Nature's way

I said I wasn't going to start planting anything until next growing season, but I was thinking purely from Spring through to the end of Summer. It has dawned on me however, since our weather patterns are changing, my growing plans need to adapt. I am considering an Autumn/Winter garden because we seem to get more sunshine and less rain during that time. So I popped off to the shops today, to buy some edible plant seedlings.

I have placed them near some of our indoors plants (indoors of course) as they came out of an air-conditioned shop. I'll place them outside in a sheltered position tomorrow. Perhaps near our new make-shift nursery.

Middle Ridge nursery had to be cleaned out for our chicks, which are now around 12 weeks old. So we set up a shelf on our verandah for all the plants to live. I thought I could build another chicken tractor for our chicks, but as always happens, they seem to grow too fast. It was much simpler to evict the plants and make way for the chicks!

I'm quite proud of my little pineapple collection now. Its growing all the time. They are "hands down" the simplest plant to propagate and virtually maintenance free once they go into the ground. Plus I love pineapples.

Right on the top of the shelf, is my growing palm collection too. I've selected some medium sized varieties (8 to 12m) to provide strategic shade on some of our slopes. Yet at this stage, the palms are very small. I deliberately buy them small because they're cheaper, and I nurture them for a few years - which gives me enough time to make the area I want them ready for planting. These probably won't find their way into the ground, until next Spring, when the danger of frost has passed.

But plants are only part of the equation when it comes to a garden. There are always more complex roles for other living organisms to play their part too. So where does the human gardener fit in? If you ask me, I've had to evolve a lot in understanding what makes a garden work. But there's often a very painful process involved while learning.

This picture looks quite innocent, possibly even a little beautiful, but it's actually taken of the garden we made as a memorial to the flood last years. Where these plants are, was the mound of dirt which was gouged out behind our retaining wall, causing it to collapse. We moved a lot of dirt to put the wall back together, but we left this little mound behind to remind us nature has ways we simply must respect. The marigold was a volunteer which sprung up after the flood. It must have come from a garden on the hill above us. Why mess with nature, if you don't have to?

Which brings me to the ways of the gardener. When I first moved here, I thought it would be awesome to have the biggest jungle of a garden. I thought it would be beautiful, but my expectations were to change over the many years I've gardened this piece of land. Nature IS beautiful, in all her many different states, but many of us come in with preconceived ideas of how nature is supposed to work for us. Consequently, we believe a garden should never look like this....

Beautiful pygmy purple grass...you would never see this kind of image in a gardening magazine. How can you appreciate how beautiful the patented product is, if you saw it being strangled by a native pea? These peas sprung up after the flood too. We didn't pull them, because we have learned nature has her ways. If a massive flood brings seeds down the slope, let them grow. Nature put them there, regardless of the beautiful selectively bred grasses we put in.

We will pull these peas very soon though. We let them have the garden for the growing season - pulling them towards the end of autumn means any disturbance to the soil, won't result in more peas springing up. Nature is going to slow down during winter, which will give the disturbed soil a chance to settle. By working with nature's ways, we build a better garden than what we first imagined. But it does come with a consequence.

You have to live with the varying messiness that nature will throw into your own mix. Can you see the plants I purchased amongst the hoard of weeds? This is what my garden looks like most of the time. Once we have weeded, it will look nice again, but only until next growing season when the weeds spring up again. There won't be as many though, because with each year my plants will grow and eventually create too much competition for the weeds.

This is nature's way though and people need to understand it. Whenever we disturb soil, nature has a natural band aide called quick spreading grasses and weeds. There is no exception to the rule. You can never pluck weeds out quicker than nature can generate them. Your only hope is to use nature's own tactic, and cover the soil with the plants you want.

Now this inevitably means living with varying stages of messiness. It's just natures way, but that's because nature always deals according to balance. Plants didn't come to rule the earth for billions of years, controlling all herbivores and carnivores, because it was weak. Plants dominate all carbon life forms and it won't be curbed by the kind of "look" we want for this season.

Natural selection, will kill some of the plants you paid for, while throwing in as many free weeds as possible. That is just nature's way. There should be 3 purple flowered plants (which I cannot remember the name of) in this picture. One died though. Don't ask me why, as I treated it the same as the rest. I originally planted 10 specimens in this row, and at least 3 have died.

