Thistlebridge
A house with a greenhouse in Utah, growing plants for neighbors.
This is a single-family home that happens to have a 26-foot geodesic dome greenhouse in the backyard. Most of what happens here is ordinary domestic life. But the greenhouse produces more plant starts than one household needs, so we grow for neighbors too — tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers through the spring and summer.
The setup also serves as a quiet test bed for some ideas we're exploring: local computing infrastructure, documentation systems, ways of learning practical skills with software assistance. Nothing that disrupts the neighborhood. Just a home with an ambitious garden and some servers in a back room.
What's Happening
Spring approaches. The greenhouse wicking system is nearly ready — 1,080 cups arranged on shelves, fed by tubing that keeps the growing medium moist from below. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, marigolds. Plant starts for the neighborhood through the summer.
At the north end of the dome, a pond holds a blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea) waiting to bloom. We're building sensors to track its rhythms alongside the weather.