PCaddict
Member
I am hoping all is well Amy, sending well wishes and prayers your way
Amy Gardner Of Eden v1.1: Outdoor 420 Featuring Star Pupil x WeaponX, PCK, Lilly & Purple Satellite
- Thread starter Amy Gardner
- Start date
Yep thoughts and prayers your way for healthy easier living and your home is intact when you get back.
Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
I just wanted to quickly update everyone because I heard from Amy today. 
She’s safe and dealing as best as anyone could expect considering the conditions there. Maybe Shed will have more update to share, but I wanted to let everyone know she is alive and kickin! Keep sending her your thoughts, loves and prayers. 
She’s safe and dealing as best as anyone could expect considering the conditions there. Maybe Shed will have more update to share, but I wanted to let everyone know she is alive and kickin! Keep sending her your thoughts, loves and prayers. 
Thanks for the update double H!
Great to know Amy is OK. Hoping and praying her Eden remains safe too!
Thank You, HH !
That's very good news !
That's very good news !
Derbybud
Well-Known Member
Good news. Thanks for the update double H
Thanks Heavenly!I just wanted to quickly update everyone because I heard from Amy today.
dynamo1
Photo of the Month: May 2018
Just a little rain ditty to occupy the space till Amy's return, come on rain lets have some precipitation participation
- Thread starter
- #271
Update Jan 18 2020: Eden on the Edge
(Or, “Amy’s Ark”
)
(Or, “Amy’s Ark”
)
That’s a (hopefully non-locatable) zoom in on the fire service map to show how close our little Garden of Eden is to the line of the fire. The “binoculars” icon is pretty much our place. Trees on our block are singed.
As a wind that changed the direction of the fire in our favour hit, our neighbour took this photo looking in the direction of our place.
They thought it a goner, and rightly so. We’d let it go more than once after hearing of carnage in the area and it feels very much more than miraculous that it still stands.
[Ramble warning... But i promise there are photos and words about plants somewhere below!]
So many folks I know have lost their homes. There have been stories of driving through forests with 40+ft flames on either side of the car and horse float with 2 horses in it (both ok, one sadly left behind - no time), of folks running with their kids and driving cars into rivers and lakes to escape apocalyptic wind-driven walls of fire and in the aftermath, looting, huge cues for nothing but white bread and water, people being told to take down their tents in the grounds of the evacuation centre because it might not be safe from “ember attack” in the days post the NYE firestorms, it’s been a real fuckin’ trip folks and I couldn’t feel more fortunate for the way I was looked after during our 12-day evacuation, for the connections and cannabis and coffee I enjoyed while witnessing scenes from an apocalypse and for the fact that, at this pause in the fire season, my home is still intact.
I’ve seen and heard testimony of things in the last 2 weeks that would seem ridiculously far-fetched in the most extreme global-disaster feature film. Prob’ly the most poignant was what i have dubbed “hell wind”; a 2am vision on the morning of Jan 5, of the thickest thickest smoke filled air travelling past my at about 70km/hr, so horizontally. It was the predicted ripping southerly - it’s arrival was a moment everyone was sitting up waiting for because it was totally unpredictable what might be coming with it. Thankfully, “hell wind” was all it was and it didn’t burn us, but if you’d seen it in a film you might easily think that the special effects department had overdone it a bit. I’ll never forget it. That doesn’t even begin to mention the water, power and communications outages, food shortages and the atrocious support (lack thereof) from many governments, local and otherwise (not all of them tho - we did witness some actual leadership).
I want to tell you all to pay special attention to this occurrence and think about the kinds of natural disasters and events that can occur in your zone and the kinds of things you might need should it happen - not to mention the kinds of things a that still need to happen to mitigate their liklihood and intensity. Apocalyptic thinking has a serious place in our lives. Get proper filtering masks - every city and town on the east of Australia has been in massively dangerously unhealthy air for weeks on end (and now New Zealand too). Proper P2 masks have been in extremely short supply, and very heavily guarded by those who have them. No-one was prepared, not even a little bit. I want to tell you all that but I know it’s not my place. All I can say is what impact it’s had on me. I already knew that the management of forests and water and lands in general here are driven by money and not fire science (not indigeneous fire science nor western fire science - and they agree on a lot of things) And now i am more certain that governments are not going to help the people most affected by the shitsstorms they know are coming and choose to do nothing about. We need to be prepared ourselves, to look after ourselves and each other. Locally generated power, locally grown food, local area networks, desalination and other water purifying technologies in place, locally. If you ever end up completely cut-off somewhere, you’ll know what I mean. You are suddenly very vulnerable and i saw many people who just had no idea how to manage or cope. Many of you already know what I mean I’m sure. Many of us would like to be living that way right now, less dependent on the modern comforts we are served so benignly.
