Weekend of Destruction

I said I would wait, but I couldn't.

I've been thinking about what changes I'm going to make to my yard, and had plans to terrace the west side of the garage and the south end of the lot, put fruit trees in the driveway loop, and, and....  Lots of plans!  I was doing some online research on landscaping for midcentury houses, thinking about who could do the terracing work and how I'd pay for it, when I realized that I had skipped a VERY important step.  **How do I want to relate to the out of doors?  What's my overarching landscape philosophy?** (yeah, OK, this is a bunch of hoo hah - but it's the backbone of just about everything.  If ya got a philosophy, then it's easy to make individual decisions. Just align to the philosophy.)

Which got me thinking about the prior owner (and wife of the guy who built the house).  How did she relate to the out of doors?  That's when I realized that she kept most of the landscaping to act as a wall between her and the rest of the world.  Example:  the top picture shows a dark square, just above the blooming bush.  That's the front door.  Yup.  The front door of the house.  Hidden behind a huge Korean Spice viburnum and some huge rhododendrons.  After I understood her philosophy, I understood why things were the way they were in the yard, and I felt pretty good about making changes. (Note:  I talked to a neighbor and friend of the prior owner and he confirmed my understanding.)

My philosophy is a little more outside-based.  Grow food, cook outside, lay in the hammock and sometimes sleep outside.  No barriers between inside and out.  It's difficult with this house.  The living level is one floor up, so every trip outside involves a flight of stairs.  Not fun, when balancing a tray with raw steak, beer, a magazine and cooking implements on the way down to the grill.  I'm just sayin'.

Anyway.  I don't have the money to make the big changes I was planning.  But now that I understand the philosophy thing, it's easy to take baby steps that cost nothing to implement.  Starting with the front door.  Bye to three rhododendrons, aggressively pruned to about a foot above ground.

The left side of the sidewalk has an evergreen and another rhody.  If it weren't for the viburnum and the evergreen, both sides of this walkway would be perfectly nice, sunny space that could be used for "useful" stuff, like rhubarb, lovage, and other edibles.  I'm going to cut down the viburnum and the evergreen, and transplant all of it to somewhere else.  If it doesn't survive, I'll be OK.  Then I'm going to bring some of the blue flag iris and peonies from the other house and put them on the right side of this walkway, where the viburnum is.  I'll put lovage from the other house on the left side of the walkway and plant rhubarb, chives and some other stuff.

Here's the north side, where I want to terrace.  The first picture is in June, when I was letting everything "express itself."  The second picture is yesterday after I did a hack job on the stuff next to the house.

This steps/ramp thing drives me NUTS!  I was thinking of hiring someone to get rid of it, and terrace this slope up to the platform.  But now I'm thinking that since I have 2 arms and no extra money and could use a workout, I can start to do it myself.  Get rid of the walkway and make the first, lowest level next to the wall into space for next year's garden.

Here's another view.  This platform (below) makes no sense, in a how-does-the-inside-relate-to-the-outside kind of way.  To get to it, you have to walk down the steps to the driveway, and then back up to the platform.  Huh? My current thinking is to get rid of it, and use pavers to make a patio-thing.  But, if there were to be a patio, it should be on the same level as the driveway, not up a hill.  An alternative is to bust a hole in the master bedroom and put some steps down to the thing. I still have some thinking about that.  The incremental approach means I've got a few years to figure something out.

I am going remove the roses, honeysuckle and the yucca from near the house, and plant other edibles there.  Possibly blueberries, but I have a perfect space on the other side of the house for them. 

(I've been spewing off names of plants like I'm an expert or sumthin'.  But really, when I wasn't being destructo-mama, I was in the books or online, researching plant names.  It's nice to know what I've got, but sad to realize that so much of my yard is overwhelmed with invasive honeysuckle and multiflora rose.  It'd be nice to have the goats now.  They like the stuff.)

I'm going to go around the rest of the house and show you what's there and what I'm planning, but this post is pretty long already, so I'll save it for another day.

The Line in The Sky

Last night I found myself laying on the hammock on the porch to relax a bit before bed.  I haven't hammocked much this year as the Lyme meds made me sensitive to heat and it has been dreadfully hot in the sun this summer.  Plus, I'm living lower this year, closer to the city where it's warmer.

I flopped into the hammock and put my eyes to the stars and they felt like new things I hadn't seen before.  Then, as my worldly stuff fell to the side, my eyes resolved the cross of Cygnus the swan right above me. I remember from the mountain that the backbone of Cygnus lies along the line of Milky Way, so I looked hard, but didn't see the Milky Way - there's too much light here in the 'burbs.  I rested a little while and looked in the way of seeing without focusing, and eventually, or maybe I imagined it, the cloudiness of the Milky Way appeared.  Up on the mountain, the Milky Way is blotchy and bright.

