Greenstorm's Journal

It's easy to forget what takes thinking. Right now, with all the snow outside, I don't have a lot of ability to do outside and thoughtlessly wheelbarrow things. Even snowblowing, which I try to do every 6" of snow, requires a fair bit of strategizing about where, exactly, the piles of snow will go and how to get them there (it can throw roughly 15' and obviously not through solid objects). Being in the house, I decided to tidy it a bit, and then the skillcult apple seed sale loomed and some scionwood became available elsewhere so I worked on making some decisions about which of those I wanted for next year.

Tidying the house is A LOT of thinking work. And not just tidying, but "should I get rid of this?" and "what things should go together in an area, which things should go into outside storage, and where should things go while they're waiting to leave the house or go into those areas?"

I made my seed order, made inroads on the house, and yesterday and today can't stay awake or think or follow a book. It's been awhile since I had to repeat audiobook spots four or five times, and I'm back to that.

So I guess I need to take it in smaller bites, though I'm not sure how.

There's about eighteen inches of snow out there right now, most of which fell in the last five days. It's good insulation against the -20.

All would be well except that Solly has realized going in the house keeps her from chasing deer away, which is her reason for existing (see: guardian dog). She's escaped from the house and will only come near me when we're nowhere near the house and I've shown her that my hands are totally empty of collars and leashes (she can get out of a collar in about twelve hours, so there's no grabbing her by a collar). She's sleeping in the chicken coop at the bottom of the garden, which is a nice 6x6' building full of straw, so she's nice and warm and dry. It's right where the deer come over the fence. I've been taking her food& medication out there in a bowl (which she stays away from me, since my hands aren't demonstrably empty, but will eat the food if I step back). I'm not chasing her, since she's not supposed to be walking at all.

I've given some thought to putting her in the small fenced garden & greenhouse with the geese. It's a smaller space, but I'm not sure how they'd all feel about such close proximity. She's allowed to stand and lie down, gentle range of motion is fine, but mostly rest. So we need to come to an accommodation we can both tolerate.

It's funny, Solly is such a ridiculous sweetie I'd forgotten just how intense these dogs can be when something gets into their guardian button. This is a dog who loves to lie on the couch or on my lap on her back with her paws in the air, but she's smart enough to connect the dots between going inside for a bit and being kept there for longer than she wants, and being inside and not being able to chase the deer away, and she's fully willing to deprive herself of all those things PLUS food in order to keep those deer away (she won't even let me feed her near the house in case it's a trap). Plus walking hurts her. The pain meds are making a difference but that just makes her do more mobile stuff.

I should be problem solving that but I snowblew her a path around the chicken coop so she doesn't have to drag her legs through the deep snow and I'm letting her chill until my mind is online again. I could catch her in the chicken coop by closing the door, but after a couple days of walking her to pee and otherwise leaving her in there she'd just have the door off. This afternoon I talk to the vet who might be able to do surgery "locally" (only 2 hours away) and then to possible funding sources.

The tornjaks in the province are all sold, so I don't need to make any immediate decisions on puppies regardless. It looks like there might have been some drama in the (quite small) breed group?

Whiskey is headbutting me for snuggles so I should go. I want my legs to work soon so I can get some water. I'm thirsty and the relative humidity is like 13%.

Last month was a bad month. Fear and paperwork. When I write things here I re-live them, and I wasn't quite able to write about them because I wasn't done living them. In many ways I'm not.

It snowed for three days after all that, maybe 18" of snow here: over my boots. My snowblower is in the shop so although I have been doing some shovelling and knocking snow off roofs a feeling of isolation remains. In this case it's soothing, peaceful: I'm insulated from everyone else, though I do keep shovelling the arc of the gate so it can open if I need to get out in an emergency. The roads have been terrible, and this morning the snow turned to rain so I can't imagine it's any better out there.

Shovelling and walking the daily chores in the deep snow are all my body has been able to do. It's such a relief after using myself up emailing to follow up with bizarre information and paperwork structures (to contact benefits, for instance, I call someone who transcribes the call, puts it into a ticket, sends the transcription to me to ok, then the ticket goes to the benefits people, who email me an answer which I can't reply to so if I want to reply I need to call with the ticket number, explain the whole thing to someone, who puts in another ticket...)

