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greenstorm...maybe you're asking, what's it like?
Right now I'm sitting at Gabe's laptop in the Big House, which is the dad's house. It's stupidly big with an open floorplan and a view of The Lake. I don't go in it much, cause it's not where I'm living-- just for laundry once in awhile and for the internet.
I'm living in The Yellow Schoolbus-- that's it's official title, if you want to be specific to anyone familiar with the property. It's got a plywood partition that makes it two rooms, and there are no seats and most of a wood floor installed. The rats get the front (shady) part, because high temps would be a problem for them, while I get the back (hot in the afternoons) part, cause I can open all the windows and not worry about cats eating me, and also I'm in the garden and not the bus during that time of day. True to my habit of distributed living, I spend a bunch of time in the hammock on Gabe's porch and in his kitchen, and also in the 'communal' kitchen (there's only me using it right now, but it had mice over the winter and the oven makes me cry, literally. The fridge used to, but is now squeaky clean, as is everything from critch-level up. Go team me!) and the communcal bathroom, which is shared by the vinyard workers (dust and dirt, but they don't pee on the floor, thank goodness, and they're only there in the morning, not in the evening when I shower. I don't mind them being around when I make breakfast)
During sunny days I'm mostly very happy. At night I'm usually lonely and a little angsty, except when I have visitors, am engrossed in something, or can get my self-absorbed head out of my ass (this happens less often than one might wish) and actually look around me at the wealth of beauty here. It never rains-- only has once or twice since I got here, but it sprinkles sometimes, and the dust gets deeper and deeper on the tractor roads around the property till it feels like warm flour up to your ankles in the sunshine. Every size of stone is represented in the soil, tiny billowy dust to sand to small stones to big ones the size of your head, all water-rounded and evenly distributed as if pre-mixed in the factory. Everything slopes down to the lake, though we don't border on it, and the sun rises and sets over the low mountains that cup it.
I'm picking up a suntan, all the usual bits plus a strip along my back where my shirt never quite meets my pants when I bend over that used to keep burning. My arms are gaining muscle, and I've learned to dig both right- and left-handed so I can do more in a day and also so I can avoid becoming grotesquely misshapen. The fat is melting off me, though I'm still full of female soft-- my days of being thirteen are definitely over.
I spend a lot of time in the garden, a bunch of time alone, and a little time with a couple of poeple. Gabe's gone out of town for the next couple of days, and greyhound is on strike, so I'm up here this weekend more-or-less alone. There are some things I have to mentally come to grips with so I think it'll be good for me. I haven't yet managed time without distractions, even yet. I seem to have got the hang of sleeping alone without angst, maybe because I've discovered trust in myself, or maybe it's because I trust Bob to want to be with me whenever I can so that seperation isn't some sort of precursor to rejection but merely something that allows us time to do other things and then come back refreshed to each other's company. How not like me is that? I haven't quite got the hang of being alone-alone though, through the daytime as well as the night, with co-workers but not really with friends to talk to. That's probably where this entry comes from, from the desire to just spin words to someone, somewhere, again.
At the same time I have spurts of anger, of trollishness, where I want to keep away from all people as if any presence or conversation were some unbearable intrusion. That happens sometimes, It's going on right now, so the one-way of livejournal is great for me. That' what I need to grapple with, that and my ability to be lonely-- I used to have that, and now it seems lost.
Meanwhile the garden is unrolling down the hillside like some fecund carpet, deep brown now with mushroom manure mulch but later to be green. We're experimenting with tomatoes, spiral-training them and trying a florida weave as well as stringing them. We're companion planting, tomatoes and onions, broccoli and beets, The Sisters planting of corn, squash, beans, and solanaceous (tobacco, pepper, or tomato) in clumps. We're hardening off vast numbers of tomatoes, digging and digging some more (Please, if you ever have the chance-- sheet mulch. It's so much nicer than digging so many years in a row) and planting in the sun. We have more plants than space, but we're too busy building beds for the main restaurant cash crops to squeeze the herbs and such in yet. Soon, though, they'll go in.
The saltwater pool was recently filled. The bathroom floor was just painted. In the last two weeks all the trees have leafed out so they now offer shade, and the hot-weather seeds are coming up. We have almond trees and straw potatoes. We're harvesting wild mint and alfalfa for iced tea at the restaurant, and they're selling it to people. Tomorrow I make up clover blosson rosepetal tea and we decide if they're gonna sell that too. I haven't gone to get groceries in a month because either time or rides don't permit, so I scrounge off the land and borrow Gabe's supplies till he gets tired of it and takes me shopping. I drink alfalfa tea every day and wear my coolie hat and don't get heatstroke. I lie in the kekuli when it's too hot, and I feel like I'm in a holy place.
Sometimes my head is too noisy to hear the earth here, even moreso than in the city, because I take the earth for granted here and because there are no distractions from the noise in my head here. This is a challenge I'll overcome this summer.
I haven't touched the lake yet. it scares me. The moonlight was bright enough to cast shadows last night, even though the moon was only a crescent. I rarely look up, but when I do there are birds- hawks flying, quail bobbing, or robins plundering my freshly dug beds for worms. There is birdsong all the time.