I laid some more on the hammock and thought about "stuff."  We'd had a carbon monoxide call earlier and I went out in the first apparatus, and got to hold the CO detector as we went through the house, in full gear and on air.  It felt really really good (aside from being uncomfortable and hot and sweaty). 

As the new person, I concentrate on not being a drag on the group and not screwing up too much stuff, while trying to be a contributer and a problem solver (not a problem generator).  Yesterday I got the air pack on, got gloved, got air started and got to the doorway at the same time as the other two guys (yay).  (Aside: it's notable how much better I'm fitting in - it just occurred to me this morning that I pointed my back side at the driver and said, "turn me on," and neither one of us thought that was strange - for him to turn the knob on my air tank so I could breathe the air.)  Also cool was that one of the guys got the CO detector out while we were enroute - and as we went in the house he asked if I knew how to use it (no), and then he handed it to me.  Then later, someone else showed me how to use the tank-refiller and I refilled all our air tanks.

I feel like a sponge with these guys.  I anticipated/hoped all along that eventually things would right themselves, and they appear to be doing just that.  They're no longer afraid I'm going to sue if they swear, which helped them relax, and I can have a potty mouth myself at times.  Are these guys my tribe?  I can't tell yet.  I still don't have anyone I can call when I feel like hanging out.  That was one of my objectives and I'm not there yet. 

I'm going to a concert tonight with NM, the guy I dated for 5 months earlier this year.  It bothered me that I didn't have any friends that I could ask to the concert, so I eventually tried NM, who rearranged his schedule to be in town.  We'll see how it goes - I don't think either of us wants to date again, but we might turn into doing stuff friends. Maybe.

Then I saw a shooting star.  I thought about my wish, what I wanted to wish for.  It occurred to me that, for the most part, there's nothing I need to wish for.  Stuff is pretty good in my world.  I concentrated on letting go of yesterday and letting go of tomorrow and just enjoying the moment.  Then I saw another shooting star as the big guy up there said, "that's right."

It's Blueberry Season!

I went to visit the folks at the mountain house last weekend (friends of mine that are renting my homestead in the mountains).  We hung out for a while, and they showed me that the blueberries near the house are starting to ripen.  Then I showed them the blueberry hill, where there's a lifetime supply of berries if only they could all be picked in a month.  We picked and picked and picked and picked, and I got to go home with the booty. 

Now, these are wild highbush blueberries that have been unsullied by human contact for nigh on 20 years.  The berries are small-ish.  The bushes are tall-ish (as in it would be perfect if I were 8 feet tall).  Two of us picked for maybe 1/2 an hour and the booty was something like 2 cups of berries, which doesn't seem like a lot.

But this morning I made blueberry pancakes and boy oh  boy were they good!  I'm going to make muffins with what's left and then invite myself back to their house to pick more!

Am I Creating Addicts?

I so enjoyed watching hummingbirds feeding at my sister's house that I up and got a hummingbird feeder as soon as I got back from Oregon.  It didn't take the little dudes and dudesses long to find the thing, and I get a huge kick out of hearing them zoom up and watching them do the sippy, tilty thing.  Here's some pix.

The feeder's on the steps just outside the kitchen window.  Doesn't seem to bother the hummingbirdies and I get to sit at the counter and watch.

Now, I am not an experienced birder, so to me, this looks like the same bird.  (Every picture is a different feeding event - about 5-15 minutes after the last one.) If it's really one bird, this feller (or lady) is going to get too fat to fly one of these days.  Not to mention being dependent on me to feed her/him.  I'm concerned that maybe I shouldn't be feeding her/him.  Opinions?

Five minutes of google searching leads me to thinking that this is a female.  Apparently it has to be a ruby-throated hummingbird because those are the only ones found east of the Rockies.  Pretty cool!

I need to do something about the greenery around the house (that you can see in the first picture).  This is the year that I'm observing and not destroying, but it's becoming apparent that trimming is in order, if not outright removal of a thing or two.

Waiting for Sleep

Here I am watching cop movies on Netflix, carding mohair, and waiting to be smacked upside the head by the sleep train.  You see, it goes like this....

It started two weeks ago with a bug bite.  Then the bug bite got infected (or so I thought).  Then the infected bug bite turned out to really be a symptom of Lyme disease.  Then I started on Doxycycline, the antibiotic of choice for Lyme disease.  Then, I got hives.  Red, itchy, spreading hives.  Did I say itchy?  I meant ITCHY.  All over.

So back to the doc, who doesn't want to take me off the Doxycycline because it really is the best thing for Lyme.  Then came Benadryl, and shortly after Benadryl comes Must. Sleep. So, I'm isolating myself even more than usual, which is too easy for me, and trying not to scratch.

