Greenstorm's Journal

I've been pushing myself harder than I should to get the garden in. We've had weather that goes back and forth between too hot and dust-dry to work the soil and rain (that clay soil really needs to only be touched at the right time), mostly courtesy of these very intense drying winds we had for the last two or three weeks. I don't want to complain too much about it -- basically the prairies are all on fire right now, with tens of thousands of evacuees -- but it has impacted the pace at which I can put things out there.

Something is happening with the garden out there. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's what I've always wanted from a garden. I'm putting in permanent paths, originally because I can't remember anymore where things are supposed to be if they're invisible. I'm putting in more bones, hazels lining the paths and shaping edges of things with trees. I'm putting in perennial flowers this year? Echinacea and sedum and daylilies and that sort of thing.

And then of course the tomatoes are going in, I now have at least one of each variety in the soil. The sweet peppers are in, the hot peppers will go in today hopefully.

It's becoming something recogniseable. Not an ad-hoc this or that, but places within the larger place, an entity that swirls through time forwards as well as back into its history. I love it here.

I was chatting with someone online the other day and realized I've somehow come into the crone stage of life unexpectedly. I never would have thought I'd take issue with interacting with humans as much as I do now, but here we are. I don't share values with anyone anymore. It's possible this is still the remains of the breakup with Tucker and the way that's playing out, but I don't think so. Maybe something about how the bad things in the world are getting closer and the way folks react to that. I'd write about that more but I've finally learned discipline around keeping away from emotional things now that I'm unwell: every feeling indulged is minutes to hours I lose from later in the day doing other things, eating or gardening or rescuing a gosling with lost parents and finding it a foster (yesterday's task).

Maybe that's why I have trouble handling people right now. There's anger sitting next to that feeling of being dismissed and I don't really want to work through it until the garden is in for the year. That does sound pretty classic breakup, no?

I'm very very happy with my selection of tomatoes and peppers this year. I didn't get everything I wanted in the ground -- woad and weld but not coreopsis for dyeing, no flax, and the squash and corn are going in late. I did get some juglans in the ground, though, and I have a fun selection of blackcurrants to put in the wet part of the back field this year, and some swamp white oaks for around them.

I'm getting a sense of how much land I can handle in annual crops in my current state, and perennializing the harder-to-handle parts, I guess.

I follow a couple of accounts in gaza of kids who remind me of me when I was that age, doing things they love as best they can. One of them is a gardener who has cats, he shows us every time he gets a new tomato or squash on the plant as the flower fades. I know one of them will eventually turn up dead, or rather, the feed will go dark and I'll have to assume that's happened. There's no way out for the folks there.

And now LA is rising up against-- well. That's just happening now, calling in the military. And I think, what would it be like to have a society that rises up to put itself in harm's way for you (I mean, at the same time as the rest of the society is putting you in harm, to be fair) instead of thinking it's too hard and letting it happen?

Dark thoughts interwoven with gardening as we move solsticewards.

So I went in to the doctor on Thursday. I'd been planning to walk in, since I knew she was working the walk in that day, but when I showed up with a bunch of papers they said normally walk-ins don't fill out paperwork but they had an appointment with her that afternoon that had just opened up. So, I went home and came back at 2:30 with a bunch of papers: my summary of symptoms by order of priority and what I'd tried and what I wanted to try next, a work form for a sick note, the article my counselor had sent me for GPs managing autistic clients that talks about comorbidities etc, and... um, something else which I've forgotten, which is why I make lists.

We had an hour to catch up on the last 6 months, decide what to do next, fill out the form, etc. Obviously we did not get through it all. I went in with the intention of taking some time off work. Long story short:( blah blah blah )

There's lots of good news though, starting with the "you need to be dead" voice/feeling being pretty much gone since I stopped the vyvanse. That is *huge* obviously.

I've been managing to run the dishwasher once a day because the cats need clean bowls to eat out of, but all other cleaning has been off the table. This morning managed to wash the downstairs sofa for the first time in awhile (Solly gets pretty muddy and goes on it) and sort of clean my pottery area a little.

