I am up early each morning now preparing for my landscape and garden design workshops. This means I am reading through all my design notes from the past several years. So often when we fill our blank books with information and insights, we rarely have reason and chance to re-visit them. And so they sit for years on a shelf or in a box. All that knowledge. All those thoughts.

It is proving to be a source of deep happiness to re-read all my notes and so often I think of someone with whom I want to share these little snippets with. But can people endure early morning texts each day? So I shall deposit them here. They will be random and many without context. Much like my notebooks themselves.

familiarity with a newness
areas of retreat, areas of social gathering
never put a camber with gravel - have a one-way fall
cambers are good for asphalt
asphalt isn't great for areas with a high water table
edging always comes first to establish levels
best time to find out about he water table is winter time - dig a meter deep (even in Utah?)
we are designers and specifiers
loose gravel weighs about 70% of the weight of the same solid rock
sedimentary rocks changes soil PH
granite does not change soil PH
put it down 65mm thick so it finishes 50mm thick
we are all bound in an endless cycle of suffering, caused by want and desire

Pure Land (Jodo): A Heaven where the spirits of enlightened individuals enter at death to be removed from the endless cycle of death and rebirth. It's an island - connected to shore by a bridge, Pure Land is attainable.

Aware (Ah-wa-ray): An epiphany at the discovery of beauty in the pathos of life.