around? Where does it end?

In those heady days before coronavirus, our worries were benign. Just the planet exploding with unbridled forest fires and floods and a mad man in charge.

Life was so simple then.

We understood carbon and we didn’t. Carbon has something to do with the burning of fossil fuels. We got that. But exactly how that can of beans in the cupboard impacts climate? We didn’t really want to understand it all that much because that much knowledge would mean a lot more than a box of Q-tips. And there’s only so much real we can handle while at the same time living an orderly middle class life. Not only, but especially in America, where that particular middle class life is considered the dream of every single human being.

But putting it all together and screaming HOLYSHITREALLYOMGTHEFUCKINGWORLDISONFIRE does indeed take a village.

Then covid came and REALLY gave us something to worry about.

I know, I’m rambling. I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a year.

So anyway, back to learning. I decided, this year, to learn about making my garden produce as much as it can for as little work as possible. This totally has to do with the earth burning up and also with covid, but I’ll make those connections some other time.

I tend to get really excited about planting a garden every year but sometime around July 30th, I lose the religion and things wilt and go awry. It has to do with my childhood but I’m not going there, at least not right now. Apparently I’m not alone, because there’s a whole new culture of gardening that requires minimum upkeep, a lot less water, and produces bushels and bushels of beautiful fruit and veg. It’s called regenerative perma-gardening, and it involves making whatever land you have work to produce all kinds of goodness in the form of food while at the same time using nature to create a self-fulfilling, rich base of soil that keeps on giving. I’ll be going into this in detail as I learn how to do it. I’ve laid the base of a few perma-garden beds already and M and I are in conversations about a few others. Each bed will have a specific vegetables, based up on the location and the soil qualities.

I’m doing this NOT ONLY because we hate mowing, but that’s part of it. Who the hell invented grass anyway? I’m sorry, who? I’m not going to even get started on how bad grass is, and why I hate golf, because I won’t stop and you’ll click away, thinking I’ve lost the plot. Well, I HAVE lost the plot. The plot of grass in my back yard that is. May four thousand heirloom tomatoes sprout from where there once was useless green carpet. Amen.

This ties in somehow to the Q-tips and the sushi plates. I don’t know if we can make a difference but this is a small effort in the right direction. Using land to produce food, and keeping that land as healthy as possible. Healthy land means carbon is locked into the soil and is released into our food to nourish our carbon-based bodies. In turn, the plants release oxygen, not carbon, into the air. The more you cover the earth with plants (yes, no exposed soil - exposed soil means carbon’s going into the air), the more carbon stays locked where it’s needed, and the cleaner our air is.

Locked carbon. Cleaner air. One small plot of land at a time.

So, here’s the deal: the next few months I’m going to be blogging about two things. Gardening prep (don’t yawn) and the restoration of our historic barn into an awesomely beautiful and very industrial rustic open dining room and kitchen for hosting supper club dinners, wine tastings and the like. The historic reservation guy is supposed to be here in a week to give us preliminary approval, and we’ll be 1/10000 of a step closer to this project becoming a reality.

In my mind’s eye, the perma-garden is going to be in full flourish EXACTLY as the large dining table arrives to complete the dining room. I’ll be cooking a garden-to-table meal for a group of wine lovers as they peruse over my new book (oh, yes, I forgot to mention that…).

But between now and then, I’ll be carrying my ideas around. Everywhere. And trying not to drop any.

Love and stay well,

Diana