elainegrey

Another 28°F dawn. The dewpoint is lower than that, so perhaps that helps keep the saucer magnolia from losing its pink petals?

Pine warblers: i'd been mistaking them for goldfinches the past few months. There ARE goldfinches at the feeder: right now a male, coming into breeding plumage, is feeding away on sunflower seeds. (Does anyone ever visit the fancy finch feeder? Rarely. Squirrel proof and unattractive to birds. Grumble grumble.) But someone suggested my blurry photo of what i thought was a female goldfinch was a pine warbler. I scoffed. But the yellowish bird at the feeder the next time i looked had a small black bill, nothing like the thick triangular seed cracking bill of a finch.

I skipped Meeting and Meeting for Business yesterday. I will need to reengage with community, but at the moment, there's a weariness i get from some of the family care i'm engaged in right now. I wonder if this meeting always had waiting worship whether i would be attending more regularly.

It was a beautiful day and eventually i stopped lingering at the computer. Less lingering and more wrestling with decisions around shopping for my mother. Eventually i found pants that i think will be suitable for my mother, to replace the many many pairs i packed up on Friday. Christine and i strolled around enjoying the spaces we have curated from the overgrown wildness we moved to in 2016. The sun was blazing war despite the cool air, and i realized that i would rather visit my mother during the bright part of the day and then work outside in the shadows.

I took Mom a thermos of tea and a serving of cake. Our little picnic was a pleasure. I was able to show her before and after photos of her study so she would understand what i did in her space. To my relief, she was appreciative.

At home, i got the chipper fired up while Christine began lopping down some of the thicket area to the west of the driveway. At the end of our work, i felt the garden has sufficient chips for the moment. Tonight i'll chip, and the results will go to mulch around the fruit and nut trees in the orchard. Leaves raked up in the autumn provided some initial mulching, but it's far from sufficient for the summer growth season.

The garden is organized somewhat like an E, with the top of the E facing North and the long "spine" of the E facing west and the house. Border rows wrap around three sides, like the outside lines of the E, except my garden has gaps on the long border so one can enter the garden on either side of the center divide. The upper and lower white space of the E i refer to as "the squares." Each square has three rows running east to west.

Right now the top of the E -- the borders, north square and the center divide -- are all well tended. I'd shoveled out the soil from between the rows onto the rows over the fall months. I mulch as i can in between the rows, and all that mulch had pretty much disintegrated and blended with the clay. This winter i mulched the isles in the square with pine straw. Brown pine needles, it turns out, aren't the source of acid that i'd been taught. I hadn't enough pine straw for either side of the center row. I'd gotten cardboard on the ground, and with the chipping yesterday, managed to get the cardboard covered. It looks tidy at the moment: Christine is delighted. I am dubious it's enough to keep back the weeds of summer, but it's better than nothing.

The south square of the E has two rows of potatoes. They're planted in the clay with a thin layer of newspaper and then some old plants -- marigolds and holy basil -- and autumn leaves on top. When it comes time to hill the potatoes, i will dig out the isles. I ought to sharpen the shovels before then. With soil on top of the autumn leaves, they will decompose quite quickly in my worm-populated clay. I remain amazed at how quickly leaves and duff decompose in the heat and humidity.

I kept that end of the garden fairly well mulched over the winter, keeping back a decent amount of weeds. I added some of the greener chippings as mulch -- the twiggy bits of branches, including the autumn olive that is already leafing out. The nitrogen content might be enough to compost a little more quickly.

I finally had a decent amount of worm castings from the household worm bin. It wasn't fully digested, but it was black and rich. I plopped blobs of the thick black goo down the top of the row i plan to use for tomatoes. Right now Austrian winter peas are growing as a cover crop there. Hopefully it will be rich and delightful for tomatoes. I missed tomatoes last year - something nibbled on the plants and ate the fruit. I assume some combination of curious deer and squirrels. I also think the soil was too poor for the tomatoes to thrive. The volunteer tomatoes from the previous year (2017) grew out of the rich compost i used to build the hugelkultur. Hopefully this row will be satisfactory for tomatoes with the pea and worm contributions.

No rain in the forecast for a week!

8:30ish 2 AMGO, mNORC(g), CAWR, TUTI, CACH, MODO(g), WBNU 9:45

I spent too much time yesterday working out travel plans for my trip to Europe this summer, but -- as someone whose travel has been limited in the past decades to family, familiar conference destinations, and road trips with everything one could need -- eek, i feel daunted.

I want to travel as light as possible. I decided my feet are the most daunting concern, so i'm going to wear walking boots with my dresses and get some practice in them over the next months so the blister horrors are avoided and i minimize the risk of spraining my ankle on cobblestones.

