Magazine Mogul Killed By Own House!

All week I have had a swollen scratchy throat and thought I was either coming down with a cold or having really bad allergies. I have never been stuck in stage one of a cold for more than two days so by the fifth day I finally believed I was going to slowly die of my allergy attack.

But then it occurred to me, when I saw what looked like roadkill stuck to my bare feet in my house...maybe it isn't allergies...maybe I'm dying of the dust and fur balls that are traveling in mighty little caravans across the wide expanses of my floor?!

This picture was taken after the first sweep through. I wanted to spare you the real horror.

I decided I needed to drink some more water just to deal with this startling train of thought and approached my fridge with deep trepidation. That's not a good sign. One should never feel they have to sneak up on their own fridge to grab a glass of water. But DUDE! Do you know what kind of stuff was living in there? There was a liquefied cucumber oozing around. No wonder I haven't been in the mood for salad lately. There were other scarier things too. Things you should never say out loud for fear that naming them will give them the power to spring to life and come get into bed with you in the middle of the night.

I have a very special fear of old meat. On several different occasions I decided to give the babies a little treat and served them up some yummy wet food. They didn't eat it all right away so the flies in our house, which we always have because we never shut our doors when we're home until we go to sleep (why bother? Chick will wrestle down any intruders*.), so the flies (as I was saying) decided that the wet food was a marvelous nursery for baby flies. There are few things more disgusting than seeing fly eggs on cat food**. And let me tell you- those flies work fast! They laid eggs within two hours of the food being out.

So I accumulated a few cans of wet food in the fridge. I got too grossed out to give it to the cats but felt too guilty about not using it up to actually throw it away.

I don't eat meat for a number of very good reasons, but one of the most compelling is that old meat is one of the most disturbing things in the world. Putrid meat is fifty times worse than liquefied cucumber. If I don't eat meat then I never have to deal with it going bad and leaving its smell in my nose.

By the way, this is the only reason why I never pursued a career as a mortician or a CSI. Oh, that and not going to college. Or even knowing that those were job options.

I was brave enough to open the top of the cans of cat food but once I saw inside I could not bring myself to clean out the cans to put in recycling. I realize this will make your respect for me plummet. I am grieved that I couldn't just deal with the festering ground beef bits. I will have to make up for this in some way.

So much was tossed out. I think this is an excellent moment to point out that if one keeps on top of the contents of their fridge there is less chance for this kind of waste. Waste is the enemy of economy and responsible landfill stewardship. Every single item that ended up in my trash can yesterday represented dollars that I spent and then threw out. That makes me a little sick when I realize how little we have right now.

I cleaned my fridge, my kitchen, one bathroom, and the floors. I don't know where I got the energy to do it but boy did it feel great. My throat is still swollen. So I'm going to have to conclude that it's allergies after all. I have to say though that I sure do hope to get the rest of my house cleaner because it feels so much brighter.

I am going to make kitchen curtains today. I've been meaning to make some for months. Every day I say to myself "Maybe I can carve out some time to make them today." and then I don't. I need a punch of color in there to tide me over until we get the walls painted. They're going to be Dustpan Alley blue (a retro looking dusty turquoise, see top of blog). The cabinets will remain egg shell colored but Philip is going to paint medieval scenes on them in a light brown.


*I really can't say for sure, but I wouldn't count on her to keep an intruder intact. Especially if they are men and have poor hygiene.

**Fly eggs that have hatched are worse, of course.

The Monastery Garden

The plans: I have finally mapped out plans for a monastery garden in my new yard. The yard is big but a lot of it wraps around the house and is long and too narrow to really lend itself neatly to a symmetrical design. You can't force design to fit spaces it doesn't belong in. There is one spot in the yard that is perfect for this style of garden. It gets tons of light, is empty aside from weeds and if I don't put something in it will attract things like broken down rusty buses.

I measured the space and using graph paper I planned raised beds to scale. !! Yes, to scale.* I planned the design to have a focal point in the center- a dwarf fruit tree. Because the soil sucks in this spot I decided to make a 2' raised bed for the tree. This will also give the beds a more formal appearance with the inner beds being taller than the outer beds.

The location: the gravel pit. You can't walk on this ground without making your feet bleed which is unfortunate. But for the purpose to which I'm going to put it, gravel is a good weed suppressant. It can eventually be replaced with pea-gravel or crushed granite* I personally like to be able to walk barefoot in my garden. Wouldn't slate pathways be gorgeous, with creeping thyme growing in the cracks? This is the official before picture.

The materials: all told this project will cost a few hundred dollars. We don't have cash for it so it's a credit transaction. Not our favorite way to finance anything but if we don't get this established now we will regret it. We got the wood yesterday. I have all week to work on this. I have an interview this morning and then I'm free. Provided my back doesn't go out on me (I will stretch!) and it doesn't get overly hot, and I can muster up the energy to work on it...(that's a lot of "ifs") I hope to have this space built and filled by this coming week-end. I want it planted with winter vegetables.