Boo-hoo, but don't cry for me Argentina - because I'm glad to see nature pulling the plants is doesn't like. Because I know I'm going to get a stronger garden than the one I originally planted. I just have to live with (shock horror) disappointment of personalised aesthetics. In several years, I may come to understand Nature's wisdom in creating gaps in this line. Maybe it just wants to change my perception of organised?

It often pains me to read about people's failures in their own gardens, especially when they accuse themselves of being born with brown thumbs. They blame their knowlege or their inability to "get" gardening. I was the same and took some of those hard lessons on offer, to change the way I think. Nature's way of gardening is the best way. Mankind's way of gardening is all about endless cycles of labour and frustration, because we don't like things to be out of order.

Believe it or not, Nature and mess go hand in hand. New gardens are ALWAYS messy. But let nature in to help you shape the vision and you will soon learn how resilient a garden can be. It will grow in Nature's image - the original teacher of sustaining life, not in our own. Because believe it or not, much of the gardening information which comes out of glossy books and magazines, is not about gardening. It's about selling books, magazines and plants.

That's not a bad thing, but it gives the totally wrong message of how a garden works. All those pretty pictures, captured in a few artificial moments, won't make your garden look exactly the same. It's difficult to come down into the real jungle and find the beauty of Nature's way.

My garden is a big old mess and I love that animals, pests and the occasional person gets to maraud through the jungle. It wasn't the kind I was envisaging from the start, but it WILL get there one day. I will enjoy it in the meantime and take the lessons as they come.

Reptilian antics

We had a little (or rather big) visitor in the backyard recently. It's a Bearded Dragon, and I wonder if it's the same one we've seen sunning itself around these parts over the years, since it was a wee mite? It would be nice to think so!

He/She decided the sun was too hot this particular day however, and decided to take advantage of the shade we erected for the chickens in their tractor. The brave reptile is sitting on the former tractored area, but underneath the temporary pergola we put up.

Of course when I came up with my camera, they did their clever impersonation of a stick routine. How they manage to stay so perfectly still when they think they might become someones dinner, I don't know. It would be equivalent to a big T-Rex towering over me. Even if I decided to play "stick on the ground", I would certainly be shaking like a leaf! But I suppose that's the miraculous nature of nature for you - lizards will be lizards and people will be people. ;)

In other good news, my friend who went in for a cancer operation recently, not only pulled through but has been given incredibly good odds of a full recovery. So yay!!! I hope it's okay to link to her blog, as she does a great job of telling her own story.

To a friend

I have a friend, and although we've never met personally, we share a lot of our lives together. We email, we read each other's blogs, we celebrate when good news is shared, and we mourn when hard times arrive. We both have properties, although she lives waaaay over the other side of the equator in the US. Her husband is Australian, so I guess that's how she gets our strange lingo and knows all about red-back spiders and poisonous snakes, LOL.

But my friend, Linda, is going in for major surgery tomorrow, to remove an invasive cancer which at this stage they don't know if they can remove. All the more reason I'm thinking about her today, leading up to tomorrow's surgery.

I didn't realise it, but I was putting together an altar of sorts. I had this urge to clean and rearrange things lately, and only realised once I put the finishing touches on it yesterday, that it carried the message I have been pinning a lot of hopes on lately. The Good Life.

Not the kind of good life that comes from a "lifestyle choice", but a good life which can be gathered from whatever is laying around. We make it good only by what we apply these things to. In the above picture, I have a protea flower I have been attempting to grow in some of our harshest conditions. It's survived both drought and flood and still manages to bloom. I plucked it recently and brought it inside.

The rosemary branch underneath, was from a real survivor too - not only having to cope with poor soil and minimal attention, but it still managed to live underneath a passionfruit vine, which had all but smothered it from the light! We pruned the passionfruit vine back yesterday and uncovered the toughest rosemary bush I have ever seen.

What is a survivor, but something that simply refuses to give in - it makes the most from what's at hand and adapts. Sounds like my friend, Linda. I wanted to let her know we are thinking about her, my family is thinking about her, and even my home imbues the kind of fighting spirit that comes from surviving against all odds.

Although she already knows it, I wanted to remind her of the Good Life, the one that waits for her after surgery.

