Plum

09:46 pm: Lammas and Chocolate -- August 3rd
No, not llamas, Lammas. Lammas is also known as Lughnasadh and it's the first of three annual harvest festivals in the Pagan tradition. It's a harvest celebration and also a celebration of craft, so I figured it was a perfect holiday for making truffles and knitting! Lammas is traditionally celebrated on August 1st, but in the grand tradition of switching around pagan holidays to fit wherever you want them to (see: Christmas), I've decided that the Lammas celebration will be at my house on August 3rd, because that's a Monday and that's how us knitters roll.

The details:

What: Lammas and Chocolate
When: August 3rd 7pm - 9pm
Where: DeAnna and Kara's kitchen (e-mail for directions or call DeAnna 360-584-6638)
Bring:
  *Makings for your favorite truffle recipe (if you don't got one, ask the internet)
  *Alcoholic Beverage of your choice (harvest festivals are all about the libations)
  *A few slices of your favorite bread to share (harvest festivals=grains...also, bread is good for palate cleansing between truffles)
  *Your knitting, or craft of your choice (is tassel-twirling a craft? I think so.)
  *A musical instrument if'n ya got one (or two!)

Feel free to invite a friend (or two!) but please RSVP so I have an idea how many bodies we'll be fitting into my little living room and kitchen. The more the merrier! And even if you don't RSVP, you can come anyway. Also, you can come even if you're not a knitter. We're not knittist around here, you just gotta like chocolate (and maybe libations).
 

09:48 pm:

Just testing to see if this is a realistic way to post from the road.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Tags: via ljapp

06:26 pm: Knit-N-Nature
Here it is folks, the official announcement! (click for full-sized)


I would love to see any of you there, and feel free to spread the word if you know of others that are interested! If you know of good places to post these, give a holler and I'll send you a full-res version that you can print and hang wherever your heart desires.

Thanks!!

02:06 pm: Knit-N-Nature, Winter 2009

I had so much fun with the first one, that I’m offering another one! This one will be a little different and about 4 times as cool as the first one (and the first one was already pretty cool). You can check out the flyer at http://www.knit-n-nature.com. Official registration starts the beginning of November, but I’m doing a special pre-registration rate just for people that are part of communities that I’m already involved in. I won’t be advertising the pre-registration price outside of these few existing communities.

This time we won’t be camping (cuz it’s really wet here in February!). We’ll be staying for two nights (February 27th and 28th) at the Waterway House at Fort Flagler, which is on an island off the northeast edge of the Olympic Peninsula. All meals are provided, as well as beds and hot baths and amazing magical beautiful surroundings. We’ll work with some native fibers, have plenty of time for story-telling, music-making, and, of course, knitting! And we’ll spend some time in the amazing rainforest learning about animal behavior, playing games, and listening to birds.

The special pre-registration sliding scale is $120-$150 (you decide what you can afford), and includes all meals, a shared room, and tons of adventure. This will be an amazing way to break up those mean ol’ post-holiday winter blues, and there are gift certificates available. Starting November 1st, the registration scale goes up to $150-$180.

You can get in touch with me here on LJ, or just email me at deandail@yahoo.com or call 360-584-6638.

Feel free to spread the word!
Peace,
DeAnna

09:33 pm: Knit-N-Nature
It's been a long time since I posted anything here, since I switched over to the Wordpress blog, but I'm just so excited about this that I'm posting it wherever I can possibly think of. Feel free to repost. Let me know if you want a high-res version for printing.



Tags: awareness, classes, knitting, nature

12:58 am: Web updates
I'm trying to switch my schedule over to nights, since I will be working until sometime around midnight tomorrow night. So I've been uploading and updating my photography website tonight. If anyone's curious to see a few new pics, they're at www.whoaphotos.com

While I was working on my site, it occurred to me that it makes sense to have my blog centralized at that site as well, since the more people click through my commercial site, the more likely I am to have sales. Besides, which, I'm paying for the darn thing, and can have as many user icons, or anything else, that I want on that site. so I decided to go ahead and switch over to the blog at www.whoaphotos.com/blog. I'll still be reading and responding to journals in lj, but I'll be posting pretty exclusively in the Whoa! Photos site. For the first while, I've left anonymous coments enabled, so you'll be able to comment even if you don't feel like getting a Tripod user ID. If I start having problems with that, I'll disable it, but it's there for now.

