O the Infamous Bin Bar
At some point, we’ll have to decide what to do with the infamous Bin Bar — the sorting and storage area for raw materials and ‘notable refuse’ collected on our litter-hunting walks around the creek.
To do that, I first have to decide whether to maintain our culture of “Ballying”…
Ballying is a meditative practice I developed during quarantine, where each person at Hybrasil gets a designated micro plot in Brigid’s Mantle (the southern yard) to tend as an altar, mandala, or straight up fairy garden (what we often call a “tuath” — in Irish: ‘village, tribe”).
The original idea was to ensure we got daily time with our hands in the soil’s biome, without the price or pressure of keeping a garden alive. The use of novel litter and miscellany from the house backed up our philosophy of making beauty out of broken things — hence the Bin Bar, where bits can be fetched as needed.
Problem is…
I’ve never really been satisfied with the aesthetics!
Sure, it is VERY COOL to see what people come up with, especially what they choose from among my own ‘trash’ or outgrown talismans. I love to see the ‘urban planning’ of wee dream towns, to receive anonymous additions to my plot, and to notice small unspoken changes in the plots of others as seasons roll on.
But in this Texan weather, where grass grows SO FAST when it rains, where stones sink into the earth faster than we can restack them — it honestly has shown itself to be a LOT of work to keep these plots from looking like more than mini landfills! It really does need daily touch — which is the ideal — but given that we’re a “commuter commune”, all that effort falls on our small on-site staff.
As a lover of beauty and a champion of ease, I obviously don’t want to become neurotic about a project that’s meant to promote peace of mind and somatic bliss.
So, I’m wondering whether we should discontinue the dream of the Bin Bar, and simply throw out the litter we collect on our walks at the city bin by the trailhead. Or at least suspend new collections until we develop a revised plan (as fun as it is to sort ‘sea glass’ and golf balls!).
I still believe in the benefits of Ballying, but right now we don’t have the infrastructure to maintain this culture at its current scale.