I Guess We're All In the Handbasket?

 I'll do another entirely ridiculous round of photos at some point, but right now I'm sitting on my side porch - Birdie by my feet and Hippo nearby - waiting for my phone to charge before I make the hour drive to W. Jefferson to buy my preferred box wine (can't find it anywhere closer), seafood, and a number of other treats and necessities. 

In the last couple of months I've been struggling with the cognitive dissonance of America. I doubt I'm alone on that one. About a year ago I came down here for a two-ish-week stay to determine whether I could 'make a go of it' in an area that was obviously very "red" and pro-Trump. I knew I wasn't going to have a lot of liberal neighbors, but I wanted to get a sense of what the more progressive minded folks in the area thought about overall community and vibes. Everyone I spoke to acknowledged they were in the minority, politics-wise, but that nonetheless the idea of being a good neighbor was still a very large part of what made up the long-time locals' ethos. I've been here full-time since December, and I've largely found that to be true. I have three neighbors in particular who have offered help to me without my even knowing I needed it. Danny came by in the spring and offered to churn up a garden plot for me with his tractor. The slow-going, hand-digging I had been doing was fairly hard work and hadn't got me half as far as what he did in about 20 minutes. Hac helped me as best he could to suss out the issue with my water supply and now mows my lawn at what I can only assume is a discounted rate. Randy also tried his hand at helping with the water issue, and does a little extra mowing for me (well, that's not entirely altruistic, as he gets to bale it up and sell it as hay). No one has been too stand-offish or weird. Granted, I rarely go anywhere and haven't broadened my social circle much outside the farmers' market folks and the aforementioned three neighbors.

I did recently meet another neighbor up the road. She and her husband have a sheep farm, and I had looked forward to meeting them given my own interests and intentions. She was quite friendly and upbeat. I did her a very small favor one week - bringing her meat orders to the market so she didn't have to - and when she came by to pick up the cooler afterwards, we momentarily got into a discussion in my driveway. It was friendly on the whole, but we did somehow touch on politics. I wasn't surprised she voted for Trump in 2016 nor that she planned to do so again this year. What did take me aback is when she said (paraphrased but fairly accurate) "I just think about the America I want my grandkids to live in. Do I want it to be a free country or a communist one? You know George Soros is determined to make it communist." This is so far from what I consider truth, I basically laughed and said "maybe we shouldn't talk politics, would you like half a watermelon from my garden?" The fact that I, too, don't want America to become a communist country, but that she and I have radically different ideas of where the threat comes from stymies my sense of hope. 

Danny, meanwhile, a few months back, asserted that wearing masks was going to cause a secondary pandemic of people "breathing in their own germs" and that masks caused legionnaires disease; a doctor told him. And Hac and I once got into a friendly discussion where we basically agreed that we didn't agree on much. Highlights from that were him saying that Mexican/illegal workers get paid more than white workers/don't pay into social security; that Nancy Pelosi raided the social security coffers to try to impeach Trump; and that all governors had asked Trump to let them decide how to handle the Coronavirus. At one point he said "you know when I watch the news with my wife and see what liberals are saying, I tell her they have the right to their opinion, but they're wrong." And I replied that is pretty much the same thing I think about a lot of conservatives. We laughed, and he left as still a neighborly friend...but geez. Hac also mentioned his concern that a civil war was brewing, and that he was trying to find a little more ammo just in case. He didn't want it. He wasn't gearing for a fight. He's not a member of the Proud Boys, and I wouldn't lump him into a white supremacy box either...and yet, he has this vague idea that shit is going to go down. 

Later on I wondered to myself, if a civil war were to happen. What would that mean for me? Would I suddenly become an enemy to Hac and Danny and Randy? I feel like no. But the many more people I don't know in the area? Who may have noticed my existence? What is also ponderous is that there is a very "woo-woo" organization one town over, all about new methods of spirituality and ghosts and other such stuff. It's not my bag at all, but I did go on a tour of their "campus" last year, and the woman who showed me around mentioned that the founder of the organization recognized that we were in perilous times, and if things were to get crazy, we might be in flash point area, which is why, in the basement of her "peace pentagon" she had a basic bunker constructed. So Hac, a conservative, Christian Republican is seeking more ammo, and a rich liberal woman trying to find the next paradigm shift in spiritual religion...is building a bunker. They couldn't be more far apart ideologically. And yet? They're coming to the same apocalyptic conclusion.

I've been a sucker for apocalypse narratives for years. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy has long been a touchstone of the future I most fear. Handmaid's Tale too of course. I've watched The Walking Dead for years less because of zombies or gore, and more because of how they depict a world where infrastructure we all take for granted is simply gone. Water on demand. Electricity. Internet. Grocery stores! I moved where I did when I did in part because I *did* want to be a little off the beaten track if shit hit the fan. But these days I'm not sure what apocalypse I'm waiting for. I am zero percent worried about "black thugs" coming to rural Virginia looking to take anything from me. I am not convinced that any government would really try to "take our guns." People have been pointing to Handmaid's Tale, the television show, as the likely outcome of the recent ACB nomination. As if that would change the minds of anyone who wasn't already opposed to the whole thing. I may live in the middle of nowhere, but I don't know if that makes me any safer than my friends living in NYC or Philadelphia. 

The whole thing bums me out. I don't see a way out of it. And I live in a low-grade fear of what will happen next. The election is so totally being undermined by Trump's offensive to make his base believe that no outcome other than his winning could be true. So let's just say he doesn't win. Do my neighbors just grumble? Or do they get radicalized? Maybe not become vigilantes here, but drive two hours to cities and, what? Burn the houses of liberals? I just can't really fathom that. But if the last four years have demonstrated anything, they have demonstrated that as much as I think of myself as pragmatic, there is an optimistic and naive streak in me that just cannot truly grasp how wide the divide has become. That even "common decency" seems to be a subjective term. If we can't all just get along, what is the next best thing? 

