Accessible Gardening: #14: Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners , 1 by Sansai87

Sansai87 wrote:
I think that is a good article idea, Carrie. Writing about Walden would mean you get to write about both Thoreau and Emerson. It was actually Emerson’s property, wasn’t it? Few places were as well described. It would be interesting to have a double vision on the place. What it looks like today compared to what it looked like in the 1850’s . I knew about the Thoreau & Son pencil Co., but I didn’t know before reading “Pencil” that he developed a new graphite compound or that he had his own land survey business. Measuring everything was evidently a quirk of his
If I ever decided to take everything I’ve learned at Amargia and create a disabled writer/artist community from scratch, the first thing I would do is have it surveyed for it’s topographical levelness. We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time making and keeping things level. . Then, I would visit the property again after a heavy rain. Starting out with a level piece of property would have made things so much easier. But, Amargia started out as a land reclamation project and we are still working at that.
The erosion was BAD. I’ve heard this area called part of the coastal plains, but the coastal sandhills is more accurate. I’ve been teasing MK about creating “the Amargia Plateau” with all her earthmoving. PJ has expressed the theory that there is some genetic imperative that drives those descended from the mound building tribes to move dirt from one place to another. He and I are both 200% behind the retaining wall building project now. You can clearly see how much bigger the problem would have been without the walls by the amount of soil that built up behind them in the course of the storm. Melinda tells me I am a highly visual learner. I guess she is right. I would never have believed that rain could have moved so much soil so quickly short of a landslide. until I saw it. But, I still want to come up with ways to make this practical necessity more visually appealing. Now that I fully understand how necessary terracing of some sort is.
It was the roadway that was hit worst. I wonder if MK has a book on the history of road building. :-) Honestly, I liked the pencil book too. It was a book on engineering as told through the development of the pencil. I think it was very smart of the author to use pencils, instead of the default subject for engineering, bridges. Anyone can grasp pencils, literally and figuratively.
The wood anemones are blooming…in PJ’s deck farm. Ah-ha, that’s where they disappeared to. :-) ~N~