Thinking like a mower

One of the Permaculture design principles is: "Use small and slow solutions."  Well, I think I've got the slow part down, at least when it comes to mowing our lawn.

We've always said that when the gas-powered lawn mower we'd bought from a friend a few years back got to the end of its useful life, that was when we'd consider going gas-free on our lawn.  Since we were only keeping gas around for the mower at this point, that would mean no need to keep a full gas can on the premises!  I was eager for that part.  But it was not until I seriously considered not repairing our ailing gas mower on this latest trip to the shop ($200 into a more-than-ten-year-old $500 Toro Super Recycler?  Iffy.) that I truly felt how culturally and emotionally dependent on gasoline I was.  This came to my awareness by way of a sensation of heat at the hairline on my neck and behind my ears (some form of flushing or embarrassment) every time I tried to think about life without a gas mower.  'Do we dare?', I wondered.  'Can we really get away with this?'  There was the thrill of possible escape, the hesitation to leave the known.

It seems silly, typing this now, that this kind of cultural importance can be attached to a form of manufactured hydrocarbon.  But think about what gasoline has meant to us over the major part of a century that it's been commonly available for amplifying our working power.  Think about what the machines designed to make use of it have replaced.  And most to the point right now, think about the way gas-driven tools have altered the patterns of use and maintenance we work out in our environs, what we assume is possible or practical to achieve, and what we think of as beautiful, or a job well done.  All of these are affected to varying degrees by the availability of gasoline and the assumption of people willing to purchase, use, and maintain or replace various common gas-driven machines.

Honestly, though, I must say that the gas machine assumption is quite an assumption, and it's exacted a pretty heavy toll.  I personally experience sensitivity to the byproducts of gasoline combustion every time I use a gas-powered lawnmower, or worse yet weedeater or chainsaw.  And I'm not the only one.  These small engines burn gasoline so dirtily that the polluting emissions from one hour of riding mower use is equivalent to traveling some incredible distance (crossing several states, if memory serves) in a Ford Explorer.  Some cities have times of day when it is illegal to operate a mower because of how much smog-forming gunk is already in the air and the disproportionate contribution small engines make to the problem.  Burning gasoline in our cars and trucks uses far more gas, and so is the greater culprit with regard to emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, but they tend to burn that gas much more cleanly and completely, so their contribution to classic "air pollution" is far less per gallon burned.  So I'm not just being a Luddite about this (although I am partially, of course).

Also, when it comes down to it, it is an unpleasant system that is at odds with our chosen lifestyle.  We have to drive a smelly gas can to town and back once or twice a year, and have to store an explosive liquid somewhere on our property at all times in order to make this work.  And speaking of smelly, you should smell my clothes when I'm done a few hours of making the yard pretty.  On the evening of mowing day I always feel grimy and compromised, even after my shower; my lungs feel irritated and I feel melancholy and depressed (partly from worrying about lung cancer).

All that is to say:  We had reasons.  To do what we did.  To abandon our trusty mower at the shop.  To try for the escape!  To buy an electric lawn mower.  Sorry about that little anticlimax there.

So we went to Lowe's and we bought a genuine Greenworks electric-powered 21 inch lawn mower.  It works GREAT!  When it's plugged in.  If you don't run over the cord.  Which no one has, yet.

If it wasn't until I'd considered moving away from gas that I felt my connection to it, then it wasn't until I actually tried getting the lawn mowed a different way that the patterns of assumption I'd been working with since I was twelve (and which my community had been working with since probably 1940) started to dawn on me for real.  I'd always known that a rural property like ours with a sizable kid play area, spread-out gardens with access paths, and a long driveway with a grassy middle and margins presented some serious obstacles to the would-be electric convert.  This, combined with my neighbor's reliable good-natured scrutiny and ribbing, was probably part of what was producing the heat at my hairline.

We knew that to even be able to mow the remote areas at all without owning a gas mower, we'd either have to borrow a gas mower every time or own a robust-enough portable electric mower (they exist if you can afford enough batteries to accomplish your job), unless we were willing to bite the really wacky bullet:  Portable Generator.  I know.  This is nuts.  I scrupulously turn up my nose at the gas-powered mower, going the virtuous if somewhat annoying electric route only to power the thing half the time with a hydrocarbon-sucker/spewer of another sort.  There is a catch, though:  I noticed a while back that Lowes carries a propane-powered generator.  OoooOOOOoooo!  With this item, I could operate power tools (including electric chainsaw and mower) ANYWHERE!  And if you don't use the fuel for a while, it doesn't go bad, it just sits there in the tank and waits for your command!  This is a bit of a sidestep to the face-off between the horde of gasoline-driven opportunities and my stubborn inner Luddite.  I admit that.  But it is what we decided to do.