Enough of that. My difficulty navigating these systems does give me real fear -- for instance, the system that was supposed to give me stopgap money requires reports every 2 weeks, and I'd been keeping my eye on their online portal, turns out the online portal just keeps saying it's "in review" until I do my first report, there's no way of knowing online if I'm approved or not until after the report is done, so I missed my first several reports, several weeks of money, and had to reapply (which then means I need to go through the weeklong no-money-during-this-period after they process it, and before I get money from them).

Anyhow, I would not be here in my bed with my cats and dim snowy light coming in through the window without friends who just give me money to live. I might be in a shelter, but the shelters are only 12 hours at night, and I think a day or two of that and I would not be able to move anymore, so maybe the hospital? With a foreclosed house and that terrible stabbing feeling of letting down the creatures I love who rely on me.

None of that is why I started writing now, after so long. I started writing because Siri came in this morning and lay on me and fell asleep with my hand under his chin, then sprawled across me. He dreamed and his tail twitched and he growled in his sleep and then settled. He was curled right up against me, as if I was safe for him, and I am?

I pay money to keep hi alive and I do not resent it in the least. Given a choice between feeding him and giving him his meds and say, clothes that fit, or a mattress without holes from laying in it so much, there's no question for me. I've felt bad about or resented people before for requiring money, but not the cats.

My house is gothic arch shaped. It's perfect for winter: the snow either stays on the roof and insulates, or it slides down and covers the basement windows and insulates down there. Things are quieter and more still, muffled by the snow at point of impact and by the rampart of snow around my house.

I've always rejected the idea of money as love because it was too painful for me to think there were ways I was unable to love people, that I just didn't have much money so that would mean I couldn't love folks properly. Like, as they said, if I did love them I'd find a way to get money for that use.

But maybe I can start by thinking of money as community love. It's still too hard to think that I can't do for anyone what has been done for me in an interpersonal love sense. But for community? I can do other things, and not this one thing, and that's maybe ok.

Though realistically I can do basically nothing right now. I can shovel a little snow and eat crackers for dinner and pet some cats. I can write very little and I can't do any pottery, though maybe if paperwork stops then I can. I can't articulate the increasing fragmentation and polarization I'm seeing in meaningful ways.

Some days I can't even find what's beautiful. I was describing my situation to a counselor at one point and she said "oh, I'm glad you have pets" and, yes. This is the thing Siri brought to me: he showed up, he chose me, he comes and snuggles close to me in the morning with full trust, and between him and the others I can always access feeling loved. Humans are so far away these days, I'm grateful to have these other ones closer to me.

And honestly, since my cognition really started to go, and since there's been more distance with Tucker and Josh, I'm not sure where my comfort level is with people at all. I used to do it so easily.

Bits of rain out there, falling on the snow now. Each drop makes the ramparts a little more impassible: I should shovel my way out at least. Or I should properly rest, since yesterday did wipe me out pretty badly.

This piece of writing has no summary, no conclusion, no theme to brush past on my way out the door. It just ends as it began, with cats snoring, and winter light in the window.

Every day there's more sunshine.

We had a fresh blanket of snow two nights ago and through into yesterday early afternoon. I popped out on work breaks to snowblow, working from home, and it was the kind of fine dusty-sand snow that blows all around and is easy to snowblow but hard to walk through.

Today it's very sunny, -20C. That sounds cold but with the sun at least making it above not just the horizon but the trees there's so much directional radiant heat and everything is bathed in light. The air is cold enough that it's full of glitter, sparkling like a christmas card or fantasy movie set.

I have a friend at a similar latitude in maybe Sweden whose geese are starting to posture. I should split off a couple groups for breeding before they pair off inappropriately.

I started seeds for the garden club meeting in two weeks, we'll be splitting the tightly-packed seedlings at the first leaf stage and everyone will be potting up some micro tomatoes and small pot-friendly peppers. It's much too early to plant indoor starts for planting outdoors at the end of May, so this is a way to get our hands in the dirt and play with seeds and build some community without having overgrown seedlings later on. Plus it introduces people to micro tomatoes and I do have a ton of micro seeds. The club is providing soil and pots (I am also bringing some pots scavenged from the grocery store program's poinsettas). This makes me happy.

My apple seeds will arrive soon and I will soak and stratify them. I have no money right now but am hoping to order a couple more haskaps and some oaks for this year. Maybe I'll sell some pottery to do it?

Speaking of selling pottery, I have the kiln lined up to buy from my mentor in spring, but money is a definite issue. I'm considering doing a "help set up my ceramics studio" kickstarter/indiegogo/maybe patreon sales type thing, though it makes me nervous. I do love the idea of crafting items for people based on a couple data points though (big or small, handle or no handle, texture or no texture, colour family, choose a word if you like).

