Greenstorm's Journal

Being able to set Threshold's beating heart as the center of things, and to ring it with fruitfulness and generous plants.

Sitting on the bench by the long-disused firepit for awhile. Someone made that bench long before me, but it will be used while I'm here, I promise.

My corns. Saskatchewan rainbow, it's a plucky little thing just like gaspe. Saskatoon white, it's even and lush and generous. Always gaspe. And atomic orange that's growing in the face of so much crow devastation.

Having water to feed my garden. It's something to watch corn go from spiky dark green leaves to wide shimmering green.

Swelling cobs on the gaspe, sometimes three to a plant! Always a miracle.

Clover growing along the path to the garden that I walk so many times a day. I love that smell. It belongs to Threshold.

Avi fixing my hand-me-down pellet smoker, and inspiring a lovely dinner of pork tenderloin and carbonara and garden salad I would not have made for myself.

Roses.

The act of scooping duck water out of the pools and hand carrying it to water each newly planted tree and shrub in a clear and emotionally legible act of service and care that is equally legibly rewarded.

Weather that cools down finally.

My dishwasher and my vacmop, these remain miracles of time and cleanliness I wouldn't be able to achieve without them.

A call from Josh where I can talk about the garden without having to explain it first.

Living more in my own head than in my words, for once.

The anticipation of lying in my hammock even though I haven't put it up yet.

A big cool class of water before sleep.

Anyone who reads this and cares, I'm grateful for you too. Thank you and goodnight.

I cleaned the floors this morning before work so I could come home and walk around on clean, unsticky floors in feet that had been in sweat and mud all day. It felt glorious.

I can clean my floors easily so I can do that without having to decide I won't walk on my floor until I'm in for the day, or having to put slippers on and off, or anything like that. I can just clean them again.

This is the first time I've enjoyed insulated water bottles for cool water. How wonderful to have the extra gallon of water I left in the hot truck still be cool when I got back to it.

Cottonwoods on the landscape are always good for my heart; they're such good wildlife habitat and with things so hot they're also a welcome marker of subsurface water.

Too hot to cool so grateful past-self left me some leftover rhubarn-pulled pork and potatoes. That's one of my favourites!

Some of the cigarette ick from my new-to-me couch came off last night with the soft deck brush. I feel better now, and I know the tool to use if I go at it again.

A mama chantecler hatched out 8 surprise babies and she seems to be taking good care of them. I didn't think I'd be getting new chickens this year but I'm happy for it.

So far the garden is doing well in this heat.

There's a long weekend ahead and I'm looking forward to it.

My house is never too hot to be in, even upstairs in the livingroom. I have to keep the windows open at night and the curtains drawn during the day but that's not too big an ask.

Yesterday the sun was at just the right angle to send light through the back arched window, through the length of the house, onto the front door. July 26th is a celstial event as marked by my house clearly.

Tomorrow after work I get to wash the bug spray and sunscreen out of my hair!

And tonight I get to go to bed early, shower all this gunk and sweat off, and drink cool water in a cool room before sleep.

I may live in the only window in time that corn can be grown here. This heat, coming as it does in the summer - 50 years ago corn would not have grown here because it was too cold, and who knows what it'll be like in another 50 years.

I get my downstairs room back and thus can sleep better, quietly, coccooned in the earth under Threshold.

Vaccuum-mop thing is so great, I haven't felt this comfortable in bare feet on my floors in a long time.

I made boba so I had bubble tea tonight and I'll have more tomorrow.

Cool evening air is so lovely.

So are machines that wash my dishes and clean my clothes.

So much depends on a good well, and my well has never let me down, I'm so grateful.

I watered my corn today. Gaspe silks are lovely. The first batch of gaspe is perfectly out of sync with the other corns, while the second batch should catch their pollen perfectly.

My dogs love me an awful lot.

Good things:

Corns are starting to tassel: saskatoon white, atomic orange, morden, even one or two painted mountain if you look deep enough into the apex.

The neighbours are having a loud party and threw fireworks into the neighbour's field and looked like they started a fire, I was all ready to be fuming, but-- the kid who threw the firework came over to apologise, there was a lot of smoke but no fire, and they turned the deep bass music off by 11. There are still a ton of folks over there, lots of voices and loud conversation and some quiet music, but that's pretty reasonable and I'm feeling much better about the situation.

The dogs seem to understand that those folks aren't much of a problem, more-or-less, and sequester themselves in the basement if they need an escape.

If the dogs bring themselves in, I really doubt any bears or other predators will be by tonight. Maybe I should ask them to throw a party when I'm having issues.

Good company the last couple days, lots of conversations, and then company is going home tomorrow so I have some time to decompress over the weekend, do laundry, wash floors, find a sprinkler for my garden, do some more gardening, just breathe.

