Greenstorm's Journal

It's equinox today. I went to the grocery store and inside an older man was saying to one of the shelf-stockers "it's the first day of spring today" so I'm not the only one in town that tracks it. I like that.

I sent in a bunch of my disability paperwork today, the parts I needed to write. Next week I go in and the doctor and I together fill out her part, then theoretically the clinic sends that plus all my medical stuff for the last year in to the insurance folks, and also make a copy for me (which 1. lets me know what it says 2. lets me know when they have it assembled and theoretically have sent it and 3. gives me a copy in case they forget to send it and I need to send it myself). Yes of course I'm charged for all of it.

The Canadian Potters facebook group mug exchange is coming to an end for this year. They partner people up, I think kind of randomly, and then we send each other mugs. I sent two, unsurprisingly, because one was a bright fun bigger one and the other was a dark textured slinky shaped one and sending two is only barely more expensive than sending two. Sending the box cost me $50, $7 of which was a fuel surcharge. Small-business-friendly government my ass.

Anyhow, part of the exchange is that when we receive our mugs we post a picture of them on the group. So there have been a ton of really neat mugs posted to the group lately. I enjoy groupings of art on the same theme made by lots of different people more than I enjoy one person's whole art display, generally, though a chronological series of works can be fun too. I both love seeing when a posted mug is something I've done or know how to do, and when it's a choice I've deliberately not made or don't know how to do.

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I've been thinking lately about how, when the ability to clone files basically for no money showed up, such that any show or picture or music could be infinitely-ish reproduced for free-ish, we took on a huge social project to convince everyone that making copies of things was stealing. It crept into home plant propagation fairly soon thereafter. During the first part of covid everyone started doing workshops online, then paywalls went up around those too, so showing someone how to do something for free isn't as much a thing anymore.

I can't help but think we could have engaged in a social project to convince people that folks had rights to food and shelter, or to not being killed by [transmissible viruses, bombs, school shootings, school bombings, food poisoning, lead poisoning, lead poisoning in food, air pollution, mental health issues, not-so-secret police, being put in cages and not fed or whatever, floods, seiges, deliberately withheld medical care, exposure all on its own, etc etc etc take your pick] but instead we spent our social capital quite the other way.

I know food is more invisible to folks than computer files. It also has a little more of a base cost -- more now with oil prices going up and fertilizer markets being used as political leverage, and even more with both Canada and the US shuttering so many ag programs and the Ukraine being somewhat down for the count. Because of that base cost we're more able to accept that we can make a lot of it, but it's ok to not give to people. I guess it was practice for the rest of it.

And yes, I'm leaving land out of that equation for the moment.

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We had those windstorms awhile back. The power didn't go out somehow, but it still got me making candlesticks, and then with the Iran war that stepped into making olive oil lamps. They need to go through the kiln before I can test them, and of course there are no olive trees here (apparently till recently 80% of olive oil was for light and lubrication, back when these lamps were used) so that one project line is turning along slowly until the next kiln fire.

I ordered another 3 cord of wood, which I need to stack somewhere, so I'll be solidly warm next winter.

It's light a lot now. I mean, equinox, theoretically it's light half the time, but when I spend a lot of time sleeping or resting a lot of the day doesn't count. I want to be outside.

*

I'm not settling into gardening like I usually do. Illness/PEM from doing too much? PDA from being forced into the disability paperwork etc for months? State of the world? My house being essentially a disgusting heap of whatever since I've been doing survival things and not cleaning it, and also the floor is falling off so it's harder to clean? Not having had a conversation with another human this year? Or meds?

I still really haven't recovered from... all the stuff. Teaching classes, pushing to do one more thing and then one more thing as the fall stretched on long without much snow on the ground, PMDD meds wobble and then medical stuff, and a steady dribble of disability correspondence.

The hope was that, from last full moon to next, I could take a month off and just kind of recover and regroup.

Well, what happened is that I did an impromptu cleaning bee with some folks at the clay studio. We've had a ton of people through there, so it was nice to do some of the project stuff together (sand and kiln wash shelves, turn over some reclaim, organize some things) and load the big kiln full of bisque; the one guy who comes in only on his two-week shifts had a crate full of scuplture, the homeschool group had a lot of stuff, and two of the studio people had taken a wheel class in the next town over so they had more stuff too. It was a fun and varied kiln load. I got someone else to do the next-day check and I left relatively early so it wasn't too bad for me, and my mental health really needed a volume of communication with folks that wasn't authoritarian/disability logistics related.