Yesterday I had an outdoor dinner and beer with a friend, and she suggested that maybe this is the one last push. That those who struggle with the white majority disappearing are trying one last time to consolidate power and somehow avoid the inevitable. And that losing this time, they'll maybe just have to give up. This seems highly unlikely. Since Charlottesville I've been saying that it seems like the best that could be hoped for, at least in the next year or two, is that being racist goes back to being something people know they should be ashamed of. Racists have been around this whole time. That's not news. But their feeling that they should have no fear in expressing themselves, and in larger numbers, now that is something that feels slightly new, and reversible. 

I don't know. My phone is now charged. I'm going to go get groceries.

All The Days

Well, the resurgence in blog popularity on my part wasn't all that strong, now was it? Right now I'm sitting on my deck by the pond, technically 'on call' for my county's Covid-19 hotline. I've been doing three 4-hour shifts for the last two weeks or so, and thus far had one woman call. The call system is via computer/internet, so I can sit outside whilst waiting for calls that I'm fairly certain won't come. I just placed a rather large - in terms of number of items and overall price tag - delivery/shipment order with Lowe's. A mix of garden supplies, chicken coop-related equipment, and the beginning steps of staining/resealing this very deck.

Two trailers of cattle were just dropped off at the pasture/hills directly east of my house. This is a relatively good thing, as I've been told that parcel will be planted with Christmas trees at some point. Obviously not yet. The cattle are all moo-ing away as they get settled, and the horses more north/in front of me all just trotted a little farther afield, in part, I think, because they're not interested in all the cattle racket.

Lowe's purchases and my intentions, a log:
Two wire trellises with slight decorative flourish: I have two potting containers with sweet peas in them...the containers themselves are a) too small for the peas once they continue to grow and b)have no drainage holes on the bottom. So I think that if I want the peas to really make anything of themselves, I'll eventually need to transplant them either into the ground or into a more fitting container. My thought is that one trellis can be for said peas (there are 8 successfully sprouted little green beginnings) and the other can be for green or pole beans if I can find plugs in a week or two.

10 tomato wire thingies: I have every intention of putting at least 10 tomato plants into the ground, but maybe more. So I bought the wires and also bamboo stakes so I'll have enough to support the tomatoes and, also, the peppers I hope to grow. I'm especially stoked to try growing shishito and poblano peppers, as they are my go-to peppers in life.

Lime, chicken wire and 5 ft. t-posts: I've been waffling a lot about chickens. Not that I don't want them, I most certainly do, but I've been vacillating between buying them in-person at Tractor Supply or ordering them online. Mainly this is because I really want specific breeds, which include Silver Laced Wyandottes, Ameracaunas and Sussexes, and each and every time I call Tractor Supply, they either have no chicks or not the breeds I'm most excited about. I should just pull the trigger on ordering them online. I had a 'cart' with my preferred breeds filled out for the last two weeks, and had I placed the order, they would have arrived around June 8th. But I dropped the ball/didn't pull the trigger so now their arrival time would be July 27th. Tomorrow I will call the Tractor Supply place one more time to see if by some miracle they have the chicks I want, and if not, I'll place the order.

The other wiffle/waffle is where to house the chickens. Months ago I downloaded a free schematic to build by own "chick shaw" basically a moveable coop that can be handled by one person. But I realized that I'd need more power tools than I have to put it together (chop saw, skill saw, etc), and the material cost alone would be at least ~$500. That led to my considering just paying someone else for a coop they've built. I kept seeing a relatively local Facebook Market ad by a guy who sells coops for about $300. But I saw mixed reviews and got concerned it was somehow a scam. So now my idea is to turn half of the shed closest to my house into a coop. I'll need to flatten out the dirt floor a little, put chicken wire around the entire interior, as there are gaps/holes in the wood perfect for predatory monsters. Lime will help balance out whatever is in the dirt. T-posts and more chicken wire will divide the space. I'll also need to get roosts and nesting boxes. I'm not sure whether it will work, but I guess I'm giving it the college try.

What else? Oh, bamboo stakes for additional support for a variety of plants. And taller t-posts to start trying to 'fence' the garden area. I've decided to try the 'fishing line' method to at least deter deer from getting into the plot. I imagine the gate/entry I jerry-rig will be the hardest part, and that while the fishing line may prevent deer, I'll still need to consider what to do about rabbits.

I also bought deck cleaner and stain, which I think I already mentioned. I don't have a sander, but may inquire with neighbors about borrowing one, as I think the success of the cleaning/staining/sealing will rely a lot on how well/thorough a job I do prepping the wood ahead of time. Knowing me, it'll still be half-assed.

Oh and wood filler for the flooring area that has been compromised by termites. Another half-assed approach to the problem. I simply don't have the $$ or know-how to take up any of the flooring and replace it with new, so this is the stop-gap measure.

I also still am living in a sofa-free house, which has generally been fine as I do have slightly comfy chairs on which to sit. But there is no avoiding my desire to have a sofa/sofa bed so that I can a) more comfortably be prone without necessarily being in bed and b)that eventually if I have visitors they'll have a slightly more comfortable option than an air mattress. I still have need for a variety of furniture. The kitchen table from my childhood awaits me in Silver Spring, but I can't pick it up during these pandemic times/I will need to rent a van or truck since my car won't be big enough to haul it. I think a sideboard/some kind of additional dresser-like piece of furniture would also be helpful in the living room. The house has a fair amount of storage given its ~800 sqft size, but I am indeed running out of places to put things I don't need on display at all times (old journals, arts and craft supplies, tax records etc.)