So where does the mohair come in, you ask?

I want to make this Swedish Heartwarmer Shawl.  I've been lusting after it for over a year now.  It doesn't matter that I can't remember how to knit, or that I have no idea how to knit with different colors, or that I'm going to MAKE the yarn instead of buy it.  None of that matters.  I'm going to make this beautiful thing.

I'm going to make it 50% merino, 25% mohair and 25% tussah silk.  I've got the merino and the silk fiber already, but here's what the mohair looks like:  I traded a friend for it 2 years ago.  Her angora goats are all grown up now, but they were babies when this stuff was cut.  So soft!

I figure I'll need about 2 pounds of yarn.  So, roughly, the steps are: card the mohair, card all three fibers together, split it up into about 10 different chunks, dye each chunk a different color, mix colors back together in a pleasing way and spin 4 different yarn colors.  I think I'll need 500-600 yards of each color.  The yarn they used is 4-ply, but I don't think I can do 4-ply.  In fact, I've never done 3-ply.  If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll try 3-ply, but if not, I'll stick with the good ole 2-ply that I already know how to do.

This is totally a time vs money tradeoff.  This time I'm going to choose time.  And enjoy every minute of the loong time it's going to take to make this.  Or not.  I could just buy the yarn for $200 and I almost did.  But that's not the point of this project.  The point of this project is not to run as fast as possible to the destination, but enjoy the journey a little more than I generally do.  A long journey this will be.

I Know, It's Been A While

I can't explain it, except to say that I've lost the urge to blog.  I see things and think, "boy, that would be an interesting blog posting," but then lack the interest to turn the thought into an actual post.

We're in the height of hot, hot, humid summer, with highs in the high 80s and huge humidity.  This is only two weeks after we had high temperatures in the 40s and walked around bundled up. It's a shame, really, because I thoroughly enjoy those 50s, 60s, 70s and low 80s that we missed this year.  I'm getting a crash lesson in how to exist in my house when it's hot.  Hint: Find someplace cooler to sleep (my bed is on the side of the house that's hot at night).

I've kept my promise not to make any changes to the yard.  I'm thinking seriously of buying a few tomato plants from some store and plopping them somewhere, just to be able to taste fresh tomatoes this year.  I may regret this, but zucchini is on the wish list, too, and I've used up the last of last year's basil pesto, which froze really well.  I want basil.  Lots and lots of basil.  Last year I had about 12 plants, which was maybe too many for me to keep up with.

The slope past the walkway and to the left of the garage is a candidate.  I'm guessing that the former owner had stuff growing there, but have no idea what it might be.  There's nothing coming up now.

I'm looking longingly at the below area that's surrounded by driveway, currently halfway occupied by some evergreen bushy thing.  There are 4 tree stumps and a fair amount of unused space.  I wouldn't be irreparably damaging anything, I don't think, if I snuck a few plants in there.  I can also use pots, as suggested by commenters.  Eventually, I'd like to clear out the stumps, the brush, the driveway crossover, and make it all into a garden.  But not this year.  It's like the former owner was trying to pave as much as possible.



I'm watching, and attempting to identify the plants here and figure out what's a weed and what's a keeper.  Many plants are totally new to me, but one, at least, I recognize from the last place, garlic mustard.  It's everywhere, and it's a weed.  I pulled a bunch of it a few weeks ago, but this battle is just getting started.



It Didn't Sell ... But it rented!

I think.

Only 2 parties looked at my house in the 5 months it was for sale and I was beginning to get a little desperate.  All the doom and gloom articles about the terrible housing market didn't help.  The long, cold winter depleted my cash reserves and I was beginning to worry about how tight I'd have to budget in order to continue paying for multiple houses.  (Like, I'd have to be more disciplined about always bringing my lunch to work and never going out to dinner - something I've never been good at. No vacations, rice and beans for dinner, etc, etc. You get the picture.)

Then 2 weeks ago, some friends of mine from the country fire department called to see if they could rent it.  Um, ... of course!  The rent will mostly cover the loan payment, and they'll put the utilities in their name, saving me another few hundred a month.  Whew!  I had mixed feelings about selling the house, and I'm happy to have friends renting it. I'll still be able to pick blueberries, elderberries, and apples and I'm uber happy to have some breathing room between my paycheck coming in and bills going out.

Then last weekend, these folks moved all my stuff from the other house to this one.  Can you say, "thrilled?"  Of course, I've lived for so long with most of my furniture at the other house, that my current place feels crowded now.  I missed my sofa, but I'd forgotten about most of the other stuff.  It's a little embarrassing that when the men were unloading the truck they'd say, "Where do you want this?" and I'd say, "I have no idea. I forgot I even owned it!"  Hee hee.  I'd been trying to be less of a control freak, and not have every little detail planned out - but I don't think those big burly men appreciated that the same way I did.

