The actual world
Jun. 11th, 2021 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormWell. That was kind of awful, two weeks of terrible mental stuff instead of the two weeks of joyful planting I was hoping to have.
On the other hand, last night we got a very very light frost and if I had planted out my melons they would have been toast.
It's interesting to see the frost patterns: in town it was a heavier frost and out here it was lighter, which is very unusual. Generally I'm a couple degrees colder. The pig field -- where the squash was -- had basically no frost by the time I got out there. The main garden -- luckily mostly brassicas and favas this year -- definitely had some crispy-feeling leaves but recovered just fine.
Some tomatoes are looking a little chlorotic and dark purple, stress/cold responses, but I don't think I lost any leaves even. There was also a really heavy dew.
I've put 7kg of rhubarb in the fridge. Dry beans, one full iteration of the tomato trial, corn, and some squash (lofthouse squash especially) are in the ground. Corn is up, both flour and flint, and interestingly although the flint corn was planted earlier it's not ahead. Not sure if that's the variety or the location -- flour is on that pig field south slope, while the flint is on the south slope off the main garden. Both were presoaked, as were the beans.
It's time to harvest spruce tips and get them vacuum sealed and into the freezer, and maybe toss some with sugar in a jar for fancy syrup. It's time to harvest and dry nettles, not quite time to harvest mint for drying yet. Apple petals have fallen. I had my first serious salad out of the garden yesterday, and some beef-and-broccoli-raab that reinforces how much I like the raab. It's quick, cut-and-come-again, can fit in the time after frost and before tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse (!) and it's tasty.
Radishes aren't doing much this year, weirdly. I hope the fall radishes do better.
Tomorrow Tucker and I are doing a run into Prince George, which is the biggest town in northern BC and where folks go when they can't get something locally. I haven't been there for a really long time, but I'm looking forward to stocking up on a bunch of things. We're going in Tucker's little car so I really shouldn't be able to get a plum tree, in line with my "no woody perennials" rule this year preperatory to moving.
Speaking of moving, I seem to be the only one concerned about it at the moment. Tucker has been living up here for two years and hasn't been comfortable in the community; he's said he doesn't want to spend another winter here and I think that's a sound instinct for him. On the other hand, he's travelling in August so he isn't likely to be moving that month, and July is definitely too soon to come to a consensus together. Moving in the winter is dodgy. The thought was to maybe move with A&E, but that's stalled out and I'd really like a backup plan.
The other group of folks we'd been talking about all moving together with have had some stuff come up, so that's not moving forward right now. In addition to the substantial distraction they've got going on, the real estate market is moving so quickly that we're priced out of the original area they were interested in. They'll need to make some decisions around trade-offs: size of closest town, winter climate, commute time to Vancouver/are ferries ok. I'm concerned that by the time those trade-offs are made we'll be priced out of wherever they decide is ok and they'll have to go through the process again.
It's weird because I think I'm the happiest with my current situation of everyone so I'm most ok staying put where I am another year or two. I am also maybe least tolerant of feeling like there's no time to come to an agreement together, and fearful of being left behind in the decisions. I think Tucker and A&E have generally more similar desires to each other than I do: they want to be closer into a big city, basically, and I want to be further out or closer to a smaller town. I'm willing to compromise some in order to get into this situation with some folks who can trade chore help, be interested in and aware of the property, and to get Tucker into a place he's more comfortable around people. Still, if it was just me... I probably would still move eventually, to a place where I have more space around me, but it would likely not be the same place I'd end up in a group decision.
Househunting is, at least, fun either way. I have been looking around at stuff and found a couple bigger acreages with little shitty houses on them around Quesnel that I'd be content with: end of the road, good wells, lots of space. I also found a truly amazing home near Kamloops with, um. Well, the outside looks normal with a deck and hedging cedars. The inside is... gold leaf, fancy tiles, and ornamental flourishes everywhere with ceilings that have carved gold relief. I'm very surprised by how much I like that look.
One of the weird parts of real estate in BC is that most homes on land are either old and falling down, or monster mansions with 5 bedrooms and a chandelier in the entryway. There's not really such thing as a utilitarian middle-aged home; I think this is because rural areas have been hollowing out for so long and only folks able to afford an estate move out of the city and build a new home. Covid and the ensuing remote work has really upended that, thus the shockingly fast skyrocket of land prices rurally. I think my little town, 1500-3000 people depending on how you count, has got at least 20 families from the lower mainland -- the real big city, not just the northern BC big city -- in the last year.
My current home is basically a very beautiful gothic-arch-cedar-lined vacation cabin; it's both too pretty and too small to be ideal for me. I got it because the land is magical and it has a good well, and at the time I only had one neighbour close by. would not at all mind trading some of the niceness of the house (some of which I've got rid of by replacing expansive lawn with pigpen and pasture, and by marking up the walls) for more land and maybe an outbuilding that wasn't falling into the root cellar.
It's nice to feel like myself again, to be able to actually engage with the world outside my own head. I'm really enjoying the garden. The animals are... a little stressful, maybe even fairly stressful, since the ravens seem to be eating my piglets and are definitely carrying off live ducklings. On the other hand some of these things suggest integrative solutions: berry mesh over the haskaps which would be a great place to let natural-hatched ducklings and their mamas forage, and which would protect both ducklings in their season and berries in theirs, for instance. Over time I'd like the two halves, animal and plant, to merge more into a single system. The summer garden in the winter pig field is a start towards that.
