Green acreage

Spring approaches, which means that it's time to start getting the garden ready... Trees to start mulching, last bits of pruning to be done, layouts to be finalised. Being on limited space is always a problem, but you make the best of what's available. While economies of scale would be nice to use - it can be easier to deal with large quantities of one or two crops - better self-sufficiency means getting a few of several.

There are plenty of places to get trees, herbs, and miscellaneous plants, you just have to make some judicious choices in regards to what you want and whether it makes sense (efficient use of the space, useful food or self-sufficiency product) to grow... And be prepared to lose the trees because they don't like the area, climate, etc... Also, if they get eaten by insects... My citrus trees are not going well, but perhaps by encouraging bird-life, I can get the birds to eat the insects that seem to plague the plants...

Which reminds me - there are a few seasonal crops I need to start up for spring... a couple of edibles, as well as cotton. Cotton is another of those crops that become easier to deal with when you're processing a lot of it - you start to build/accumulate/etc. things like cotton gins.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't get rid of all my non-cropping plants and just put in as much as I can. The problem with that is that getting rid of all your trees the ground no good. Apart from soil washing away, grass isn't good at getting moisture into the air. When you start cutting swathes of trees down, you make growing harder. Yes, I'd be putting in replacement trees, but they will take time. On the whole, I think I'll maintain my current pace - keeping most of the big, healthy trees, getting rid of scraggly or dying ones, but get rid of them as newly planted things are able to establish themselves...

Money, money, money...

I've been reading a lot recently, lots of different topics. When you're a polymath, you have to.

I am currently finishing off When Money Dies, which is a lot at hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s. Rather scary, really. Deficit spending to pay for a war (which they didn't win), people losing confidence in the coin of the day, and the rise of extremists (particularly ones on the right wing of politics) who target scapegoats for the problem.

I wonder what that reminds me of...

It does remind of something that I've long held: Money is an illusion, it is an abstract that allows us to keep track of bartering. It only really exists while people believe in it... Once people wake up from the dream, everything goes sour.

On The Beach...

I just the other day listened to, and finished, a radio production version of Nevil Shute's On The Beach. A very difficult two hours because

Spoiler Alert


Everyone dies.

Every single person. Not with a cry of rage, but with barely a whimper.

Young, old, rich, poor, deserving, undeserving.

Those with potential futures, those without.

By the end, no one is left.


I don't know which has affected me the worse - the tragedy of death, or my infuriation at their acceptance of their oncoming demise. The characters seem to accept what is going to happen with pathological stoicism - like getting half-way across a road, seeing a truck coming several hundred metres away, and calmly lying down, getting ready for the truck to hit you.

The story is set in Australia, in the early 1960's. Global nuclear war erupted in the northern hemisphere, killing (as far it can be determined) everyone, if not in the initial conflict, then in the radioactive aftermath. The clouds carrying the deadly dust are slowly moving down past the equator, slowly covering the globe. The end is coming, those remaining can see it, but no-one seems to make a move to preserve themselves; they accept what is coming, although enter a collective fugue state - they know what is coming, but continue life as normal, albeit with rationing, talking about what gardens they will plant in the next year.

No-one seems to say: This is coming, we can use our ingenuity to at least not be complicit in the extinction of the human race...

That last sentence has struck me - by accepting their oncoming fates, not trying to save themselves, the people in the story are as bad as those who started (,continued, and finished) the war in the first place.

Maybe it has to do with the book being written in 1957. Would people react that way now? After seeing how people can work together in emergencies, perhaps we wouldn't just lay down to die. Fifty years of study of radioisotopes, new technologies, and so on, might mean that people know more about what to expect - and how to survive the worst of it...