Peace.

06:36 pm: Mt.St Helens
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This isn't filtered at all; she really gets that color at sunset sometimes.

Tags: pictures

10:38 am: Garden Update
The mountain had it's first snow coat last week. It only hailed here on the ridge where I live, but the next day when the clouds lifted, Helens was bright with snow. I'm waiting for the fog to lift this morning to see how she is doing today. Right now, the fog has come all the way up the valley and seems like it's encircling the lawn, as if there is nothing in the world except me, and this house, and a rabbit browsing in the front lawn. I have already fallen in love with this place to the extent that I feel resentful whenever I have to leave it. It's unfortunate that we don't own it (we're only renting), as I will be very sad to move away from here.

But so far, the major life upheaval is going very well. It's getting to be time for me to start a job, since the savings won't last forever. I've sworn off desk jobs and corporate politics (my last few jobs were as a technical writer), and this Thursday I have an interview to be a cow milker. It's something I'm totally unqualified to do, and I told the head guy that right up front. But he was still willing to give me an interview, so I'm looking forward to it.

I had decided not to have a winter garden this year, since Preston graduates in December and life is pretty up in the air after that. We may be staying here for another year or two, or we may be heading for Japan to teach English, or any number of things between those two extremes. So I didn't want to put all the effort into a garden and then have to leave it in January. So instead of gardening, we've been clearing blackberries. Many of the patches are taller then my head by a foot or more, even taller where they've overtopped the fir and hazelnut trees. I'm guessing that about a quarter of our 17 acres is blackberries, although we have yet to *find* all 17 acres, since many of the access routes are covered in blackberries. Every time we open up a new trail, we discover some new part of our property that we didn't know existed.

But now two interesting things have happened to make me change my mind about the garden. The first is the discovery of a garden from a previous tenant. We had seen a fence post when we first moved in here, and it looked like it marked the corner of a fenced off garden space, but it was completely overgrown with blackberries. We could only see a small corner of the fence, the rest completely covered with vines 5 to 8 feet tall and heading up the steep hill behind it, so that it looked like a wall of blackberries 20 feet tall. We didn't really think that it was worth salvaging. But then last weekend, I was curious to clear a path to a particular fir tree at the edge of the yard, and the easiest way was through that garden patch. As i started clearing in there, i discovered that it isn't just your average row garden, surrounded by chicken wire. There are these great raised beds in there, a tomato frame, a couple of other beds that were obviously designed for something in particular, although i don't know enough to know what they were for. Even a raised bed with a platform on top designed for starting seedlings. And it's much bigger than it looked at first. It's not completely rectangular, but it's probably roughly 20feet by 30 feet. I know for some of folks this isn't a large garden, but remember that my last garden, on the balcony, was 1.5 feet by 8 feet, so this is *huge* by my standards.

A couple days ago, we got all the blackberry chopped down, but there's a lot of raking left to be done to get it cleared down to the dirt.

And the second thing that happened is that I read this fabulous wildfoods cookbook, by a woman named Linda Runyon. The book is called From Crabgrass Muffins to Pine Needle Tea: A National Wild Food Field Guide. She was a homesteader in the Adirondacks in the 1960's, and she lived (and still lives) on 60% wild-gathered foods. The book identifies several dozen common "weeds", discusses how to gather, store, and cook with them. There's even a chart that breaks down the nutritional value of all the plants, so you can see the calories, protien, vitamins, etc. (this is hard information to find about wild foods). There are 50 pages of recipes, from nettle chowder to clover pasta. And she even has a section on poisonous look-alikes (which is often missing from edible food guides).

