elainegrey

Christine mowed on Friday, removing a to-do from my list to prep for visitors.

Friday night i binged and read the next installment in Ryk E Spoor's Hyperion series... it's kind of a space opera, i guess? It begins with Earth in a state of technological abundance, and one of the things i enjoy is the affirmation that in the absence of "needing to work" that people would continue to be creative and ambitious. Grand Central Arena (first book free) has first contact and reveals a fascinating universe structure concept. This fourth book, Shadows of Hyperion, came about with crowd funding, and i was delighted to see left the story line open for more while leaving me satiated. I do feel i need to reread them all now.

Saturday and a good bits of Sunday i have been catching up with online things. Large chunks of that seem to be deleting emails regarding causes for which it is too long past responding in solidarity, or tech newsletters which will be replaced with even more up to date things. I am impressed by how much time i can spend just tapping away. Admittedly, i spent much of my free time in California doing just that.

We had Christine's sister, her husband, and friends J-- & L-- over last night for long delayed gatherings (we had strived pre-pandemic to see J-- & L-- once a month). Having both couples over meant Christine could escape to cook or take care of pets and they could talk to each other, easing the stress. I think my family gatherings will be as easy, although i am very tempted to order the chairs Christine dismissed.

I ended up doing little to prepare outside other than picking a lovely bouquet. The rain (yay, rain!) had bent down some of the butterfly weed's bright orange blooms so i added those to daisies, yarrow, and grasses, then went and picked some of the purple stems of the downy wood mint (that came out of nowhere -- seeds scattered in 2018?) to contrast.

The evening was beautiful, overcast skies clearing shortly after J&L arrived. The cool night was not cold enough to make watching a documentary on the porch idylic -- i watched the big dipper become visible, observed a few fireflies (diminished numbers due to the chill)

I've now burnt hours of this gorgeous holiday morning while going through 2016 June photos of the landscape here in its terrifying wilderness state. We've been here five years. Not unremarkable years with the first year marked by the anti-trans bill passed the day we signed for the house, that summer unfolding with the presidential campaign year, four years of a presidency that terrified me for the future of the marginalized and the facts, Mom's stroke, and a pandemic. Global warming and ecosystem crisis are clear to me -- although the fires in California since we left would have also been unambiguous.

Out out out i should go: finally get tomatoes and peppers in and maybe even the sweet potatoes.

No news re the nodules in Mom's lungs. She came out of the thoracic procedure extremely thirsty and apparently coughed much yesterday. I've got the CT scan results: the presumed primary area hasn't changed size in two weeks, and her heart which was "mildly prominent in size" two weeks earlier was deemed normal. I've been buoyed by the doctor's absence of caution around the fibrosis, and now realize that she might have lung surgery while i am out of the country. Oh. Well, we will see.

Christine asked about what would happen if Dad's mother needs him while i am out of the country. Exchanged brief messages with my sister over that and should be able to set Christine's mind at rest regarding that.

Christine had a nightmare about the compost bucket: i should see if she's anxious about visiting the worm bin while i am gone. I think i will find some vegetative matter to harvest for them and leave them with a bin of greens and shred paper for the two weeks i'm gone. I'll think of a place Christine can dump the coffee grinds if she wants to not trash them while i'm gone. Otherwise, i rather think i'm the main cause of vegetative scraps.

We split the first blackberry from the orchard. There will be a second, but almost all the other flowers seem to have not set fruit, or they aborted during the dry May weeks. I ate a very young green bean: no where near as pleasant as grazing on peas. Maybe tomorrow i'll dig a few more potatoes and have green beans. I can finally see black walnuts forming in the trees

Yesterday evening i went to Apex to meet up with a colleague who attended the Code4Lib conference at NCSU. She wanted Eastern NC style barbecue and i tried to find a place. I'm not sure a place that sells lavender and lemon kombucha is an appropriate place from which to order eastern barbecue. As i perused the menu i realized that if i wanted to do a meat trial before traveling, this was the best time and place. So i had the chopped pork BBQ. And meh. My colleague said the meat was A+ but the sauce was completely underwhelming. I was not impressed with either. Christine & my's eastern barbecue tuna is excellent. I find i really don't miss the meat and i will be happy to avoid it in the future. The good news though was that i have had no physical reactions, so if i do get a dish with meat in Tallinn or Stockholm by accident, i won't be risking misery.