I'm pondering buying light luggage specifically for the trip. I'm thinking about the day in Stockholm between landing in the early morning and taking the overnight ferry to Tallinn, Estonia at dinner time, and the day in Tallinn before taking the overnight ferry back to Stockholm. I hate thinking about "disposable" cheap luggage, but i don't know that i need to invest. I am going to check with my traveling local family members to see what they have to suggest or loan.

Recommendations about really light travel accessories like rain ponchos and wraps and totes as well as European SIM cards are currently welcome. I will be using my iPad as my guidebook and notebook so the walk around bag needs to hold that as well.

Christine is very anxious about my travel so i need to find ways to help ease her worries.

In Mom news, yesterday brought the news Mom could be transferred to the new facility on MONDAY, with no return calls from the new facility leaving me without the confident joy i would have liked. We have had a few highly frustrating gap experiences and it's hard to "go with the flow," as i was advised.

Mom knows she's moving and is delighted.

Wishing i had some confidence. We're not ready for Mom to come home yet but once she leaves The Olds, i can't imagine her returning.

On ElectoralVote today there is the statement, "you casts your vote, you takes your chances." So i pondered, "Pogo?" That is, i wondered if it was from Walt Kelley's Pogo strip. I found the quotation only at an inflammatory (well, that's the banner image) pro trump "anarchist" site on 6 Nov 2016.

Turns out it's an evolution of an old (1840s) showmans pitch, "you pays your money, you takes your choice" per The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When By Ralph Keyes. The slow shift of "choice" to "chance(s)" is intriguing.



Meanwhile
* have a cold
* brother's family about to head to Tampa
* taking time off work, but not feeling as vital as i need to be to do the yard work i wanted
* mourning over Duke power's contractors' collateral damage to a 6" diameter redbud and a 4" diameter cherry tree (and irritated someone took the cherry tree wood). And by collateral damage, intentional cutting down of those trees.

Monday, the crescent moon and Venus were brilliant in the predawn sky, casting shadows. It was a warm morning, following Sunday's unseasonable humidity. This morning i was out a bit later, when the sky had grown light but the moon was in the same place and Venus higher. There's some high clouds, and the weather was a good bit crisper.

Only oak leaves linger on native trees. The autumn olive is finally deigning to change to yellow. Pine needles make a fresh carpet everywhere, and i look forward to raking them up for mulch over a between row path in the garden that i dug out last week. All the previous mulch had decayed into a rich dark soil.

Snow is predicted this weekend! We wouldn't have known but the stoner* bagger made conversation about the coming snow while incompetently tossing our groceries into bags. I didn't sufficiently look out for the bread as he was doing that. I don't think i realized just how jumbled the bags were. I usually bag for us and i know i can do so well because i know what is in the cart and Christine makes sure like is with like in the cart.

We went out for subs after the groceries and found the shop extremely well staffed by another crown of youths. We were asked by one how our weekend was going. There was a long pause before we made positive sounds, and the youth commented on the long pause before cluing in that the day was Monday. Another youth had not paid attention to the request to go light on the oil and vinegar and my sandwich was soaked and dripping.

KIDS THESE DAYS.

*cough*


I am out of yarn again for my crocheted circle sweater. It just needs a bit more and i'm left wrestling over how to complete it. Find more handspun alpaca like i bought at the farmer's market fiber day on Saturday? It won't be 20% off.

* Christine's label for the youths.

So sore -- it seems unreasonable to be this sore from raking. I do blame that the pair of sneakers i wore on Saturday are worn out (so i tossed those) and that the very soft ground filled with mole tunnels i raked Sunday provided lots of ankle exercise. All the rakings go to good causes and i am sure it's good exercise. I have more ares i'd love to mulch: i eye the stands of autumn olive with expectation.

I found small snakes -- DeKay's brown snake and a worm snake (Carphophis amoenus) -- and a cricket frog.

The moss and native grass are green and happy to get sun. I love the native grass so much as it barely grows above a pleasant height except in may, when it goes to seed. And even then, it's not particularly tall. I can't wait until all the east yard is turfed with it, with the violets mixed in.

The mossy area is definitely getting thicker and stronger. It's a slow change, but going into this, our third winter, it's definitely a meaningful change.

I hope to find a way to be productive in the evenings. I spent a great deal of time skimming a TV show that is near soap opera-ish. I suppose it's no less productive than reading fluff, but i do want to pick up sewing and yarn habits again.

I didn't plant trees yesterday but rested a good deal, with two bouts of raking as exercise. I also got the worms and assembled the worm farm i purchased. Knowing how worms in an old tree container survived and worked for me in California, and how a fellow in Washington state takes garbage cans full of tree clippings and tosses in worms to get worm compost a couple years later, i'm not worried about success. But the expense of this "worm farm" is appealing when considering it looks very tidy and it will make removing the worm castings very easy. No more dumping out on a tarp and sorting out worms and half eaten bits from the castings.

I walked around the yard a bit. I know having the stilt grass whacked and dying and generally having rampant growth of the plants slow down, helps move all the to dos away from "urgent" to four months of just getting things done. I felt satisfied though. It's becoming a lovely place.