Blah blah blah. I have no sense anymore of how this pandemic situation is going. I mean I read multiple articles every day, but that doesn't give me as much clarity as I'd like. Are we still in the thick of it? Since so much of my life hasn't changed because of it, I almost feel a dread in the lifting of restrictions and folks going back to some sort of semi-normal...mainly because it won't change how I spend my time/days. Each time I choose to read a book instead of do something productive, I give myself permission, as the pandemic is nuts. But it's really an excuse and not a real reason not to do things.

I started talking to a guy via Tinder in early March. Our initial plan was to meet up and play trivia once the pandemic became less of a thing. Of course, it only became more of a thing. At one point he suggested we meet and go for a hike, but I demurred. Privately, I like hiking but am not in tip top shape and didn't want the first interaction to be while I was red faced and breathing heavy (not what I shared with him). Additionally (what I did share with him) I do have a general rule that I don't meet strange men from the internet in non-populated places. Murder and all. He took that graciously. But it just feels less and less like he'd be someone I'd actually enjoy meeting. I tried to do fun 'what do we know in our own heads' trivia back and forths with him, which he humored for my two questions to his one...but let it peter out. Then when he again suggested we meet in person, I replied saying a)pandemic no thanks and b)it would just be getting to know each other small talk that we could do online. So then I asked him what he did/what he wished he was doing in a professional way, and he responded that he "doesn't do small talk" then only replied to my question by saying he'd prefer to be a "trust fund philanthropist." Basically he doesn't ask me many questions, hasn't said anything that makes me chuckle, and keeps suggesting we meet in person when THE WORLD is telling us NOT TO. In his last attempt he said that since the pandemic looked to be a continuing thing for months "we should really get over ourselves" and meet. Given that he's mentioned that desire three previous times, it felt very much like he was telling ME to get over myself. Fuck that. I told him that when the seafood market an hour away from my place has soft shell crabs, we can also meet there. Two birds, one stone. I didn't want to completely say fuck you, but honestly whatever frisson of fun there might have been last month has petered off. He has not convinced me that he is a person I want to meet.

Meanwhile, I wish I could also get another puppy. I keep checking the closest animal shelter's facebook page, but they've mainly had strays (strangely often they have pink or camo collars). And I really do want to have a lil pupper to mold as I did Birdie (lol to say I molded this dog is probably an overly bad piece of hubris).

I go back and forth in terms of having too many drinks and calling people. Two weeks back, I reconnected with a friend I hadn't spoken to since I left Philly. She didn't answer, but she called back a couple of days later and we did manage to have a conversation that was entirely lovely. I think I had felt layers of guilt about how our friendship had unraveled and feared she was holding a large (and partially understandable) grudge against me. But it appears all is forgiven (or wasn't even in need of forgiveness) and it was lovely to hear how she and her kids are doing. Touched base, also, with an old farm friend from my first year out in WA. And that, too, was a lovely catch up after a couple of years' of no contact (less fraught more typical 'drifting). Same can be said for a college friend, another high school friend, etc. etc. This behavior - have some drinks and call people - is not pandemic-specific...but the pandemic has given me license to call people I'd usually not consider. Also (soberly) emailed the long-ago ex. I have been smart enough, even while under the influence, to refrain from calling him for both our sakes. I'd only end up feeling embarrassed and awkward. Which is how I felt when I did drunkenly call the more recent ex, though nothing too terrible was said there either, as we ended on generally understanding terms. Still, though, the reply to my email was cordial and strangely comforting. We haven't seen each other in over ten years and broke up even longer ago. As my most successful/long not successful relationship, he unfortunately still has some meaning in my life while I know I have very little in his (married/baby etc.) so his acknowledging my email and sharing a small memory from our shared time together as well as an update about himself gave me a sense that while, yes, of course we weren't meant to be (no matter what my mother said) and, of course, I should have more restraint than wanting to check in, we did share a bit of our youth together and though much of the associated feelings have faded into nothing, oh I don't know really what I"m trying to say. Writing and receiving emails between us felt familiar and no longer fraught with any combination of sadness, disappointment or other negative feelings that were certainly harder to avoid many years ago . Lol...but I think I'll still refrain from going to a wedding that he might attend just for continued self-preservation and dignity. Would I still feel this way if I was as 'farm fit' as I was in WA, or if the more recent ex and I were still together? Hard to say. But here we are.

Well I've certainly been typing up a storm whilst receiving no hotline calls. Cows are still acclimating to their new digs. Horses are hidden from view. A bullfrog occasionally bellows from the pond. Birdie's legs are caked in mud. Bluebirds and goldfinches and red winged black birds and robins and cardinals are all flit and flying around. Swallows seem to have gone elsewhere today.

I haven't been able to get a status about my stimulus check. Not sure whether I will get one, and whether the IRS has the right info to get it to me. I completed my 2019 taxes in February, so technically they have my most recent address on file. But I wrote a check for what I owed, which I think may mean they'll mail me a check instead of using my 2018 routing/banking info. I am continuously concerned about whether the pandemic will ultimately impact my income. Right now is always a slow time in my professional life - usually just an hour or two of billable work on any given day, and sometimes less. But come July/August, things should pick up. But will they? While the timing of my FINALLY buying a place rural and remote was excellently done given the current state of the world, it will be less fortuitous if I can't pay my mortgage in six months.