I've made a promise to myself that I'm not going to make any (big) changes to the lot this year, like building raised beds or planting any fruit trees.  It's almost painful to hold back, but only 2 years ago, I did major stuff at the other house and regretted it.  So I'm going to wait, impatiently. 

Here's some pictures of the new place.  It's sortof a panorama.  I'm standing on the porch on top of the garage, looking down the driveway, then taking pictures rightward. 

One good reason to wait is that I've never seen how sunny or shady parts of the yard are.  In fact, the leaves fell off the trees about a week after I moved in.  Smart people plant things in sunny areas. There are so many trees, if only I knew where the sun will land in the summer...

I'd love to put beds along the edge of the driveway where it curves here.  Probably not raised beds though.  It wasn't too long ago that there was about 4 feet of snow piled up on the sides of the driveway.  Plowing would really damage anything I put there.

I totally want to use those inside-the-loop areas to plant yummy stuff (there are 4 tree stumps in the right-er space.  It'd be cool to have a mini-orchard there).  And I'd love to plant berry bushes along the outside edge of the driveway. Just gotta account for the fact that snow has to go somewhere, and gotta see if there's any sun over there.

And finally, I took an EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations) course over the weekend.  Saturday was  classroom training and Sunday was driving on an obstacle course that included a serpentine forwards and backwards.  (Yes, it was an extremely busy weekend, what with this class and moving all in one weekend.)  Chief was only going to let me drive the small vehicle, but I asked nicely and got to drive the big truck! (It was a smaller one than this ladder truck, but still big!  I think they got a little calmer when I told them I had had a 3/4 ton pickup truck and was totally comfortable doing the backwards serpentine in that.) I did pretty good, considering that my very first time behind the wheel of that fire truck was to do this course!  Every day I spend in bunker pants earns cred with these guys and helps me fit in.  This weekend was hard, but it was a big step forward.

What I'm Doing These Days

A few people have mentioned being curious about what's going on with me these days, so I'll oblige.  It's just been so ... ho hum, that I haven't had the oomph to put it into a posting. In no particular order, here's the poop.

1. I've been working on making friends.  I joined a group a year ago, but hadn't devoted any time to it until a few weeks ago.  Some of them get together every Wednesday night for fiber-y stuff.  Last Sunday it was beermaking.  Every Thursday it's dance practice 5 minutes from my new house.  They're very active and I could devote a LOT of time to these folks if I wanted, but I'd rather test out a few "tribes" before I commit to one. I may prefer to be half-into a few "tribes" instead.  I'd much rather have one or two close friends, but I don't have a formula for that other than if you want friends, be a friend.

2. Speaking of tribes, I'm trying to settle in at the fire department.  I joined the department closest to my house, even though they didn't have a good reputation.  It's been tough.  The guys haven't been friendly. I dread drills and I've almost quit a few times.  But a few of the guys are getting a little nicer and this is something I suspect will work out well if I put in effort and time to show up and do my share of the work.  I have to earn respect.  Last night was the best drill yet.  We practiced search and rescue, on air tanks, crawling around a smoky house and "rescued" a baby (doll).  I was probably the worst performer, but I was in there with everyone else, doing the work.  Then we drove around in the fire truck and I rode in the back feeling like part of the team.  I felt great when I got home last night.

3. I've been eating low carb and reading up on the current state of research.  The engineer in me isn't satisfied with mainstream media's treatment of it.  I've recently realized that age is only going to make my current out-of-shape-ness worse, and if I want to be fully mobile at 60 or 70, I'm going to have to get into better shape, starting with losing a bunch of weight.

4. I've been researching midcentury modern design, decorating my house, and beginning to appreciate what's here.  I subscribed to a really cool magazine called Atomic Ranch where less than 10 pages into my first issue, I learned about the weird, round, push button light switches that are all over my house.  Current research project is my one-piece pink Sears toilet.  I was going to replace it, but now that my plan is to celebrate the midcentury-ness of my house, I'm going to fix it.  Of course the folks at Home Depot have never seen anything like this. They don't sell parts for this one.

5. I've been bringing pieces of the other house to their new abode.  Here's the hammock on the porch.  I may have shown you this picture already, but so what.  I brought over the patio table and chairs since then and put them just outside these doors.

5. NM and I started dating again, sortof.  It's much more casual this time, which seems to suit us both better right now.  Less time required, less drama, more fun.