One of the things that’s happened here, environmentally, is that the intensity of drought conditions the last few years (intensified because tropical wet seasons have not behaved as they usually do so we’ve not got the rains they usually generate for us - plus the aforementioned and atrocious water policy of many many governments over many many years) meant that wet dense forests that never burn, have burnt. And they burnt fiercely. These are areas where wild fires usually meet their end and can be, in previous seasons, ‘easier’ to stop; old growth Tropical rain forests. Fuel reduction and hazard reduction burns that get done in other areas have been severely hampered by a lack of appropriate conditions the last few years alongside less and less funding from government for much longer than that. 100 years ago on this country, land holders used to work with the indigenous population and burn the country to manage seasons, land vegetation and to mitigate against big hot fires. This is all still possible, it just takes vision from government and leadership and sadly that is very lacking. A wise person I read recently said, “solutions to complex problems take lots of different kinds of minds to figure out” and I think that’s just a great quote for our times. And to mitigate something else, all the media noise you might be hearing about heaps of the fires being from arson is grossly overstated. A very tiny % of the hundreds of fires burning have been attributed to arson, a very small number, most are known natural causes like lightning (lots of dry storms) and trees down over powerlines.
The sheer scale of it all is really overwhelming and almost ungraspable by the mind, but we really ought to try to get our heads around it. 1+ billion animals (not including reptiles, arachnids, insects etc.) and probable multiple extinction events. And that’s wild animals, the numbe of farm animals dead or so badly injured they need euthanising is astronomical. This has been many times the scale of the catastrophic California fires. Much forest will regenerate yes, this is a fire country and that’s what it does, it’s doing it already. But much of this won’t either, like the places that have never burnt before, things are just too different and some eco systems will not recover. We shalL see what apocalyptically-adapted species emerge in the wake of it all, over the coming years.
Locally, I’m very close to some of the hardest hit areas. There is probably only 10-15% of the forested country left unburnt for a more than 200 mile distance north and south and west of us, and we are in it. That’s a lot of energy, soil energy, and carbon-eating air producing forests gone. I can feel the silence of the forests that are now denuded north and south of me, and the sense of responsibility for this tiny little piece of what’s left is very palpable.
Our sense of good fortune in amongst the disaster zone is also palpable. Very much so
I’m so very grateful to all of you for the messages and sincere thoughts and prayers and good wishes and best irie vibes and everything else you sent. I was reading every now and then without logging in, during the active comms windows (when data was allowed through) and it really helped, a lot. I appreciated that others noticed that the country’s leaders were toasting to smoke producing fireworks while thousands of people, their constituents, were cut off from the world in unbreathabe air having just experienced some kind of living-hell-apocalypse-on-earth merely a few hundred kilometres away. I was one of them and it was horrible and it was nowhere near as bad for us as it was for a whole lot of other people. I had access to a house, water, food. Lots and lots of people didn’t have those things and still don’t. So, thanks for noticing that. Stupid wankers... hang on...
Ok ... phewf! So, I’m not going back in the journal to like or quote anything because we’re well past that, and I know that you know that I read it all and that it is all very appreciated and was deeply so during the ordeal.
lets have some precipitation participation
After 2 days of concerted but merely-drizzling effort from the skies to give us rain, an effort which resulted in a sludgy, thick-with-smoke, atmospheric wetness that was very hard to make friends with, it rained properly all night last night. 15ml. Hopefully more in the not too distant future. Again I pay homage and give thanks to our good-fortune as I can report that the ran came on really slowly here, unlike places up north and southwest of us also where it hard and furiously and flash floods closed roads
. We have had a pretty good slow soaking now so some respite. It’s drying out already and we mustn’t drop our guard too much but it definfeels like some decent respite for while. Time to re-pack the evacuation suitcases, process some cannabis and see what state we find the garden in.Attention to the plants has been about as fragmented as that ramble up above probably is and mostly not by me. Here are the bare facts of their existence:
Since December when the fires stated locally there has been very little direct sun and over the last 2 weeks since the firestorm that would have put the plants into temps in the high 50ºCs early 60ºCs plus some super hot days either side of that, no real light to speak of most of the time as well as really toxic air and some strangely cold days and nights. I’m amazed I still have plants.
I have been thinking about whether there is a problem with smoke particles and contaminants getting into the soil and being taken up by the plants - assuming they survive ad produce anything at all(they are very small!). I cant really find anything bout that and no-one seems to think food from the garden is a problem. But we know that cannabis is special and can bind contaminants to the plant fibre so it makes wonder. Anyone know any Cali farmers that looked into this after fires there?
Assuming that isnt a problem, here’s where things are at.
The Purple Staelites and Star Pupil x Weapon X are about 7weeks old and have all shown sex, I’m pretty sure. I definitely have 1 male PS and female PS and 1 female SP x WX, maybe 2.