When mom was dying she wrote a few things down or said them to me. I think the following is something she wrote not something she said, but it amounted to her worrying that perhaps the world was only going to get worse. I think at that juncture in time the BP oil spill was continuing to do damage in the gulf, and the Chilean miners were still trapped below ground. I'll have to see if I can find her wording, but it kind of came down to a 'maybe now is a good time to go, before everything else goes to shit.' Lord what would she make of all this? Of Trump. Of pandemic. Of protests for haircuts. Of 100s of deaths one day, an re-opened beaches the next? Unanswerable, really, what she would think. Though I imagine some combination of appalled, resigned, outraged and slightly bemused would work. That's certainly a set of feelings I have on a daily basis. The thing is, the world keeps not falling quite enough apart. So we're left with splinters and shards of normal and good and irregular and bad, but not quite an all encompassing feeling of either. If even this can't get everyone on the same page, what on earth could?

Pandemic Brings Blogging Back Into Vogue

It's a crazy mixed up world these days. Given my predilection for apocalyptic fiction over the last 25 years or so, I began to worry about what was happening fairly ahead of the America curve. I've spoken with numerous friends over the past couple of weeks, and it has been interesting - the progression of feeling like we were talking about something distant, faraway and abstract to death tolls rising and toilet paper becoming a commodity. A few friends have mentioned my recent choice to move to a very rural place as fairly prescient, or at least well-timed. And it's true, I've wanted to live in the country forever...for the beauty and peace and nature absolutely...but also to be removed from a great part of society if the world began to collapse. I'm not sure if the world is truly and utterly collapsing at this moment in time, but it does seem likely that many more people will die; many more people will lose their ability to make a living; many more people's lives will never be the same. I've expressed this thought to a few friends: while most living at the time could still tell you where they were when JFK was shot, or where they were when they heard about/saw the World Trade towers fall, etc....I don't feel like there is as a defining and universal day for the Coronavirus. Is it the first time I heard reports about something weird happening in China? Is it the first time I heard how important it was to wash my hands and not touch my face? My point is, the day will not be the same for all of us. And the day may just keep resetting. Normal. Normal was never the same after 9/11. And yet it was reestablished as a possibility. So,  I assume, if this doesn't lead to nuclear war, revolution or a near complete wipeout of the human race, some new normal will replace the one we'd gotten accustomed to. Ha. And then climate change will throw that on its head and so on. At this point I'm almost 100% sure that no one reads this anymore. Ah the hey day of loyal readers...so far and long ago. I guess my not writing anything here for 18 month stretches might also come into play.

Well, in any case. Here are some photos - as always not in chronological order - of the recent goings-on in my life with random captions and perhaps a few more hacky thoughts about the pandemic.

I closed on the house December 20th. Almost immediately it became apparent that something was amiss with my water pressure. The pump when the inspector had come out the month before had been constantly running, which the inspector noted shouldn't be the case. But water came out of the sink at a consistent rate and it was probably just a matter of getting a new pump. Upon purchase, a different problem suddenly appeared: if you tried to turn on the water and let it run for longer than about 30 seconds, the pump would shut off and then no water would becoming into the faucet. I delayed moving into the house by about two weeks and consulted with a cast of characters, each of whom had their own hypothesis of what the issue was. I found my spring box and reservoir up in the woods above my house, next to a creek (folks around here prefer to call this particular form of water a 'branch'). I had a pressure tank put in under my counter, as there wasn't one. This helped in a temporary way, as I could plug in the pump and let it run enough to get water in the tank. Or at least that's how I thought it worked. Regardless. The mystery was that up at the reservoir there would be days where it was full - brimming actually to the level of the overflow pipe. But then a couple of days later it would be nearly empty. This is a concrete rectangle in the ground that I have, in fact, jumped into...I couldn't stand up inside of it, but I'd say it's at least 3.5 feet tall and 6 feet long and its width? Oh maybe 4 feet. My point is that is A LOT of water to go missing if you are one person living in a house where you are taking only sporadic showers and have done laundry less than once every two weeks. It was only two weeks ago that I noticed a strange thing...the drain pipe on one side of my house that I thought was for the gutter above it (not using my language skills well here) had frequently had a puddle surrounding it in previous weeks, but I had assumed that was excess gutter rain water/saturated ground, as this has been an incredibly rainy winter. But one day I noticed there was still a big puddle, even though it hadn't rained in a few days. And then I noticed that there was the tiniest - but steadiest - trickle feeding that puddle from under the porch/deck. Of course I got my headlamp and investigated, and followed the trickle to somewhere under the house on the opposite side. If I turned off the main valve to the house, the trickle dissipated and, within minutes the puddle would dry up. This was a very interesting discovery. Then a few days later my neighbor Randy and his buddy Jamie showed up. They'd actually been investigating what was going on with the water whilst I was in TN for a weekend. Haha..country neighbors talk. In any case, it was at that point that Jamie went under the deck/porch from a different angle and found....this. It's not a great photo, but what it is is a fairly substantial (if hyperbolic) LAKE UNDER MY HOUSE. While we couldn't actually lay eyes on the source, it was clear that some pipe under my house was busted, and every time the pump asked for water from the reservoir, a good majority of that water didn't ever make it into the house.

One of the nice things about my bathroom is the clawfoot tub. I got new shower curtains with birds on them, because of course I did. At some point a few months back, my uncle Ed sent me this magazine, which I began reading while taking a bath and having a glass of wine. Baths for a while were the easier choice over showers, as the water pressure was rarely consistent. Baths now get to go back to being more a matter of luxury and comfort than necessity.