While we were there, a thunderstorm dropped rain, then dramatically large hail. (Golf ball sized, my colleague from Houston pronounced.) As i drove K-- C-- back to the campus hotel, fog rose from the hail accumulated at the edge of the road. On my return home i hit another squall line, the sound of the hail on the roof of the truck was quite dramatic. The clouds created an early dusk. Rain was so hard i could barely see, so i quickly pulled off the road and waited for it to ease a bit. By the time i got home, the squalls were past and the sky quickly brightening. Wer'd had a half inch of rain while i was gone, but no damage that i would expect to remain after anything like the hail i saw.

I watched far to many episodes of Lucifer while i waited for Christine to return home.

It's been three years and a week since we arrived from California.



Top: photo my sister took when she inspected the home before closing. The summer undergrowth hadn't taken off yet, and it's clear that the owners had done some clearing off the deck to sell the place.

Bottom: Today, with a very similar view of the deck railing, window box with miniature roses, and the cluster of black cherries to the left. The thicket of young trees on the right is gone.

A year ago i went wine shopping in Safeway for wines to move with us to North Carolina. (I don't think we've consumed any of them yet.)

Carrie carried many shoes into the living room overnight and chewed a strap off one of my sandals and one of Christine's shoes overnight. She also took socks out of the bedroom and left them in front of the library, and pulled jeans to the door of the bedroom. It would be adorable if it wasn't so expensive. Christine talks about nominative determinism: i should remind Carrie her name is not "Carry."

I've ordered "bitter apple" spray that should arrive in a week.

Also, i will be trying to not let her sleep all day.

--== ∞ ==--

A black snake slithered out of my way as i was mowing the east yard yesterday -- first snake of the season. The exterminators found mice under the house, so snakes follow. (Actually, we'd seen a snake going under the house when we first moved here.)

Also, when i went out before heading to sleep, fireflies. Fireflies! Already! I don't recall them before June, but i also didn't have the habit of going out every night when i was growing up.

The exterminators gave us a quote for replacing all the vents under the house, around $1500. It seemed wise to get an estimate for sealing off the crawl space as we had pretty serious humidity issues last summer. I was sure it would be over $10k, but it wasn't. So, we'll have the crawl space sealed up and included in the HVAC system. I think it will help reduce Christine's anxieties about snakes under the house, and it should be more efficient. All around a good investment.

--== ∞ ==--

I saw a therapist yesterday. She thinks i'm lonely, and that's affecting my capacity in dealing with Christine's elephants. She's echoed one of my goals for the week and helped chat me through some of the procrastination. It's hard for me to see myself as lonely, but i have been aware that my interactions with people have decreased. Even here with you all.

One insight i had was that i didn't have a clearly social relationship with many of my CA friends. That is, it was either a group gathering, stopping to see someone at work, or in conjunction with Meeting activities. I never had a pattern where they or i reached out directly to each other.

She also loaned me a book about living with someone with one diagnosis of what the elephants may be. Much of the details did not resonate. Christine said when i shared the book that it was a diagnosis that was one of the more unlikely. After reading some of the diagnostic points, i'm leaning towards discarding it as a possibility altogether.

Yesterday's unseasonable and unsettled weather translated into unsettled moods.( Unsettledness )

--== ∞ ==--

In wrestling with sending Yuletide greetings, i find myself shying away from sharing news of the move. Yesterday i said to myself, "The move was traumatic." I think i need to be honest with myself about that, and then perhaps i can move out of this odd relational isolation i am in.

I have disappeared from communities in which i was deeply integrated, and i have been ignoring that pain. It's not to say i don't love the relationship i am building with the land, but it asks for very different listening from me. And how i answer the land back? Sweat and some blood: no tears yet.

I suppose the tears part is nagging me: The herbivores are going to come for my garden and any fruit and nut trees i plant. It will be hard to communicate to them that if they just wait for the trees to mature, they will have even more food than the bark and twigs.

But... here i notice my tendency: go off and research some detail about planting, not deal with the emotional wound of my own transplantation.

Wow, the journaling is really falling by the wayside, and i suspect i'll rant to read back on what this first year is like. Ah well.