In support of this option, we employed another Permaculture principle, namely that of multiple functions.  This one solution is not a solution to just one thing.  It would permit performance of a variety of tasks required for the kind of property use and maintenance we choose, it would allow for the performance of these tasks without the need for gasoline to be kept on hand, it would provide back-up power to our large freezers (holding precious victuals!) in the event of power failure, and it would do all this while burning way, way cleaner than any gas engine can.

So how's it going?  In a word:  Slow.  Mowing within range of the power outlets is not noticeably slower than the gas mower, or won't be once I fully get the hang of it.  But there is no denying that lugging that generator to a new position every two hundred feet or so is a cumbersome process.  I think there is no chance I can achieve the same mowing speed as the gas mower can enable.  Hoo boy.  I guess we're going to have to change our thinking (and THIS is where I think it gets interesting!)

It turns out that this choice to move away from gasoline (aside from the car) is going to, in itself, function in multiple ways.  I have now completed one whole mowing (in several sessions) with the electric mower; partly plugged into receptacles, partly with the generator.  Aside from the obvious and kind of mortifying slowness, there is a shift in assumptions already starting to take place, and I am provided with an opportunity to examine the old ones.  Why, for example, is the pull towards the traditional gas-powered mowing pattern so strong?  I'm so accustomed to making one pass around the perimeter of the yard and then making further concentric passes until there is a little patch of raggediness left and then finally...it's all the same!  Aaaaaah: tranquility!  Whence this tranquility, and how deeply has describing and executing this ordinary task so regularly affected my thinking?  Has it been more of a help or a hindrance in the making of my life?  All I know right now is that even though that pattern clearly makes no sense when you're tethered by a cord, it requires a bit of steely willpower to prevent myself from attempting it or to reverse course when habit has led me that way.

The whole way I'm used to seeing the surroundings of our house is threatened by this!  I can no longer zip around the perimeter of what I've delineated as "Our Yard" and then zero in on the middle, skirting around obstructions large and small and rendering everything within that loop a part of the same, evenly trimmed whole.  It's not that the electric cuts unevenly...it cuts exactly the same way as a gas mower.  It's that with being tethered to outlets or the generator, I am obliged to think about the places we've chosen to cut lawn as a series of nodes, with our managerial influence radiating from them, and connecting in some places, not in others.  Also, obstructions that are a mere annoyance with a gas mower become motion-altering obstacles (who can fathom--pun intended!--throwing the cord over a six foot shrub at every pass?) and so the yard gets divided into amoeboid lobes that sometimes converge behind the object and engulf it and sometimes don't.

Why does this matter?  Because the effect on my mind has already been that in a more real way than ever, "our property" seems to me a location that is spreading its influence out into the real world in nodes and patches, and that is also accepting in a similar way the presence and influence of the real world within its own region of dwelling.  It's as if this switch of mowing technique may be a major step towards the recognition of this place as an uncontained and open system, a system not so much described by a border or boundary, but rather by the magnetism and energy of home.

P.S. My sister's neighbor in Keezletown proper likes fixing up mowers for fun, so he went and picked up our old one at the shop.  He likes it so much he's making it his main mower!  Love it.

P.P.S.  After mowing today, I felt tired, but not beat.  I'm breathing peacefully, and I feel alert and cheerful.  My clothes didn't stink and my shower refreshed me.  Exactly how much inconvenience is that worth?

P.P.P.S.  We're looking into alternative (speedier!) ways to manage some of the remote mowing, such as a grass whip, more scythe work, etc.  Any ideas anybody has are welcome!  A little raggediness is o.k. so long as the functions are maintained.  We haven't completely ruled out the rechargeable electric mower, but we'd like to avoid it.

It's raining!

The littlest gal is sleeping, Kali is researching the rainiest places on earth, and Jason is reading a chapter (we'll see if he sticks to just one) of the book he got stuck in on our vacation and I recently picked up for him at the library so he could finish it. I just rescued the laundry from the line as thunder rumbled all around and it started dumping as Kali and I were folding it. The new planting of beans and peas should be happy, and I feel a little silly for carrying 8 watering cans of water to them this morning!

It seems a good time to at least introduce the newest Tangly Woods' members. As a bit of a backdrop to this post, I must note that I still have a big knot in the pit of my stomach as I think of trying to catch our blog up to date. I am typing from a new computer and the pictures I feared were lost by my recent computer crash were in fact saved! However, yesterday as I was getting this new computer set up to download pictures, I inadvertently lost 199 of the 200 files I was intending to import from our camera card (complete with the last few days of our Maine trip and seeing family on the way back, getting our goats and recent fun times with visiting family). Jason's perspective on the mishap is much healthier than mine. I realize, with some remorse, that my eldest has a good dose of me in her as I staged a pretty tried and true meltdown (behind closed doors with Jason as my only witness) with some rather fatalistic thinking. I recognized in myself what I see at times in her - a real challenge in letting things go that we really can't do anything about. No amount of crying or stomping or berating myself was going to get those files back. And, no, we were not going to try to recreate any of the situations from which those photos were taken. So I had a good chance to think about my own reactions to the relatively minor unfortunate twists and turns of life (or in this case clicks on a computer) and am clearly still working on it since I still feel grouchy just sitting down to the computer. Surprisingly, Kali wasn't mad at me and didn't even get upset, especially once I clarified that I had not lost ALL our photos (her worry was about pictures from when she first got her ducks). So today still won't be the Maine trip posting - if there ever is one.