I put the handles on some pottery two days ago, it's been a long time since I had energy to work on that sort of thing at home.

4/7 house animals went in to the vaccine clinic yesterday. Some hadn't seen a vet since 2018. It completely flattened me for several hours and used everything I had -- I didn't even have energy to make tea and breakfast until after it all, and after a nap. But: cats all microchipped finally, treated with a tapeworm-inclusive dewormer that we're not allowed to get over the counter here, Thea got her vaccine boosters thank goodness, and all the animals hated it but were pretty good about it and have somehow already forgiven me. Thea went in a carrier in the back of the truck and didn't even throw up! She also did well on leash and appreciated three people all petting her at once, and she tolerated a little puppy running up to her very well. Somehow she is officially a senior dog now, eep. Let me tell you though, three yowling cats in the truck at once is a sound I won't soon forget, and I learned that Demon can jump over a door with a standing start. Like, a door door. This goes under health stuff because their health is my health and because literally they kept me alive over the last months, and no doubt will do so again.

I've had the energy to text a little more with partners and friends, though nowhere near enough for a call yet apparently.

I even had the energy to open my mail and see the furikake Josh sent me, which will be nice and easy on rice, or rice and salmon.

I'm starting to think about writing up the ad for the pigs, about taking the last couple weeks of garbage to the dump, and maybe even vacuuming. Not there on any of them yet, but it has at least crossed my mind.

( Tired of medical stuff? I sure am. )

In other news I potted up my F2 heirloom mini x baby jade seedlings, there's time nice variation there. I set up some lights in the basement after clearing out some of my closet for pottery supplies (the closet is right next to the wheel). After those tomatolets and some of the peppers got potted up I ran out of shelving, so I need more shelving to set up more lights on. I'd been going to put them in the nutri-tower but I can't find the clippies to set it up.

I need to replant one set of peppers, and finish winnowing down which tomatoes I'm planting this year. I'm down to 70 varieties, which is pretty good honestly. I also want to remember to plant a bunch to sell.

Obviously I need to grow a bunch of the F2s I produced last year, some of my good favourites, some new quick red ones, and some new fancy ones. The F2s really need a good quantity of grow-outs so it starts to limit the rest.

Some of my micro tomatoes from the micro tomato project are forming baby tomatoes, they're carrot leaf plants and I can't wait to see what happens! They may have brown or large fruits.

I also found some carbon x zesty green F1 seeds which is amazing and I really hope they grow. They were in a tiny weirdly-shaped tomato and there are only a couple seeds, that happens sometimes with hand pollination and bagging.

Meanwhile the geese are laying-- I had sorted out a few extra nests for them on the weekend. They're adorable and I want goslings this year. Not sure if I want to incubate or not. The ducks are in spring plumage and therefore gorgeous. The silkies remain tiny and cute.

Woodstove is out, it's been warm and the house has been spiking in the afternoons due to the angle of the sun. It's supposed to be cold the next little while so although I've cleaned the chimney I need to clean the ash box and maybe start another fire or two for a couple days.

The government is already sending out "watch for burning bans" ads over fb and youtube, we're all nervous about the spring and fires.

There was a glaze fire Sunday night in the studio kiln, it cooled yesterday and so we can open it after work today. I've been seized by catastrophizing that my new glazes have run all over all the shelves and wrecked them. They're probably fine. We fired at cone 5 with a 12 minute hold instead of the previous cone 6 because the kiln was overshooting some so they should run less than previous, and I was pretty careful.

Tucker, his partner, and her kid are going to visit some friends for the eclipse. I made a set of eclipse mugs for them all, one of the first times I've worked to an idea I clearly visualized in advance, and I'm very curious to see how they come out. It takes skill to be very deliberate in a creation like this and I'm still only building skill slowly and in slow kilnload-by-kilnload iterations.

I haven't been able to throw in awhile, it seems like an exceptionally bad idea with the migraine hanging over everything, so I have some ideas piling up.

Today I'm still getting visual artifacts but am in much less incipient pain so yay! And also bad to work. Oh well.