Last week flew by with the distraction of a foggy mind and some sort of sinus unhappiness. Midweek my dad let me know our rescheduled trip to the mountains would need to be rescheduled again due to a doctors appointment he had forgotten. I think i was disappointed, but i decided to keep the day off as i was feeling run down.

One lunch Christine and i went to walk outside in the front woods we've cleared back from the future driveway. A dog came trotting up the driveway, ( and we walked him home. )

( Friday furniture )

I woke at 3:30 am on Saturday, thinking about the yard. Happy thoughts: where to plant what, what to tackle next. But i couldn't manage to quiet the thoughts to go back to sleep, so i got up and did some tidying and unpacking, and some reading. The moonlight is wonderful.

Eventually Christine woke, and we had a pleasant breakfast before i prepared for a day of yard work and she prepared for a friend/client meeting. I worked on the path around the porch and deck, transplanting violets, Heuchera americana (Alumroot), and some other attractive ground-covering plant. I am guessing the alumroot is wild, but given the proximity to the house, it might have been an intentional planting.

( mystery plant )

They were transplanted to a "shady" garden outside our bedroom window. I hope it will be shady next summer, but i have cut back a number of saplings and cleared out the honeysuckle and Japanese knotweed. I've only left a small redbud in the area i consider the flowerbed, and a dogwood does reach over the area a bit. It may be much more sunny though, than it has been. There are three moss covered rocks that act as focal points as well as the huge stump from a tulip poplar tree. (The rest of the tree still needs to be removed -- the previous owners cut down trees and left the logs and branches in the woods.) I planted the 15 yellow daffodil bulbs in this area too, did what i could to encourage moss growth, and hope that it becomes a verdant little area.

After all day outside, i cleaned up and dressed up. Christine and i were guests of a "table captain" at the Equality NC Gala. Conversation was impossible, but that was a plus for me as i was feeling shy. The program was very good - lots of NC House Bill 2 politics and politicians. Lovely to see such a large community of LGBTQ supporting NC politicians! The past mayor of Houston spoke and it was fairly inspiring. The program ran long though, so that was exhausting. I drank a bit more than i usually do, mainly as an analgesic. Oh, did i ache from the yard work. People watching was fun, although pretty sedate.

Sunday i couldn't bring myself to go to Meeting. We had a fairly quiet day, the highlight of which was going to the nearby mill town of Bynum to a native plant seed swap. I had nothing to swap, but the organizer was happy to send me home with seeds, and i was thrilled to get seeds of plants i've wanted for a while. (Pawpaw! Waxmyrtle! Buttonbush!) I'm trying to figure out how i am going to start the seeds. ( seed starting )

Yesterday i managed to finally get soil samples together. I have to get them to the state soon: In November there's a charge.

There was shooting in the large woodlot next door yesterday. I worry it's going to be hard on Christine hearing hunting going on: deer and turkey season start in a month. She's sensitive to sounds like that, sounds she has no control over. Being well isolated has reduced her stress compared to living in a dense suburban situation in California: i hate to think how she's going to be affected by the shooting.

Looks like lovely weather through the week.

[1] AKA Neighborhood public road. I think it means that the state doesn't maintain it. http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByArticle/Chapter_136/Article_4.pdf

A friend at the Meeting in California hosts a mailing list. He writes out to some list of BCC and you have no idea who else is on that list. He occasionally replies to someone, bringing their response forward to all. It's different, but it is the culture of his list. The power dynamic is so different, but i think it's wise. He is a rare black attender in the mostly white California meeting, and he's willing to prick the white conscience with regard to racial privilege.

I struggled a bit with the power structure of his list last night, as i replied to a reply someone else had made to the host's use of the word whiteness. In an amazing act of white privilege, this person had complained that the use of the word made him feel something was wrong with his skin. My response was a bit more developed response of "Sit with the discomfort and think about it." I eventually simply replied to the host and the other correspondent, not BCC'ing or CC'ing anyone. I thanked the host for providing the discussion space.