The pond is not a feature I totally love. I mean, this is obviously very pretty, and I do like that I think that the pond does attract more peepers and other aquatic creatures I enjoy seeing - there are a few mini fish in there, definitely a lot of frogs. But it's mucky. The branch/stream that feeds it has been generally steady in its supply, but it's all just very muddy. I think the thing to do would be to try and deepen and narrow the path to the pond and put some kind of reenforcing fauna or rocks along the edges to keep it from devolving again. The pond also has way too much algae, and while it's been cold I haven't worried too much about Birdie, that will change in the summer. I have so many things I need fenced already, and this is definitely not what I'd like to deal with first...but I also don't want my dog to die because she can't stop traipsing through the muck and mire and occasionally actually go chest deep in the pond itself.

Back to the house water saga. So my neighbor across the way, H.C., recommended a plumber for me to try named Rick. Rick came out the morning I was going to leave for TN and I showed him the puddle and recounted all the numerous things others had thought or considered in regards to getting me a consistent, reliable and pressurized source of water inside my house. We agreed that upon my return, he'd really get it all resolved. I'd heard it before, but since the puddle/lake were new data points everyone else hadn't had, I was optimistic. He came back, Randy the neighbor stopped by again and we all agreed on a course of action that would probably resolve the issue. We also discovered that the pipe that burst was the one leading to the outdoor spigot, which was unfortunately placed between my pump box and propane tanks. I said I'd dig down and find the water line so that Rick wouldn't have to bring his backhoe out (saving me $$ and allowing me the fine pleasure of digging/manual labor). And dig I did do.

Random things found in one of my two barns. Or this one is more a shed.

My place is 21 acres in size. Just a tad over really. I've been trying to take daily walks around it just because it's mine and I can. It's strange how it feels like a lot of land and just so little all at the same time. My ratio/percentage skills are terrible, but I'd say maybe its 60% woods and 40% pasture/house/cleared land. Here is a pod I saw while walking in the pasture.

How I looked two weeks ago when I was in Tennessee and prepping to go see Arlo Guthrie perform in a cavern with my dad and two of his friends. This was mood one. I so rarely leave my house or interact with other people, and I'm not one to put on lipstick to go to the grocery store, so I did really try to gussy myself up a little.

On another walk I explored the woods mainly, and found plenty of bones. It was my bones walk.

Spoiler alert, I found the waterline and felt pleased with myself.

The day I bought the house was another lipstick occasion.

See where the woods stops at the top of that hill? That's my woods to the left and down:)

Okay so I complained about the pond, but I do really like the view, even with the phone line in play.

The waterline! Water line?

I have thus stayed strong and still only have the Birdster, but I did visit my friend Joan's puppies for a few weeks when they were still so freakin' tiny. I do keep thinking about whether I should be adopting a dog from the local shelter at this specific moment in time - they are a kill shelter and I imagine this situation has put them in a bad bind. I'd prefer to foster but the shelter doesn't have a foster program. Hm. I should reach out to them and see if there's an emergency foster situation in play.

The pasture from a lovely angle. I fell in love with this area because of its swells. These neverending waves of hills and mountains. And this is my own special swell. It's pretty swell. Har har. This week the big excitement has been that I've noticed horse poop in the pasture that is FRESH. I have no horses or livestock of any kind. Yesterday I saw a few hoof prints in a number of different spots. My theory is that at least a couple of my neighbor Danny's 15+ horses must hop the decrepit old fence line, graze on my land, take a little stroll through the woods, and then hop back over when none of us are watching. It makes me smile, but also I keep thinking maybe I should call him and ask if he's counted all his horses lately.

Closing day lipstick and round face.

The most important part of my visit to TN was going to a storage unit there to FINALLY get my real bed. I'd been sleeping on an air mattress since January and while it tried its best to be up to the challenge of daily use for three months, it lost a certain will to retain air and I was getting quite tired of waking up partially sandwiched by a semi-deflated air mattress. This is Birdie on that air mattress when it was still keeping its shape up.

Mood two.

Mood two for Birdie too.

Nice light on a woods walk.

The house from my driveway. It's pretty cute. I always wanted a slightly larger house with more bedrooms for guests and maybe two levels of porches...but most of those were out of my price range or so damaged/fucked up that I would never have been able to afford the rehab even if I learned how to do a lot of it myself.

This is just a view from elsewhere in the county. I believe that is generally looking west maybe a little northwest.

Ah yes. This is from a drive from Bristol, TN back home. I took a longer/more scenic route (they're all long, and they're all scenic, but this one was free of I-81), and found myself at an elevation where more snow had accumulated than would be evident at my place. Pretty.

More bones from the bones walk.

My 'knob.' It's the highest point on my property. I do one day hope to figure out a way to build a house on this spot, but I've got many, many things I need to do first.

Pond heron. Last week there were THREE of them chilling out around the pond. They flew off as soon as they saw me, but I hope to one day be stealthy enough to take a photo of them before they all fly away.

I recplaced my doorknob, as no one seemed to have a key to the existing lock.

Lichen? Fungi?

One element of the area that I hadn't fully understood/done my due diligence on during my exploratory time here in the fall was just how dominant Christmas tree farms are here. I knew they existed, but I hadn't fully understood the feeling of them slowly taking over valleys that I'm now noticing. And, apparently, they fly giant helicopters over the trees and dump pesticides or other chemicals on them. Obviously that is not really my bag, but compared to the fracking I would have been surrounded by if I had chosen to pursue an affordable spot in PA, I think I just have to accept they exist and, in fact, are neighbors on at least one angle of my property line.