It seems important that not too much time pass before Oreo, Cookie Dough and Brownie make a debut on the blog. They are pretty cute and all of us are enjoying having them around. I will admit to being the one that is probably the most "bothered" by them - bothered in a maternal kind of way in that their cries do a similar thing in me to that of a baby - a very strong urge wells up in me to make it stop! So the fact that Brownie in particular lets a cry out about every time we step out the door of the house may get a little old. So far the girls are loving feeding them autumn olive branches and other treats, and they are happy to oblige them by gobbling them up. Alida is getting more and more confident being with them, no longer trembling with an excited nervousness when they approach her and saying, "I'm scared!...are they going to eat me?" Now it is hard to get her to leave after a short visit.

So here they are!  It won't take a rocket scientist to figure out which name goes with who.  We decided to leave them with the names they came with, as it seemed pretty clear that they were already somewhat familiar with them.  There is plenty of bonding going on and so I imagine this blog will include future posts as we all work out the role of goats long term on our homestead! For now they are enjoying doing just what we hoped they would like doing - eating lots of brush!  Just as soon as we get collars, we will be showing them all the tastiest poison ivy spots on the property that we hope they will assist in relegating to history!  It's been very hard to let beautiful handfuls of wineberries go, due to them being surrounded by poison ivy (as good as they are, it just isn't worth it).

And especially not worth it when we enjoyed a family wineberry picking outing yesterday with friends, that made our small patches seem rather puny.  There are 7 quart containers stuffed full in the freezer along, and Alida helped me put away several new batches of wineberry jam on the root cellar shelves this morning. It's that time of year where the shelves start to fill with color and the ratio of empty jars to full ones begin the fun shift! 

A day in "paradise"

If I was in a position to design a beautiful place and meaningful things to do for a very, very long time, it would include many aspects of our day today!  Reading back over that sentence I realize that that is exactly what we are trying to do here at Tangly Woods and today it felt like just a little taste of heaven on earth.  It felt so wonderful to drive up Fruit Farm Lane at about 12:30 this morning.  Home at last (all except for Kali who is cashing in a very special Christmas present to head to Pittsburgh for a fun-filled weekend with aunts, uncles and cousins)!  Had we been gone much longer we may have had to bush whack our way to the front door - clearly Virginia did not experience a dry spell in our absence.  I could hardly fall asleep last night from my eagerness to see what the new day would bring and what changes the sun would shed light upon for us.  I was not disappointed.  A blog post about the vacation will have to come later and so will pictures to accompany this post (my work-issued computer finally decided to die once and for all on the trip and so I'm without it and our pictures - which they were thankfully able to recover today - until my new one arrives...). In short, we are glad we went, we are glad to be home, there were good times and bad times and wonderful things to see, people to visit, foods to eat AND it rained a lot both here and there.

Tonight at dinner (which was supposed be an early dinner and ended up being around 8:30 or so...), I listed all the fresh foods we had sampled/savored in one form or another  that were picked from the property  today: basil, garlic, red onion, mint tea, yellow squash, zucchini, yellow pole beans, kale, sage, parsley, sugar snap peas, green beans, wineberries, round zucchini, black raspberries, gooseberries, cucumbers, dill and black raspberries.

Let's just say that we are not fully unpacked from our trip because Jason and I could not stay indoors long enough to unload our suitcases. I got a little of that done, some bills paid, and a few of those annoying but necessary phone calls about scheduling repairs or troubleshooting tech challenges, in between all the fun.   Alida was my little side kick and such a fun one - she was clearly glad to be home and this morning said to me as we were talking about our trip: "I yike our house more than Maine."  Me too!