My vet offered a sale on pet dental work, and so I booked Thea in for next week since she has some tooth stuff she's been waiting on. It isn't uncomfortable but it needs to happen at some point, so a sale seems like the right point. It will mean taking her into town (2 hour drive) in the pre-dawn dark (which is admittedly anything before 8:30am these days) in unknowable road conditions, and sleeping in the truck while her surgery is done.

It was inevitable that a -20 cold snap would be forecast for next week. We've been bobbling around freezing or just slightly below, again, still. It's normal in Fort for cold snaps to alternate with warmer snaps, not really fully above freezing or just a little above, where the snow compacts and there's a reprieve from the brutality of real cold. Our last snap was in the -15Cs and was brief; the next is supposed to be in the -20Cs and not so brief. There's supposed to finally be a lot of snow; we have some but not much right now.

The last couple days were warmish so I went out and sledgehammered some things off the ground (things freeze to the ground and ice gets harder the colder it is, so sometimes on the warm days they can be moved. In this case there was a concrete block that had blown down right where I wanted to snowblow, and some pallets lying on the ground. The yard is clearer now, which is good.

Then last night a big wind came up, gusts up to 80kph, and unsurprisingly the pigpen's metal roof started to peel off. I went out with the power drill and climbed up there. The wind was enough to pull some of the screws through the metal and fold it in half backwards, so I folded it back and screwed some wooden strips overtop, so the screws went through wood, then the metal, then into the structure. While I was doing that the roof was bucking and lifting and very slippery since it was angled and topped with snow. I did not slide off (the drop would only have been 4 feet from the back, so I wasn't so worried) but I did get some bruises. It was holding an hour later but the wind continued all night; I have not yet gone out to check. Suspecting the wind might be ab issue, I'd used hurricane ties on the rafters when I made it, so I'm actually quite pleased with myself. Been a couple years since I made a pigpen fix in the middle of Winter Weather. Of course, it doesn't leave me much energy for today.

It's looking clear and sunny through the window. It's inviting me to come out and totter around a bit in the sun, and of course everyone needs to be fed.

But you can see how I haven't had much rest. I've had the mental fortitude to not do too much pottery at least, crawling into bed around 4pm instead of taking an hour of wheel time at night.

Descent into meds:

Oh! Good news from the gut meds I was given by my doctor: things feel weird in there still but these really help. Things seem to pretty much go in the right direction, with minimal pain comparatively, and at more or less the right speed. I don't worry everything is going to fall out of my stomach if I lean over, and I suspect I'm breathing in a lot less gut contents at night. AND I'm feeling a little less lightheaded, or lightheaded less frequently, which I'm chalking up to keeping liquid in my body better. Interestingly one of them (Accel hyoscine or something?) was prescribed to me for gallbladder stuff but I think has additional IBS use? I'm taking it at half the prescribed amount, since that seems to work best.

Anyhow, there we are.

Too much people in the last little while. I spent a bunch of time at the studio which had a bunch of ambient folks and some time on the phone with disability folks and it's just been too much.

The pill fluctuations are catching up with me too; with PMDD it's the change in hormones that's the problem, not necessarily the levels, so I'm back to steady on the pill to suppress my body's cycles which had started to wake up. I have to remind myself that I lived through this monthly for decades, until it became super constant; I can get through this bit ok until I stabilize. The bubbles of hatred and despair and pain are just very unpleasant.

Being outside makes everything ok, though. Moving around, looking at different things, making garden beds and planting bulbs and splitting firewood-- those settle me and give me peace. I've nearly finished putting in the peonies and have added some grapes and a toka ownroot plum and three manchurian apricots, which may well be hardy here. They're all miniscule plants, of course, 2.5" pots, which take longer to mature but they're what I can afford. I can't spend as much time doing these things as I'd like, of course, or I lose use of my body, but any day that contains them is a better day.

Today the plan is to screw some pallets together to make a winter pig shelter. They can't stay in the back, and since the rescues are full they need to stay here, so I'm going to bring them in closer. We'll see how much of it I get done, but even if all I can do is move the pallets today, pound the t-posts tomorrow, and screw things together the day after then that's how it must be done. Weird to think I used to be able to do something like this in one bite in the dark after work, and work the next day.

The days are getting distinctly shorter. I think we're below 8 hours of sunlight now. I hadn't realized how this would impact my ability to be outside; because I need good long rest periods between pieces of activity I end up running out of daylight even if I'm only spending two hours outside total unless I start very early.

The ground is starting to freeze. I bet I can still get t-posts through the crust, it's not deep yet, but I'm not sure about digging anything and a bunch of stuff is likely frozen to the ground. I may have one hose encased in an ice flow on the north side of my house, which I think may not thaw till spring now, but I got most of the hoses and pallets up. I'd thought to move woodchips later in the winter but had forgotten that the outside of the chip piles, which are wet, freeze. I've moved most-ish of the chips anyhow, making the lasagne chicken-manure-and-green-deciduous-chip beds. I'd left bulbs-and-mulching the orchard until the ground on the way back there froze. It's more work slogging through mud, and anyhow, I just haven't had the ability.