Time to Take it Easy

This is the first weekend that I've had no plans since I've bought this house.  It's a weekend of nothing special, piddling around, rearranging stuff, and small painting and repair projects. Knocking down the list of niggling items and getting comfortable in my space.  You see, 3 weeks after I moved in (if putting a mattress on the floor can be called moving in), I got into the car accident.  Then 3 weeks after the car accident I met NM, and we did stuff on weekends until recently.  And when I was with NM, I had no desire to organize the pantry, or scrub dog pee off the basement floor, or fix the kitchen cabinet door that won't stay closed.

Yesterday I fixed the cabinet door and painted a bench, and set up the hammock on the porch.  This is in an unheated part of the house, but it will be toasty warm this afternoon after the sun's been warming the space up all day.

I've had some time to think since NM's been gone.  About patterns in my life and being mostly alone for the last 12+ years after my divorce.  About how I've been happiest when I've had friends and how hard I worked up on the mountain to accomplish the goat-y goal, but didn't invest the time to make friends.  I invested time to find a partner too, and was unsuccessful at that as well.

So here I am, half an hour closer to the world, coming out of the hardest winter since my first winter on the mountain 2 years ago and thinking about what to focus on this year.  I'm not going to plant a garden this year.  I'm going to watch what the place wants, and hit it hard next year.  I'm not going to work so hard at finding a partner.  I'm going to take all that energy I spent and put it into ... taking it easy.  Getting comfortable with those assholes at the fire department.  More and more of them are being nicer every week.  Good thing I can be persistent. Taking the dog for walks.  Finding people to relate to, and turning those into relationships that support and nourish my soul.

It's tremendously freeing to know that I'm not going to do any big projects this year except the Make Friends project.  And all I have to do for that one is allocate my time to doing outside-in-the-world-with-people things that I like doing, and be myself.  (It's telling that I have to give myself permission to relax and make it a project, isn't it?)

The only other thing I have to get done is actually move my stuff from the other house to this one.  It's been on the market for 4 months now (here's the listing, probably safer to post now that I don't live there any more) and not a single person has been to see it.  Two folks almost walked through it, but decided that it was too far away.  I lowered the price two weeks ago and it hasn't made a difference.  I'll probably lower the price again, and then just rent it out if there's still no interest.  I've already found a property management company who can deal with finding and managing a tenant (and fixing maintenance issues), so it won't be a big deal when I make that decision.  I'm kindof in limbo here though, as long as most of my furniture is still there.  No matter.  That decision will wait.  Time to take it easy!

Try, Try Again

I've done a bunch of homestead-y things in the last week or so.  Most of them are firsts, or first-time variants.  Some of it isn't.  I made venison jerky, which is drying in the dehydrator now.  I know that will taste good.

I made cheddar cheese with 2 of the 4 gallons of raw milk.  It seemed to go well, but the cheese is aging now in a "cave" (a plastic tote with water, to raise the humidity level) for at least 3 months before it can be tasted. I've never made cheddar before.  The parts of the cheesemaking process that I've done before went well, but the "cheddaring" part was new to me, so I'm not sure if I did it right.

With another gallon, I made mozzarella cheese the long way.  I've made mozzarella a few times the short way, with varying success.  It's tasted OK, but wouldn't hold it's shape.  I don't think this round was a success.  It holds it's shape just fine, but is harder than I wanted, and doesn't tase very good.  Mozzarella cheese freezes well, so it's off to the freezer with these guys.

With the last portion of the raw milk, I made yogurt.  Not a success.  It was my first time making yogurt, and although I pasteurized it, I didn't make any other allowances for using raw milk.  After culturing overnight, the "yogurt" was still runny like milk, so I dumped it out and tried again with store-boughten whole milk mixed with cream.  This super fatty, creamy stuff turned into great yogurt, and I've had some yummy smoothies in the last few days.  I'll happily try this again, but the other parts of cheesemaking I'm not so sure about.  Both the cheddar and the mozzarella consumed most of a day.  It's tough to rationalize spending so much time on something that can be easily bought at the grocery store or farmer's market (and tastes better).  Better to spend time making cheese (or yogurt) that is hard to find, and spend my precious little free time on other pursuits.

Take yogurt.  The grocery stores I frequent don't seem to sell whole milk yogurt in anything other than Plain.  It apparently takes space away from the sugary, low fat yogurt that fills the shelves. Extra fat, creamy yogurt doesn't exist in the store.  Yogurt was easy to make, so I can make exactly what I want and skip the grocery store for that item.