-30C. Lake freeze up last night.

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.

February was so warm for the most part: lots of days above freezing, even a night or two above freezing.

March has been super cold, in the negative double digits. Last night was -20C. I'm pretty ready for it to be over, or at least for water freezing hard enough that I have trouble getting it out of the water bowls to be over.

Planning to start lots of seeds at the end of the month: tomato, pepper, potato, tomatillo, artichoke, etc, etc. Still need to set everything up, but that should give them the necessary 8 weeks until June when they go out. Everyone's gardening mojo is low, though: we just had 2.5 feet of snow in a week and it's hard to imagine the ground exists. I can barely see the tops of my fences!

This winter has just been a continuous bounce from cold to warm to cold again. We're having another one-- last week was up to 7C, this week will get down to -24C at night. Bounce, bounce. My driveway is a 6" slab of ice, but since we got a full foot of snow last night and a ton of wind it's impossible to fall down on it.

I need to go out and snowblow, but first I need to dig the snowblower out of the drift of snow in front of the shed. We hadn't had a big snow this winter, or maybe just one, so it will be good to have the moisture. On the other hand, I am poorly equipped right now to snowblow and carry straw for animals. I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep, despite that glorious sun outside.

In slightly troubling news my well needs something or other done to it, the pressure has dropped considerably. The pressure tank seems ok, it may be the pressure switch that's failing. So I hope, anyhow. Hopefully too I can get someone to come out and look at it before it fails completely. Melting snow on the woodstove for animals to drink does not seem fun, though I guess I could hook up the animal water heaters.

Edited to add: there are something like 40 ravens hanging out in the pigpen, it's driving me nuts.

Mind still bad, but I have an appointment on the 27th with the gyne. That's the day I drop Tucker off at the airport and pick Josh up. Luckily it's a phone appointment so I just need to be in phone service.

Refilled the wood stand in the house, I think last time I refilled it was the 5th, so that's 9 days? Not bad.

Very cold coming up, -34C or so. My upstairs is so draughty/leaky, it's a real problem. I guess I can just bake things all day or do some canning. It's the point where if I wash the windows to put film on them, they'll just ice over (maybe the cloth will freeze to them, depending) and they probably won't dry. Inside the house is warmer than that, but windows just aren't that insulative even when double paned.

Made my potluck dish for work tomorrow. I'm trying the spanish lemon goose recipe on pork, it seems to be pretty ok. May make for a good canning spice inspiration. It can also hang out in a crockpot, which is key.

Hoping tomorrow goes ok. People are a problem right now. In-person people will probably be more ok. At leaat the landrace forum is a nice place to spend time-- that goodness they're moving to a free, reasonably-constructed site.

PS Avallu was sleeping by the fire and ...howl-crying in his sleep? It was a bit eerie. I eventually woke him up and gave him pets.

It was supposed to get very cold last night, so I caught most of the muscovies and put them in the quail sed in deep straw; I plan on putting heat in there whenever it's going to drop below -20C. They're fairly tropical birds and they don't have all the fancy mods that true ducks and geese do, to keep their feet warm. In the past I've had muscovies that froze their feet, which was... bad.

This morning Chocolate the muscovy came out for water (I water everyone before work) and I scooped her up and put her in with everyone else. I'm not sure where she sleeps, but although it seems like it must be safe I think she'll be happier with other muscovies. I hope she doesn't hold it against me that I picked her up just because she lets me get close. We'll see.

It feels warm out. The thermometer reads -15C, but maybe the lack of wind is helping. It's almost foggy and I suspect the moisture helps too. In a couple days we're supposed to be up to -6C over a couple nights, that will be a nice respite and should let me pry some of the water dishes off the ice as it softens.

Samhain is over but the veil still feels so thin right now. I go about my daily business and there is just a near presence of death, not necessarily a foreboding, just that I feel it around me even with the worst of the killing cold done for now.

I do what I can to stave it off for the animals, that's what I'm here for, and then to sort seeds for new life in spring.

Dreamed that I was back in my old home, the one I grew up in, and I was scheduled to die the next day. I didn't want to.

Now I'm awake in a hotel and it's killing cold outside. I'm tired but the person in the room above me is walking around.

One of the things that makes me bad at cities is how much trouble I have with people-sounds from the ceiling.