Here is how Alida and I spent most of our day while Jason got reacquainted with the chickens and ducks (and found a good number of new chicks under mama hens) and started hauling produce in (beans, cucumbers, garlic, zucchini and tomorrow will be onion pulling day):

It was one of those days where one thing led to another thing which led to another thing:

The basil needed to be picked as it was wanting to go to seed. That landed us two huge bowls of basil to make pesto out of.  In the process of getting the basil we needed to free it from a peppermint take-over.  So we picked enough peppermint to load up the solar food dryer and weeded out the rest from that bed and the bean bed below it.  On one of our ventures out to the garden, I couldn't stand the weeds growing between the bricks in the front walk any longer so we go distracted weeding the front walk - it looks SO much better.  We took a large bucket of weeds to the chickens in the composting chicken coop and then got back on track...  We pulled some garlic bulbs and proceeded to make three large batches of pesto for the freezer (Alida is a super taste tester when it comes to pesto).  By that time it was already nearing 10 and we hadn't had breakfast so we picked the squash, got some red onions from the garage and whipped up some veggies to go with scrambled eggs and toast. The other food processing in our day included the first batch of dill pickles and the first round of dilly beans, which just came out of the canner. We are also trying some beans that we just can with vinegar and salt to see if we like to use those in some recipes or to just eat cold or heated.  We also just delivered 5 trays of green beans to the freezer.  For supper we savored (Alida devoured) the first cucumber dill salad of the year and I experimented with stuffing the little round zucchinis with veggies, sauteed venison and a little cheese.  I had also made butter from the cream for the week and so had buttermilk and decided to make apricot, craisin, walnut, almond, oat muffins to go with dinner (this was also to increase the caloric content of the meal...otherwise we'd be tired of chewing and give up before we got full).   We enjoyed delivering some veggies to neighbors; it feels so very good to have an abundant harvest to be able to share.  There have been years that the hard work didn't necessarily feel like it matched the pay out.  This year it feels like we are reaping the harvest from years of building the soil and developing the land in a way that hopefully will maximize its productivity over the long haul.

One of our goals as this season goes along is to really enjoy the hard work as much as possible - which means trying to not do too many midnight canning parties.  I knew this day was going to fly by and it did.  Thankfully there are two more at home before I head back to work. Hopefully I'll have my suitcase unpacked by then!

Jason's note:  I can see the squash vine borer taking its percentage, and I can see the bean beetles setting clusters of eggs under the leaves...no year is free of challenges in the garden!  All the more reason to be grateful for this first summer flush of rather pristine, sweet, and tender garden produce.  And we are!

Leaving the jungle...

So the long anticipated vacation is upon us.  Every time recently we've been talking about our vacation around home, Alida's pipes up, "Can I come to?"  And yesterday when Jason and Kali were talking about our trip, Alida said, "Don't leave me at home!"  As if that was a possibility!  It's cute to see both girls excited about the adventures to come...  Oh for the days of the pure joy of vacations without the preparation, packing, and planning!  Thanks Mom and Dad for all the work you put into family trips - sorry for any bit of crabbiness that I no doubt added to that coming up at you from the back seat of the car!

We pull out tomorrow morning making our way to Maine via Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and then home via Connecticut and again Pennsylvania.  We look forward to seeing various members of Jason's family on our way to and from Maine and spending a good part of the week in Maine with my parents.  I'm particularly looking forward to the 4:2 adult child ratio!

The last few days have kind of felt like a sprint to the finish line (or in this case the start).  We are grateful to be leaving the homestead in good hands, and having people here that can enjoy the things coming ripe (we'll miss most of the black raspberries).  As a follow up to Jason's last entry, here's some photos of the outdoors, or little people enjoying what is coming in from the outdoors!  It will change a lot in the next two weeks I'm sure!

Alida enjoying her first red raspberry

Kali doing the same

Due to the front walk weeding project being partially completed our yucca is in full bloom since it now has access to some sunlight!

Where the aforementioned raspberries came from

Onions going to seed are so beautiful

Will there be squash and/or cucumbers when we return?

We've been enjoying snitching dill - here it is towering above spinach going to see, melons starting and lettuce

Garlic in the background, tomatoes, peppers and sweet potatoes underway

Who recognizes this plant?  Thanks Aunt Christie (or am I to thank Ms. Eleanor Rosebottom) for the peanut seed!

Beans are blooming and to the left are two more beds planted today

Our potatoes didn't fully recover but there will be potatoes!

Three sisters planting - will we get the produce or will the critters?

Onion field - after a rough start, looks like we'll get a lot of onions (and amaranth!)

Jason and Jonathan planing oats between the wheat rows

Kitchen garden is flourishing - including Alida's popcorn. Made a batch of red currant jam today from the bushes around the apple tree on the upper edge.

Still picking some beautiful strawberries - thanks to the Sparkle Supreme variety!

It's a jungle out here!

We've had strong rains this spring, and it shows.  For once, water is not the limiting factor on this dryish little southeast slope we call Tangly Woods.  "Dryish" I say because of four factors:  1) the general climate of the Shenandoah Valley, which because of a dual rain shadow effect falls into official "semi-arid" (though rather humid) status, 2) we live on the side of a small foothill of the mighty Massanutten; there isn't a whole lot of anything uphill from us, so we don't have active springs or much other water moving through, 3) the legacy of wheat farming which eroded the precious topsoil and its lovely moisture-retaining capabilities in centuries past, and 4) a relatively porous silty soil (mineral portion) which doesn't keep water especially long without good organic matter content, which varies here.