This afternoon's nap was lovely and much needed.

I have a neat spotty tomato growing in, I can't wait to see if the others on the plant are also spotted.

Goodness am I grateful for earplugs.

Mom gave me a birthday gift of a certain amount of money, which went towards a part-purchase of something I could not afford (anbd honestly still couldn't but) - a tineco vacmop. I've had it 36 hours and it honestly is the best; it vacuums and mops hard floors in a single pass. I've cleaned my kitchen floor twice so far. Even if the rest of it stays on my credit card until pig butcher in October I'm calling it worthwhile.

A person I didn't know very well came up to visit and for once I was not the first person in the conversation to say loosely "it's arbitrary the way we draw lines around what an organism vs an ecosystem is, a human is composed of lots of different genetic individuals like gut biota etc"

I am incredibly grateful for hoses, without which I'd have to bucket water.

Brassica carinata is amazing, I've eaten off it once or twice a day for quite some time now and intend to continue doing so.

The corn is growing so fast and I love it.

Avallu is a very good dog and accepted my friend.

Writing inspiration has come to me, a little, and I spent some time today working on a thing. It's almost done.

My hair is pretty right now, it's neat to look at and I like it.

And now I am so grateful for sleep.

I figured out what it was in my communication that led mom to cut down that side of the house. I feel so much better now.

Mom is gone home now, and home safe, and I'm down in the quiet basement for a couple nights until my next guest gets here. The guest after that will share a bed so after that I'm no longer limited to space.

Brassica carinata is the best. It's tasty and succulent.

My corn is beautiful <3 <3

Clean sheets, showered, few bugs. Home feels like luxury.

I should be working outdoors tomorrow, that's pretty great.

My yard is full of ducklings. They are cute.

The clothes dryer has such a soothing background hum-thump.

And I can slide into sleep, just like that.

Rest

Sex

Love

Conversation

Food

Rain

Good socks

Time with no deadlines

Good designers

My grass is growing so well this year. In the far back it's up to my chin, if not higher in some places. This is much better than last year. A good year for grass, a good year for biomass on my fields, a good playplace for the pigs.

Avallu was joyful in the tall grass: he jumped through it like a fish popping up out of a lake over and over, then lay down and rolled, then got up and did it again. When I went into the garden later he positioned himself so he could watch both me and mom.

Mom apologized. That meant she must have noticed how upset I was. When I came back down from writing she came up and said she was sorry, sincerely. I feel better about that, and more certain in my choice of coming up here to write instead of crying or yelling or who knows what down there if I tried to push through. I'm glad she saw me well enough to know it was needed.

I have a word for my mind-storms now. Meltdowns. It's neither the most elegant nor the most semantically accurate, but knowing that it's a thing really helps me to think about, understand, and handle when my mind goes to that place. This is a normal autistic thing and there are ways to handle it. It's still true that sometimes the only way out is through, but it's also true that I feel less guilty about them and more able to avoid the worst of them when I have any control over my environment. I also have more of a sense of perspective. Self-knowledge is always important for me and this is a big chunk of self-knowledge.

Tomorrow I both get a medical thing done finally...

...and I get to see Tucker, which will be most welcome, whatever else happens.

I had a day in the field today, I climbed a rock outcropping in the wind over fallen logs and looked down over a lake in a cauldron of spruce and dead pine.

And finally, gaspe is tasselling. It's about the same height it was the last two years when it tasselled, so that's interesting. It seems to be pretty uniform in starting to send up the tassels. I'm so glad. But also it'll probably be done way before the other corns. I'm glad I planted that second bed to try and pollinate for my crosses. Maybe I should plant another round in pots, just in case? But anyhow, gaspe is my corn and it might produce seed another year. This is always a miracle.

Big day, and some challenging bits. But still, with a lot of stuff there's a lot to be glad for:

Downstairs has mostly finished its shift from storage/shop/plant room to livingroom: the sofa from which to watch the woodstove is down there and in place, the storage shelves are mostly moved out to the shipping container. I've already spent some time on the couch - the whole room looks different from that angle - and although the room isn't aesthetic yet it's functional. My wheel has a place in it too. My house feels more settled and more like home all the time.

I found a recipe book of the things I made in 2015. I'm super excited. I'd thought it lost.

Today included a couple-hour-long nap which was much needed.

I planted some greens in the garden: a lettuce/chicory mix, a brassica mix, a small patch of napa cabbage, a row of diakon, a small patch of conventional cabbage that's supposed to be aphid-repellant. I'll plant more soon. Planting seeds is one of the best things for my soul. The garden is full.

The tomatoes are flowering nicely. Fruit by Aug 10th maybe? Depends on the heat. I love my tomatoes. I'm glad they're thriving despite the late start and growing outdoors somewhere they have no right to grow.