Make my day

I decided to do our shopping a few days earlier than usual. Don't ask me why, but I'd forgotten it was Valentine's Day. Kind of what happens when you're half asleep, getting your daughter ready for school and thinking about the shopping list. But when I entered the supermarket, I saw the shop display with fresh flowers and lots of people gathering around! Mmm...Valentine's Day - I knew there was something missing from my shopping list!

I scanned the aisles for ideas - passing the lollies and chocolate section and wondered if my family would like a special treat on Valentine's Day? So I looked at all the best deals and nearly parted with $15 for a big box of assorted chocolates. Then I stopped and wondered...I wondered if there was anything really special in that box of chocolates? We'd love it for all of 5 minutes, then regret it 10 minutes later when the bellies started to ache!

Then I started to wonder if I could bake something myself? So I passed the baking aisle next and looked at all the pre-made icing mixes, the sparkling silver balls and even went looking for heart shaped anything. My eyes soon glazed over for all the choices. I started to wonder if all that artificial stuff they stick in to keep it pretty and "safe", would taste as nice as home made royal icing? Not knowing exactly what I was going to put together, I decided I wasn't going to buy a gesture for Valentine's Day. I still had time, given I was home from shopping by 9am! So I decided I was going to make my family a day to remember.

Mmm...Is there anything more delicious, than freshly baked vanilla cakes, smothered with royal icing? I used some melted white chocolate to pipe the hearts on top. I even made my own piping bag out of greaseproof paper.

It only took about 3 hours to finish them and some of that time was for cooling. Yet after my creations were finished, it wasn't long before Dave was due to return from work, after collecting Sarah from school. Perhaps I had just long enough to set the table?

It was nothing flash, but more the thought which counted. I lit a candle, placed an angel ornament near by, and set our table for afternoon tea. I even put on a lovely dress to welcome them home with. The pair of them were delighted with their special surprise when they returned home together. Sarah kept saying she couldn't believe I did what I did. I'd much rather hear that than, why didn't you stop me from eating so much chocolate, LOL. She then felt inspired to give us all a hug as her Valentine's present.

Who would've thought on my little shopping trip, I considered buying them a box of chocolates? I really enjoyed spending part of my day, making them something from the heart instead.

A fallow year

I haven't been doing much posting about our property at Gully Grove. The simple truth is, we haven't been doing a whole lot that's new. Other than building a drystone retaining wall - yet to be completed (when our rainy season catches a break) and other regular maintenance like mowing - we haven't embarked on our usual typhoon of projects. There are several reasons why, but let's start with the most obvious. We're just plain tired!

Ha-ha, yeah that's right. After 4 years hard slog, building gardens from debilitated scrub land and that little train wreck with the floods last year, well, we're spent. Not just physically and emotionally, but financially too. We're not broke, we have our bases covered but for the first time ever, we aren't presenting our payload of projects with an open cheque book. This year we said that's not going to happen. We're just going to have to be more inventive with our solutions - if we decide to embark on anything at all.

Which brings me to the enlightenment of the fallow year. In organic gardening, a fallow year comes to represent a whole growing season where the ground isn't tilled or planted, mulched or fertilised. It just sits there letting nature weave that special magic of replenishment. I like the thought of that. There isn't a more perfect time for a fallow year in our lives, than this year!

So we aren't running around with our mower every weekend, even though the grass desperately needs the hair cut. The grass and weed seeds are returning to the soil as nature intended. We aren't running around saving seeds from our garden either. Things like the spring onions and leeks are growing little fluff balls, that will be released before winter arrives. Again, that's fine with us, we're letting nature replenish the stores this year. All it means is, nature will grow things where it decides is the best place and how.

Kind of like this never-die luffa vine we've had for several years. This particular specimen fell off the parent vine and got kicked around a little with mowing. Once the rains arrived, whulla, instant luffa pot plant! Not to worry though, I don't mind it's appearance in a place I never would've planted it myself. Nothing has ever managed to grow in that particular spot before anyway. It's almost pure sandstone with a splash of clay and weeds like cobblers pegs.

I love how nature found the solution, in a decaying luffa fruit and the summer rainy season. In a harsh, exposed location such as ours, nature has to be creative! I'm going to leave it to grow there, and do whatever it was nature intended.

It's exactly the same strategy I've always used for these three year old, Kent pumpkin vines. The winter has never managed to kill them off, neither the occasional heatwave before the summer rains set in. They simply hang on for grim death, and then explode into life when the rainy season comes. All it requires is to ignore their unkempt state, when they only look fit for the compost heap. The reward is getting a steady supply of pumpkins every year, with no effort but to pluck them off.