Ok. Time to get rolling. It's good to be back.
On the other hand, last night we got a very very light frost and if I had planted out my melons they would have been toast.
It's interesting to see the frost patterns: in town it was a heavier frost and out here it was lighter, which is very unusual. Generally I'm a couple degrees colder. The pig field -- where the squash was -- had basically no frost by the time I got out there. The main garden -- luckily mostly brassicas and favas this year -- definitely had some crispy-feeling leaves but recovered just fine.
Some tomatoes are looking a little chlorotic and dark purple, stress/cold responses, but I don't think I lost any leaves even. There was also a really heavy dew.
I've put 7kg of rhubarb in the fridge. Dry beans, one full iteration of the tomato trial, corn, and some squash (lofthouse squash especially) are in the ground. Corn is up, both flour and flint, and interestingly although the flint corn was planted earlier it's not ahead. Not sure if that's the variety or the location -- flour is on that pig field south slope, while the flint is on the south slope off the main garden. Both were presoaked, as were the beans.
It's time to harvest spruce tips and get them vacuum sealed and into the freezer, and maybe toss some with sugar in a jar for fancy syrup. It's time to harvest and dry nettles, not quite time to harvest mint for drying yet. Apple petals have fallen. I had my first serious salad out of the garden yesterday, and some beef-and-broccoli-raab that reinforces how much I like the raab. It's quick, cut-and-come-again, can fit in the time after frost and before tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse (!) and it's tasty.
Radishes aren't doing much this year, weirdly. I hope the fall radishes do better.
Tomorrow Tucker and I are doing a run into Prince George, which is the biggest town in northern BC and where folks go when they can't get something locally. I haven't been there for a really long time, but I'm looking forward to stocking up on a bunch of things. We're going in Tucker's little car so I really shouldn't be able to get a plum tree, in line with my "no woody perennials" rule this year preperatory to moving.
Speaking of moving, I seem to be the only one concerned about it at the moment. Tucker has been living up here for two years and hasn't been comfortable in the community; he's said he doesn't want to spend another winter here and I think that's a sound instinct for him. On the other hand, he's travelling in August so he isn't likely to be moving that month, and July is definitely too soon to come to a consensus together. Moving in the winter is dodgy. The thought was to maybe move with A&E, but that's stalled out and I'd really like a backup plan.
The other group of folks we'd been talking about all moving together with have had some stuff come up, so that's not moving forward right now. In addition to the substantial distraction they've got going on, the real estate market is moving so quickly that we're priced out of the original area they were interested in. They'll need to make some decisions around trade-offs: size of closest town, winter climate, commute time to Vancouver/are ferries ok. I'm concerned that by the time those trade-offs are made we'll be priced out of wherever they decide is ok and they'll have to go through the process again.
It's weird because I think I'm the happiest with my current situation of everyone so I'm most ok staying put where I am another year or two. I am also maybe least tolerant of feeling like there's no time to come to an agreement together, and fearful of being left behind in the decisions. I think Tucker and A&E have generally more similar desires to each other than I do: they want to be closer into a big city, basically, and I want to be further out or closer to a smaller town. I'm willing to compromise some in order to get into this situation with some folks who can trade chore help, be interested in and aware of the property, and to get Tucker into a place he's more comfortable around people. Still, if it was just me... I probably would still move eventually, to a place where I have more space around me, but it would likely not be the same place I'd end up in a group decision.
Househunting is, at least, fun either way. I have been looking around at stuff and found a couple bigger acreages with little shitty houses on them around Quesnel that I'd be content with: end of the road, good wells, lots of space. I also found a truly amazing home near Kamloops with, um. Well, the outside looks normal with a deck and hedging cedars. The inside is... gold leaf, fancy tiles, and ornamental flourishes everywhere with ceilings that have carved gold relief. I'm very surprised by how much I like that look.
One of the weird parts of real estate in BC is that most homes on land are either old and falling down, or monster mansions with 5 bedrooms and a chandelier in the entryway. There's not really such thing as a utilitarian middle-aged home; I think this is because rural areas have been hollowing out for so long and only folks able to afford an estate move out of the city and build a new home. Covid and the ensuing remote work has really upended that, thus the shockingly fast skyrocket of land prices rurally. I think my little town, 1500-3000 people depending on how you count, has got at least 20 families from the lower mainland -- the real big city, not just the northern BC big city -- in the last year.
My current home is basically a very beautiful gothic-arch-cedar-lined vacation cabin; it's both too pretty and too small to be ideal for me. I got it because the land is magical and it has a good well, and at the time I only had one neighbour close by. would not at all mind trading some of the niceness of the house (some of which I've got rid of by replacing expansive lawn with pigpen and pasture, and by marking up the walls) for more land and maybe an outbuilding that wasn't falling into the root cellar.
It's nice to feel like myself again, to be able to actually engage with the world outside my own head. I'm really enjoying the garden. The animals are... a little stressful, maybe even fairly stressful, since the ravens seem to be eating my piglets and are definitely carrying off live ducklings. On the other hand some of these things suggest integrative solutions: berry mesh over the haskaps which would be a great place to let natural-hatched ducklings and their mamas forage, and which would protect both ducklings in their season and berries in theirs, for instance. Over time I'd like the two halves, animal and plant, to merge more into a single system. The summer garden in the winter pig field is a start towards that.
Ok. Time to get rolling. It's good to be back.