NM and I are taking a "break," which may or may not ever end.  He's 8 months off the end of his marriage, and it was too soon for him.  We talked about that fairly extensively at the beginning, and he thought it would be OK.  I'm an optimist and I hoped it would be OK, but the cliche about it being a bad idea to date someone soon after the end of a long relationship is a cliche because it's so often true.  I'm sad, but not heartbroken, and not looking forward to jumping back into the casual dating scene. But this is another area where I must try, try again.  This time I'm going to take my time, be less single-minded about it and try to have more fun.  It's possible that NM and I might get back together, but our agreement is that I'm not going to wait around.  Spring is coming and while I'm sad, it's hard not to feel a little joy when the sun shines.  It's been too long waiting for the sun to not enjoy it when it comes.

Bye Sweetie

It snuck up on me, Desmond's last day.  He was fine in the morning and at dinner time, but when I got home from NM's house, he couldn't put weight on one of his front legs.  I felt it up and down and nothing made him wince.  I thought it would get better, like so many other times, but overnight he developed a fever and the shakes, and whined from pain, and couldn't get up at all.  I gave him a painkiller, and then another one an hour later and when morning came I made the appointment.

I wasn't this prepared last April, when Desmond had his last health emergency.  I ran him to the vet for blood tests and xrays and poking and prodding and a very expensive operation to remove a cancerous spleen.  I wasn't ready to say goodbye to this old dog and spent a LOT more money than I could afford just to buy more time.  I swore I wouldn't let feelings of guilt keep Desmond alive when/if it was time for him to go and prayed to be able to see when it was time.

So I watched over the months as Desmond became less able to navigate the two steps into my country house.  Started to soak his food when the dry foot hurt his teeth.  Added canned food when the wet/dry food didn't taste good enough.  Picked him up when he fell in the snow and cleaned up after him when he pooped and peed inside.  He was still happy to go outside and stand for a few minutes, and still had a healthy appetite.  But somehow I knew that last night was different, and it was time to let him go.  I was prepared this time and in the end it wasn't as hard as I imagined. I'm sad because I miss him, but happy because he's running in heaven now, and all his pains are gone.

Going Away and Coming back

Funny how life goes in circles sometimes.  When I moved to the city, I knew I wasn't going to lose lessons I learned in the hills, but I never thought about how things would evolve and circle back onto themselves.  Here are two examples of homesteading skills I taught myself last year that I'm thankful I have.

A few months ago I made jerky with some venison NM brought over.  It was such a hit that it's become a regular request. Here's the latest four pounds of venison on the way to the jerky marinade and dehydrator.



On our Saturday furniture-picking-up trip to Vermont we drove right past the dairy I bought raw milk from last year. I'd been thinking about making cheese, and couldn't resist the siren call of that raw milk. But first, a cheese press (my last one was utterly dependent on using a certain windowsill at a certain country house as the end of a lever). NM just happened to have some corian solid countertop material laying around. We did some cuttin' and some drillin' on Sunday, and ta daaah, a new cheese press. So here I am, (ahem) working from home while cultures ripen on the stove in front of me. In three months it'll be cheddar cheese!


Mom, dad, remember these glasses with the balls on the bottom?  I love 'em so much I keep them out on the counter.

Midcentury Modern and a Road Trip

I've been in my suburban house for exactly 3 months today.  It's been a rollercoaster ride with a car accident and a new car, frozen pipes, broken boiler and a ton of other stuff that kept my attention in fight or flight mode for most of the last 3 months.  A new person in my life kept my attention in better places as well. 

As daylight hours grow longer, I'm beginning to look around my new place like I'm seeing it for the first time.  Since I'm living in the middle third of the house, I really haven't spent any time in the other 2/3 of the house!  Sunlight falls in new places on the walls. Actual sunlight!  Last week I saw light in a weird place in the basement and I started a bit before realizing that it was the natural stuff, made by the big guy upstairs.

My house is Midcentury Modern, designed by an architect and built in 1962, the middle of a time now known as the Midcentury Modern period, roughly 1950 to 1970.  (I can't find a pic of the house right now) Houses were designed to blur the lines between inside and outside.  Huge walls of windows bring nature into the house, and natural building materials like stone and wood make it seem like the inside is outside.  In the 50 years since my house was built, the original owner enclosed a few outside rooms, and covered up the walls of glass with thick curtains and drywall.  And awful pink paint.

But she left the blueprints behind and I can see how this house was originally full of light and air.  The room you see across the kitchen peninsula used to be open to the outside, a porch, before she made it closed in and dark and weird. Now that the string of winter emergencies seems to be over, I look at this room and imagine opening it up again, with glass walls on all sides and no roof, like it was designed.  I'm dreaming midcentury and salivating over Ebay listings of Eames furniture and atomic lights.

Which is how we come to be making a road trip to New Hampshire this weekend to pick up a $69 bench that I saw on Ebay and couldn't resist. I bid low, but was unopposed.  Apparently other people are too socked in by winter to furniture shop.  It was too easy.