So in an ordinary year, we and our cistern and weak well struggle to keep up with the water demands of even the modest garden patch we've developed so far.  I've come to realize that many times our plants have probably been water-stressed by the first day of summer.

Not this year.

Every leaf of every green plant on our property that is in anything like reasonable good health is just as broad and green and moisture-plush as they get.  New sprouts are appearing in odd places along bare woody trunks or vines as the plants take advantage of the moisture bonanza and in some cases the light-snatching opportunity we've given them with our various clearing projects.  This is likely to be one of the years that loggers of the future will be able to identify as a nice fat growth ring in the stumps of the trees they fell.

Resultingly, it's kind of getting dark and gloomy in our woods as the trees detect each available shaft of light filtering through the canopy and unfold a leaf into it, silently squeezing more and more light out of the understory.

This was all fine and good and mentally stimulating (the fascinating shapes of the vine/tree amalgams, the dark forms slipping furtively through all levels of vegetation, the birdsong ringing through the wet woods) until the jungle started trying to include my chickens in its food chain.

Maybe it was my fault for casually throwing rotten eggs and sadly dead chicks into the woods; I may have unthinkingly baited the coon myself and given it a taste for all things chicken.  Or it may have happened anyway.  After three failed nests I was so pleased to have broody hens succeed at hatching out 12 fine chicks, and I thought I had accounted for the possibility that coons could reach through wire to tear chickens apart in their cages by installing 1/2 x 1 inch wire mesh for the floor of the brooder coop.  Alas.  We lost three or four chicks that way and one hen is now in seclusion recovering from the mutilation of her feet.  Lesson learned.  I gave the hens and chicks in those coops shallow pans with wood shaving to brood on at night so they can be protected from that particular danger, and they seem to be using them faithfully with no further problems.

Soon after that incident, however, I began free-ranging my half-grown cockerels and pullets.  Actually, I only free-ranged half of the flock (the half I was less attached to for breeding purposes) of 26.  I think the first night I lost one or two, and many nights thereafter that was more or less the pattern, so that in the course of a week or so I was down 5 birds.  Now, I had expected to lose a few, and truth be known I was counting on our little temperate jungle to help me in my selection process, since one of the goals of this breeding project (the "Alleghenies") is to develop a chicken that can free-range successfully in the moist, rich woodlands and forests typical of the mountains found in the east of the continent.  I just didn't expect the assistance to come so swiftly and emphatically!  My little jaunts into the woods to close the chickens in in the evening took on a more sensitized quality as I strained to see where errant chickens might by roosting in the trees and watched and listened for signs of predators.  They were all totally invisible to my eyes; I had no choice but to wait and see what news the morning would bring.  The urge to pray for my chickens caught me off guard!

When the morning had brought bad news often enough and when I felt the experiment had returned meaningful results, I re-integrated the remaining 8 free-rangers with the penned 13 and went back to confinement management for their own safety.  One quite interesting result:  It hit me with a jolt when I realized that I had no more chickens with yellow feet.  Three of the original 26 had been yellow-footed, a trait I am selecting against because a) I don't fancy it aesthetically for this project and b) it strikes me as bad woodland camouflage.  Hmm.  Maybe I was right.  Three out of the five that disappeared were thusly adorned.  Dark colored and/or mottled chickens form the bulk of the remaining eight and all have dark feet.  Despite what we were taught in school, natural selection is not always slow or gradual, especially when it's coming in the form of an ecologically-based correction to human fancy.

So then when a bear began visiting our neighbors' bird feeders and a great big scat showed up within 30 feet of my young birds' coop...

My evening forays into the woods have again taken on a whole different quality!  I regard the likelihood of a dangerous encounter with a bear to be extremely low, even when they are skulking around regularly.  Even the likelihood of a bear destroying one of my coops and eating the living contents seems low to me since I know lots of people keeping chickens in bear country and have heard of only one incident.  Still, something about knowing that an omnivorous animal bigger than I--and far stronger--uses this land, too, substantially changes the experience of walking around after dark.  I can't help thinking about my own self being warmly welcomed (bear hug?) into the food chain!  All those dark patches of understory look a whole lot darker...

But this is what I wanted, right?  Isn't this what I was after:  meaningful and close contact with the ecosystem that sustains me?  Didn't I want to be "just one of the animals"?  Is not the whole project here one of integration, of shaping and sustaining the forest garden that shapes and sustains our family?  Doesn't that involve taking some risks, learning some hard lessons as we allow that process to play out?  Gulp.  Yes, I guess it does.  Hoo, boy!  Am I ready for this?