I uncovered my magic manna and painted mountain corns today, and one patch of early riser. I think more painted mountain and early riser survived than I thought. I am deeply grateful for this.

Along the same lines, "if I hadn't lost the hardware for the sofa feet just now I'd be annoyed at how hard it is to haul this couch around, but now I'm just really grateful to have found the hardware and have the couch fully functional"

One of my favourite online plant people is posting a ton of pictures of his tomatoes and corn. There is nothing better than garden pictures and someone talking a ton about them.

I had the realization that mom is the only person I mask completely and totally around. That's... quite an insight and I'm glad I had it. I am interested to see where it leads me. I don't think she knows what I love? Do I want to tell her before she dies? Hopefully I have some years to get to that point.

I have a bedside lamp on my side of the bed now and it makes evenings so much more comfortable.

Today I read several pages of an actual book for the first time in so so so long. It was a bunch of the chapter on corn in Jack Lazor's The Organic Grain Grower and it felt so nice to be pulled into written words for a little while and it's always a relief when my brain does something it used to be able to do but mostly has lost.

I can hear rain through my open window. It's such a nourishing sound.

All these ducklings are a delight, and the snowblower duck mothers are pretty good at their job.

I don't understand my mom, at all, why she comes up here and we don't talk and she powers through all this work here, but I do really appreciate all the wood she's put into the woodshed and the tidying/cleaning/garbage runs we've got done. And I-- if we were visiting in an apartment she'd be hauling me out to hike or look at museums or something, and I do much prefer this sort of activity to that.

I'm grateful for the people I'll get to see over the next couple weeks, and I am enjoying my sense of anticipation to see them: Tucker and Angus this coming weekend, most likely J in the week or two after that, Avi at the end of the month, maybe Josh midmonth even.

Tucker has been making it easy to talk to him in the evenings. I treasure that, though I need to remember it means only what it means and no more.

Even though mom and I don't talk, I don't feel lonely. And I'm not annoyed by her being here so long, as I sometimes am. I think my well for ambient social was so empty and now it's refilling. I really am grateful it's turned out this way on all those fronts.

And now to sleep, in the dark that finally arrives while I'm still conscious to experience it. Grateful always for the seasons, for knowing that things will turn and turn again.

PDA would like to announce we won't be doing hard categories. Still, I'm going to do these in the evenings, whatever they look like.

Today mom and I did a tremendous amount of packing and organizing my basement, moving things into the shipping container, getting distracted halfway through to take garbage to the dump, going to pick up feed, getting distracted from unloading the feed by cleaning out the enclosed trailer and power washing it, and then finally unloading feed. Later this weekened we'll hopefully get the couch into the downstairs. This is a tremendous amount of progress towards getting stuff more useable, which I guess is always an iterative process, and I'm grateful for mom's help and for the way her presence will linger whenever I use the new space. Too, I'm excited and anticipatory towards having a couch downstairs in front of the fireplace; previously I've just sat on the floor. The kinds of things I miss in people, being able to look far forward months and years ahead towards known wuantities: I get those from Threshold. I'll sit on the couch this winter and watch the woodstove and pet the dogs and maybe even fall asleep there. I mean, life happens, but that kind of commitment isn't something any person is willing to offer me now and the fact that I have this same home who loves me means especially a lot in that context.

My past self, who made grape applesauce, was a genius and I love my grape applesauce. The apples are swelling on the trees again.

I have enough of a base tan that being outside all day didn't burn me. Thank goodness.

My baby ducklets are very cute. The next cohort seems to be beginning to hatch out now, that'll be the 4th. The 2nd cohort, mothered by the snowblower duck line, are especially good foragers and those mama ducks are ferocious protectors. I'm lucky they came into my life (in the super weird way they did, which, it's a story I'll tell later)

A year with rain and heat, my garden is pleased. The corn is straining at the floating row cover, I'd let it free but underplanted with gaspe later and it's not quite big enough to be on its own yet. But. It will be soon.

Whiskey has been very, very snuggly and though that's hard for me sometime it's good to feel loved.

This time of year is so good. It's not light out forever but the days are still long, it's warm, things grow so fast. The garden is full of promise.

I made a pulled pork that wasn't too sweet. Secret ingredients: rhubarb, and Josh's dry rub. Really tasty.

Tomorrow I signed myself up for a medicine bag workshop and I'm looking forward to the ambient social of it.

I have enough people coming through in the next few months that I suspect I'll enjoy my solitude a lot when I get it, and I also enjoy the (wide range) of people.

Bed will feel very good tonight after unloading a literal ton of feed and unfortuately handling most bags a couple ties each in the process, powerwashing, carrying who knows what all day...