So, back to the garden. I've decided that I don't want to put the time and money into a garden that I might abandon in January, but there's no reason why I couldn't transplant some of the edible stuff that's already growing around here into the garden, making it easier to access. Things like plantain and dandelion and nettles and chickweed are all excellent food, with many uses and lots of nutrients. I've got the plantain, clover, and dandelions growing in my yard. Some friends have some chickweed they are happy to give me. I haven't found any nettles on this land, but surely some neighbors have some around here. I'm sure some folks think it's madness to grow dandelions and nettles in my garden, but it's free, and it's better for you than lettuce, and I think it sounds fun.

So I'll spend the next couple days raking and moving chopped up blackberry vines. (It's one of the big problems with blackberries...where do you put them after you chop them down?! They resprout from cut canes.) I took some before pictures, and as soon as I find the charger to charge up my camera batteries, I'll take some after pictures and post them in a photo album.

When we first discovered the garden, i had all these images in my head of the lovely, knowledgable retired woman who must have put so much time and love in to creating this garden. I had fantasies about looking her up and showing her the before and after pictures of restoring her garden. I was even having imaginary conversations with her about where she used to grow different things. But then, from a variety of sources (including left-behind paraphanelia and confirmation from the landlord and the neighbors), we've learned that the garden was created by the guy who lived here alone 4 years ago or so. He was a commercial marijuana grower. He had converted one whole outbuilding into the equivalent of a pot closet, complete with grow lights and temperature controls. The nieghbors say that when they walked through the property after he moved out, they could see the cleared plots where he must have had outdoor crops growing in among the trees, but he had cleared them out when he left. Apparently, he had quite a green thumb, and was also growing a legal garden, and had built all these raised beds. It's funny how often I have to be taught the lesson about stereo-typng people. I suppose men can be gardeners also. :) (No, we haven't found any of his left-behind crops. I don't imagine anything would be left after 4 years, even if he had forgotten some. But we're still keeping our eyes open ;)

01:55 pm: I've become my mother!
Just now, I washed a used Ziploc bag and propped it open on the hot water knob to the sink to air dry and be re-used. I used to mock my mother for doing exactly the same thing.

Tags: introspection, mom

01:49 pm: Funny Conversation
You might have to know my old boss to appreciate her tone, but picture the consummate business-woman. She is in her 50's, respectable, always dressed conservatively and very properly. I don't think I ever saw her break a smile in the course of a business day, although she could be very funny and friendly at company picnics and such. I liked and respected her as a boss, but she is a fairly hard woman. She called today to ask about some files she couldn't find, and then was asking how my vacation was going:

Jo: So have you been enjoying your respite?
Me: Absolutely! There are skunks under the shed, bats in the ceiling, deer in our front yard, and frogs in the spring down the hill.
Jo: Mmm-hm. (beat) And these are things that you find enjoyable?

Tags: overheard

01:37 pm: back!
And now the most exciting news! I'm posting this from home. Yes, I made it almost exactly one month without internet access, and then we broke down and signed up for dial-up. It's actually not as slow as I remembered, and will work fine for job hunting, which is what we really need it for. We decided that, while it's kinda spendy, it's cheaper than a subscription to every local newspaper on the west coast.

So, I'm accessible again, although, fair warning, I am very much in hermit mode, and I spend a lot more time skulking around in the bushes than I do inside typing e-mails. Don't expect any of the long missives that I used to write while bored and stuck at my desk.

Speaking of which, the sun has just come out, after a foggy morning, and I can see the Stellar's Jays playing in the cedars outside my window. I bet it's warmer out there than it is in here now. I'm off to play in the woods.

