Uncharted Land

Today we carried out the first steps toward building an allotment and growing some vegetables. We surveyed the plots before us. It was a rough landscape of riddles with thistles and weeds, comparable to the untamed wasteland which the early pilgrim settlers first encountered upon landing in America. However, we had something the early pilgrim settlers lacked: cardboard, plastic and knowledge of photosynthesis! We set about our task of flattening the weeds and then rigorously fixing a blanket of plastic and cardboard over the beds. Soon enough what once was a wilderness of strange weeds now looked like a rough scrapyard for recycled materials. Whether this helped kill the plants is uncertain. Unfortunately, what was certain was that we had unleashed a plague of loose plastic bags on the allotment that floated around like proverbial tumble weeds.

A picture taken by the first English settlers upon landing in America:

From wilderness to scrapyard (no indigenous populations were harmed in this process):

Pilgrim Byard admiring his new home.