I suspect gardening was meant to be this easy, once we can live with the messiness of seasonal change. We don't get bumper crops gardening this way, but we always get survival crops that taste just as good as their pampered counterparts. By allowing nature to do most of the work here, we're conserving energy and resources when we most need to.

Seeing some of these Pink Thai, cherry tomatoes adorning the ground, are you beginning to wonder if we look after our produce at all? This year, you'd be right to assume we're not. But if the birds, marsupials and hares aren't dragging these little seed bombs all over the place, we somehow manage to. I pulled these off the parent plant, to get them off the ground. This was several weeks ago when they were still green. Naturally, I forgot about them and so they ended up dwelling on the barren sandstone wasteland we like to call the front of the house, LOL.

They may just propagate themselves yet!

Do you want to know the secret to how anything changes around the garden in a fallow year? Humus made from decaying plant matter. This is just the remnants of soil in an old wheel barrow. It fell over recently and got pushed back under the pigeon pea trees. Old shriveled leaves meet new green ones. Microbes love this kind of soil banquet - especially during the rainy season. I know I keep banging on about the rainy season, but it's only just dawned on me this year - the rains are the signal for a new growing season. It's not until they arrive, that anything starts to grow in earnest. The ground needs to be saturated in order for the soil microbes to kick off their breeding cycle.

Soil microbes get some assistance traveling around the garden, from fungi and mushrooms. They always emerge with the wet humid weather and seem to disappear just as quickly and mysteriously again. In my garden they will always be considered magic mushrooms, as they bring change with them. I know when they start popping up, we're doing something right to the soil. Maybe not perfect soil condition, but at least adequate enough for something as delicate and sensitive to change as fungi is, to start growing them.

These mushrooms/fungi were underneath a pigeon pea tree. I would have to say this is our favourite kind of pioneer plant at Gully Grove. Wherever these peas are planted, the soil starts to come to life again. Good soil is a rare commodity in the bush. It's great for growing natives, but not a great deal else. That's when you need some clever plants with clever tricks up their sleeves. The pigeon pea tree has many.

Before our fallow year this year, we started digging our small ponds to catch water run-off. On the edges (love those shady edges) we planted a row of pigeon peas. In their first year, it was still the tail end of our drought, so I had to pamper them with visits with the watering can. But only a few years later and they're creating their own soil in a former clay-pan. That's why these ponds hold water without a plastic liner - it's clay.

But pigeon peas have deep tap roots, so not only can they survive in the dry, they can also push through clay layers in the wet too. Great trick for adaptability and does wonders for the soil. This is truly our most beloved (exotic) plant that will be responsible for considerable soil improvement over the years. If you have really awful, and I mean Sahara desert type soil, this amazing plant is a miracle.

But what we love about the pond development, is how it's become a favourite spot for all the birds and local wallabies to drink. I'm just sitting back and taking it all in during our fallow year. We did the hard yards first, now we get the reward of watching. Grab your patient cap though because it won't happen in the first year you work, or maybe even the second. By the third and fourth year though, all those hard miles and worn shoes will reward you.

Of course, there's always a flip side to such an energetic pace. Before you know it, there's a jungle in your backyard! The passionfruit vines have managed to smother the rosemary bush again. What rosemary bush, you ask? Well, I know it's in there somewhere. It's that round bulge in the middle. Hilltop chicken coop is behind there too. You can just make out the roof line. Crazy growth rate here, but pruned passionfruit vines make good mulch for fruit trees in autumn.

Not even Middle Ridge nursery was spared. Amongst all that vegetative growth, there's a narrow path for me to check the seedlings aren't drying out or being strangled in their sleep. I won't weed it though. Apart from the fact I don't want to, it's generating a marvelous micro-climate. The soil is moist and cool, therefore any sun exposure creates humidity. It's perfect for some of the palms I have in there. Can you make out the pineapple hoard in the middle of the table?

While I won't be planting more pineapples this growing season, I always propagate the tops when they come into my possession. Dave scores pineapple tops from the kitchen he chefs in, we buy the occasional pineapple on special, or like the plant above, I propagate the suckers. Three have already been plucked and planted from this particular specimen. Once we harvest the pineapple to eat (before winter) I'll break the two crowns up and propagate them also. It's really not that much effort and I've seen pineapples grow in really awful soil.

