W E L C O M E

Saving seeds, while staying with the trouble.

Hey there, friend -

Kirsten here - I’m a gardener, writer, a wonderer and a wanderer, living gratefully on melukerdee / palawa country - in the south of the south of lutruwita, Tasmania.

And here is what’s going on, with this new garden journal of mine -

For the last two decades I’ve been completely consumed with Milkwood - which began as a small ‘climate change farm’ on rocky soil on Wiradjuri country, with my partner Nick.

Milkwood went on to become an Australian educational powerhouse of sorts - teaching skills for living like it matters to folks both locally and worldwide, publishing books, growing plenty of food, sharing skills and helping to cultivate community.

By the end of last year though, I was Completely Frazzled.

‘Twas a heady combo of All The Things (teenager included - hello darling! love you), plus perimenopause, which took the lid off my previously-somewhat-masked alphabet soup of mental diagnoses, yoinked off my carefully arranged and long-worn armour, and whacked me over the head with a cricket bat.

Then, quite quickly - down off the front step of small certainties, down from the speaking gigs, the spreadsheets, the socials, the course design and teaching… down and out and into the earth I tumbled. Or perhaps melted. It was quite messy and very un-ignorable, whatever it was.

And here in the mud I sit, for now.

Watching the bees. Listening for Currawongs. Cooking dinner on the fire, sometimes. Learning the ways of the rockpools and their seaweed teachers. Paying attention to the small, steady work of living cycles and seasons.

And so this Entangled Garden is a journal of… the view from here. And what emerges slowly from this place.

For a little more context, regarding land and place - my ancestors came to this land from Wales, Ireland, and Scotland... as convicts, settlers, coal miners, young women travelling alone.

They built homes and families, worked hard, and also benefitted from colonisation, dispossession and their inherent whiteness in ways both blatant and insidious, I am sure. I live within that inheritance.

And I’m wondering, more than ever before… what active repair might look like - for this land, this place and it’s people. And maybe, also, for me.

What does it mean to try to live in right relationship with a place? To step outside clock-time and into deeper living cycles? To tend to soil and seeds, in a world on fire?

Might active repair look like saving seeds, with careful hands? Look like listening to local elders, for sure. Learning about country, and good fire, and how to be a better ancestor, perhaps.

Could active repair look like noting and naming what is shifting in the fracturing seasons, with clear eyes - all the better to see you and me with - to be better equipped to respond, to care for, and to help collaboratively lean into the futures our communities need, and deserve?

Maybe down here in the mud is the best place for me, just now. I can see the stars from here, when they come out.

So in short, this journal is my current home camp.

For wonderings, and notice-ings, and learnings from plants and place, kinship and responsibility, and the living cycles that shape us, even in a world out of balance.

An ongoing experiment in staying with the trouble, while staying in relationship.

You’re welcome to join me.

Pull up a log. There’s tea.

Entangled Garden is a reader-powered publication. If this journal speaks to you, you are welcome to join the conversation:

You can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber, by sharing this journal with friends, or buying one of my books. Thanks for reading, and be well - K