A friend helped me take measurements for the automatic pattern thing (apostrophe patterns) where you feed in your measurements and it spits out a pattern. I just don't have it in me to self-draft leggings, and it's worked well for shirts in the past. Weirdly my arms are symmetrical now, biceps at least. I've lost 3" on my biceps in the last two years, which is not surprising but it makes me sad. I'm so much weaker now, and it's a combination of less physical activity and the illness.

Anyhow, the vast majority of my pants are in rags at this point. I have three pairs of comfortable-enough pants without holes, but none without stains, for winter. I have four additional pairs of pants that will work for winter with long underwear, two without stains, but that won't work for daily life, and of course I don't want to wear the ones without stains for daily life or they will stain. Either way I've been wearing the stuff with holes and trying to eke out the time between laundry, but if I can manage to put together several pairs of warm winter pants it will make a big difference.

Shirts that fit will be lovely too. I have several t-shirts -- they don't need to fit in order to stay on so I can buy them online -- but winter weather shirts that can handle chilliness and body moisture are beyond my price range, so it'll be good to put some more together. I did splurge on socks, as I have done at least every second year since moving north. Luckily I don't go through them as much as I used to when I was putting kilometers on them every day, and I don't need that level of quality, so it's a reasonable splurge.

Money is on my mind a lot. I have maybe eight months at most of the level of friends' support I've been enjoying. It's kept me alive through the worst of disability paperwork and learning to manage this, but it of course couldn't last forever. After that it will be back to survival expenses only.

As I go through the days I'm slowly saying goodbye to the luxuries I've enjoyed: premade food, steak sometimes, fresh veggies and even non-apple-or-banana fruits in the wintertime, fruit juice or pop or fancy tea or any drinks that cost more than a cheap teabag, milk and probably nut milks, gas for popping into town, a truck without check engine lights on, maybe regular membership at the pottery studio instead of saving my work at home to pop in and use the kiln every so many months, new plants, testing fancy clays maybe?, new sheets, electric blankets, keeping my home warm even in the shoulder season, running the dryer in the summer and midwinter (shoulder season is necessary I think), I know there'll be lots of things. In the meantime I need to sort out if there's anything that will substantially make my life cheaper at that time, and get it now. I've been thinking an e-bike, to get to town and back without gas, but that's only good in the summer. Maybe worth it? Maybe I can't maintain it well enough with my cognitive stuff and it's not?

I'm going to try and figure out some way of replacing my upstairs tile at least. Right now I can't wash the kitchen and bathroom floors except on my knees with a nearly dry cloth, because the tiles and grout and the MDF board underneath are so compromised that any moisture swells the MDF and further cracks or pops off the tiles and several are already missing or at an angle. So, I haven't been using my magic vacmop and in fact haven't been washing the upstairs floors at all. That just can't go on for the next 40 years. Even if I can just get it off and put well-sealed plywood in? It doesn't have to look like anything but I need it to function like a floor.

In the midst of all this, the ball I've been letting slip is meds. I've put off my covid shot, which I hear is a demanding one this year, because I haven't had enough recovery time lined up. I'm supposed to have started B vitamin shots a month ago, but again need to take the time to make sure if I have a bad effect I can recover. And I haven't been tracking meds symptoms except noticing the bubbles of intensity creeping back from hormonal fluctuations, and I notice them because they really are incapacitating.

Enough of that. I'll get the pigs tucked in somewhere warm today, or tomorrow, or the next day. I'll get the bluebells under the rest of the woodchips. Cats will snuggle with me when I rest by the woodstove. In a couple weeks I'll get the pottery area tidied so I can head back to my own wheel instead of the studio ones. It's a good life, full of things I love, and I'm very grateful to have it.

Despite everything, this summer is truly a glorious one.

The last three summers have been drought and wildfire smoke, and before that the heat dome. 2020 I spent in a state of basically complete panic that was probably a combination of PDA and work from home interacting, along with the ambient covid panic. I can't remember 2019's summer offhand but I think I changed jobs at that time; 2018 was a wildfire evacuation. I moved into this house in 2017 at the end of summer and that was the last summer like this, with birds and the smell of clover everywhere. Threshold loved me as much then as it does now, part of my body, a fully enveloping love like finally having real skin or gravity.