Tags: internet access

09:24 pm: two skunks!
Tonight was the first time I've had a chance to head out to my sit spot at around dusk since the last skunk encounter. Tonight, when I heard one scuffling around under the old kennel, I started talking softly, just letting it know I was there, so that I wouldn't have to go through all the stress of the last encounter. I still really don't want to get sprayed. So the skunk would pop out from other the kennel, about 8 feet away from me, and check me out, and as I kept talking it would duck back under the kennel. It didn't seem particularly scared, but it also didn't come up any closer, which was fine with me. It popped out from under the deck a few times to check me out, and then went back under and I could hear it scuffling around down there. After a few minutes, I saw it pop out of the other side of the deck. By then it was dark enough that I couldn't really make out anything but the stripes. But pretty soon, I could see that the stripes were going in opposite directions! And I realized that I was watching two skunks. While I could see the two of them, I could swear I heard a third one still under the deck, but that could have been an auditory illusion. After a while, I was feeling like I wanted to head back into the house, but there isn't really a good way to get back to the house other than past the skunks. I didn't want them to feel trapped, so I started talking as I headed the long way around the yard, so they had plenty of time to duck back under the deck as I went by.

I'm guessing that they must be this year's babies. The babies are born in May or June, so that would make these just a few months old. Otherwise, I think they're supposed to be solitary, so I don't know why else there would be more than one denning up together. I read in a little field guide that they den up and sleep most of the winter, which bummed me out a little bit. i was looking forward to making friends with them throughout the winter.

Tags: naturalist

02:57 pm: skunk!
This evening, while sitting at the picnic table at the top of the back yard, I saw one of the skunks that I suspected was living under the storage shed. I watched it pulling up grass and dragging it back into its nest area for about 5 minutes. I was practicing staying silent and still, although I did take advantage of a second when it was down in its den to grab the cat so I could make sure she wouldn’t do anything we would both regret. When the skunk started heading down a path that would take it within inches of my foot on the picnic bench, I thought about stomping or something to scare it away before it got too close and startled itself when it realized I was there. But just before I tapped my foot, it took off in another direction, circling down to the kennel and ducking under the deck.

A few minutes later, when it reappeared, I thought for sure that it knew I was there, so I didn’t tap when it started heading towards my sit spot again. When it got to the path directly in front of the picnic table, about 3 feet away from me, I realized that it must not know I was there, and by then it was too late to stomp, as it was close enough to startle and spray. I’ve been sprayed once before, from a distance, and that experience was enough to let me know that I wouldn’t like to repeat it from 3 feet. So I just shuffled my foot a little bit. Fortunately, the cat was also silent and still. But when the skunk heard my foot shuffle, instead of backing off a little, as I was hoping it would do, it came closer to investigate. I didn’t realize that they must have very poor eyesight. The skunk came all the way up to my toe, hanging off the edge of the picnic bench (I was sitting on the table), to sniff my shoe. I held my breath and my heart was racing. It was sniffing, and then raising up on its front feet a little, trying to get a good smell of the rest of me. I don’t know why it took so long for it to sniff. I’m guessing that because I had the cat in my lap it might have been a confusing mix of smells. Also, the smoke from the woodstove at the neighbor’s house was drifting down the hill, which may have also muddied the smell.

It looked away for a second and I took advantage of that moment to raise my hand to cover my nose and mouth, partly to keep any possible spray out of my mucous membranes, and also because my heart was racing so fast that I was having a hard time keeping my breathing silent and I was hoping to muffle it a little. The skunk turned around, not with the tail pointed directly at me, but with it pointed pretty near me to the right. It paused there for a second, walked back past me to the left and paused again with tail in the air. All through this, I stayed still and so did the cat. Finally the skunk headed down the hill a little ways and took an alternate trail past the compost pile and into the woods.

So this is an excellent example of my fear of stealth. I don’t necessarily think that I’m good enough at it to get away with being completely unseen when the skunk walks within a couple inches of my shoe on its way down the trail. So is it better to just make my presence known at the beginning and avoid any possible confrontation, although also ruining my chances of an up close encounter or even of watching unobserved at a distance for a while? Or do I try to stay unnoticed as long as possible and risk being sprayed from a foot or two away when the skunk suddenly realizes that I’m there?

Tags: naturalist

08:49 pm: pictures and a general update
No explanation necessary

Preston has been putting a lot of work into updating his room before he moves into it. I don't have the "after" pictures yet, but here are some of the progress.

