COMPOST PILE 001 ♲ Indie apple cider, resisting the attention economy, asexual propagation

In this first "Compost Pile" for paid subscribers, here is the nutritious surplus that did not make it into the previous "Sustainability Crush Sunday" installment.

I used to think the “green thumb” had skipped me. My mom has ten whole green fingers — for as long as I can remember, she has been causing front and back gardens to flourish, attracting pollinators, tolerating rabbits and squirrels and foxes and deer. She has nurtured pit fruit seeds and root veggie cuttings atop kitchen sinks and counters. There is nothing that gives her more joy, I think, than stepping out onto the porch or deck, feeling the soil teeming with life between her fingers, and surveying her kingdom of ecological fancy.

I’ve never really grown anything myself. I love the plant papis, especially the queer ones, who post thirst-traps amid monsteras — giving us thigh meat and hairy pecs, disco balls catching natural light, crisp boxer briefs leaving little to the imagination, watering glasses glinting like stained glass in their eco-sexual cathedral.

I also think that plant shops are inherently romantic. As a baddie based in Washington, D.C., I can spill a little sencha and tell you two of my faves, tucked away in the heart of the city but close enough to all the good eats and hustle and bustle. (BTW, these are cute first date spots, okay?!)

Enter this week’s sustainability crush: The humble feral apple.

One day, I will write an absolute ode to Jenny Odell, whose book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy has left an indelible mark on me.

Lowest of keys, maybe once I build the kind of big robust community that I really desire on here, we can do a book club! As a slow reader and neurodivergent hottie, it would either be very asynchronous, where we skip around (very safe to do regarding non-fiction books, I feel) or I’d facilitate it K-12 style, and give y’all some time to read the passage in the session.

I am absolutely gushing about bring up Jenny Odell because a key theme of her exploration of alternatives to being chronically online and engaging in the attention economy is nature. Not that nature is the anti-thesis to technology — in really juicy instances, such as using a birding app in amateur ornithological endeavors, technology can actually aid our appreciation of nature.

I treat the internet like an endlessly vast library and one of my cherished finds was the Forest Garden podcast and its interview with Matt Kaminsky a.k.a. Gnarly Pippins.

There was something so transformative about listening to this episode on my way to the little coffee shop where I have become a regular. (!!!)

I had just finished How to Do Nothing. I was relishing every piece of moss, every fungus spore, every curious sparrow that looked my way.

It was this sumptuous midday walk that inspired me to make feral apples my sustainability crush for my second installment in the series. The first was Tupperware — particularly events and spaces that ask you to "bring your own container” to eliminate waste. All my sustainability crush series installments, current and upcoming, are rooted in personal experiences.

Given the event that was the focal point of the last installment, the fact that zero-waste living was a key factor felt poignant to me.