Big update infodump I guess. I think I'd be writing more if screens weren't so weird and uncomfy. Maybe I should start vlogging or something. Is there an audio equivalent?

It warmed up. Animals all seem good. Solly is the world's biggest lap dog, maybe literally. Body abilities still slowly eroding and work continues to be poorly managed. Happy nonetheless. Doing some carvings on my pottery from time to time. Carried so much water and food. New laundry sink downstairs is excellent, as is calf sled. Lots of snow now to keep the house warm since the last batch settled off. Relationship stuff good.

Tapped out of counselling midway because of a shutdown. Need to figure out how/who to talk to about leave of absence maybe. 60% sure I won't survive my job till this time next year because of PDA-related stuff. It's scary, but I don't have enough bandwidth to address it, I'm just surviving.

It's later than usual for snow but not ridiculously so. October has been warm; this last day or two looks like it's finally going below freezing for good for the winter.

Things I have not done that I need to do:

Pull up the hoses and coil them

Power wash hoses, snowshovel, nets, anything else that's been sitting in the mud for the last two weeks since we finally started getting rain

Put my chainsaw pants on and actually cut up all the logs

Screw together the field fence

Put a roof on the greenhouse

Move the birch wood in

Build one or two doghouses with pallets

Build a roof over the feed area, or build a feed shed

Pick up weird bits from the yard in prep for the snowblower (Solly makes this hard, since she re-scatters things everyday)

Spread the woodchip piles

Put the rototillers "indoors" somewhere

All that said I'm still pretty easily winded from covid, and when I do too much in a day I get dizzy. Yesterday I spent the full day at the pottery studio -- this month Sundays seem to be when it's open, and hopefully that continues -- and by the time I got dinner in me the room was just spinning. I'm back at work now and it's definitely a struggle.

I've got a bunch of tomato seeds fermented and drying, though, the corn's in and there were some gorgeous gaspe x saskatoon white ears with a peaches-and-cream pattern in the mix. I pulled in a karma miracle, sungreen, sweet baby jade x "heirloom" micro, taiga, and sweet cheriette plant to do some crossing this winter, and I need to start some micros.

Pottery is super fun. Having the wheel in my house really helps; my skill is improving so quickly when I'm able to work even a little most days. I still haven't got a slurpee-cup-height cylinder thrown but I'm only an inch or two away. Most recently I've started attaching handles. I have two shapes I like: one is a classic rounded bellied shape and the other is a very geometric conic flare; I can make the former but not the latter. I'm learning so much all the time: besides handles, the most recent bit is that these big pieces need a lot of material left at the bottom, to be trimmed off, for stability. Funny that I've just learned to clean up the bottoms and take extra material away. Each technique has its place.

I've been working with two clays: p300 and m332, both by plainsman. the p300, a porcelain, is like sewing with silk. It does whatever I ask it to do immediately, it holds its shape. The m332 is like carpentry, it has a significant set of physical limitations and strengths. It's sandy and red and has absolutely gorgeous potential for texture, where the porcelain is pure white and smooth and I end up being uninspired by the surface except to cover it with glaze.

Kitten has settled in as a full member of the household. He still sucks on any bare skin he can find, but otherwise functions like a very energetic, exploratory tiny cat. He harasses the other cats, who set boundaries; climbs the curtains and shelves; snuggles lots; and sits on my lap and helps with the wheel. I think he wants to be called Bear or Little Bear. He's also apparently a smoke cat, and not a black one. That is, he looks black but his undercoat is white, and his belly is developing white longer hairs too. Between him and Solly it's feeling very animally lately.

Covid took my sense of smell but not of taste, and I found it remarkably easy to eat for a couple weeks. I think I didn't realize how processor-intensive food is for me until that went away for awhile. There's just so much going on in the whole nose/sinus area. Things are back to normal now, more or less, and I'm enjoying the bergamot in my earl grey tea again.

There's probably more but my cat is sucking loudly on the inside of my elbow and it's distracting. I should talk about eating with people from separate rooms over thanksgiving, but that might need to fade into obscurity.

Dog better.

Puppy slowly integrating with dog.

