The Calendar Pages

Using The Calendar Pages

Designing sustainability and resiliency is a holistic approach to life. Part of this involves conscious consideration in how we create, modify, and manage our living spaces and work spaces. The goal for both sustainability and resiliency is to work towards spaces that are self regulating. It is also important that we produce the food that we need to survive close to where we live, ideally in your own yard or space.

The calendar pages are designed to give you one piece of the information to help with that. On the top right hand side of each month, you will find the length of daylight and the angle of the sun at the beginning of the month. I have done this for roughly central Iowa in the US, but this will hold roughly true for anywhere on the north 42nd parallel. North and south of this line will require some adjustment. This is critical information for designing both garden spaces and structures to make them environmentally efficient.

When you are designing most structures, your highest efficiency for both heating and cooling in temperate climates will be to place on the south side (in the northern hemisphere) to collect winter sun and then to have those windows shaded during hot weather.

This also helps you in the garden. By knowing where your sun is going to be, you can extend the season for both heat loving crops and cool loving crops. By predicting where the sun will be, you can build cold frames to collect that sun for the warm crops. By knowing where the shade is, you can extend the cool season crops into the summer by taking advantage of the shade.

Here are your calendars for the week.

Journal Prompts for the week

The Plant Profile

While I am not an expert on every plant that I will profile, I am trying to provide a complete profile for each plant. For the plants that I know, I will supplement the research information with my experience as a mid-western US gardener and as someone who has gardened in pots in an RV. For those plants that I don’t personally know, this is information that I need as well. My primary focus for 2025 is on useful plants that can be raised in almost any circumstances, from an RV or apartment to a small yard garden, to a permaculture garden.

Each profile includes as much information that I can find and is organized in a reference template that will be the same for each plant.

This is what you can expect to find in each PDF profile:

Identification

Plant growth and the conditions that the plant prefers

How the plant matures and develops

How to use the plant

The medicine and magic of the plant.

And when I know, suitable varieties for small spaces.

Any nutritional, medicinal, and magical properties that I include are intended for your informational purposes only. Always check with a reputable medical provider or herbalist before using an herb medicinally.

The version of the profile that I include in the PDF files here are a manuscript version. I welcome and encourage your input as I edit them for final publication.

5 Minute Hack

Effective Rule Breaking

I break the “Rules” all of the time. However, effective rule braking doesn’t by chance.

1) It takes conscious thought and study so that you have a base understanding the processes that you are working with.

2) It takes understanding what the purpose of the “Rule” is in the process. Every rule has a purpose. Sometimes the rule is important. Sometimes it is a relic of what was.

3) Understand the underlying science and philosophy behind the rule and the cost of breaking the rule and the cost of breaking it.

4) Know why you are breaking the “Rule”. And break the “Rules” for good reason.

5) Figure out how to break the “Rule” without breaking things.

The project in the monthly newsletter is an example of how I break the rules. The bushes had to be cut back to save them so when I set them into the propagation tray in less that ideal conditions had no downside except 5 minutes of time. The potential up side was a significant gain in new plants to put in the landscape. This was a good time to break the rules to see what would happen. The worst case scenario is a lesson learned.