This year I've only closed the windows for wildfire smoke a couple days. We've had actual rain, the kind of rain patters I remember from before the drought: little wandering thunderstorms bringing cloudbursts and sometimes thunder as they pirouette across the landscape. There's no heat dome; outside it drops to about 10C at night and when I wake up the house is cool; during the day the sun can be a little hot between rainstorms but long cool mornings and the endless stretch of near-solstice evening give lots of time for moving around.

There are more bugs than I've ever seen and my body feeds noseeums and blackflies as well as mosquitoes when I go out in the evening. I leave the fan running in the bedroom, facing out the window, and a window on the north side of the house open downstairs; it pulls the cool air in but also disrupts the mosquitoes and any who get into the house can't fly against the air current. I picked that trick up from an Ologies bug episode, where the entomologist said the best way to keep mosquitoes off a patio was to put a fan at ankle level. They're bad fliers, he said, and like to be low, so they can't fight the air current enough to bite. I love that kind of elegant solution. When I came in from the garden two days ago in the evening my face was covered in blood, half from swatted mosquitoes and half from blackfly bites.

The garden rolls out like a carpet and then fills in like details on an oil painting. I'm putting in paths and trees and trellises, a little at a time, and yesterday I picked up a bunch of perennial flowers and they're waiting in the wheelbarrow to go up and in. I've put in a kolomikta kiwi trellis. I've put in a strawberry bed with six kinds of strawberries. I've put in baby lindens and silver maples and elms and ash and oak and hazel. In one tomato and pepper bed the hazel, cherries, and haskap are there, no bigger than the other little pepper plants and spaced in between them to line a path that does not yet exist, to a spot that is still weeds but will later be a portal.

I have somehow become a person with elderly animals -- not elderly in the way they act, but at ten years old they start to get yearly bloodwork at their vet visit to make sure everything's ok. Whiskey, Hazard, and Siri fall into that category and today is Avallu's birthday; he's 9. Yesterday Whiskey followed me out to the garden and followed me as I wheelbarrowed woodchips from down here to up in the back garden a couple times, then got the zoomies and ran along the path very fast, bounced off the wheelbarrow I was pushing, and kept going. He does not feel elderly.

Anything could happen during the rest of the summer. It's windier than it has been, with tornadoes surprisingly nearby, and the wind strips moisture quickly. We're only saved by the little wandering rainstorms that come regularly. There is a lot of fire elsewhere and strange heat anomalies and floods. Politically we've lost the idea of human life as important and human well-being and rights are so far out of functional equations as to be laughable. There are many wars, even if we don't call them that anymore, and no one with resources is interested in holding back the tide of disease. Systems infrastructure frays and I suspect one day we will wish we had our current access the things that right now we think of as irritating because they are becoming inconvenient: border access, medical systems, air travel, relatively free telecommunications, year round fresh foods, so many things.

This won't be the last glorious summer like this but it might be mine. Even if it isn't I draw a line here: I love being alive, I love inhabiting my life, I very very very much want to know what happens next, but this summer would be enough.

Cool wind and the scent of overnight rain through the window. Warm covers and a cat sleeping on the bed while others wait for breakfast. Thai black rice, coconut milk, and sugar in the rice cooker with apricots waiting. Aspens rustling outside silkily. A pile of woodchips waiting for their wheelbarrow, steaming slightly as they compost. Wiggly dogs and the sound of roosters in the distance and beyond that robins and sparrows. Nearly clean sheets and parsley, mint, and tomatoes from the garden waiting to be turned into tabouli downstairs. Reading again! by audiobook, the closest I can ever have to revisiting my childhood home. A nephew? Even a few people in the world who really want me alive.

It's very good to be here.

Into the city for another MRI. I'm claustrophobic, so I need to take drugs when I do them, so I can't drive afterwards. So: hotel.

The timing is such that Josh is coming up today, the MRI was ysterday, so I managed to find a ride into town and will be going home with him.

That meant I could end up in the hotel with no parking, which was literally a block away from the candlelight Coldplay string quartet concert I'd been thinking about coming in for last year, but had then decided too much was going on. Right day, too.

Between chores yesterday morning, getting to the hospital (a few blocks), wandering lost in the hospital for a full 20 minutes trying to figure out where to go, coming home, and walking to the concert I covered 8km yesterday. The concert was an hour, and by the end (I wasn't checking my watch) I had ust about decided I needed to stand up and walk out because I was at the edge of my ability with sitting so long, then they announced the last song. So that was amazing.

The hotel mattress is excellent, I did get rest in between everything, and my body hasn't tanked yet. Maybe it can wait till Josh is gone?

