RealityPivots

I went tango dancing. It was a benefit for a young woman who had suffered an eye injury at work. Two friends, Gary and B, noted that I hadn’t been writing in my blog. I usually think of the blog as aimed at the wide world but this one’s for you guys.
I’ve thrown up all my sheds as quickly as possible. When I started, I only meant to construct a place to store my belongings and camp out. Twelve years later I’m beginning to make some refinements.
I’ve been scurrying around preparing for winter — I’ve finally got some fire wood cut and stacked — and making things pretty.
I tore up the porch next to the kitchen and rebuilt it and then painted the kitchen.

From Kitchen porch mess, me

From Paint

The kitchen also now has “running water”, albeit from a garden hose.

From Paint

The Solarium became olive green.

From Color, barn

Lisa’s cabin is more colorful than ever.

From Color, barn

The barn interior was changed again.

From Color, barn

The garden fence was expanded and the new dirt was planted with shallots and mulched.

From Color, barn

Thank you gods for what we have received.

From Kitchen porch mess, me

I never planned to be a gardener. One small step followed another until now I’m obsessing about my responsibilities to grow a cover crop over the winter.
This summer the incremental pieces added up to a Garden. Lots of shallots.

From gfts

Tomatoes outdoors and in the Solarium are ripening.

From gfts

Basil.

From gfts

Lisa has started another garden area on the West end.

From gfts

I’ve been infected by some of Lisa’s excitement about the fauna were supporting.

From gfts

The dry weather this year meant a scarcity of mosquitoes which pleased me no end. And the hot weather meant water flowing through the hose from the second 275 gallon water tank we installed was warm when I took a shower in the Solarium.

From Water tank

Simple pleasures.

Not gold.
I’ve bought 3 big truckloads of dirt for the garden.

The Gardener is back and we went to muck out sheep stalls and bring the results home to the garden. She was working one handed and twice as hard because she broke her wrist biking through the back trails.

From lisa works

She was pleased to return and find tomato plants in the Solarium:

From cat,gutter,rose,solarium

And roses and basil and cilantro and zucchini and asparagus.

From cat,gutter,rose,solarium

The French shallots and oregano have already been harvested and put on the new drying racks in the barn.

From cat,gutter,rose,solarium

This:

From Passing lane, barn

came about because I started to build this:

From Passing lane, barn

I’m a proponent of the Humanure method of composting human waste and it has worked for me for 10 years. This Spring I decided to build a little shed to keep my 5 gallon buckets out of the rain. One thing led to another and now I have half a barn and a little sheltered spot on the north side to keep my buckets dry.

We only got two weeks of Census work rather than the 6-8 they had projected. I want to return to Buenos Aires but I’ll have to dig deep to make it happen. Two of my favorite bloggers, Carolyn and Debbi, are going soon. What fun it would be to meet up with friends at milongas. If I go again I want to stay for a year or two.
I keep working desultorily around Shedville, completing projects that will be handy when I return or will make the property attractive to someone who wants to lease it for a weekend getaway from Seattle.
I finally found the giant unglazed pot that I needed to make my refrigerator.

From Refrigeration and water storage

You plug the hole in the bottom and put sand in between the exterior and a pot you place in the center. Then you add water to the sand. The water evaporates through the clay and that evaporation acts as a cooling mechanism. It works best where the air is dry so it might not be too effective here but I just want it to preserve things like lettuce a little longer.

From Refrigeration and water storage

I’ve made an arrangement with a neighbor to buy water. They pay $2.18 per 1000 gallons and I’ll pay them $10 — a good deal for both of us I think. I’ll run a hose over to the 275 gallon tank I bought. It used to store whey.

From Refrigeration and water storage

I need the water for the garden mostly. In previous years I stuck with garlic and shallots that I planted in the fall, mulched heavily, wished them godspeed and didn’t worry about water. Now I’ve got a lot of things planted that need water consistently. My first attempt at asparagus is showing spears and the new strawberry plants are healthy.

I keep thinking about a zen story I read a long time ago and have thought about off and on over the years. A zen student who was a great musician abandoned that for his study of zen. The lesson I imagine is that the satisfaction of living in the eternal now is superior to chasing ephemeral passion. I find myself dissatisfied with my very groovy present only because I imagine a BsAs of passionate dance and friendship. However, it wasn’t that way when I was there before and, in fact, I was drinking more Malbec than was good for me.

The gardener is off in Thailand studying massage but I struggle on.
I harvested the first lettuce from the Solarium.

From Solarium, salad, seeds

From Solarium, salad, seeds

The Solarium is great. Any sun makes it a wonderful place to bathe. I made up two privacy screens to replace the plastic wrap I had up to cut down drafts.

From Solarium, salad, seeds

From Solarium, salad, seeds

I put 20 assorted pepper plants in yesterday.
The lawn needs mowing. The alder logs need to be inoculated with mushroom spores. I’ve got all my seeds to plant.

From Solarium, salad, seeds

Water! I need to create a reservoir.
Hup!