Friend found two kittens on her 25 acres, one died, the other is in my spare room pending a FIV test. Have never had a kitten before, it's 5-6 weeks old. 5-8 weeks is the fearless imprinting stage. It is very tiny, very affectionate, very active, very cute, and very catlike. It has a loud purr and a silly meow. Current plan is for it to go down to a rescue on the coast (rescues up here are all full) but we'll see. After a FIV test it can hang out with my cats if all are willing.

First frost was last night. I have yet to see the extent of the damage. I hadn't brought tomatoes in to ripen. Yesterday I got home at 9pm and had to do chores and kitten stuff, and I'm in the office today, so.

Have to give a presentation to a bunch of highschoolers about forestry in two weeks. I'm thinking themes will be "everything is connected" and "monitoring/data and always learning is important" and the spot is a stream so I'll tie that in since everything that's done on the landbase flows downhill.

Kilnload of stuff at the studio is cooling right now, this will be my second firing in Fort (it's not all my stuff but it has a bunch). First firing with these glazes over a red clay. Very curious about it.

Scrambling to do work-adjacent stuff before a deadline. Have had a headache for over a week. Just want to lie around with kittens and puppies. Such is life.

I get clogged up trying to write everything, so let's try some simpler micro-posts

1) Rain. Only a small amount, but it's here. The only two times it's rained lately are right after I water the garden.

2) Plumbing/foundation/taking the waterline right back to the well is done. My water pressure is great. The sand appears to be mostly out of the system (makes sense, it had been accumulating for a long time) and my water is great. It tastes better too, unsurprisingly.

3) My body is having some issues. Possibly intense sinus stuff exacerbated by concrete dust etc. Need time to clean the house thoroughly but need to work. Still, working through things like cleaning all the laundry in the house (dust got into drawers and beds etc) a little at a time.

4) Ducklings and goslings are adorable and growing faster than seems possible. V cute. Reset more in the incubator.

5) Eating is hard even though I have like 70lbs of pork salami back from the butcher.

6) Starting to finally plant things.

7) Trees got taken down on the south side of the property. Feelings about that. The arborist was super skilled. Good to have the light on the garden. Gonna be a lot of tree processing.

8) Did I mention it's nice to have water?

9) Planning a week-long trip this summer w/ housesitter. Involves crossing the border. Anxious about it.

10) Plumbing emergencies aside, worked my way into positive cashflow though still need to deal with a bunch of debt. Still working away at this but it's definite progress.

11) The cats are extra snuggly lately.

12) My baby orchard is doing well.

13) Avallu is super happy with hanging out in the back with me.

14) I will get a puppy for Thea by the end of next summer. Now to decide from who, etc.

15) Garden <3

16) Pottery <3 Enjoying a red clay body to play with, thinking of neat glaze ideas.

17) Had another 32C day, and last frost has happened just recently. Seasonal signs going by very fast because of the heat.

I've been dreaming hard the last couple weeks. These are the long, complex, deeply social dreams I used to have when I was younger; days or months or a lifetime passes and I have enmeshment and intimacy with people. Some of those people exist in real life. Sometimes upon waking I find that they never did and that's pretty devastating because my feelings of care and connection remain.

I also haven't been writing much about non-garden things. Whatever is going on with me has made it difficult. To describe it I will conceptualize writing as having four components: having an idea to write about, being able to form concepts into words, actually doing the push to start (executive function?), and the physical labour of viewing a screen and navigating a keyboard and web interface. Right now I can do the first two but not the two. Bits of things to say float around in my head but I can't sit down and dig into them.

Normally writing feels companionable, clarifying, and positively connecting. I'm putting myself out into the world as myself (this is a practice for me that requires constant, er, practice, which is why this journal is public). Anticipating that connective feeling usually drives me to write in the same way that anticipation of a conversation with a friend might drive you to use your phone. There's usually not a barrier to me for starting. Lately I'm unable to anticipate or conceptualize that feeling in advance so I'm not able to start easily.