Before
Preston working on the drywall on the ceiling, and geared up for installing insulation. A few days after he was finished with this, he was working on the window and commented that he wished we had come across a skylight or something on Freecycle, since that would be really cool in there. I pointed out that he was already half way there, if he had just left that sheetrock panel off.

While we were waiting for the next step, Preston had his friend Melissa out to help him stain the loft bed before we put it back together in his room.
Our landlord offered us a window, which the room desperately needed (among many other things). He came out to help us out with the first few steps, which ended up being quite the day. He doesn't believe in measuring things, so we just held the window up to the wall and traced it. Then he and Preston took hammers to the wall, prying out the sheetrock and the framing. Preston spent the day alternating between amusement and distress at Tom's construction techniques.

Fortunately, Tom was only there to help us out with the deconstruction part of the process, and so Preston finished framing up the window quite nicely the next day.

Somewhere inbetween all that, I fit in a weekend trip to visit my Mom's house in Montana. she lives out on the plains. In the picture here, her house is the closer green patch in the center of the picture. The closer buildings to the right are her nearest neighbors. It's big and flat there, beautiful in its way. She also has a new cat who looks quite sweet in this picture, but is really a Bad Seed. He's nice to humans, but terrorizes all other living things, including the dog, who is terrified of him.

And I think that catches me up to now. Tonight is my first night alone in the new house (the night of the bat story doesn't count, since Preston came home late that night). Preston is with a friend in Canada for the night, so I have the place to myself. I've accomplished quite a lot, considering that I took a 4-hour nap in the middle of the day. I decided that now that Preston and I share a place, and that means I have to eat healthy most of the time, I would take advantage of his absence tonight. So I had Rosemary and Olive Oil Trisquits with colby-jack cheese for dinner. For dessert right after i finish writing this, I will either have mint oreos and milk or Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Or maybe both if I can't decide.

Then the only thing left on my list that must be accomplished today is to wipe down the lower half of the door in the bunny room with diluted Tabasco. I have to figure out a way to keep them restricted at night, without them chewing through absolutely every wall they can reach. In the past, Tabasco has worked on small spots to keep them from chewing, so I'm going to try the dilute version and see if I can just close the door to their room at night. This is Plan B, after spending the last two nights listening to them trying to chew through the metal gate I was using to lock them in. The gate was in no danger, but it was really freaking loud. I figure if I have to Tabasco something, I might as well just use the door to the room, which is easier to manuever than the portable kennel gates.

Tags: country living, pictures

03:07 pm: house-warming party
So Preston and I had this mini-epiphany the other day:

We don't like parties. We don't generally go to parties. Parties make us stressed and usually bored. It would be really silly for us to have our own party. So we've decided that a house-warming party is not our style.

We would love to have anyone come visit us anytime. Just give either one of us a call, and let us know when you're planning to come out, and we'll give you directions. We love having company. You can also email either one of us if you want, but it's a slow way to get in touch with us, as we have been checking e-mail less than once a week.

Tags: friends

07:21 pm: Mom's House
A great down-home country sort of a day. Woke up and after a little messing around with the animals (Mom has high-maintenance pets, all of them darlings), we spent an hour or so weeding the greenhouse. Good feeling to have some dirt time. Mom has some amazing beans, tomatoes, and tomatillos growing in there. Went for a walk around the perimeter of Mom's property, through some barley stubblefields. The landscape here is pretty amazing, and I forget in between visits. I can't stand it for more than a couple days, but it's breathtaking anyway.

We fed the horses, moved some various things out of the garage, spent 20 minutes or so trying to figure out how to get the rototiller to roll without actually turning it on (you have to take apart the wheels and put them back together a different way). We picked beans to can tomorrow, and generally dinked around doing various little odd ranchette projects.

We had a little scare when we thought that Duke, the new dog, had run off one of the cats. She hadn't been around since this morning, and she wouldn't normally miss a meal. So we went walking through the stubblefield calling her, only to return and find her in the garage.

Tags: mom

09:06 pm: Conversation with Preston
Me: I think I just saw a bunny in the front yard! I did, I did. Look there's a bunny right in front of our porch eating grass.

Preston: Wow, cool.

