What the hell am I doing

It started with a pineapple. My parents gave me the plant, I put it in the ground behind a house in a gated community, and a few weeks later the HOA sent a letter about my unapproved plant species. I had two options: fight it, or pull it. The correct answer was a pot on the windowsill. I bought an acre in the middle of 30,000 acres of state forest instead.

That’s the short version. The long version has an RV, a 19-foot wall I clad myself, a roof, a well, a set of stairs, more years than the plan said, and a final inspection that still hasn’t happened, so technically the house can still kill me. My parents built their own house and told me I could too. They were right. I’m still amazed we made it through—this far at least.

Somewhere in there I picked up a macro lens and had the thought that if I built a garden, the animals would come to me instead of the other way around. My dad has grown food my whole life. Those two things met, and the food forest happened.

So, what the hell am I doing.

Making a place, mostly. An acre where the butterflies show up because I planted what they eat, where dinner comes out of the ground, and where the workshop turns scrap wood into a trellis and the trellis turns into a wall of passion fruit. And a house built to be healthy, where concrete is concrete and metal is metal. Then photographing all of it up close. Then telling you about it, because a thing you’re proud of is better with someone to show it to.

That’s the whole point. Learning to grow food in a place where the northern advice doesn’t work. Building the beds, the paths, the moongate. Decorating the butterfly garden for Halloween, because why the hell not. Some of it will be experiments, with a stated bet and a date to come back with an answer. Most of it will be the garden, and me, and whatever showed up that week.

One post every Sunday, whether it went to plan or not. Dead plants included. That’s the deal.