Work in progress: we always have works in progress. This is our pile of dirt. We have access to some more topsoil for free. I don't know if it will be enough but if not we will buy what we need to. Our poor neighbors always have to see our piles and our messes and these new neighbors don't know yet that we really do eventually make good with a pretty yard. Never a tidy yard, but it will be quite pretty in a couple of years. We certainly do take our time.

Alright, I'm off!

*I know, I'm impressed with me too.
**Yeah. In my dreams. Apparently we can't get it here. Dang it!

Never Alone In The Quiet

This guy is the last to leave the garden party. There isn't much for him to eat but he's still hangin' around.

I got two six packs of rainbow chard planted.

Looks pretty messy out there. It's an Obsessive Compulsive's nightmare.

I adore the optimism of seeds. Tiny dill seedlings are volunteering in the bed. Frost will probably kill them all before they mature enough to harvest.

Sunshine streamed into the chicken run and the girls fought over some cucumber I brought them. Non-local cucumber that Max has been eating.

There were quite a few bees trying to gather the last bit of pollen for the season. My roses obliged.

I made it outside yesterday just as I promised myself I would. I want to describe the warmth of the light as malty though I know it's a stretch to smell it and feel it as I did-sweet and sluggish, rich and mature. Unlike the weaker colder sun of winter, it was like a day from summer accidentally popped into our fall week and it shook itself all over the place; all over me. It even sounded like a summer afternoon; lawnmowers were busy in the distance; bees lending a lazy humming to the quiet; the hens clucking and shuffling in their run.

I planted my baby chard in the bed that grew my cucumbers and dill this summer. Everywhere in that bed were tiny dill seedlings, bright slender green notes of ever-hopeful life. I shook weeds out of the way and as I removed them they released the scent of the dirt into the warm air. I had to sit down and just listen and breath. I actually forgot how the garden can be such a great place to be at peace. I'm always so busy planning, plotting, and trying to get things done in minus time, I rarely go out there and just sit in the quiet.

Or the peaceful unquiet. Perhaps what I find so soothing about it is the great industry of organisms that undulates all around you in happy accord with the fact that their lives are short and they are driven by instinct, light, and hunger, to do what they need to do in order to complete their own cycle. The tiny worms curled up in the dirt don't ever ask "what is the meaning of life?" nor question the fairness of having to die in a few days or a few months or one year. It seems so greedy the way humans suck up life and feel entitled to a long one, feel cheated when someone gets only a few years, or worse, when someone gets seventy long ones and still-it's never enough for us.

Who are we to say that a fetus that lives only a month in it's mother's womb didn't live the perfect cycle of life? Who are we to know what that spirit wanted or what it should have had? Who are we to declare that the spirit of a man who's lived for eighty years and then packs it in in violent crash wasn't relieved to have left this mortal coil?

I once inspired great ire in a man I worked with by suggesting that humans aren't superior to ants. In fact, I think I asked "how do we know that we are 'more intelligent' than ants?" I had been reading a nonfiction book about ants and it occurred to me that a human measure of intelligence cannot be used to measure an insect's intelligence. Some ants milk aphids. They herd them like we do cows, to plants the aphids like, and then they harvest the "dew" that the aphids exude from their skin. Nutritious substance that the ants feed on. Hello!!! We are not the only beings on this earth who have figured out how to use other creatures for our benefit.

The man I worked with was deeply offended that I could even question such a thing. I was surprised, actually, because I really didn't see my questions and my curiosity as a threat to human existence. So what if we are not necessarily the most superior beings on earth? We're still pretty high on the food chain and have got the whole world in our destructive grips- are we so insecure?

If humans are too afraid to even ask these questions then our belief in our own superiority must be pretty weak.

Out in my garden I don't count myself as the superior being. I don't really count myself at all. I just move in it. Building. Planting. Smelling the air. Watching as the insects live their lives and wondering at their view of the same world. I sat on the edge of one of my raised beds and listened and felt the warmth of the light heat up the fibers in my shirt. I could almost hear the soil moving.

When you are that aware of the universe of small life around you it is impossible to consider unloading a jug full of Round Up. When you are aware of the universe of small life around you, you also become aware of the universe of small life that makes up your own body. There is no real difference between your own flesh and the soil. All of us made up of molecules of matter; all of us made up of colonies of smaller beings than ourselves. When you pour killing concentrations of any substance into the ground you are disrespecting yourself most of all.

I don't go around preaching to people about using chemicals in their yards. I'm not even trying to do that here. I'm merely saying that when you stop all the talking in your brain, when you shut up and listen, you will find that your place in the world is not separate from the dirt but right smack in the middle of it. And when you realize how connected you are to soil, the ultimate source of all of life on earth: dirt and water, you just can't knowingly pump it full of toxic matter. Because it's like pouring bleach down your own throat.

This is all very earth-mama and the part of me that rebelled against pot smoking earthy women with long arm pit hairs would like to whip out a gin and tonic and put on some Frank Sinatra REALLY loud so I can pretend I didn't say all the things I just said. I do NOT wear patchouli. (anymore.)

It's interesting how talking about my jaunt in the garden yesterday I am making it sound like it was so serious, dark and grim...yet I just meant to tell you how good it felt. How hopeful. How peaceful. How wonderfully loud with life it was.