KW-27 Days of sunshine
It's not all ones and zeros.
It has been an intensely hot week in Europe and at the Barracks. You’re favourite pirate is a teeny bit red all over. I might be quite the silver haired gardener / philosopher these days, but it’s hard to forget that I am still a ginger underneath.
On top of that, winter and spring were unnaturally dry, so while the ground is being baked from above, there is little moisture even quite deep under it. The expression heat dome might not be meteorologically a new one, but in another new linguistic sign of the times, it has entered the common tongue in just the last two or three years. Just like flash drought, polar vortex, and thundersnow, language is having to grow to normalise the extra-normal conditions that we are far too quickly having to get used to.
Socially, change is happening faster than optimal. The Greek authorities have told people not to go outside after noon. So it’s Greece, we know it’s hot there, but this is still Europe. It happens elsewhere is not going to be a useable excuse for very much longer. I’ve joked about this for a long time, maybe that is to mask the seriousness, maybe it’s because with humour you can jolt people more effectively, but I am genuinely worried about this coming summer.
I had a look back over the last two years’ worth of KW-27s, and I mention that it was hot in both of them, so maybe it’s just my terrible memory, but then, looking at the peas and the potatoes, both years were very far ahead of where we are now in the growing season.
The soft fruits are just starting to feed me some much needed fresh produce.
I continue to eat strawberries every day. The white currants look like they are going to win the second place crown, but I am most excited about the tayberries, which will almost certainly be the last to ripen, but for the first time are doing just great. I had mostly ignored them before, but this year, I gave them a trellis to climb up, and they are flourishing. I guess we all need structure.
It is incredible that I am still sowing. It’s a good thing as well.
This week, I put in a couple of rows of beetroots, four of sweetcorn, four sunflowers, a nice double row of broad beans, and three rows of potatoes.
None of this makes any sense to my conditioned gardener brain. Broad beans are an overwintering crop, usually, though not here as the ground freezes up just a little more than they can really deal with. The rush to fill up the potato break before the middle of May is a real thing. Sunflowers and sweetcorn need many days of sunshine to ripen. It was such a slow start to the year, it’s valid to ask if any of this going to work? The strange thing is, I feel good about it.
I’m not exactly worried about the winter food stores. Everything being a bit later isn’t even the worst thing. Sure, as I mentioned last week, it would have been nicer to have been eating from the garden already, but pushing the whole season back a week or two hopefully just means that the fresh stuff keeps coming off for a bit longer at the end, pushing the consumption from the stores a little later as well, and next year is a fatter year than this one.
I realise that the last couple of chapters of the Book of the Barracks have maybe sounded more Doomer than Happy, so a note:
A curious thing about being a Doomer is that people think you must be miserable. I think this is a postmodern problem, where (in postmodernism) the only thing that exists is the present, devoid of context or history or future, a current moment to be consumed. It wants us to exist in a state of permanent heightened intensity. All we have is either a magically beautiful moment (because we expect, need, our consumption to make us whole) or we exist in a sullen, dreary depression.
Happy Doomerism is not the intersection of the both. Being happy because of the coming collapse would be crazy, but only exactly as unreasonable as assuming chaos and the terror of that moment, because happiness is momentarially unavailable. It is the rejection of the binary choice.
I know magic exists. I see it in the Barracks in ways which appear to contra-indicatory to a rigorous scientific examination. There are manifestations of the natural world which lie on the edge of and beyond our senses (and therefore beyond our science) and which are magical and beautiful. At the same time, we have put ourselves on an unchangeable course to, at best, the collapse of society, and at worst, the extinction of the human race.
If we were to chose to live on either of these extremes, we would go mad. But we can accept that they both exist and chose to thrive in the middle, and be the best versions of ourselves possible. A binary lens on the world is the worst possible take.
Come to the Collapse Laboratory, we can discuss it better there.
And until then, or until next week, I wish you all the best to be best you can be. Take care of each other, and with much love,
Your loving Pirate Ben
xoxo
A request:
Please sign up a friend today. With their permission, of course. We have hit something of a growth wall and I think that this is worth getting out to more people. I know that this particular edition is not my finest. It needed another hour or two, but I ran out of time, and have to go and feed the pigs. But if you think that generally, it’s has messages that should be heard, or could be helpful, please do try to get one extra person on the list this week. I would love that so very much.
Thank you!
( there is a “refer a friend” button. I’m not totally sure what it does.. but here goes… )
https://www.thebarracks.de/the-collapse-laboratory
We're really looking forward to the collapse laboratory! Sehr gespannt sein, would be the most fitting expression for that ;)
Structure helps us thrive. We need support to help us climb to the next level. Nice idea Mr Philosopher. Stay cool ✌️ x