In fact, when we get back into the rhythm of gardening, pineapples are going to be one of our main features. If something really works in your garden, duplicate it. Or just let nature do it for you and live with the unkempt mess of a seasonal garden. You'll be amazed at what a fallow year can teach you. There are plenty of clever tricks nature can surprise you with.

Of course I can't leave without touching on some of the negative consequences of our fallow year either. We may have lost a red delicious fruit tree, due to collar rot. We hadn't mowed and some of the grass was over a metre tall. With the constant moist conditions the summer rains have caused, the base of the trunk was growing white fungus.

The leafs have died and the two baby fruit are hanging there, waiting to drop. At this stage we don't know if we will lose the tree. Maybe we got to it just in time - the wood on the branches are still very flexible and green? We'll have to wait. It has air flow now, so that will stave off the fungus growth.

I actually don't mind the loss, if that is the case, as I've been curious to try planting apple seeds instead. I enjoy how nature can be quite abundant like that; a grafted dwarf tree might cark it, but a seedling may just endure. Each little seed represents a possibility regardless, and precisely why nature is in the habit of throwing so many around! Perhaps you can understand why I'm pleased in a fallow year, nature takes over completely and sets the agenda. So many possibilities flying around the ecology, waiting for inspiration to rise up out of the ground. If I'm not messing with it, I get to see how nature does it.

I have some pretty amazing before and after pictures, to demonstrate a tidy and an unkempt garden. But that will have to wait for another post. I know in the past I haven't shown many of my messy garden pictures, because I figured success meant big patches of green production! Turns out I was wrong. A garden is still growing even if it looks unkempt and unruly. In fact, the most productive gardens are the ones that feed the soil out of natural provisions.

Ours still has a ways to go in development, but I'm confident despite our temporary hiatus, our garden will benefit from our fallow year. We won't be tilling the soil, except where we need to re-direct water flows. Everyone will benefit. So next time you visit your old garden, consider any fallow beds invaded by weeds, your respite - not your nemesis. ;)

Free Calendars

Just a quick post to share something new I learned today...how to print a free calendar from the internet. I had been meaning to purchase my annual calendar, but for some reason kept forgetting to. So now it's nearly February I'm beginning to feel a little lost without my calendar hanging up.

It's there to remind me of appointments and when bills are due. I know there are more electronic ways to get reminders, ie: send yourself an email from your own computer calendar, but call me old fashioned: I need the visual model hanging on my wall which I can scribble upon when something calls for my attention.

I found a link for free calender downloads, from my free software Open Office - which is kind of like Microsoft Office but free. I just wanted to share in case anyone else has forgotten to buy their calendars, but has a printer available. By the way, you don't need to download Open Office in order to to get the free calendars, as they open in your existing internet browser. I chose to download the ink-saver version. Bear in mind for anyone who doesn't live in the US, don't download the holidays version by accident. What you need to click on is the Blank Monday-Sunday version, for the applicable year.

I had a few troubles at first, but then I read all the instructions on the page to discover I didn't have a current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, which was also free to download. So be sure to read and follow all the instructions. Then it's just a simple matter of printing out your calender. Here's a photo of mine...

Anything but flash - always practical!

I used a clipboard for backing, and a big clip for hanging from the screen divider near our small office area. I also put a piece of blue scrap-paper behind the current month, so any ink or indentations won't seep into the following month underneath - because it's all printed on regular office paper.

I thought this might be a useful tip for those wanting to save money, or just too forgetful to write "calendar" on their shopping list, LOL.

If I like the calendar, I may even try to find it a permanent backing board, made specifically for these free printables. You know, easy to put on or take off, easy to hang, stuff like that. I'll make it out of whatever I have laying around too. No fuss, easy and rustic, that's my motto. ;)

Earth movers

I know it's officially the "New year", but for us at Gully Grove, we haven't been paying too much attention. That's because Dave has taken holidays and we've been happily playing in dirt! Oh yes, dirt can be loads of fun especially when you build stuff with it. Once you get over the stiff ligaments and aching muscles, you won't want to put dirt down. Okay, we try not to go overboard because we've learned with experience, endurance is all about knowing when to say stop! Dig like a soldier if you must, but stop when your body tells you to. And always drink plenty of water because there's nothing which makes a throat dryer than kicking around dirt.

