Welcome new subscribers!

(Last week I was featured on Culture Study, one of my favorite Substacks, which brought in a bunch of new readers - welcome! I'm so glad you're here! If you haven't seen the interview yet, you can find it here.)

On Tuesday, Earth Day, I almost sent you a long quasi-rant about climate grief and cognitive dissonance. I was pretty deep in it, and feeling quite low.

But I decided to pause and wait until Seedurday to see how things were going before sending anything. Instead I celebrated Earth Week privately, by getting very in touch with the Earth, literally.

I’ve shelved the rant for now, and am sending this much lighter Earth Day edition instead, with important news about Dramarama and some heavy duty gardening.

First off, I know it’s been bothering you that the best ever Earth Day song has the date wrong. The first line is, “It’s April 21st and everybody knows today is Earth Day.” Well, for someone who’s bad at dates, but good at song lyrics 🙋🏽‍♀️, that one throws me for loop every year.

You’ll be happy to know that there is now a corrected version with the lyric changed to “It’s April 21st and everybody knows tomorrow’s Earth Day.” Phew. Though the original video is still excellent, in a vintage ‘90’s kind of way, and worth a watch once a year.

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[Thank you to Rick and his daily newsletter about chores and daily minutiae for the head's up on this important Dramarama development.]

On Earth Day itself, instead of continuing to labor over my (now archived) rant of a newsletter, or worse yet, reading more depressing Earth Day stats, I did some weeding, shipped a TON of orders, and spent 90 minutes outside playing soccer with a bunch of 10-year-olds. Spoiler: Playing soccer with 10-year-olds is better for mental health than ruminating about CO2.

Because my daughter had an overnight trip with school, on Thursday my husband and I were able to take a short, but excellent trip to the mountains.

Being in wild places is good for the soul, of course. It's also one of the best inspirations for gardening. Seeing how forms and colors interact in nature gives a blueprint for how to create natural feeling layouts in miniature in your own garden.

The timing of our short trip was accidentally perfect. On Friday, just back from the mountains, and in between shipping orders*, I led the build of a crevice garden on a median strip as part of a community project in Orta's industrial neighborhood. The fresh memory of rocks in nature translated to the shapes we created with concrete chunks.

The next step for this garden is to fill the planting pockets with drought tolerant perennials whose roots will appreciate all the little crevices between the rocks.

(For more on crevice gardens, here is the google doc I put together for the neighborhood committee, including links to lots of other crevice gardens.)

After this big week of being outside, communing with rocks (and “urbanite” aka, concrete chunks) the grief is still there, but the mood has lifted somewhat, maybe because of the fresh air, maybe because of so many hours literally touching earth, or maybe just because of time. Who knows?

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you know that Earth Day is a big deal here at Orta, and it’s when we usually do our spring sale.

This year the sale is postponed because we’re working through a backorder on 12-Packs, and don’t have a lot of stock. We’re producing at full speed though, and should be stocked up enough for a sale in the next few weeks. I’ll let you know.

Happy Earth Day, and happy gardening,

Anne

*It's been a huge week for orders, and I'm almost caught up! If you placed an order in the last few days, it will ship by Monday. Thank you for your patience!

When you’re ready, here are some more ways I can help you grow a thriving garden from seed:

1. Plan your seed-starting schedule with our ​free printable planner.​

2. Download the free ​Orta Seed Starting Handbook with all the basics you need to succeed with seeds.​

3. Take the guesswork out of watering with Orta Self-Watering Pots. (Find discounted factory seconds here!)

4. Join the Orta Seed Club to have 5 hand-picked, unusual & high-yielding varieties delivered to you every season.

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