Though I now have a bed, two dressers and three chairs, I'm still working on making this place a functional home. Getting a bunch of my favorite trinkets, doo dads and pieces of art has helped make me feel more settled.

Honestly, if I could do it again I would choose just a slightly less vibrant yellow. I was really just trying to find the same color I had on my walls in Ellensburg, WA...but the three years and a different hardware store led to a slightly more garish color than I had really intended. And of course I just stayed the course even once I began worrying over it. I do not, however, in any way regret this wall paper choice. I may eventually move the dartboard and put a tv there, but maybe not.

Mood three. Weirdly blurry.

So last week, I dug the hole to the waterline and then did much of the digging for the trench to the repositioned outdoor spigot. But not all, Rick definitely got in there too and was far more efficient than I was in getting to the proper depth.

A still living tree in a section of woods I call "Dead Tree Alley."

Just another view of the house and landscape. One thing my neighbor Randy told me lately is that hill beyond my house, with the red bard etc...it's all going to be Christmas trees in the next year or so. This really bums me out. I love this view. Christmas trees are planted in such a regimented manner, I don't know, it just won't be the same.

Two people whose hypothesis about what was wrong with my water was totally wrong.

And that, I guess, wraps up this blog post. I didn't really get into the other line of thought I have about the pandemic. Perhaps I'll do so another day. Hopefully not in six months.

The Rural Wave

A thing I'm working on. All the {} are further little stories or anecdotes/tangents that I halfway think are worth pursuing, but also halfway know only bring me farther and farther away from the actual point I think I'm trying to make. It may be that like many of my stories, I really don't have a point.

I grew up in an especially idyllic little pocket of suburban Maryland. Ours was a mish-mash neighborhood of fairly well maintained Victorian-ish houses whose larger acreage/plots had been subdvided and filled in with houses over the course of many decades. A house built in the late 1800s could easily be found next to a pistachio green plastic siding house from the 70s.

{Beekeepers. Old Man who? The wooden bridge.}

Visiting my paternal grandmother - known as "Granny" - in Sewanee, Tennessee most summers introduced me to an even slower paced and more magical setting. Granny lived in a house she had built in the late 40s/early 50s, which was very much in the Frank Lloyd Wright vein of architechture - lots of glass, and stone and very few steps or closets. The house's modern layout and aesthetic, and the way it looked from above gave my father - no more than 12 - the idea of naming it "Crash Landing," which stuck. {Getting lost in Abbo's Alley} By the time I was 10, I was allowed to walk from Crash Landing to the pastures near Lake Cheston to say hi to the horses, and maybe give them tufts of greener, less-nibbled grasses I plucked on the other side of their pasture's barbed wire fencing, just out of their long horse-neck reach.  Or perhaps an apple or two that my mother gave me to bring along. This was no more than a mile away, probably less. What I still just remember marveling at and feeling incredibly happy and excited about, was walking out of my grandmother's driveway and turning right, and walking along Florida Avenue, down the dip by the football field and back up, by my horse camp counselor from 1992? Jessie's Mom's house, and just collecting dogs as I went. {Go home Ernie go home}. I would pass a house with a dog I knew already somehow, just in its yard and I would encourage it to join me, and it would. I don't really remember making these dogs come with me, but I do feel as if I would encourage them. One kind of black and tan hound dog. Maybe Winston next door before he left [did he really get taken to a farm or did he die?]. And as I walked the peaceful, green, still but bug buzzy roads, we'd pass another yard, and another dog will join us. And together, four dogs or so would accompany me to the pasture. As I write this, I'm now questioning if this is true. I have a sincere memory, or series of memories, where the basic beats of what I just described happened. Sewanee was the kind of small town where everyone's dog safely wandered just a little, at least in the late 80s and early 90s. I would walk in the middle of the road. Which can fit two cars, but narrowly, a dog or two in front or to the side of me, and likewise behind. Sewanee had no leash law for years and years, and dogs really did have the freedom to do this back then, just as children like me were equally free to meander perhaps a little bit more than they are allowed to now, even in Sewanee.

And as a kid I got a real kick - and I mean a real visceral shiver of a kick - out of getting to the side of the road for the occasional 20-mile per hour car I did encounter, then giving a small wave to the driver, usually in response to their own. I didn't KNOW these people! But here we were waving at one another. Acknowledging our mutual existences in what felt to be a strangely intimate but anonymous manner. I really thought it was cool. I still do. I still like that while it's a little less automatic than in years past, you can still have a dialed down version of that kind of wave in Sewanee. It was just what you did, even if you couldn't quite place the person to whom you were waving.

Grayson County, Virginia. Or at least the small tiny paint spatter of the county I've really seen, is an area where there isn't necessarily a pedestrian wave. There aren't enough houses strung together for quite that unity. Or maybe I don't know because my house is tucked away from the road. I have to drive on one road to get to anywhere else in the world. And one thing I have definitely noticed is the one finger salute many drivers will give me as we pass each other on that one road. Old bearded men in pick up trucks are the most reliable, but women in compact cars too. A brief 1-2 second raising of a pointer finger, or even the pointer and middle finger together (never just the middle finger). And then we're past one another, barreling down the road that is taking us to wherever we are trying to go.

As a newcomer to the area, I appreciate this rural wave. With the exception of about three people, anyone raising their fingers in my general direction as we drive on by and past each other has no idea who I am. Last week I finally got my VA license plates, but even with my out of state plates, I got plenty of little salutes. I have begun to salute back. Or even to preemptively salute.