I definitely needed to get out of my little box a bit. I also need to make my little box nicer, which hopefully Josh can help with. It's got piles and dirty floors and everything askew. I'm hoping to enlist him to remove all my clothes older than 5 months or so (saving t-shirts and jeans legs for projects), figure out organization for some of my shelves, and do a gigantic dump/thrift store dropoff run.

Plus I think the cats need a bunch more Places, like wall steps and boxes in corners etc. They're socially unstable right now and that isn't ideal; with more cat-habitat I believe the situation will be better.

Not fully convinced I'm not becoming allergic to the woodsmoke from my chimney, which is problematic, though for a heating system I probably do eventually need something that's not splitting, stacking, and carrying several tons of wood each winter. Not sure I can be convinced to get rid of the woodstove as a backup, though, since every other heat source needs some kind of electricity, even the pellet hoppers and blowers. I say that as if I have money to install alternatives.

Been talking to Tucker some and there are hard bits but also we're both better at compassion for each other now. I'm very happy about how it's going, and very curious about how his practicum with my former employer (different person, different ministry, but still) will go. I steered him to this guy, who seems pretty good and reasonable, so my fingers are crossed.

The light is racing back after solstice. You can see outside by 8am and even after 5pm now. It's so good.

Tomato seeds are in for the year, I believe 101 or 102 varieties depending on how you count. Several of them are F2s, which is the first variable generation after a cross. Many of them are up already.

Peppers are potted up, mostly, and the couple that didn't germinate are replanted.

I put a bunch of greens in too, though just a couple of each except sorrel, with the plan to start a bunch more for the farmer's market later on. Doesn't impact me, but I believe some legislation was just changed so it wouldn't be legal for actual stores to buy veggies from me unless I did a bunch of licensing stuff and joined a group of some sort based down south. Not a great look, gotta say, for a gov that mouths words about food security. As always I'm excited at the idea of ethiopian kale.

Potato seeds started, though seed potatoes are not ordered. The snow is mostly off the garden, on a sunny day I could go up and plant favas and poppies and I bet the ground would be thawed enough; it's still mostly freezing hard overnight which makes chores less muddy.

Looks like many of the apple seedlings I planted are still up there -- some are not -- but the geese keep getting into the garden and likely will eat them all if I don't get better fencing sorted asap.

No legumes or corn or squash started yet. I'm thinking about doing a round of sweet corn or popcorn on top of my gaspe, I'm more likely to eat popcorn but people locally like sweet corn so a seed crop might be nice. Anyway, I could offset those by starting them indoors, especially if I'm starting from several different varieties. I'd like to try runner beans this year too, I don't really like figuring out support but they're supposed to do well in cooler weather. Maybe on the deck? I have a nice assortment.

I did plant some mache and pak choi on the deck.

I would like salad season.

I set up some damp boxes and am experimenting with those. I'd like to be able to throw a bunch, carve a bunch, and handle a bunch of objects not necessarily in the demanding timespan that air drying with a bit of plastic over them forces on me. Fingers crossed! The damp boxes are just clear bins, I set cardboard in them for the mugs to sit on and I can spritz those or just dump water in. Now I need to shift some shelving so they can be somewhere convenient and also allow more plant space when the tomatoes get potted up.

Geese are sitting in a lot of cases, I'd been hoping to keep them off the eggs until midmonth so no babies happen while I'm gone in early-mid May. I've managed to keep the ducks off at least. It all means lots of eggs for me, I sent a box of them with Tucker and stored a box in the back of my fridge (goose eggs keep for a really long time) and now it's time to start making and freezing pasta dough. The little food processor I got way back when is putting in some hard labour on pasta dough.

Thea has really bad matting on her pantaloons. It must be uncomfortable because she doesn't want me touching it. I think I can get in on Solly's before it's that bad, and Avallu's are good, but I think I might take Thea in for a professional groom. She gets spectacularly motion sick, but there's a groomer just a couple kms down the road, I might even walk her down there?

In other dog news, Avallu let me clip his nails the other day after I worked up to treats-for-touches for awhile. None of them are running on the road much, so they're definitely needing clipping. Thea is Not Having It, Solly will be worked up to it ok, she's just skeptical. And Solly has showed truly excellent escalation from tiny liplifts, through gentle escalating growls, to a sudden but roomy air-lunge with the cats. I'm very pleased; when she arrived she went right to lunging to indicate her displeasure, and I've been working on letting her know that growling is a good communication tool. This just makes her a safer dog all round. The cats appreciate the heads up too, and are feeling safer knowing when to be around her and when not to be (the not being: when she's eating or getting lots of attention from me. We're working on this latter one a bit).

I realize I'm supposed to be making some dishes for my brother's wedding but I haven't been in to the studio to use those bats for plates recently. Hm.

