Blooms in and around the garden: the first plum blossom, plum blossoms waiting to pop, a rugosa rose planted only a few days earlier, and a blood root unfurling!
You know how difficult it is to plant seeds when the cat decides to help?!
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New additions to the garden: a beautiful row of garlic next to seeds of carrots, parsley, and wasabi radishes (the cat helped); 2 elderberries watered by @niccolo.seligmann , blossoming blueberry bushes, and a blossoming peach tree. Bliss!
Garden continues to progress. After my folks kindly helped with some bed digging, I was able to plant the 6 blueberry bushes. The apple trees and the sour bush cherry are beginning to bud, too!
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Current head count: 2 apples, 1 sour bush cherry, 1 peach, 1 apricot, 1 plum, 1 persimmon, 6 blueberry bushes. More to come!
I'll let you guess what's going on here:
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Option 1. Sometimes you can plant a tree in a half hour: the top soil runs deep and shovels out like dark molasses when you dig the hole.
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Option 2. Sometimes you take an hour and a half to plant a tree: the rock is harsh, close to the surface, dives deep, and requires blows from the digging iron.
Planting an orchard! Papa (@koons.instruments ) and the Wheaten Terrior helped me plant 2 apple trees and an already-flowering apricot today (and 3 junipers and 2 dog wood trees elsewhere). We're whooped. Soon to join them: plum, persimmon, quince, peach, and 2 pawpaws. It's so exciting to see new garden beds slowly begin to take new shape
Always a pleasure to visit @ashleyminnerart 's Indigenous Studies class at UMBC to nerd out about ways of knowing, Indigenous perspectives on #archives, and historical research methods with awesome @umbcspecialcollections librarian Susan Graham! (Photos by, and posted with kind permission from, @ashleyminnerart )
I made a thing! It might look unimpressive, but it's secure and took 2 hours. The @koons.instruments method of measure twice and cut once makes a huge difference!
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Not every day you get to make an archival-grade enclosure for LP records! Processing Collection 120: Maryland Traditions at the Maryland Folklife Archives at @umbcspecialcollections continues to go well!
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#archivist #folklifearchives #folklife #archives
Turning a sharp corner reveals a seemingly alien landscape. Tucked away in Maryland's Baltimore and Harford Counties are a few remaining "serpentine grasslands." Described in historic settler accounts as "barrens," these #grasslands both result from and are named after the blue-green mineral #serpentinite, which creates a nutrient-poor soil. In contrast to surrounding forest ecologies, they are home to #prairie grasses and rare, isolated species. Regionally these serpentine grasslands are the last remaining habitat islands from the extensive prairie that, 25,000 years ago, covered much of the lands now known as the eastern United States.
As the climate cooled over thousands of years, Indigenous peoples maintained the grasslands through controlled burns. Colonization disrupted the practice of burns and Indigenous peoples' relationships with their lands. Pines and junipers could now intrude, shifting grasslands into forests with the stunted trees visible in some of these photos. Habitat transformation continued via chromite mining and residential development; now only a tiny fraction of the original grassland endures. Other effects of changed relationships with land are visible in power lines, abandoned mine shafts, and speeding cars.
The largest remaining contiguous serpentine grassland is at Soldier's Delight Natural Environmental Area, managed by the MD Dept of Natural Resources in Owings Mills, Baltimore County--where I took these photos during a fun guided tour kindly provided by amazing #geologist @monab5454 .
This is part of a project to craft a culturally-respectful "land acknowledgement," a statement that recognizes the local Indigenous people(s) dispossessed of their lands by settler colonists. Though not without controversy, they are a good first step toward counteracting inaccurate settler colonist narratives.
Make no mistake: these were and are still Indigenous lands. And it's time that folks in #Maryland learned Indigenous peoples' unique historic and contemporary relationships to land.