Yeah, I know, I'm not looking for furniture.  But the price was right and I was looking for an excuse to take the new-to-me car out for a long spin and get a change of scenery to boot.  Plus, this bench totally fits in the house.  Here's a picture showing the room I'm using as a bedroom, and the wall of windows.  It's supposed to be a living room.  The air conditioner completely messes up the lines of the room and if I can stand it, it'll be gone, gone, gone after it stops being so bloody cold.  The curtains and blinds mess up the space too and are going away as well, after I prudently wait a bit to make sure it won't be too hot in there in the summer.  The prior owner really loved to cover up the windows.  And the floor?  And the 1980s-era ceiling fan?  I'm still thinking about what to do about those.

Here's another porch and another wall of windows. I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but in the short term at least, a hammock will be involved.

See?  Can't you tell I'm past the whole winter series of emergencies?  Someone caught in the throes of getting through each frozen day doesn't have time to think about architecture. I'm too busy making dastardly plans and dreaming MidCentury dreams to be glad, but it sure feels good!

Someone's Coming to Visit

Here's the house on Sunday, looking as desolate as it can possibly look.  I'm giving some of my wood to NM, so we went up to snowblow and move wood.  While he and his grown sons were throwing wood about, I did some inside cleaning of mouse poop and other little messes.

Fortuitous timing, because I got an email the next day from the real estate agent.  Someone wants to see the house! First showing in the three months the house has been on the market.  I hope she likes it!

Realistically though, the deep snow completely covers all the nice stuff outside.  The hammock I so artfully placed in November.  The table and chairs on the south side.  The raised beds.  The chicken coop.  All covered.  Since the yards are one of the best things about this house, it's hard to believe that someone will see how wonderful this place really is over the crooked floor or through the loose windows.  We'll see.  Hoping for magic, but not expecting it.

Probie

I'm a probie!
Was voted in last week after a multi-month process and finally got the turnout gear, and hat for the new department.  I can go on calls now, but can't do interior firefighting until after I pass the 6-month probationary period.

February Snow

My diabolical plan to make the snow stop was to borrow a plow blade for my ATV.  So, here's NM (New Man) trying out the blade last weekend at the top of the driveway.  I had this idea that as soon as I got prepared for this snowy weather, it would stop snowing.  OK .... hear me up there?  It can stop snowing now!

It's coming up on two months with this guy and I'd been holding off on writing about it for fear of jinxing it.  He knows I write a blog, but has never seen it (a good decision, I think).  I've thought (but not too much) about how as soon as (literally 3 weeks after), I moved off the mountain and stopped being so desperate for a partner, one comes along.  I've never been in a relationship like this.  He lets me know during the day that he's thinking of me.  We talk a few times a day.  It's new stuff for me, and pretty cool.  I'll write more when I'm less concerned about jinxing it.

Desmond is still perking along, more or less OK.  He's still interested in food and his surroundings, has learned to get up sometimes when he falls, so I don't have to pick him up as much.  He's not too upset by living in the basement (he can't go up stairs and I can't carry him up and down). So we're in a holding pattern for now, until the next emergency happens.  He's such an easygoing dog!

 Maggie jumps over the piled-up snow, but Desmond's world got smaller when the snow piles got too high for me to dig a path through them.

Top of the driveway looking down to the road and the pond across the street.  I was a little terrified of sliding down the hill, but my new car is heavy and all-wheel drive, so I haven't slipped even once on this hill.

And finally, the mailbox.  It's a little amusing to drive down the street and see people digging out their mailboxes.

Let Us Go and Make Our Visit

The title is a nod to a poem by T. S. Eliot and describes what we did Sunday.  Visit the house in the hills with a snowblower.  Good thing, because the snow was over three feet deep around the door.  It would have taken hours to move enough snow to get into the house with shovels.  At the end of the driveway, it was solid and frozen.  And deep.  I had a chair leaning up against the woodshed door to hold it shut, that was completely covered with snow.  This house has been here for well over 100 years (some would say it's been 200 years), and even though I've worried about it this winter from my house down in the city, every time I come here and step inside, I see how solid it is.  It could easily stand another hundred years.  It's got a nice, new, metal roof!

The other house has only been on this planet for 49 years and it's youth is showing. Things break.  Things don't work.  But it's close to work and to life in the city and I like it very much. At least the 1/3 of it that I'm living in.

Here's a picture of the parking lot at work yesterday, showing Mount Snow growing daily.  Much of the problem this time of year is where to put the snow, since it's not melting between snowstorms.  Huge piles around driveways and stop signs make it difficult to see when cars are coming.  Snowblowers reveal archeological layers of white snow, then grey snow, then more white, etc, etc.  One can count the snow layers and tie them to particular storms.  "That one is the Christmas Eve storm," and "the one above it is the storm a week later", etc, etc.