I've always admired those people whose reaction to a cold swimming pool or hole is to find the highest ledge around, jump right in and get the shock over with.  That is not me.  I inch my way in until I'm up to my armpits, then close my eyes and let myself slip under.  When I come up, I'm adjusted.  One of the ways we can adjust and adapt to a given natural community is by recognizing patterns found in our environs and imitating them.  This is one meaning of the term "biomimicry."  With regard to chicken keeping, it's helpful to realize that in the chickens' ancestral, wild context (the jungles of southeast Asia), they were the common prey species known in English as the Red Jungle fowl.  Common prey species usually employ the strategy of prolific procreation to counterbalance the heavy predation they experience.  When you think about it, chickens are adapted to raising a brood of 8 or 10 young once or twice per year.  That means that to maintain a steady population the Jungle Fowl only expected 10 to 30 percent or so of its offspring to survive long enough to reproduce.  If I have the goal of installing my chicken flock in the ecology of my own jungle, then I'm going to need to be able to raise a lot more chickens!  Hence the composting coop, built this spring and stocked two days ago with the remaining members of the half-grown flock.

When the chickens are fully oriented to their new home, we'll try another round of free-ranging (gotta get those ticks!)  Stay tuned to find out how that goes!  It may be that in practical and prudent terms the near future will find us living in the Tangly Woods jungle...to a point.  We'll probably still rely on our garden fences, our deer repellents, and our anti-Lyme disease antibiotics just as long as we need to to confer reasonable assurance of our safety and sustenance.  But little by little we will keep tinkering with our style of living so that more and more we can become adjusted to making our life here as full participating members of the ecological community.  Through the years we will find out just what that means, and what it costs us.

Blood donating or trying at least...

I thought I'd write a little bit while the emotions are still swirling and Jason is out doing chores before I head in for an all day meeting.  Sleep has already cleared my emotional space somewhat - it usually does! Also, it is probably important to note that I went into last evening's blood drive with a lot of emotions already very near the surface - I'm saying goodbye to two close colleagues this week and so the big work transitions that have been looming for months are now at hand and that is part of what is on my heart and mind these days.  That, and journeying alongside (and mostly from a distance) friends who are walking closely with loved ones who are very ill.  So I was looking forward to last evening - a time and space to gather with others, remember Nora, remember others who are journeying through times of loss and do something helpful in the process.  We arrived a little before 5:30 p.m. with Nora's memory box, the book my Mom had created about her life, her little green blanket that I had croqueted and some homemade snacks.  One friend, who accompanied us to Nora's birth, had already finished donating.  Over the next 2-3 hours, another 12 people donated blood, Jason gave platelets, and 2 friends who could not give blood cut their hair to donate.  While Jason was hooked up to the platelet machine for most of the time, I was the resident photographer and visited with friends as they came in and donated.  You will note that I did not mention donating myself and that is because I'm not among the 12...

So my iron was too low. Despite furiously rubbing my second finger to get the blood circulating well before a second finger stick, it was still a little too low to give this time.  Big deal, one might think (you might be thinking as you read this!).  There were over a dozen others that gave, some who had never given before, and hopefully I'll be back on track in a few weeks after pulling out the iron supplements (I can hardly eat more dark greens that I'm currently forking in...).

For me, it hit a deeper emotional chord.  I'm not even sure I have all the words for it, but here goes.  In some ways it felt like my experience last night of being "rejected" from giving blood and having things not go as I had envisioned in my mind, brought me in touch just a bit more with many of the emotions that characterized that time with Nora.  I know it probably seems like a stretch, but it doesn't take a very large trigger to bring back some of those feelings.  The feeling of being out of control of the outcomes and of needing to let others do things for us that we were not able to do.  The feeling of others journeying beside us but ultimately it was our path to walk, and one that had so many unexpected twists and turns.

It was so very special to be there talking with family who knew Nora, friends who had been there to support us after she died, and new friends who have joined our circle of care and support in the years following.  And there may even be a gift hidden in my own inability to give last night. One other person's iron was too low to give also and one friend who was hoping to donate for the first time (and was eager to have others who had done it before join her) woke up with a sore throat yesterday.  So there may be a little follow up "mini-blood drive" in a few weeks!  I don't envision I'll ever be someone who is "good" at easily letting things go, but I imagine I'll keep getting plenty of experiences that give me opportunities to practice!  Hopefully many of those experiences will be small like last night, and not as much what our journey with Nora entailed.  There is so much beauty to be found and growth to be had if I'm up for the challenge!

(More pictures to follow and maybe a few more thoughts in a day or two so check back...)

Update: below is a smattering of pictures from Monday evening. And I've fully "recovered" from the disappointment of not giving, and am actually kind of amazed once again how sometimes things just work out for the best (even when, at the time, it seems bad to me).  We'll be having a little mini-blood drive with four of us coming up in just over two weeks with those that were not able to give Monday and, thanks to Aunt Emily hanging out with the kiddos at the donation center, Jason will get to join again so we'll hopefully get to donate together after all (if you give platelets you can do it every two weeks just FYI!).  I continue to be flabbergasted that it is possible that it is me noting that I was disappointed at not being able to give blood and that I'm genuinely excited to try again.  Here's hoping for increased iron reserves!  And a big thank you to all that joined us Monday and a deep sense of gratitude within me for the very tiny person that inspired the event!