Picture taken 2012

This is what Dave and I have been doing in our spare time - moving the 15-20 cms of silt which came down with the last flood. It's a combination of our neighbour's driveways (on the hill above) plus some of the back-fill we used building the retaining wall in the picture. It's rather unremarkable, simplistic and dare I say even tedious of all the tasks we do here...pick, shovel, load, cart and dump - yet it's a very important job too. Like the ants, termites and plethora of other insects which use the earth during their life cycles, we all have something in common: dirt is everywhere we live.

Our concrete driveway in the background

We can cover it in concrete or with gardens but soil is almost always on the move. It's part of the natural ecology. Rather than employ large machines to religiously deal with it for us however, we gladly embrace the working of the soil as part of our living ecology. For every load of dirt we shift, we get paid for in muscle mass. Traversing every footstep with monotony, we can see where dirt is best employed too. If a path is too steep or a hole in the ground too dangerous, our feet will tell us and so we move dirt where it's needed around the property

At present, it's behind the house, where we are building more buffer space for the surcharge of the building. It wasn't until the January floods (2011) we had to consider what impact the force of heavy rain could do to our house. Not only did it drench the soil to levels not experienced for over 30 years (causing it to compact tighter when it dried) but also the force of the amount of rain falling, put extra pressure on the house pad. It all resulted in the soil lowering.

Our house is in pretty good shape considering, but we've decided not to sit on our hands either. Ants wouldn't! We see them all the time after a storm, building their defenses back up, raising the level of the entry hole to withstand the next big rain event. Likewise, we take the silt which got dumped on the cut side of our house, and move it to the fill side; expanding the dirt at the base of the house pad outwards. We will then plant it out with gardens too, but for now we are working on the edge.

After 3 days work

The edge of our batter is going to be a drystone retaining wall. Man these are wonderful things to build! When you've had to compact the road-base footings of a constructed block wall, with nothing more than the top of a heavy mallet (ouch, me back!) you will understand the pure joy of laying a drystone retaining wall, because the footings ARE the stones. All you need to do is expose the natural compacted layer of soil and start laying them down. Yes it can be fiddly at times, trying to find the pieces which match, but once you get going you seem to find them by intuition.

Still more rocks to lay

We've stepped the stones back (angle of repose) increasing the interlocking capacity to withstand the pressure of the soil behind it. That's why it's important to fill in every gap with chinks of stones, so that as a whole unit (large and small) every rock can interlock and buffer the surcharge. For those wondering, surcharge is just the term used to measure the weight above a retaining wall. It's how Engineers come up with the recommendations of minimum retaining wall heights, before Council certification is required. For our Lockyer Shire in Queensland, we can build a retaining wall without certification up to one metre high. Our drystone retaining wall is going to be well under that. Other Council regulations can affect whether you need certification, so be sure to check with the Planning Departing in your local Shire, before embarking on your own wall building project.

Back-fill with smaller rocks ~ add organic matter ~ then plant!

But really every opportunity you can give the earth to reclaim it's vegetative cover, is a step towards preventing soil moving in the first place. The only real exception to that rule is floods! Not a great deal can stop a force of water, best practice is just to get out of it's way and clean up afterwards. If you're considering working your own piece of land, take some advice from a human earth mover, check out what your local ant colony is up to. See how they build their paths across a slope rather than up or down. Wish we had paid them more attention before we concreted part of our driveway. I'm sure if we did, we wouldn't have allowed a building company to decide how our land would be accessed or cut.

But you live and you learn and hopefully make more informed decisions in the future. While ants don't exactly come with engineering degrees, they certainly know a thing or two about the natural elements. We like our ants here. At times we've had to poison them (regrettably) when they've built a massive mound near accessing our cars or footpaths. I don't mind living with ants so long as they don't bight me on the way to the car! Thankfully, where we had to poison them in the past they have not returned to build there, so we no longer poison. We still see them inhabiting other parts of the garden and on our bush-walks around the area. Ants and termites are important to the echidna's diet in this area, and we see those occasionally in our garden too.

When you think about it, earth is something we all need in some capacity, even if it's just to give our feet something to stand upon. I couldn't see myself doing anything more enjoyable for New Years than playing with dirt.