They will get transplanted later today or tomorrow into the raised bed.
No light means very little branching. Honestly it’s been like having them under about 50watts of CFL.
The Lilly has fared the worst and has been hit hard by the grasshoppers too so the poor thing is currently weak and thin and pale and the Pakistan Chitral Kush is still very very small and also a bit grasshopper bothered. As soon as I’m able, I will give both of them a good TP drench to follow up this rain and the older ones will get the same when they’re transplanted.
I figure they all have about 2 weeks of veg left before starting to flower properly and if we manage to get any light at all I might get a few branches by then! All new growth looks good and healthy colour-wise but there is definite lack of vigour, turgor is the word i think - they don’t have it. They had some early this morning after the night of proper rain but dropped agin by mid-morning. Power is out. The drenches will be hearty and should get things going well. I topped the Purple Satellite and the definitely-female SP x WX today. Absolutely terrible timing moon-wise for topping and transplanting but hey, the apocalypse, right?
The visuals...
The view looking back through the fence. It was the plan to transplant today but exhaustion levels are too high. Tomorrow.
There was even a critter of the week during the evacuation when we didn’t see or hear a bird or frog or cricket for many days. During that time a Pineapple Lilly, which is a plant I’ve never even heard of which our host had salvaged from an inner-city street many years prior, went from having no flowers at all to being completely covered in them and then, on Jan 11, was host to a beautiful and almost invisible visitor.
Thanks if you came along for the long ramble
and thanks, too, if you didnt and just looked at the pictures.As the decade ticked over to 2020 in the land down under, the poignant words of a local Rural Fire Service fireman when he pulled over to yell some passionate abuse at the government via a roadside newscrew, were telling it well; “it’s all gone to shit!”. Indeed it has, and still some form of life goes on in the aftermath. And there will be life in the aftermaths of other things to come, too. For others definitley and perhaps for us again as well. It’s not exactly a time I thought I’d be living in but I find myself not actually surprised that it has come this soon, at this mind-boggling scale, in one massive hit - oddly not surprised at all. It’s almost like the obsession with apocalypse films that recent generations have has been a preparatory subconscious manifestation - both expressing our fears and preparing us for a (more and more) likely future.
So, I’m totally, completely stoked to have some living plants and if there is no toxic soil issue and I get some sun in the next few weeks there is still an outside chance some consumable buds might get harvested at the end of March.
I would love any insight or info anyone might have about that toxic soil question tho
...Much love and respect to all of you
Great read!
I tried to track the fire route, but it's hard from the other side of the earth so I couldn't really tell. I looks like you simply got spared? Didn't it burn all around you? Amazing!
And the plants - sheesh - what troupers!
Glad you're still mostly intact.
I tried to track the fire route, but it's hard from the other side of the earth so I couldn't really tell. I looks like you simply got spared? Didn't it burn all around you? Amazing!
And the plants - sheesh - what troupers!
Glad you're still mostly intact.
dynamo1
Photo of the Month: May 2018
Thank you for the update, Intact Eden & you is such good news. 
I'm happy to hear that you and Eden have come through this so far more or less intact.
I'm very glad to hear the rain has come to help control the fires. Hopefully things will continue to improve, but don't let your guard down.
Edit: I'll ask my sister when I talk to her tonight about the toxic soil question. She's a deputy fire chief here in Canada.
I'm very glad to hear the rain has come to help control the fires. Hopefully things will continue to improve, but don't let your guard down.
Edit: I'll ask my sister when I talk to her tonight about the toxic soil question. She's a deputy fire chief here in Canada.
So happy to hear all is safe and changing for the better . Hoping the smoke clears and your plants get some of that lovely sunshine they need .
So happy to read your update Amy!
should be fine. fire has been used here in agriculture for literally centuries. although the practice has decreased greatly, they still burn stubble fields in the fall before planting the next yrs crops.
a lot of the wine production in california was decimated by the fires. the vintage yrs were destroyed as the smoke puts a lot of flavor into the wine and ruins it. subsequent vine stock grown in the affected areas still makes wine with a smoky flavor, as it has been introduced in to a layer of the soil.
Derbybud
Well-Known Member
Breathing easier but still praying.
praying they can breathe easier...
Mark Gordan Smith
Well-Known Member
Hello Amy,
I have a lot of respect for your work in this place.
I've kept a lot of the your Friend or Foe - Predators of Eden filed away, great photos, so well done.
I don't have any religion....sorry, but I want you and those close by to come through the errors and be happy.
I cannot word it any better - Stay well, Amy.
I have a lot of respect for your work in this place.
I've kept a lot of the your Friend or Foe - Predators of Eden filed away, great photos, so well done.
I don't have any religion....sorry, but I want you and those close by to come through the errors and be happy.
I cannot word it any better - Stay well, Amy.
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