How's your summer been?

it's been pretty decent here, though breathtakingly hot in the western Colorado high desert. i've been forced to confront my own laziness, though, which is less fun! my wife and i bought a house last year and i have all of these amazing, awesome, but also labor-intensive ideas about how to green it and solarpunk it up, and several of these ideas have just fizzled.

that said, i have at least installed gutters and rain barrels to irrigate our garden(s), which is good... i just haven't actually made a garden yet. oops! we do have two pounds of native cover crop seeds that we're going to sow at the beginning of September to start healing our rough, uncared-for dirt yard.

i've found a lot of joy in setting up bird feeders, too - we have seven now, all sourced locally via Buy Nothing or my mom's cast-offs. there were almost no birds here in September last year, and now we have an absolute ton. our elderly neighbors across the street also have a lot of feeders, so we will be keeping the birds happy through the winter too.

i started commuting by ebike in April and have really enjoyed that. i don't know how much of an impact that really makes but it feels good, so i'll take it.

finally, my wife and i were able to take a vacation to Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada. it's relatively near to us and is also one of the least-visited national parks not in Alaska. we got to hike to groves of 3000+ year-old Bristlecone pines and past that to a snowfield below a glacier. experiencing a snowfield in Nevada in August was not something i expected!

thanks for asking. hope the fall treats us well, collectively, and may we all grow towards liberation.

Worked a lot outside, on the garden at home and at my job waiting tables. Now all my kids are back in school, with the youngest in Kindergarten at last, and I find myself with time to finally tackle some big home improvement projects and maybe even go back to school myself.

First time in my life I actually did some gardening. Its on a balcony so its really limited space, but that made it more accessible for me because it wasn't that much to do. I had really luck with the beans, but was really unlucky with growing chives. Besides that my region / country is close to some decriminalization of weed, so that will be fun next year on my balcony, I already started preparing a raised bed lol

I did hitchhiking for the first time, that was really exciting. I never thought how easy it would be, but that probably also reflects some of my privileges. In general I would do it again, but who knows when I will have the chance again because its really time intensive and does not work that well with a steady job.

What I noticed this summer, was how much work+university(3+1 days a week) restricted the way I could do stuff like vacation / going to political camps / visit friends.

Got to make a couple sets of good friends down the street, as our young neighbourhood starts to connect, and form a community. It’s pretty exciting.

How did that happen to you? In my area most folks prefer to stay really anonymous in their neighborhoods, we only say hello or accept deliveries for each other.

Things are going well. Wife and I both got new jobs we’re excited about. My backyard tree nursery is healthy despite the severe heat. And I proved to myself it was possible to bike commute here during the summer despite the distance and some questionable bike infrastructure areas I needed to cross. New job is within walking distance of my house though which is even better.

I moved to a big city and completed my fist major DIY Project - I converted a department store display case to a thriving terrarium for my pet snake :)