Me: This is so exciting. Our first truly wild animal sighting on our property!

Preston: Actually, we've seen lots of snakes.

Me: Okay, well our first wild mammal sighting then.

Preston: Actually, I'm pretty sure bats are mammals.

Me: Okay, well our first cute wild mammal sighting then.

Preston: Didn't you call the bats cute when you were looking them up in the field guide just yesterday?

Me: Yes, but I was lying to try to make myself feel better about sharing space with them. Bunnies are cute and bats aren't.

Tags: country living, naturalist

11:37 am: pictures
The bunnies love the new house!!


And here's the view of Mt. St. Helens from yesterday. It was steaming all day, but you can't quite make that out in the picture. This was taken from my front porch.



Tags: country living, pictures

09:06 pm: Small Town
Sometimes it pays to have a sexy boyfriend. The PUD here wants proof that you paid your utilities on time for the last 12 months in order to waive the $200(!) deposit to get the utilities turned on. I've never even heard of such a crazy deposit. And we paid our Seattle City Light bill late in November. But the nice overworked lady, with too much make-up and a cross on her necklace, told Preston that she would waive the deposit as long as we promised to pay on time. It's nice to live in a place where they make personalized exceptions. And it's nice that I have Preston to take care of these things, since I was cranky and probably would have been bitchy to the woman, and she would have made me pay 200 bucks.

The nice man at the hardware store recognized us from our one visit a few days ago and was very friendly. We forgot to take back the machete though (having realized that it didn't come any sharper than the one we already have, which was the whole reason for purchasing one).

Then we were sitting on a bench on a downtown (which is about 3 blocks long, on one street) sidewalk, trying to pirate some wireless. This funny old man walked by and said, "You shouldn't make love in public, you know." And I told him we would try not to. We're pretty sure it was the same guy who yelled at us for jaywalking when we were at the farmer's market a few days ago. Gotta love the small-town weirdos. But we couldn't get a strong enough wireless connection to get access (there was a connection there, and we could get into it, but the signal was too weak).

Also discovered a very nice feed/farm store that carries rabbit food. It's nowhere near as good quality as the stuff I was getting at the BLRRFH, but I guess the bunnies will have to get used to it. I don't think I can afford to get the stuff shipped to me. I also got pine pellets for the litterbox, since that was the only kind they had that was compostable, but now I don't remember if pine is one of those things that you're not supposed to use for small mammal litter. Something to add to the list to look up whenever I get an internet connection. For now, I'm mixing it with their old litter, in hopes that it won't be too bad for them.

Tomorrow we're doing a shopping trip in Morton, where there is an official internet coffee shop. It's not free, but it's only 10 cents a minute, and I'm ready to have an e-mail fix as soon as possible. And after 3 days without coffee, and no headache, I'm feeling like I might even splurge and have myself a fabulous chai tea while I'm there.

Tags: country living

08:58 pm: Bats in the Belfry
I was so glad for Preston to come home last night. By the time he got here, I was pretty darn positive that it was indeed bats I was hearing in the ceiling, and I was also pretty darn sure that I had heard one chew through the ceiling and flap down into the cupboard where the dishes are. Eeek! I'm not the kind of girl who normally says things like Eeek, but I think bats coming through the ceiling qualifies. So we just avoided opening the cupboards (which are all connected, so it could have been in any of them) until this morning. Then Preston opened up each one and looked behind the cereal boxes and everything. (Sometimes, boys really are awesome.) He didn't find the bat, but we did find the bat-sized hole in the ceiling in the back corner of the dish cupboard. I don't really know what to do about that. And now that I look around, I see patched holes in the ceiling in various places that are also about bat-sized. So I suppose we need to patch up that hole, but it seems likely that they will just chew through somewhere else. Perhaps this is an issue for the landlord, although I hesitate to tell him about it for fear he will do something horrible to the bats. I like having bats around the property, and really, I don't even mind if they live in the roof, as long as they don't come in the house. So in the meantime, we'll be washing our dishes before we use them, and standing back from the cupboards every time we open them.

Tags: country living