Furthermore my body is tired all the time, my elbow had been hurting, and there is still something weird with my vision. I quite often sit or lie there thinking of exactly what to say but the physical experience of writing feels overwhelmingly uncomfortable to me. I have an optometrist appointment this week so we'll see if there's an obvious cause for the vision; if not I'll follow up with my doctor because it has been awhile with this blurry spot in my left eye, with difficulty focusing, and with a patchy/bleeding overlay on light surfaces. Luckily basketweaving seems to have fixed my elbow. I probably just needed to work the unused accessory muscles hard.

Having said that it would be good to find a good speech to text device.

On the opposite end of that I've been doing an evolution deep dive and every once in awhile there's a Stephen Hawking quote. I cannot tell you how soothing it is to hear an AAC (augmentive/alternative communication) device being used. Part of my autism learning has been exposure to folks with situational mutism, that is, folks who sometimes lose the ability to speak but other times are fine with speaking. I get those periods, and I get periods where I can force myself to speak but it's really really uncomfortable. Having just one person in my awareness who uses AAC sets me at ease on an unexplainably deep level, like maybe someday I can do that too when I need it.

I've been pretty busy lately. I'm still very very tired a lot but I've been able to spend a couple hours at a time outdoors somedays. I took two day-long basketweaving workshops and learned to make willow baskets (!!) which felt really joyous and fun. The first one was on Friday, my Friday off, and was a small class full of delightful people including the person who runs my local food bank. It was a nice chat-and-work day. The second class was on Sunday, it had more people and was a lot quieter but I still found so much joy in making the basket. Not quiet pleasure, but actual joy, like a leaping of the heart.

I seem to be able to connect to the things in front of me right now. I may not be connecting well to the internet but every time I see my baby apple trees and tomatoes I'm happy. Those baskets and my pottery feel good. A seed exchange with the food bank person was lovely and I like her generally. It remains such a relief to experience joy and connection again after a winter without.

Some things are more complicated. The pottery studio in town seems to be turning from a "show up sometimes to volunteer" to "carefully navigate people to find out information and push a little but maybe ultimately be a structural/organizing force myself". I'll do that if need be but I'm a little bemused. I've been able to dodge the garden club and landrace gardening organization; I've been good at organizing long enough to know that the second I take anything on I'll be running the whole thing. It may be that if I want the studio to stay open I need to step in, though.

That's always how they getcha. This might be a record timetable for being sucked in though.

Also complicated is stuff with Tucker. With the exception of that one evening (which is scarring from years of society and probably relationships using "your partner feels hurt in this situation" and "you shouldn't be poly because it's bad" and which I totally understand) he's been really present and loving and available. Realizing that I have no obligation to interact with him, I am wondering if I'd like to explore how our interactions could be if 1) he's not in a job where he's super burnt out and 2) I have my mind and sense of enjoyment back. Both those things are true now and they might not have been true for a very long time. I guess we'll see how things go and I'll self-monitor.

Meanwhile counseling today will involve a deep dive into my symptoms that might be medication side-effects (this counselor has lots of experience with autistic folks on various medications, we tend to react differently), some way to track symptoms and make decisions about trade-offs, and hopefully a strategy to approach my doctors and an approach to deciding what do to next. I'm feeling woozy a lot but happy, and I think I need to clear up the woozy before I'm driving 4 hours a day dodging logging trucks on resource roads. If I were in the city it would be fine, but with this much driving it is not.

More random things: donated a bunch of seeds to the burgeoning local garden club for them to give away as prizes, that may count as having given 120 or so packets of seed away locally. Big win.

Food bank can take both eggs and inspected frozen pork. Come to think of it, I wonder if the local teaching kitchen would mind hosting a bacon workshop? That might let me get out from under some pork belly. Contributing to the food bank is a win-win-win; I get to support the part of my community I most want to support, I don't have to run a perishable food retail business (though maybe I can tax write-off a sufficiently big donation?), and folks get food.

Cats are eating 1/2 can a day of wet food mixed with 1/2 can of water each. Their energy levels and coat quality have noticeably increased.

I guess volunteering with the pottery studio is volunteering? I've been looking for something to volunteer with for years here but it's mostly only during working hours. For instance the health and wellness fair that has all the clubs and volunteer folks put out a booth and people from town can go look is Tuesday afternoon, with just a touch of after work time.