It's interesting, but I feel a major case of winter blahs coming on.  The temperature has only turned the corner for warmer within the last week.  Thankfully, the extra minute or two of light each day mean that I can turn the light off at home while I am gone during the day.  It will be light when I get home from work. That counts for something.

Amazing, I Know

But on the coldest morning in umpteen years (-14 on the way to work. Thirty degrees colder than normal for those of us keeping track), everything is OK.  All my animals are alive and healthy and at home.  All the systems I use to live, like the shower, the sink, the stove, the boiler and the car are working as they should.  I breathed (brothe?) a big sigh of relief this morning and was very thankful.

Maggie makes herself a nest in the snow and sits for hours (in this weather it's more like minutes) watching for deer.  Like this one who showed up outside the bedroom window on Saturday afternoon.  Since Maggie was keeping vigil on the other side of the house, she missed him entirely.

It's indescribable how much calmer I am now that I am back in the city.  Some aspects of the homesteading dream are still there, but are sleeping for now, while I thrill at being able to be at a restaurant in 5 minutes instead of 45.  I've been reading the travails of another solo female homesteader, frozen pipes, nonworking vehicle, dead animals, afraid to leave the 'stead for fear of a catastrophe, but afraid to skip work for fear of losing a job.  I remember the feeling, reeling from the body blows of solo country living and I'm glad I don't feel those now, in this sub-zero weather.  Thankful I am.  Yes, thankful.

Bundt Cake Anyone?

I'm such a resourceful person!  Snow season caught me a little flat-footed, and I successfully repurposed whatever was lying around in service for spreading salt on the driveway hill.  Since I've never in my adult life (or childhood life) made a bundt cake, I doubt I'll miss this cake pan in the kitchen.  Or maybe an extremely important Bundt cake event is coming up soon!

I swear this winter has been the coldest, snowiest that I remember.  Even colder than my first winter on the mountain, two years ago, where my power was out for 3 days.  This winter, I've got a small, plastic shovel that I'm using to clear my 250 feet of driveway and the hill.  Yeah, it's not working well.  Maybe because I've gotten something like 4 feet of snow this month, in snowstorms that seem to be coming two a week.

I've got a plan though, to attach a borrowed plow blade to my ATV. Crossing fingers that we can get that done this weekend.

Where would we be if things that we thought were fixed didn't keep on breaking? Being relaxed and calm is overrated (ha!).  I came home from work yesterday afternoon to a very cold house and a nonworking boiler.  Aside from being in the same (boiler) system, this failure is completely different than Sunday's failure.  A similarity though?  Both required an emergency call to the fuel company and scrapping any other plans.  Here are the repairman and the new dude.  At least yesterday's emergency call came at a reasonable hour!

Lest I Become Complacent

God Forbid I relax or anything! 
After a few weeks of relative peace, beginning to enjoy city life and new "friends," I was woken up at 5:00 Sunday morning by the boiler's constant noise.  It was not going off.  After a little investigation, I found out that it was not going off because a pipe had burst in the back bedroom, and the entire back of the house was flooded with warm water, spraying from the baseboard and pouring down into the basement.

I called my new "friend" who was like all sane people at 5am Sunday, sleeping, and didn't hear the phone.  Then I called the gas company and 3 hours later the emergency was over, but several pipes in the basement had been cut to empty water and isolate the back of the house from the rest of the house.  Small sigh of relief, but emergency over meant that the cleanup could begin, starting with an early morning trip to Walmart to buy a wet/dry vacuum, disposal of the soaking carpet and cleaning up of water.  The gas company had to come back in the afternoon when one of the cut and capped joints started leaking, but I think it's all OK now ... more or less.

Here's the culprit break in the pipe that caused the ruckus. The blue-striped wood at the front of the picture used to hold down a carpet.

I didn't sleep well last night.  The heating system sounds different now, that it's been emptied, filled and purged a few times.  I'm different, too.  I've lost some trust in this house and I start at every strange noise,  meaning I woke up about a thousand times last night listening for rain in the basement.  I got up a few times and walked the house, making sure that the water noise in the pipes was safely confined to the pipes where it belongs.

Another thing is different now.  After almost 12 years of having only myself to rely on, another person asked me to let him help.  I've been through so many emergencies like this alone, that I'd forgotten how nice it is to share my nerves, "should I worry about the washing machine pipes freezing, or the floor freezing because it's not totally dry all the way through,"  "what do you think if I put a heater here ... and here," etc, etc.  It's all stuff I would have struggled with alone, and turned over and over in my head until I had it figured out.  With this other person around, I can bounce it off, answer it, do something, and move on. That's nice.