{Dad stealing corn on a country road somewhere near the Monastery}

Last Spring and Early Summer in Washington

I drafted this in 2018 and never edited or further adjusted or dealt with any of it. I"m going to publish it as-is because, well, why not? I think I'm going to start blogging on this again, though at this point it's basically blogging into a void. But I think it'll be helpful for me to type type away about my latest and newest life change (bout to buy a small house and larger parcel of land in an entirely new place). Apologies if tone and image quality is, uh, not great on this year old unfinished round up.

As always, the order in which I took these photos, and the order in which Blogger chooses to display them is not one and the same, but I am an inveterate lazy person and refuse to go to the trouble to sort it all out. We'll see how this whole post shapes up as far as actual content goes. This most of these photos were taken a year ago or just under that, and my current wanderings and wonderings are far more fresh than the state of mind I was in back then. I imagine there will be a fair amount of 'woe is me, my face and body used to be skinnier/stronger' and maybe a modicum of passive aggressive griping about the reasons behind my departure (I hope not though, because it's not a good look and life goes on). And maybe further discussion of the concept of home, or how big and little and same and different all of America some times seems to me as I drive through it, staying very small amounts of time in myriad places. If America was a map, and I was a rain cloud, then my foot steps would be rain drops but the smattering of them would never make much of a puddle, let alone a lake. What? Maybe just pithy captions is the way to go. We'll see.

Birdie and Rey remained steadfast sparring partners. That my life is most often now documented through Birdie as my proxy is pretty okay with me.

Yeah this is way out of order. I think this is on Lopez Island in July, after I had left Ellensburg.

The above and below were taken on Whidbey, also in July or late June. I spent a couple of days there before going to Lopez, staying with Clare or camping by Whitney's tiny house in her parents' yard. But a lot of my days were going to the old farm and hiking my way down to its beach for final days of beach lounging. Stan had gotten really into felting likenesses of his friends and the farm dogs. I left Birdie with them for a few nights when I went to Lopez, and when I returned, Stan had made one of her. I was so happy to have one. It hangs from my car's rearview mirror as one of a few talismans from that time - the others including two of the most perfect moon snail shells I managed to find on the last day of farm beachery and a wooden otter that Whitney carved for me.

Skinny faced beach time. Fuck.

I joined M&A and their kids and old college friend Jason for a couple of days on Lopez. I'd never been and certainly did enjoy it. We went to a community concert featuring the musical stylings of a Beatles coverband that had come all the way from Athens, Georgia...because of course it did. At one point I ran into a hippie lady with this puppy and I was missing Birdie so much I really wanted to take it. But I didn't...just watched it while the lady went to the restroom.

Whitney and Brock on her tiny house porch. Great photo of both of them, for sure.

Whitney's house is a culmination of two or even three years of hard work on her part and with many assists from Stan as well. It is delightful and magic.

Lopez Island rocks. Figuratively and literally.

Birdie and I stopped by Whitney's workplace at that time for a quick burger and maybe a goodbye?

I also met up with Gabby whilst I was on the island. We took our respective terriers to Double Bluff and ate sandwiches and caught up. She is a very delightful, smart, funny and kind teenager. If all of them could be that way, I wouldn't be so terrified of them. As we were heading back to the car, we were walking across the pool of water that forms way back from the shore...I don't think it's a tidal pool as much as a weird giant puddle. In any case, across in this instance means balancing ourselves on a log or two that had been put across it. Of course this ended with me going ass over teapot into the water, along with my bag that half a sandwich in it. I was so amused I asked the strangers laughing at me to take a photo. And my left breast seriously considered revealing itself, but chose not to at the last possible second.

The Whidbey farm was - and I imagine is - a pretty magical place to spend some time. It wasn't all roses and there were challenges and difficulties to my time there, but even factoring them in, the good generally outweighs the bad. I'd never had gotten myself Birdie without first meeting her aunt, Coco, never would I have blithely and giddily followed Stan into the sound on a low tide day and caught my own Dungeness crab, nor would I feel confident in so many elements of farm chores without having been first taught and then trusted by Lynn. And then there's just the fact that the dogs were having such a great time most all of the time.

Back, inexplicably, to Lopez and little M looking out into the beyond.

I was never a super model skinny girl, but damn I felt good about myself and looking at these photos, I am glad I did. I'm glad at the time of my healthiest/fittest self I was fully cognizant of it and enjoyed it, instead of somehow beating myself up for even smaller flaws. Womp. Womp. Womp.

I always would bring little M. bits of jewelry to play with because I knew she liked to...this visit was no different.

The Ellensburg house and the small landscaping steps I took before it was clear that I wasn't going to stick around. I somehow imagine the moment I left the boss man pulled it all up and deemed it done all wrong.

Birdie and her aunt Coco playing at the beach.

Before it turned all the way warm on a walk in Ellensburg.

A drawing I made.

I caught Bobby sniffing around a wheelbarrow one day and found that he had located a secret laying place of the free range chickens.

Whitney visited and we went on a hike up into the hills. We hoped to find elk sheds, but found none. Super steep terrain.

The mezze I put together upon our return.

A morning boop and cuddle between Whitney and Birdie.

Another photo from the hike that sort of shows you the landscape and the rushing stream.

Lambs were born.

Very cute lambs. Because they weren't a dairy operation, and also just had a different philosophy about it, lambing season was far less intense or hands-on when compared to the Whidbey farm.

One day my boss called me whilst he was out and asked me if I could meet him by the ag store to help locate and return a hitchhiking chicken he heard/we eventually found in his trailer's wheel well.

So many eggs.

Bebbe.

Bebbes.

Can you spot Bella the dog? She went looking for chickens up in the hay stacks and then wasn't entirely sure how to get down.