This morning i am more able to see what is going on: we must trust the host to curate ... fairly? justly? It is not transparent, a word that comes to mind as echoing the Charlotte Mayor as she tries to negotiate between the police and the people. My discomfort with this list is it isn't transparent, and i need to trust the host. The people of Charlotte ... they have a situation with trust and transparency, too. I've no idea how many responses the host receives, how often his BCC list is "all" or "some", how wide or diverse the community of discourse is. I think it's wise though, because it is a way the black voice will be heard in the white space. Our host's moderation reminds me of the moderation of nuclear reactions in a power plant: the clamor or white voices as we, in our many different places of facing our privilege, feedback upon each other and melt down. Our host absorbs and paces the discussion, keeping it from being overwhelming, keeping the silence between messages that is hard to do in an asynchronous medium.

I knew last night i recognized something "Quakerly" about the space our host had made. This morning i see the pacing he creates, keeping the space between the responses, choosing whom to recognize as clerking the discussion. And just as one holds the clerk in the Light, recognizing the difficulties they face in the challenge of moderating, i hold our host in the Light too.

--== ∞ ==--

In other news, i have avoided the debate and much (i suspect) of the rehashing of the debate. Each morning i read the analysis at http://www.electoral-vote.com/ trying to skim past most of the eye rolling at The Donald, but occasionally following the links to news articles, such as the one about the Trump campaign trying to find a mosque The Donald could publicly visit. I admired the responses i read about: no we will not create a photo op, but yes we will sit down and talk with you. The local Meeting's women's group is gathering tonight and the invitation includes "bring your favorite quotes from the debate." I will not go. I wasn't feeling inspired, as yesterday i was dragging with a cold (it's too soon to see today how that will go). But until debates are about policy and not performance, i'm opting out.

I spent the weekend lopping and have indeed created a huge pile of brush to eventually send through a chipper as well as tangles of grape and honeysuckle vines to be burned. I haven't quite figured out my metric for "worth the time to send through a chipper" vs "burn" but i have one, some instinct about the balance of effort and reward with a bias to chip. I got quite worn out on Saturday, working in the sun. Sunday i reserved energy and spent some time just appreciating the cleared space and the trees of the understory. I selected spindly oaks to keep and hope will grow up above the dogwood and redbud, lopped out sweetgum, found what might be spicebush -- a native plant that fills the same niche as the autumn olive and is host to spicebush swallowtail butterfly larvae -- along with ferns and pipsissewa. (I'll note i was taught to call Chimaphila maculata pipsissewa, not, as Wikipedia redirects, Chimaphila umbellata.)

Monday and yesterday i corresponded - and also had an insight: i can start drafting digital Yuletide greetings NOW. I was considering what to write to someone back in California and was feeling like i had no place to connect a conversation. I'd sent the person my month one and two missives, so i knew they had a picture of where we were, but no real response. So i've drafted a note to send come Thanksgiving or Yuletide with a how are [things] going. Actually, as i write today, i'm not sure why i feel the need to delay sending that.)

Today should be just about heaven. The rising sun is brightly illuminating the tops of the pines and there is a fair blue sky. I don't think there's a cloud until you get to Kansas. We're around 480' elevation here and a good bit up from the nearest creek.

Hunting season may have started, and i worry about how gun shots will play on Christine's nerves knowing the deer that visit us and that hunting lands are directly to our east. I should go buy purple paint to mark our boundary.

Last Sunday was moderately pleasant, too, and instead of yard work i took off into our woods. I crossed into the hunting lands and back a couple times -- there's a bag with three propane cans and something else i should go collect for the trash that i found. I assume they are empty, and i assume they were left by hunters and not the litterbug previous owners.

I started out near our eastern boundary and cut west, finding a massive sweetgum (liquidamber) and the large rock that had tickled my father. There's no loam in places - the clay shows through a bit. I saw a fairly common orchid and some wintergreen. The southwest corner is well marked with a pipe. Cutting back east i found thickets of autumn olive and the ground covered with stilt grass. I was waving my walking stick in the air ahead of me to clear the orb weaver webs and then whacking the grass, to alert any snakes. Despite looking at my location on my phone I got turned around more than once. It's Mirkwood, i tell you, Mirkwood back there. If there are Hobbit capturing spiders i will not be surprised.

Ugh.