I ordered a new, bigger collar for Avallu. He'll let me brush his right feather but not his left so I'm glad I'm working on it a little at a time. He's really enjoying this routine brushing, as am I. He's getting extra snuggly. Now if only I could maintain a routine.

Did I mention I have like 275 apple seedlings growing? Extraordinary. I feel so lucky.

I've been listening to a podcast called "Evolution Talk" lately. I was initially skeptical about 10-15 minute episodes written in an easy-to-digest style since I normally like very fact-based deep dives. The guy comes from a radio play background too, and has voice actors for folks like Charles Darwin. I've found over time though that it's a delight: short enough episodes that I can usually keep my attention through one without having to turn it off and rest, and he's a very clear but comprehensive thinker. He also does a bunch of series on a topic and he really digs into subjects like popularly-unknown folks who worked on pieces of the idea of evolution, multiple theories and how they're supported, etc. He also has his sources on his website which is becoming a requirement for me to take something onboard.

It's been raining and snowing and raining and sleeting. My towels are out on the line and have been for a couple days. On the other hand it's supposed to be 25C next weekend? This is a very springy spring.

Anyhow, very long update but I'm still in here. I'm just less physically and emotionally able to internet than before.

Tired but not completely dead after going to the thing on the weekend.

I think the medication reduction (and shift in time of taking it) is helping. I seem to have roughly 12-14 hours after taking the pills that I need to be able to sleep, so if I take them a couple hours before bed I'm lucid a little earlier. But also 75mg just makes me way, way less exhausted than 100mg.

I probably gave away 70-80 packets of seed on the weekend, maybe a little more? I like doing that. I need to come up with a better system for packaging seed, though. Portioning it out and labelling it is slow and if I wait to do it till right before the seeds go out my PDA kicks in. I think I need to leisurely design labels and fill packets earlier in the winter. This is significantly less seed given away than a year or two ago (I think my max was a thousand packets one spring?) but it's all local, and that's nice.

I should explore how I feel about taking money or not for things I make with my therapist, probably with the one who I vibe with more spiritually/nature-relatedly. I haven't seen that one in awhile, and I should. The one I'm seeing right now is the PDA strategies and therapy modes geek, which serves a very different need. I'm pretty glad I have both of them. I feel really good when I give away what I make, but I also feel like "the weird one" again and that can be kinda rough? I don't get that feeling too often, since I don't often violate important social norms (like our capitalistic mode of reciprocity).

Geese are laying. Swans are coming back to the next town over, where they will blanket the fields in what looks like living snow as they glean grain before continuing on their migration. They're usually here for about a week, and I should probably drive down and soak them in. They are beautiful. I hope they're not hard hit by Avian Influenza this year: the migratory birds carry it and spread it.

I won't, since I'm not entirely in my right mind with some medication stuff happening. But:

This has been a year of tremendous loss for me. Not just the loss of a planned community and a partner, but also of a lot of trust in people: trust that folks who love me, care about me, and relate with me will tell me what's going on. I think I've been deliberately misdirected, withheld from, and lied to more in this last year or two by people I love than at least I ever figured out before, about anything except poly (I have come to expect to be lied to and withheld information from in the beginnings of someone's poly journey).

That is pretty dark. We'll see if it survives the light of whatever comes once my body has some sort of chemical adjustment.

On the other hand, this is the year I really get my 12-year-old self back, with my joys and my interests. That means a lot. I have bags of seeds that I grew. Today I wore clothes I made and snuggled with my animals.

People show up in a kind of attenuated way; not with deep intimacy, but certainly with care. There is, after everything, no one who feels truly safe and comfortable to talk to. There are people who we enjoy being around each other. My foot in the human world is light sometimes, and it feels strange.

I've come to extra value my mom. She is still there. Who knew she'd be the last one standing? Actually, no, she's always been the last one standing. She's too stubborn to go down. I guess we share that.

Tonight I'll draw a card, or some cards, from my deck in observation of the human new year. I'll drink some water and sleep. Tonight I can't see the future beyond that.