I also started a "mug of the day" post on instagram, where I'll post something about something I've made. Sometimes it will be a glaze detail, sometimes another thing I'm noticing or thinking about. At work it's something about the mug I bring in to drink out of.

Visit with Tucker was excellent, though I didn't love being away from home. Finally talked with Josh about all the stuff that had been waiting on me having energy, and that was good. It's a place to start.

So: lots of good.

The drop-dead date for having completed all the stuff I haven't been able to do to keep working is this fall, and I'm just not able to do it in time, plus work, plus manage my health stuff. So far as I can tell they allow zero accommodation there, too. So this lovely castle in the air I've built myself rests on that foundation until October, when I'll most likely lose my job because I'll be kicked out of the forestry thing for not finishing it. The forestry thing doesn't allow it all to be done separately, only while working, so that's a no go. I'm glad to have had this, anyhow. Not sure how long I'll be able to hold down any other job, like retail or whatever is available in town, since I'm working from bed a couple days a week right now. So I know there are changes ahead, but I'm happy right now. That counts for something.

It's been awhile since I wrote. I had that truly terrible cluster of migraine symptoms at first, then work was extremely busy -- we did a last minute heli flight that lasted a full workday, then I was helping with a conference one town over, then I was recovering, then I was helping with our seedy saturday, then I did a tiny bit of pottery at the studio, now it's now. It really took everything I had to get through that. I gave up on non-masked human social stuff for that couple weeks, on doing more than minimum for food and house. Now I want to sink into the deep pool of peace that is my house and my life. I want to watch my cat sleeping and intermittently pet him for hours while my mind unspools and processes.

There's a lot to process.

It's spring and the geese are all over the yard looking for nests and there are melt-pools everywhere. I can hear gregarious honking through my dog door.

While I was at the end of the conference, but still in it, before the drive home, I was sending off a quick email to my supervisor about how my work hours supported the yearly priority plan. I used the term "DEI" and he didn't know what that meant; I sent him a copy of our organization's new DEI plan that had come out and been circulated something like last fall and he said thank you; he didn't dispute (and never does) the time I spend on this but wow.

I introduced my colleague to proper vietnamese food for the first time and as I was dressing and flipping my pho he asked how I knew how to eat it. He loved it, even the (truly phenomenal) fish sauce.

I gave away 8 mugs as door prizes and several hundred packets of my own seed at seedy saturday. They had someone else as a speaker this year talking about "proper" seed saving (how not to cross, for instance) so I spent my time at the seed tables. First I was stuffing envelopes with seed and directing people to label them as I stuffed, but we quickly ran out of packets. Then I showed people how to do the origami seed packets, the librarian used her paper cutter and a pile of recycled paper to make squares, and we folded, filled, and taped. People kept coming in with big bags of seed. Someone came in with elaborate origami seed packets with a crane folded into them. We had such an incredible richness of local seeds come in, I felt so honoured, like a conservator of a community treasure. Several thousand packets of seed went out, free, to people. My mugs, some plant starts, other folks' homemade wine went out as door prizes. The space was packed. Everyone said it was an amazing event. One of the speakers brought 75 varieties of tomato seed to give away. They say that in the coastal indigenous cultures your wealth was measured by what you give away, and I always feel that, and last Saturday I felt wealthy. All the extra seeds go to the new seed library in the library there so anyone who missed the event can still grow things. A+ use of my time but following on the end of a long week it was a lot, and by this time I was really missing talking to my people.

Dogs finally got treated for the fleas Solly picked up when she went on her walkabout. I hadn't seen any in the last month but that means very little. I've been watching videos of a professional dog groomer doing livestock guardian dogs on youtube and trying to figure out how I could wash my pups. I'll settle for getting the mats out and doing a deep brush. Avallu's been loving this; I think it's time to start treating Solly for it. Thea has realized it gets her attention so she's settled into it.

My pepper seeds are all up except for the african birds eye. It's getting on time to start tomatoes and separate the peppers, which means setting up more lights, which means clearing a shelf or two, which means doing some work on my storage container. My first round of seeds, tomatoes from Jan 1st, is doing well-- some of the micros are flowering, and the F2s exhibit the breathtaking diversity that hold me in awe and that I'd always hoped to attain.

The headache seems to be somewhat recurring, but not as constant as it was. Nausea is a near-constant struggle. These two things may (?) be correlated to air quality, as they may get worse when I turn off the CR box or have the windows closed? On the other hand it's warmed up and I can keep a couple windows cracked open so my body just feels lighter in a lot of ways.

In two weeks I'm driving to the coast for a couple days to visit Tucker and bring him (and some clay) back up, maybe disseminate some mugs.

