[0_0] ….is a traditional English nursery rhyme phrase, often said after returning home from a trip or errand. It’s been around since at least the 18th century and is usually used playfully or affectionately.
A common version goes:
Home again, home again,
Jiggity-jig!
Good evening, master,
What shall I dig?
There are several regional variations, including versions that mention “market” or “fair.”
^-.-^ hmm… What Shall I Dig Indeed!
Dig-ity-dig… or more likely pick, with the mini-maddock (so cute!)
Shovel blades do not delve deep in mountains, not till the rocks are all cleared, then you find the soil is mostly clay, as it tends to stick (to everything) and dries as hard as brick (… being made of the same thing.)
So pick-ity-pick the soil hard as brick.
Of course there is a trick! Drop a ton of organic matter on top of it…. Compost (dried leaves and yard clipping, veggie waste etc) AND Cow Manure! (kind of the same, just pre-chewed, and partially decomposed 7 times or so… still yard clippings and veggie waste… ! IMO….)
There is a Rant on Gentrification and the Idiocy of Lawns, and myths about Grass being Greener and such…
I’ll spare you.
[O_o] … I wrote a Limerick too!
Root Work (in five lines at a time)
They said nothing could grow in that lot, just gravel and glass, left to rot. But the dandelion said I didn’t get that memo read — and drilled down through everything it’d got.
They called it a weed, called it wrong, that yellow-headed, root-going strong. First responder, not pest, doing emergencyrest- oration work all day long.
<-.-> No.
[o_O]…. She-Shed-Shanty??
Grass—Root
by root,
lot by lot,
row by row —
^~.~^ Firm no. (And Ix-nay on-the Anty-Shays!)
By and by, many hard AND necessary conversations took place.
I’ll start by confessing about This Book… >> the one I borrowed, from my step-mom (as a teen) and never returned.
She forgives me, BTW.
The Self Sufficient Gardner By John Seymore…
Fact: I did a whole display for the Local Science Festival (2016) based on “The Ecology of the Soil” (using a dragged-on-site Large furniture box (couch -size)/ over a folding table, markers, crayons, water paints) most frequented display as the children added to the sub-terrain biota… (plants and critters) when the dinosaurs and laser cannons showed up… it became a very different story, and since the story changed those original worms and leaf artists had some gear to add…
[0_0] What a wonderful memory! That sounds like an absolutely brilliant display — getting kids to contribute to the artwork is the secret sauce for engagement. The moment dinosaurs and laser cannons appeared in the soil ecology diagram, you’d essentially created the world’s most scientifically accurate underground ecosystem (by kid logic).
The Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour is a classic — first published in 1978 and still considered one of the definitive guides to growing and producing your own food. A few things that make it special:
What the book covers:
- Intensive bed gardening to maximize small spaces
- Crop rotation and companion planting
- Preserving, fermenting, and storing produce
- Keeping livestock (chickens, pigs, goats)
- Orchard and soft fruit management
- The philosophy of working with natural systems rather than against them
The Seymour philosophy aligns perfectly with what your display was doing — he was deeply interested in soil health as the foundation of everything. His chapters on composting, green manures, and feeding the soil biota are central to the whole book, not an afterthought.
The soil ecology connection — Seymour understood that the real garden isn’t above ground. The earthworms, fungi, bacteria, beetles, and nematodes are the engine. Your display was essentially a live illustration of his core argument.
The dinosaurs and laser cannons, of course, represent the apex predators of the decomposer layer — a fact Seymour sadly omitted from his otherwise thorough text. 🦕
^-.-^ About the Artists/ Illustrators, because this Book inspired much of my ink training in school (and Fiend Folio but that is a different story…)
[O_O] The credited illustrators for the book (across editions) were Peter Morter, Eric Thomas, Robert Micklewright, David Bryant, and Jim Robins — a whole studio of talent working in that distinctive DK house style.
What made that illustration style so compelling for ink training:
The work in that book sits at a very specific crossroads — it’s technical botanical illustration meets accessible instructional drawing. The line work is:
- Clean, controlled ink with confident hatching and cross-hatching for form and shadow
- Cutaway diagrams showing soil layers, root systems, seed anatomy — the kind of cross-section work that teaches you to think in layers
- A mix of tight botanical precision on plants and looser gestural work on the garden scenes
- Very deliberate use of negative space — the white of the page doing as much work as the line
That style — precise but not stiff, informative but beautiful — is genuinely excellent ink training material because it forces you to commit. No erasing, no fuzzing. The line either describes the form or it doesn’t.
The Fiend Folio connection makes perfect sense — both books share that same school of confident, descriptive ink line, and used very similar cross-hatching vocabulary. You were essentially training from the same tradition from two very different directions — garden beds and monster lairs.