It was a bit depressing, and i stalled on yard work this week. Today i will get back in the groove. In good news, there's no honeysuckle back there. I did see a place where one of the giant vines of poison ivy had apparently collapsed under it's own weight right at the edge of our clearing. I've no idea what to do with that: "nothing" sounds like the right plan.

--== ∞ ==--

Another thing that happened last Sunday: I attended my first Meeting for Business at the FUM meeting. Of two remarkable things, one was that they discerned about a slight change in wording in their minute to repeal HB2 (the "Bathroom" bill). An out transwoman in their community had concerns about how the wording made it sound as if the meeting did not reject the bathroom provision but all the others. No one was defensive (although there may have been a long email thread to which i was not party), there was compassionate discussion -- including for those who have been stirred up to fear -- and the minute was adjusted promptly.

The other remarkable thing was the informality. Over the week i've grown to realize that the formal practice of business meeting with which i am familiar is partly due to the large size of the meetings. I've not decided what i think, but i am becoming acquainted with the Quaker Police in my head, tut-tutting about the form.

The meta-Quaker police are going to tut-tut about THAT, as form is not the goal. And i think a spirit of Love and Justice moves unhindered in this community.

I would like to be far more intentional about recording when i do what outside. Saturday i wanted to do some eradication of some high invasive grass, but my chosen location was in the sun. I ended up weeding the same invasive grass, but mown short, from a large expanse of moss. I'm realizing most of the green "lawn" is actually the invasive grass. We had afternoon plans, which included me actually touching the camera i am thinking about buying -- and i am now planning on buying. It's still not the "pro" level camera: while i hope some day to be pro, i am not yet. I think i can grow with this camera.

Yesterday i slept surprisingly late. I missed Meeting, and sat in waiting worship with Christine for a while in our living room. It was miserable outside. Still, i kept my appointment for a walk with my sister's family to hear someone in their neighborhood chat about lichens. Pleasant memory, but at the time i thought i was just going to dissolve. In the late afternoon i actually worked outside (since i was already in a state requiring a great deal of tidying up). I finally planted some plants i had "rescued" from the sale rack at Lowes. One has been lingering for weeks. I think it's still alive.

So, i now have a north to south area under various experimental treatments. ( Long description of a small area of the east yard. )
--== ∞ ==--

Meanwhile, it was a hard weekend on the elephant front. I need to think of sustainable practices for me.

The air conditioning was fixed yesterday morning, just in time. It was a cooler than usual night and we weren't so uncomfortable that we couldn't get through our usual evening and morning.

Yesterday after work i went out, clumsily hacked into tree and shrub trunks, and applied high concentrations of glyphosate to the wounds. I'd done some tests with autumn olive a few weeks ago, and it seems promising. I was delighted to find that the goats had girdled the mimosa and that it was quite dead. They'd done some trunk damage to the trees of heaven, but not enough. I do worry that there will be mimosa suckers for ages -- although maybe if we get the copper phosphate in the septic field that will be addressed.

In repairing the HVAC, Ken (the HVAC guy) noticed some other issues. He gave his advice, but i'm going to run it by my dad before acting on it. I also posted my thoughts to the county BBS. The county BBS certainly seems to have plenty of folks ready to dismiss liberals as the evil that is ruining the country. Then there's the right wing rumor machine at work: yesterday some one was pushing the theory that H Clinton is having transient small strokes. Nonetheless, i'm finding it fairly easy to filter the political noise from the neighborly signal. And for local politics, such as the preemptive zoning of the whole county, it is useful to read everyone's concerns.

So, before we bought our place in April, we had the sellers install a new condensation barrier in the crawlspace. Yesterday morning we had our HVAC friend out (heat pump had stopped due to a poor design of its condensation drain - again), and he noted that there was now condensation pooling on top of the barrier. He said he'd seen a lot of this recently, and the answer was sealing up the crawlspace instead of venting.

It seems to me that sealing up would be an amplifying choice: as long as it's dry, great, but if any moisture did get in, it would be harder to dry out. I suppose one could run a dehumidifier in the crawl space, but i'm not thrilled with yet another system to keep going.

Finding a way for pooled water to drain down through the moisture barrier seems like it would solve the current issue and still not allow much moisture to rise. Or maybe more effective venting? Some fan system? (Although that's another active system to maintain.)

I do like the hickory flooring, and i really hate mold.