This Wed is a bisque kiln and possibly the following weekend a glaze kiln, that doesn't leave much time for glazing.

Odds and ends, unprocessed. Spring is coming. My mind doesn't think well. Still I'm doing what I love and am happy; I only hope this life doesn't have that fall expiry date.

Connection with Tucker continues to deepen in a way that feels cautiously safe enough for me to mostly own where my attachment issues are - even the ones that were previously caused by his behaviour, there's space to listen and empathize. That's good. There's a lot of baggage, that's hard, but I'm mostly hopeful.

Solly has not yet learned to use the dog door but the dogs have all been in the woodstove room at once, or in various pairs, though she's still getting some counterconditioning around guarding things, and she's poorly mannered about the sofa (but is getting better). Still, we've had nice evenings with all three dogs and a couple cats snuggled up in here. Solly is also re-learning her growl and I'm so proud of her (haha, as someone who spends time with folks who have trouble expressing "negative" emotions I guess) and she's growled several times now instead of going straight to a lunge-and-air-nip. Thea needs daily love and attention for her to not guard Solly away from me in the downstairs. Avallu will not displace cats who are lying in his bed, and so has been sad.

I cleaned the chimney a couple days before new years and relit from the ashes. Chimney was good and clean from burning dry birch. I want to make a better woodshed and get a bunch more birch if possible.

Making a ton of pottery. Downloaded a tracking app and am numbering anything that will be bisqued in 2024 as 24-1 through 24-whatever.

Josh and Tucker both might be visiting in Feb.

It's been ultra warm, not even consistently below freezing though the ground is frozen and we finally got snow a couple weeks ago for insulation. Finally have -20C in the forecast. Very curious to see how the rest of the winter goes.

Last night, on the 1st of the year, I planted 4-6 seeds each of 8 types of tomatoes: two I'd got from a silvery fir micro lineage for testing online, two for crossbreeding (mission mountain sunrise and sweet cheriette), and 4 of my own crosses (unknown whether F1 or F2) sweet baby jade x hardin's mini, F2 zesty green (an offtype of karma miracle I think) x silvery fir, F1 of mission mountain sunrise x (F1 of aerogarden "heirloom" micro x sweet baby jade), and F2 sweet cheriette x karma miracle. This morning I woke up and, knowing those seeds were planted in the next room, I couldn't stop smiling. It's not a lot for growouts but it gives me something to look at, and it's my first manually crossed F2s!!!!!!

Working on a micro tomato workshop for the garden club. The grocery store gave me their poinsettas, so I can use those pots and some scavenged soil and my own micro seeds and people can plant their own. This is the time of year everyone wants to plant things but it's too early to start outdoor veggies. I love being able to help people do plants, especially at low-to-no cost. The garden club is trying to plan one workshop per month and a couple seed swaps at the right time for different plants (early flowers, veggies, and probably plant-straight-outdoors plants).

I am inspired to do some sunreturn pottery as the days get noticably longer (and maybe some wheel pottery at summer solstice?). Tucker requested something firey, and I realized in that moment that good reds usually come from reduction firing-- that is, heating the clay with actual fire instead of electricity, so the fire eats the oxygen and you get different chemical reactions and thus colours than you do with electricity and exygenated air. Relatedly, someone about 3.5 hours away offered for me to fire pots with her. That's relatively close in the scheme of things. I'd like to figure out some sort of wood firing here, not sure if barrel or pit or clay oven style.

I'm going to open Threshold to folks who want to celebrate the solstice and eating and planting and telling stories and maybe canning or sausagemaking or making clay things and who knows what for a week around June 17-24 this year. Hopefully I'll have the outdoor shower & maybe an outdoor toilet by then, there's some camping space maybe even fenced off from geese and some room in the house. It's going to be a big lift but it's important. Need to figure out covid protocols etc. Hoping too much of the province is not on fire by then, we're still in hella drought and I know a lot of those fires are burning under the snow. Flying over them some of the fires were very patchy, so there's lots of edge for fuel to be living in.

Little Bear the kitten manages to somehow be adorable enough that I welcome his help in keeping surfaces clean rather than being upset that he knocks things over and tracks mud onto my neck etc. His current hobbies are windowsills and sinks but they change often.

Tucker got me some lights from ikea as a christmas gift and I'm using them to set up shelves to display my unfinished pottery so I can stare at it after bisque and before glazing and let a creative process of some kind happen. Downstairs is getting really nice. The lights and shelves are as much of a game changer as the couch or the storage can.

It's cat brushing season and now Hazard is demanding, not just food in the mornings, but also brushing.