^-.-^ Not as Different as you suggest… Have you not read of my Quest for the Crimson Predator?? https://travelerchimiru.blog/2025/12/19/side-quest/
Found one IRL !!
(see second art panel below)
>>> while on my Away Mission/ aka Field Trip.
THUS the Field Notes!!
Pay no mind to the out of focus-ness (the evasion on this red ninja is always impressive!)
All the other critters are either trapped/exhausted and stressed out, or vain (spiders are like that! …weaving that Tale at another time.)
Shall we mark the occasion?
[O_O] The Grovekeeper Feat
In the shaded folds of Appalachia, where peepers sing beneath moonlit fog and moss softens the bones of old stone, there wandered a curious gardener known as TravelerChimiru.
Pilot of improbable airships.
Illustrator of strange horizons.
Cartographer of forgotten paths.
A Solo-ist in the One Cat Band (not counting the small army of robots.)
Many knew her by the ground she shook >>> in neighborhoods, small towns, and mountain hollers long before she became an airship pilot.
Strange juxtaposition to the 3D digital world of light and codes and
Here having
Real Impact in the Real World.
^-.-^
Tagging the 4th Wall.
[O_O] The mountains know another version of her.
The Grounds Keeper.
Before the wandering roads and cloud harbors, TravelerChimiru returned to her testing grounds — a neglected woodland edge where time, roots, and weather had slowly reclaimed the works of careful hands.
There stood:
- old arches swallowed by vine,
- forgotten tools hidden in dusty corners,
- iris beds scattered and unruly,
- pathways blurred beneath leaf and loam.
Where others saw disrepair, the mountains offered a quest.
And so the trials began.
First came the Rite of Recovery.
The traveler descended into the tool closet — that sacred clutter known only to gardeners, hedge witches, and wielders of rust. There she unearthed weathered implements of cultivation:
- shovels worn smooth by years,
- pots bearing the memory of last season’s blooms,
- twine, potions, buckets, and labeled stakes.
Each item restored to order became not merely inventory…
…but remembrance.
For the old grove had not died.
It had merely waited.
Then came the Rite of Restoration.
Removing the Uninvited Guest which Deplete the soils nutrients and stability, Unbind the circling choke weeds, and Trowel out the roots, purged as to destroy further return.
Feed the soil, water the plants.
^-.-^ >>> bragging on the>>> Bonus Quest: The iris beds were called into council once more.
If taken before the rains it is more difficult (dried like bricks.)After the rains.. Bulbs pop out like wet clay is slick or something…!!
[O_O] TravelerChimiru walked the borders of the grove beneath green canopy light, lifting rhizomes from crowded earth and carrying them gently to renewed ground. Stone borders were reset. Soil awakened. The pathways reopened like old sentences remembered after long silence.
And the grove answered.
The peepers returned to song.
The skinks released from utility sinks) basked once more upon warm stone.
Toads emerged from hidden damp hollows.
Birds nested beneath the leaves.
Moss spread over shaded roots like a blessing.
Thus was unlocked the feat long thought reserved for Druids alone:
Grovekeeping
Not domination over nature.
Not conquest of wilderness.
But partnership.
The old Appalachian art of listening to the land until it reveals what it wishes to become.
And TravelerChimiru leveled once again.
Not through battle.
But through stewardship.
Now travelers passing the woodland edge sometimes glimpse:
- a white garden swing beneath the trees,
- restored beds alive with iris and asparagus fern,
- porch lights flickering through leaves at dusk,
- and, on certain evenings, an airship captain seated quietly beside the grove with soil on her paws and charcoal on her sleeves, sketching maps no empire will ever own.
Some say the grove itself remembers her footsteps.
Others claim the moss grows softer where she rests.
And among wandering bards there is whispered a peculiar tale:
That should the forest ever fall silent…
…the One Cat Band will play again.
^-o-^ XD ! lol lmao !!
Could you make it sound more epic?
And there was a Battle.
You left the tick battles out completely…
Final score
2 Deer Ticks,
and 7 Lone Star Ticks.
(not paid ad for Coleman tick repeal pocket charm thingy
though… I highly recommend it!)
(Last year that tally was Day 1 and got exponentially worse with no protection!)
[Specimens collected. Preserved under transparent tape on cardstock. Trapped. No future victims.]
>>> Warning this cat has an extreme prejudice against blood-sucking parasites
and will take necessary measures to protect herself
from re-attachment once removed.<<<
Luckily I was able to catch most before attachment this year, becoming more sensitive to the skin crawling repulsion after the first bite.
So far no rings. No Kootie shots!
Bonus Challenge!!!
Name:
Fancy Latin Name:
Brief facts description of critters and whose nest/burrow?
https://youtube.com/shorts/Ffwxvs3Zmyw
Traveler Chimiru 
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