Sun either rising or setting. Setting because that would be looking west. I'm smart!

One task I had was to put away the chickens at night. When their "tractor" home hadn't been moved for a couple of days this was pretty simple, they made their way there by themselves. But on the evenings when we changed the homes' locations, at least 20-100 chickens would not understand it and would bed down in the grass where the tractors had been the previous night. So, to get them to their rightful sleeping domiciles, I got on the ATV and brought with me two large garbage cans with lids. Then I would scoop/chase chickens, get them by their feet, place ~8 of them in each can then zoom down to the tractors on the ATV and dump them all in. And then repeat that a few times depending on the number of stragglers. It was dark work and not entirely fun, but also, like most farm chores from my perspective...still pretty fun.

This seems to be a roasted chicken I made with a side of stuffed and baked poblano peppers.

Another hilly walk. Or perhaps the same one. Hard to say.

A more defined and happy face.

Cow skulls come with toupes.

Rainbow on the way in to Seattle.

Eating treats with M&A before they entirely gave up meat.

Birdie and Coco.

The ridiculous mud/water situation at the entrance to the cows' pasture. God it was bad.

The cows coming after me because I started spreading out their breakfast on the opposite side of the pasture from where they had been hanging out. It was always fun to see them roll into a canter-like gait.

Birdie wasn't sure about any of it.

A tofu stew I made with poached egg on top.

Butter calf.

I couldn't quite get a photo that fully showcased just how deep the mud was. Like, this doesn't look so bad from this angle...but it was. It really was.

Spring starting peeping.

The dogs kept playing.

Birdie looking hella swole after a hike and splash.

My kitchen sink view.

My face after I moved the tractors by myself and didn't fuck anything up.

Somewhere outside of Wenatchee on the way to get my hair cut.

My hair cut.

More spring.

I did make a couple of friends whilst I was in Ellensburg. Steven worked for the farm from time to time and I enjoyed getting to hang out with him and his wife Therese from time to time.

When the digging to lay in plumbing/gas began.

Trump loving mongrels were a dime a dozen round those parts.

I also made friends with Maxine and Matthew after meeting them at the Iron Horse Brewery one night. They were lovely people to get to know and I was happy to have them over for a small fire/diner one night.

A different hike, this one in search of a waterfall.

Which we found.

I'd never worked cattle before, so I was both excited and trepidatious to do so. I can't say it was an altogether fun time. On the whole it was just Chris and me, and whilst I was fitter and stronger, and he was fit and strong, it might have been easier if we had two more sets of hands. Chris refused to 'trim' the cow's hooves and we all knew I wasn't ready for such a task, so the boss man did it.

At one point I was trying to ear tag a calf, who had horns, but it shook its head in such a way and at such a moment that I got hit in the face with its horn. Or, more accurately, grazed...if it had been a more full blow it would have been far worse. Chris and I were both a bit shaken up about it. Kept doing the work of course, but he was like 'you really could have just lost an eye' and I concurred. Then I spent the next few days trying to take a good photo of my shiner without entirely satisfying myself with a really good one.

Drawing.

Black eye attempt.

Steven and Therese also came over for a fire and sausages.

This hike killed me a little. It was so steep and remained that way for the duration. I actually ended up not getting to the summit, so wiped I was from the first mile and a half. Summit is not really the word because compared to mountains, it was just a really big hill.

The wildflowers were worth it though.

Not the cow that hit me. Or maybe.

Another big mud puddle, but one we never needed to deal with in regards to the tractor. I think it also would expand or contract depending on what the bossman was doing irrigation-wise.

Then it started getting hot. At this point all the animals were off the old farm and on the new one. The new one was bigger but didn't have the same infrastructure as the old one. Ie: no water spigots in all the best places. So a huge portion of my day would be filling up the drums behind me with water and then distributing the water to the various flocks/herds etc. The cattle could go through a good portion of the water in just the time it took me to fill up their troughs and go back and get a little more for sheep.

Bones.

Finished.

A fun thing I saw on my drive from the old to new farm one time.

More spring.

More sausage. 

An accidental attempted upload of a video of me filling the trough and the bull getting first dibs. I took a lot of said videos in slow-mo because their tongues lapping at the water amused me.

Sunset in downtown Ellensburg.

Living the good dog life.

Another accidental upload of a video (that I believe won't play?). This was the big project of renovating the old dairy barn into a kitchen and farm store. I left before it was complete, but much was accomplished whilst I was there.

Whipsaw Brewery was a pretty nice place to hang.

So strong. This was about a week or so before I left.

Digging the big hole for the new septic system. I learned a lot about what it takes to make a building actually functional...and the way some choose not to get the right permits to do so.

Chris in the new septic tank before it was connected to anything or had anything ugly inside of it.

The skies were pretty awesome.

Oysters in Seattle I think.

Yes. Dinner at Solare with M. once I had officially left Ellensburg but was hanging around the west coast for a bit before heading eastward.

I was able to run into Seth, who is a good friend of Louise and Tony's, while he was in town for a conference.

I followed that up with seeing another Louise/Tony friend, Tim, and met his girlfriend as well.

Then I went to Whidbey. My off-farm social circle was relatively small, but good. I stayed with Clare, and she and I met up with Bob and his wife Bernita for a lovely dinner at Prima (no surprise there, of course) and then a final glass of wine at Ott and Murphy's. Gooooood people.

Clare does not like having her photo taken, but I insisted.

I am a lucky girl to have such friends.

Me happy to be in a bikini at the beach. I think I had Coco and Birdie in tow.

And that's about it for the round up of my final days in Ellensburg and last visit to Whidbey and the San Juan islands.