First Light

The greenhouse is quiet in January. Outside, the Wasatch front holds snow. Inside the dome, the air stays warm — not from heaters but from the earth itself, pulled through tubes beneath the floor. A climate battery. The ground remembers summer.

This is Thistlebridge. A house in Utah with a geodesic dome greenhouse. We've been building here for a while now, and it seems time to start sharing what we're learning.

The primary work is plants. The greenhouse has a wicking system — 1,080 cups on shelves, fed by tubing that keeps the growing medium moist from below. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, marigolds. We grow more starts than one household needs, so the extras go to neighbors.

The setup also serves as a test bed for some other things we're interested in: local computing, documentation systems, ways of capturing and sharing practical knowledge. But that's secondary. Mostly it's just a house with an ambitious garden.

The name comes from the weed and the structure. A thistle persists in marginal places, provides for pollinators and birds, has uses that modern abundance lets us forget. A bridge connects separated places. We're on a marginal parcel next to a freeway, trying to connect practical work with the people nearby who might benefit from it.

At the north end of the dome, a pond holds a blue lotus — Nymphaea caerulea. It hasn't bloomed yet. We're building sensors to track when it does.

The light in January is thin but present. Spring will come. Seeds wait in packets.