Every time we turn on the irrigation, there are rainbows.
Right now I'm sitting at Gabe's laptop in the Big House, which is the dad's house. It's stupidly big with an open floorplan and a view of The Lake. I don't go in it much, cause it's not where I'm living-- just for laundry once in awhile and for the internet.
I'm living in The Yellow Schoolbus-- that's it's official title, if you want to be specific to anyone familiar with the property. It's got a plywood partition that makes it two rooms, and there are no seats and most of a wood floor installed. The rats get the front (shady) part, because high temps would be a problem for them, while I get the back (hot in the afternoons) part, cause I can open all the windows and not worry about cats eating me, and also I'm in the garden and not the bus during that time of day. True to my habit of distributed living, I spend a bunch of time in the hammock on Gabe's porch and in his kitchen, and also in the 'communal' kitchen (there's only me using it right now, but it had mice over the winter and the oven makes me cry, literally. The fridge used to, but is now squeaky clean, as is everything from critch-level up. Go team me!) and the communcal bathroom, which is shared by the vinyard workers (dust and dirt, but they don't pee on the floor, thank goodness, and they're only there in the morning, not in the evening when I shower. I don't mind them being around when I make breakfast)
During sunny days I'm mostly very happy. At night I'm usually lonely and a little angsty, except when I have visitors, am engrossed in something, or can get my self-absorbed head out of my ass (this happens less often than one might wish) and actually look around me at the wealth of beauty here. It never rains-- only has once or twice since I got here, but it sprinkles sometimes, and the dust gets deeper and deeper on the tractor roads around the property till it feels like warm flour up to your ankles in the sunshine. Every size of stone is represented in the soil, tiny billowy dust to sand to small stones to big ones the size of your head, all water-rounded and evenly distributed as if pre-mixed in the factory. Everything slopes down to the lake, though we don't border on it, and the sun rises and sets over the low mountains that cup it.
I'm picking up a suntan, all the usual bits plus a strip along my back where my shirt never quite meets my pants when I bend over that used to keep burning. My arms are gaining muscle, and I've learned to dig both right- and left-handed so I can do more in a day and also so I can avoid becoming grotesquely misshapen. The fat is melting off me, though I'm still full of female soft-- my days of being thirteen are definitely over.
I spend a lot of time in the garden, a bunch of time alone, and a little time with a couple of poeple. Gabe's gone out of town for the next couple of days, and greyhound is on strike, so I'm up here this weekend more-or-less alone. There are some things I have to mentally come to grips with so I think it'll be good for me. I haven't yet managed time without distractions, even yet. I seem to have got the hang of sleeping alone without angst, maybe because I've discovered trust in myself, or maybe it's because I trust Bob to want to be with me whenever I can so that seperation isn't some sort of precursor to rejection but merely something that allows us time to do other things and then come back refreshed to each other's company. How not like me is that? I haven't quite got the hang of being alone-alone though, through the daytime as well as the night, with co-workers but not really with friends to talk to. That's probably where this entry comes from, from the desire to just spin words to someone, somewhere, again.
At the same time I have spurts of anger, of trollishness, where I want to keep away from all people as if any presence or conversation were some unbearable intrusion. That happens sometimes, It's going on right now, so the one-way of livejournal is great for me. That' what I need to grapple with, that and my ability to be lonely-- I used to have that, and now it seems lost.
Meanwhile the garden is unrolling down the hillside like some fecund carpet, deep brown now with mushroom manure mulch but later to be green. We're experimenting with tomatoes, spiral-training them and trying a florida weave as well as stringing them. We're companion planting, tomatoes and onions, broccoli and beets, The Sisters planting of corn, squash, beans, and solanaceous (tobacco, pepper, or tomato) in clumps. We're hardening off vast numbers of tomatoes, digging and digging some more (Please, if you ever have the chance-- sheet mulch. It's so much nicer than digging so many years in a row) and planting in the sun. We have more plants than space, but we're too busy building beds for the main restaurant cash crops to squeeze the herbs and such in yet. Soon, though, they'll go in.
The saltwater pool was recently filled. The bathroom floor was just painted. In the last two weeks all the trees have leafed out so they now offer shade, and the hot-weather seeds are coming up. We have almond trees and straw potatoes. We're harvesting wild mint and alfalfa for iced tea at the restaurant, and they're selling it to people. Tomorrow I make up clover blosson rosepetal tea and we decide if they're gonna sell that too. I haven't gone to get groceries in a month because either time or rides don't permit, so I scrounge off the land and borrow Gabe's supplies till he gets tired of it and takes me shopping. I drink alfalfa tea every day and wear my coolie hat and don't get heatstroke. I lie in the kekuli when it's too hot, and I feel like I'm in a holy place.
Sometimes my head is too noisy to hear the earth here, even moreso than in the city, because I take the earth for granted here and because there are no distractions from the noise in my head here. This is a challenge I'll overcome this summer.
I haven't touched the lake yet. it scares me. The moonlight was bright enough to cast shadows last night, even though the moon was only a crescent. I rarely look up, but when I do there are birds- hawks flying, quail bobbing, or robins plundering my freshly dug beds for worms. There is birdsong all the time.
Every time we turn on the irrigation, there are rainbows.