Two unique gals!

So I've had a growing list of things I've wanted to get updated on the blog (my "scrapbook" feels horribly out of date with some major events missing).  I haven't, for example, written anything about our two May weekends away - both fun and full of adventure and good times.  The first was Emily and Jonas' wedding - a much anticipated and special weekend celebrating with them.  The second was a trip to WV with two other families - it had been three years since we had last coordinated our schedules to get away together.  There could be much said about both, but I will just note one personal highlight that ran through both weekends. Our 14th wedding anniversary fell on the day before we left for the wedding weekend in PA.  We kind of mutually decided that we'll really celebrate next year (our 15th on the 15th).  What surprised me was how celebratory this year ended up feeling - having a wedding of two dearly loved ones right near our anniversary, and me spending my late night reading time on my writing from the weeks around our wedding, put me in a reflective mood (as well as feeling so very grateful for the living and loving Jason and I have done together these last 14 plus years).  While in WV we pulled out our wedding video and watched it with Kali and Alida for the first time. Very fun!  So fun that we pulled it back out when our friends arrived and watched parts of it with them, doing some reminiscing throughout (as well as plenty of laughter, a few groans, and more gratitude).

But all that was last month and as things go around here, lots happens on a daily basis and so the main focus of this post is to talk about our kiddos (the one napping and the one out in her bikini filling up the wading pool). It's hard to keep up with them right now.  Just when we think we have something figured out, it changes.  They are doing plenty of living and loving as well, and while I have moments where I could burst with frustration, I have more times where I feel I could burst with feelings of complete amazement and joy in our little family!

One of the more challenging things that keeps popping up now and again is the fact that Alida is two and in the age/stage where whatever the big people are doing is very interesting to her.  She wants to copy and join in and do whatever we are doing - especially what big sister, Kali, is doing!  This, 75% of the time, doesn't seems to bother Kali and she happily and willingly includes Alida in her activities.  But when it does bother her, it really bothers her and I haven't yet found an approach to her anxiety and frustration about it that seems to really help.  She doesn't want them to be the same people.  Neither do we!  But to date there seem to be many signs pointing to the fact that they won't be, and even now aren't!  I'll share just a few here (and Kali would likely not approve of portions of this post, but I'm hopeful that down the road she'll be glad to read it...let's hope anyway!). So now for the 3 S's...

Sleep: Kali doesn't "need" sleep.  For as long as I can remember that is her firm stance, one that cannot be disproven by any amount of scientific research because they have not studied her.  But there is no doubt that when she sleeps, she really sleeps!  One of the big changes for us, however, is that she no longer wishes to have one of us lay with her while she falls asleep.  Years ago we decided to give up the fight on this one.  I was never a confident sleeper growing up and remember feeling very fearful at night, most nights.  While not always convenient, it felt good and right for us to provide Kali with a feeling of closeness and security at night. And we figured if Alida was sleeping with me anyway, we might as well spread around the nighttime cuddling.  So we dropped it, knowing it would not last forever, but recently Kali said she wanted to try an experiment. I thought it would never come and then all of a sudden a one night experiment turned into forever, or so it seems.  She noted that she is not as hot and has more room with just her in her single bed. Good thinking (and timing with summer right around the corner).  So she is still our night owl, reading until she can't keep her eyes open (but note that her eyes getting heavy does not mean she is tired or needs sleep!).  Alida has a bit of a night owl tendency in her but she shows true signs of tiredness in a way that Kali never did (the little gal gets cranky!).  And she seems to almost welcome sleep - both naps and nighttime.  And she still likes to be near her mommy (well the emergency milk supply), for now!

Soccer: Kali just finished her first soccer season and loved it!  She'll likely be doing it again this fall.  She was very motivated to be part of every practice and game and she has never done her duck chores so fast as when we need to get moving to go to soccer!  It felt like a big step for her to want to do this on her own and it seems like it moved her forward both in her confidence interacting with others socially and in her soccer skills. I still wouldn't say that to date she shows a high natural aptitude for the sport, but the league is a perfect place for her to try it out with coaches that are way more into gaining experience, having fun and teambuilding than in winning. 

I learned that I'm not going to be a quite spectator...My two most humorous moments to date included watching Kali turn a complete 360 when her coach hollered to her to "turn around" when her back was facing the ball and then watching her at least twice almost follow the player she was marking off the field when a sub was coming in for her.  It's cute to hear her analyze her own play and wonderful to sense her super attitude about playing - seldom even knowing what the final score of the game was.  The noncompetitive nature of this league is probably best demonstrated by the fact that you don't forfeit a game if you don't have enough players, the other team just gives you some of theirs so the game can go on!