Weeds that are greening up include native cudweed and the non-native but edible chickweed and bittercress. The chickweed annoys me: it mats so thickly that i think it completely blocks sun from getting to moss. I think i will go easy on the bittercress, though. I'f i'm growing other nonnative flowers in the orchard, bitter cress is a perfectly acceptable ground cover.

I have to say, my plans for a mixed ground cover seems crazy with the green of all the new grass. I have to remember, once the grasses mature, it won't be the same as the glow in the picture.

Work day today.

Bah, humidity.

I read Terry Pratchett on the plane, escaping the sardinitude of airline seating. I was appalled by the amount of onion on the salad i had picked up in the terminal. Surely they imagine folks carrying those into the little enclosed tubes. I hope it didn't annoy my seatmate.

In Florida i detoured from the route to the hotel to go to a Publix grocery store. This one, in it's far flung corner of Orlando was not the mouth-dropping temple to groceries i recalled from growing up, mainly because other stores have caught up with the initial standard. As i approached the tourist district of International Drive i passed another Publix that came up on my search. Oh, THAT ONE, that one must be a remarkable temple to groceries. Probably for the best i missed it.

I had enough time to drop my stuff and pack the fruits, veggies, salmon, and yogurt into the fridge when my aunt called to let me know she was downstairs. Then we were off to drive around the tourist district, where i tried to oblige in oohing and ahing at piles of tourist construction and lofty ride structures. Dinner at a tapas place, then off to Disney Springs, an outdoor mall with more tourist architecture. Dinner was delicious, the best part being a pineapple cider, and the walk pushed me over my step limits.

My parents and sister have all bemoaned my aunt & uncle's relationship, and i did pick up on some little jabs, but in general it was a pleasant visit.

***

The conference day passed with intensity, and i bailed out around 4:30 with the intent of catching up on things at the hotel. But first, i'd just read a little bit....

One novel later..... well, i must do my time card. All my plans about reading white papers went out the window.

Therapy yesterday: right now i think of therapy as a disciplined checkpoint on following through with good mental health practices. The week of Kava-NO (as Christine quips) sucked my life away. I can't imagine what it was like for those who had personal experiences to compound it: thank you, my friends, for sharing here.

My therapist gets ecstatic at the thought of ripe persimmons, so she was delighted to hear my first fruit tree was a persimmon. I do tap into joy thinking about the orchard, and that wave of anxiety i had about getting it Right has long sense faded. But this blasted cough (not quite a month old yet, the sinus infection began over Labor Day weekend) exhausts me and weighs yard work with a great dampening.


Right now everything i think about brings up negative responses. ( short examples )

I think i am still mourning the beautiful grass in the orchard: how my heart leapt as the vision became visible!


Between the factors of asthma flare, dead grass, horrible news, and the shortening of the days i think i can explain feeling down in the dumps without being concerned about going off antidepressants. Somehow, though, i need to trick myself to reframe.

I planted my first fruit tree, a persimmon from Stark Bros. The ground was wet: given the 27 inches of rain in August and September it's not surprising*. Where i put in the persimmon seemed OK, but where i want to put in the mulberries just seemed to still too wet. Between that and tentative green blades of grass, i didn't want to push it. I did put in three tiny blackberry plants as well: these are an upright, thornless selection that fruit on both the first year (primo-) and second year (flori-) canes. I may not have been so aggressive with the soil preparation for the berries. That should stretch out the season. (Two more blackberries of a different thornless variety are coming with the blueberry plants later this month.)

Then i pulled up piles and piles of stilt grass. I was happy to find the shade garden had done well, but the day lilies and irises had not. I need to move the bulbs (again) this winter: their next home will not be so rampant with stilt grass. I tidied half of the moss garden, just outside our bedroom window, and whacked down weeds in the veggie garden. I planted a lettuce-herb mix of seed that may work out. I am thinking about trying season extending practices this year.

I was moody over the weekend, which leads me to wonder about my antidepressants. I'm trying to tell myself i haven't done much physical activity since ... June? Which was crazy hot? I am sore from the digging (which wasn't particularly dramatic) and loosening the soil for four feet out and a foot down. And i still have an asthma flare. And so the sense of physical exhaustion is to be expected. So instead of depressed, perhaps i am just feeling tired and the aches may be more painful than i want to listen to. Well, if i keep the level of activity up, i will rebound. And the asthma flare is healing.

Meeting for worship was a meditation on racism and left me feeling very tender. I shared with Christine over lunch, and shared my witnessing of racism in Pacific Yearly Meeting that has been troubling me this year.

This morning the pines are catching clear morning light against bright blue skies, the dew point is in the 50s, and i have the windows open.

Shudder: it's spider season. Not going out the front door until Christine can relocate the very large spider.

* Average rain for this county is 45.5" a year.