I’ve always found fall to be the most gloomy season. All promise of warm summer days fades, replaced with cooler and cooler days, increasing rain, and the inevitable unpleasantness of cold, wet winter. Being outside is tolerable in much smaller doses when the chill sets in. Not to mention, there are a lot fewer bugs, birds, bats, and berries to catch my interest.

This will be my second fall observing Cosmic Acres. While I’ll be busy with a new job (after many months of workplace injury recovery), I’m also going to attempt to fend off fall blues whenever possible with some new land projects:

I’ve been tending some native plants that I’ve grown from seed this year, and I’m looking forward to planting big leaf lupine, red osier dogwood, swamp milkweed, and thimbleberry from pots.

I will also be seeding my wildflower plot that I’ve been preparing. I have a seed mix and have also been gathering seeds from fireweed and western aster to scatter around.

I impulsively ordered a too-large amount of camas bulbs this year from Northwest Meadowscapes (the bulbs are really only offered in too-large quantities, so is it really my fault?). I need to figure out the best places to plant camas on my land. I might also need to find homes for some extra bulbs.

I need to acquire and learn how to use a chainsaw. There are a few dead alders on the land still standing. The only trees that have fallen in the past year on Cosmic Acres were dead alders, so it would be good to take them down before they take themselves down. There are also a couple of very tall holly trees that need to come down before they start setting fruit.

I am experimenting with using propagation (or air layering balls) to grow evergreen huckleberry starts. Last week I started several. You put a growing medium inside each half of the ball and then put the halves together, around a stem. The stem has had its outer layer of bark peeled away to encourage the growth of roots from the stem. When enough roots have grown, you can simply cut the stem off the plant and put the root ball in the soil. I definitely have more than I need of this plant, but I’d like to share plant starts from Cosmic Acres with other individuals and organizations.

I’m also planning a huckleberry harvest gathering with friends soon. There are so many huckleberries growing out here, I could probably start a U-pick farm next year…

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a safe September.

Thanks for visiting the future internet home of Cosmic Acres, a 5-acre forest in Western Washington. To receive monthly thoughts about habitat restoration, ecosystems, and climate change on the land, as well as cool pictures of native plants and animals, please fill out this form.

It’s been hard to start/finish this post, let alone stay positive about the future, so I deleted everything I was trying to say about current politics. I got bogged down in trying to say everything exactly the way I mean it. Suffice to say that I am very worried about the future in many respects, not just for myself or my family or my community, but about targeted people around the country, and about the future of our ecosystems. 

One of the main problems of modern life is that it is so easy to be disconnected from the land. But our natural world is part of us – we are part of it – and it is the land and water and sky that sustains us and makes everything else possible. I’m grateful to indigenous teachers, in person and through books and social media, who have impressed this on me.

In hopes of reconnecting to the roots of human existence, repairing some of the damage done by white settlers in the Puget Sound area, and building a future for the planet – please keep reading and/or join me out at Cosmic Acres soon!

Hello everyone and welcome to the first little update from Cosmic Acres.

Land Thoughts

A few days ago, my partner Charles and I went out to the land for the afternoon. I’ve never been here in the spring so wasn’t sure what kinds of plants grow. I knew about the little nettle patch, the literal acres of evergreen huckleberry, and some of the different invasive weeds, but everything looks different in every season.

We saw a Pacific banana slug (not always banana-spotted) – our native slug friend! They can be differentiated from the non-native/invasive black slug (not always black), because the black slug has a ridged pattern along the rear of its body. You can see here that the banana slug looks pretty smooth.

I went to the nettle patch to pick some nettles, but after grabbing a few leaves I really took stock of what was around me – not that many nettle plants, some looking rather chewed on. I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The repeated line through most of the stories in this book is about the Honorable Harvest, an ethos of foraging based in indigenous wisdom. Part of the Honorable Harvest is harvesting so that our plant relatives can grow, spread, and thrive. If I took as many nettles as I wanted, I might harm the health of this nettle patch, an area that I value and want to protect. So I stopped. Maybe next year! 

Instead, I took a few minutes to clear non-native species from around the nettles, including some Himalayan blackberry shoots. Much more work is needed in this area. But because I stopped, observed what was happening, and changed course, I also noticed something interesting about some of the brambles.

The leaves had a different configuration. In Himalayan blackberry, the three leaflets start growing very close together, eventually growing into five leaflets. On these different brambles, the first leaflet is on a stem that extends it away from the other two. It wasn’t just a quirk of one leaf; it happened on the whole vine. Then I noticed the color of some of the vines – a whitish green. And then I noticed that the thorns on these vines are whiter and pointier than Himalayan blackberry. The likelier identification? Whitebark raspberry, also called blackcap raspberry – a native bramble that grows black raspberries. I am so excited to come back in a few months to look for raspberries!

Predictably, I had chosen the day because it looked like there wasn’t going to be rain, but we started getting dumped on by 4 PM. Without proper rain gear, we headed out a bit earlier than expected.

I’m looking forward to more spring days in the woods, learning about these ecosystems and enjoying some peace.

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Hello community!

As you may or may not know, I recently accomplished my dream of buying land. It’s about 5 acres of undeveloped forest in Western Washington, near but not on Puget Sound, in the territory of the Squaxin Island tribes.

I’m calling the land Cosmic Acres.

Why did you buy land?

For a few years now I have really craved being in forests, getting to know our native plants, and enjoying the peace of unplugging from online life. But I also really like living in the city and walking places! So I’m not planning to move out there or anything like that. 

I wanted a place of retreat, and I also wanted a place that I could take care of through my life (as a renter in highly unaffordable Seattle, this will be a nice steady place). And I wanted land that I could share with my communities! I think a peaceful retreat is going to be really important for people in the coming years.

Tell me more about Cosmic Acres!

It is a beautiful site of Douglas firs, big leaf maples, Pacific madrones, and other native trees. There are endless evergreen huckleberry bushes, and some gentle/medium slopes. It was last logged around 50 years ago and is currently a thriving young forest. While much of the site enjoys predominantly native plant species, there are vigorous populations of English holly and Himalayan blackberry.

Sitka deer, Douglas squirrels, ravens, and other mostly native wildlife make use of the land, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of them as I spend more time out there. And from most of the site, no humans or buildings are visible. 

Right now, there is no infrastructure (just a bucket toilet hidden in some shrubs, and a water dispenser). I have a lot of ideas about how I might build up the space in the future (tiny cabin?) but for the moment, I’m going to focus on smaller projects like a fire pit, compost, and native plant restoration.

How can I be connected?

I’ll be writing semi-regularly about work on the land, nature observations, reflections, and upcoming events. If we are personally connected, there are possibilities to come out and work on the land with me, camp there, or to just enjoy it on a day trip!