Well, soccer, is the one place where we have the most "rub" right now as Kali wants it to be her thing (even after informing her than millions of people play soccer worldwide!).  She has given some mixed messages though because she was very supportive of Alida having her own soccer bag to go to practices with her own soccer ball.  But of late she tries to get Alida to play with our football when she is kicking soccer - only minimally successful.  The fact is that Alida has quite the little foot and it wouldn't shock me in the least if in the end Kali moves on from soccer to other things and Alida actually is the one to stick with it. Who knows. Here's Alida at it:


  
Secrets: This is probably where Alida and Kali's personality seem to be showing a very striking difference.  Kali is very private.  This, for her external processing mother, is not an easy thing!  And the more one tries to get something out of Kali, the less likely you are to do so.  Actually I don't think it really makes a difference what approach you take, you will not get something out of Kali that she doesn't wish to offer. There are benefits to this approach, of course.  But I'd certainly be grateful for a few more glimpses into her mind and heart, on personal matters (she will gladly have an abstract or theoretical conversation anytime!).

Alida is our little "open book" gal right now.  Of course that might change over time but I'm enjoying the contrast and found it particularly helpful the other day.  

So Alida just melts when Kali reprimands her - trembling lips, sobbing and cries of "mama."  I was hanging laundry the other day while the girls played on the porch. I heard Kali say, "Alida, don't do that."  Silence and then the request again a bit more forcefully.  Soon Alida was coming my way crying.  For the next 5 minutes or so I tried to get Kali to tell me what Alida had done that was so troublesome so that I could more easily talk with Alida about it. It was clear I was fighting a losing battle as Kali was not going to tell me.  She seemed to think that her telling Alida not to do it was enough and that if she told me then Alida would just pick something worse to do. I think she was reading into Alida's intentions a bit too much, but I was completely in the dark as to what Alida had done.  Of course my curiosity was peaked but I've learned that I might as well just drop it as I'm not going to get anywhere.

It was hours later that inspiration hit - why not ask Alida what she did?!   We were in the kitchen, and I just nonchalantly asked Alida what she had done that morning that had bothered Kali so much. Without missing a beat she informed me that she had put a boogie on Kali.  It was hard to not laugh really hard at that moment.  A quick check in with Kali confirmed that I had been offered the truth.  Now, I'm still clueless as to why this was top secret information on Kali's part, but clearly Alida had no trouble offering it!

So I'm trying to love and cherish the ways in which our girls are similar and different and hope we can help them to honor those things too.  Kali doesn't seem to mind they they are both thrilled with their new swimsuits!  I'm not sure how Kali will feel if Alida wants to get pigs - it would be different than her but that might be pushing it.  Speaking of animals, three quick tidbits. Kali was out on the walk the other day when a very small wood duckling showed up.  That's right, one very small peeping wood duck!  We caught it and a day later my dad and Kali delivered it to a wildlife rehab center.  We have a patient number to call and check up on it.  It was a cute and very wild little thing - it didn't waste a moment trying to get out of the cardboard box we had put it in.

I'll give the sad news next and then end on a happy note.  So we had another brood of baby chicks hatch under a mama, giving us three mama hens sitting on chicks.  This morning when Jason went to the low coop with a mama on each side, he found a very injured hen and two chicks missing on one side and a slightly injured hen and one missing chick on the other.  It makes us sick to even think of it, but clearly a raccoon got under the coop and dismembered and pulled out the baby chicks through the wire. Jason knew that raccoons could be a problem, but thought the gauge wire on those coops was not only snake proof but "other critters" proof. Not so.  We'll be doing something different for them tonight but that doesn't make it feel much better today.  Jason will need to do some work on the one hen and will probably try to give her remaining chicks to the other mother hen tonight (hoping she'll bond with them) so that the hen can hopefully recover from her injuries.  Very sad!

Lastly, I think we are not going to classify my mason bees as an "animal." We've had a "one new animal" a year policy for the last number of years (and that has included babies).  Well, we went to see some baby goats the other night.  That is a very dangerous thing to do if you are not planning to purchase them.  Oh, they were cute and so persistently friendly.  Alida was sure about their boldness, but I found it very endearing. The one little fellow figured out the zipper on my sweatshirt and was successfully pulling it up and down. The one is black and white (Oreo) and the other brown, black and white (Cookie Dough).  They need their mama for another 6 weeks or so but then I have a feeling they will be making Tangly Woods their home.  We forgot to take pictures, so check back...

Now back to some veggie and fruit processing - I could spend all day just bringing delightful treats from the outdoors in for processing and it is only early June.  We continue to enjoy strawberries daily in many forms, fresh greens of various kinds and the sugar snap and snow peas are coming on (though I doubt any of those will even get cooked before they are consumed).  We are grateful for such abundance and the fruits of labor that we find so much fulfillment in!