Kittenlet got approved by the vet to go in with my other cats yesterday: no FIV or whatever the other one. This morning he and Demon were chasing each other around the house, I think deliberately. When folks come up for thanksgiving it'll be interesting to see where everyone ends up. It seems like he's probably staying here? But only if Hazard can handle him. That's the last holdout.

It's definitely fall. The aspen trees are brilliant gold, and soon they'll drop leaves on roads and sidewalks and those will be gold too. We've had a bit of rain but not a ton. The ground is still very dry. Frost has killed the tomato plants back and is taking its toll on the favas. I've harvested very nice gaspe and gaspe x corn, the first round of favas, and my seed tomatoes.

I'm very, very tired and I've been distant from all my people lately, and/or they have from me.

I played with a little porcelain on my home wheel for the first time the other night and it is just so much easier to control than stoneware clay.

Probably more to say but too foggy to think of it.

I planted sixty tomatoes last night, mostly promiscuous and blacks but also my 16 grocery store green F2s. Greens and reds are mostly already planted. More blacks, some sibling promiscuous, and some "weird" colours still need to be done.

The smoke was coming in last night, not high where the sun turns orange but low where the sky is still blue but it moves like mist along the ground and smells like a neighbour's bonfire all day. Today, thank goodness, it's gone. My air filters have not yet arrived and I haven't yet cleaned up the dust from downstairs.

Somehow I've gone from being energized by the sun all my life to being sick and weird-feeling when I'm out in it even in the late afternoon. I've been gardening between 7 and 9:30pmish, because I just do not feel well if I go out otherwise. I have a Dr's appointment next month; I need to bring my list of symptoms and push for whatever the next thing is because I still don't have enough memory to advocate for myself in a visit like that without notes. Sinus infection still present: eyes hurt, shoulders and neck hurt, on top of the normal sinus places. Not sure if the stabbing headache I've had for the last week and a half is related. Things just hurt, dammit.

I don't work tomorrow. I may stay out late and plant things; this is about as late as I want to push that.

It's supposed to be cold on the weekend. I want to do some pottery, and maybe I will. I am feeling significantly more emotionally regulated now than I was yesterday; I assume that was a medication wobble, or maybe I took some steps to reach out and chat with folks and that helped with my sense of connection.

Canada is doing an education grant for all citizens, regardless of income: $3500 for selected "futurizing the workplace" type courses. A couple are website design for small business owners, which I might do to out out some of my soap, random cool animal bones, maybe random pottery, and meat in season - I have a website sketched up but the last time I did the internet it was all straight html, so. There's also a nice drone program or two -- good for work - one on autism (not sure how good it is), some things like the basics of plumbing which would be ultra useful, and -- well, I just like taking online classes, so this is neat. But it would be good to get a website up. I think we have 2 years to use up the grant funding.

Oh right, I also need to put some mushrooms in my logs. Tonight is pottery, so this might be a late night, or an early morning tomorrow if I'm trying to avoid the sun.

The geese and especially ducks are growing super fast (the babies, I mean). It's unreal how much they eat, poop, and grow. The chicks in there are a little more civilized.

I had a tap installed in the south wall of my house when the plumber was here, and now I realize I have water there. I should* put a lean-to greenhouse against the south side of the house, where it will broil and be great for tomatoes and peppers, slightly insulate the water side of my foundation, etc. In the meantime I should put pots of tomatoes along that side, they'll be easy to water (before I had to wrap the hose around the house) and do well in the heat.

I have a bunch of my seedling apples in the ground, about 18" apart. Will be interesting to see what survives the winter. These are the edholm seedlings: "early OP", "Oct OP", "Wickson OP" and "red flesh OP". There's no real way of knowing what they crossed with, though there are a ton of interesting things on his land, and only Wickson is a reliably hardy parent. I figure I'll just replace any that die with new seedlings every year until I have no more gaps. But anyhow, that's why I thnk the 18" spacing for full-sized apple trees is ok.

My named apples planted in the orchard are doing well. All the crabapples are flowering.

I'd like to make a bunch of tags, one for each tree, out of clay. Just one more project, besides the poetry tumblers and the seed storage jars and the plates. Good thing winter exists?

It's dry dry dry here. The "poker ride" (something about riding around the trails on ATVs and poker hands?) was cancelled because those hot engines on the vegetation can start fires when it's this dry. Thank goodness for my well and for that little bit of rain the other night, but still.

PDA is kicking my butt in so many places. I have pictures and last year's text for piglets, I need to put up excess pigs for sales. Also something course degree something mumble oof.

The folks in Smithers who were looking to share their property let me know about a job in that area. I guess that's also an option if I wanted to move, which I don't really. The more apples I plant, the more I know that when my dogs leave the trees won't survive unless they're big enough to survive moose predation.